Tag Archives: Mental Health

Community

Where to Turn for Help: The South End Guide to Crisis and Advocacy Groups

by Victor Simoes

Last Updated on April 16, 2024, 1:52 pm.

Strong communities are a source of vital connection and a sense of belonging — a place of collaborative care where we often seek help and support​​ in times of crisis. When emergencies happen, it can be daunting to figure out where to turn, especially if calling police-involved numbers like 911 or the 988 hotline isn’t ideal. 

In this South End Guide, the Emerald has compiled a list of crisis and advocacy groups that offer immediate assistance through emergency or crisis services, legal assistance, and information and support on mental health, domestic violence, sexual assault, and substance use. 

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Arts & Culture

Morgan Parker Imagines Psychological Liberation for Black Folks

The poet’s new book, the memoir-in-essays ‘You Get What You Pay For,’ makes the case for therapy as reparations.

by Jas Keimig

“I am looking for something to cling to for solace amid gunfire,” author and poet Morgan Parker writes at the end of her introductory essay “Start at the Beginning” in You Get What You Pay For. “I am looking for a root, a pit at the center, something to exorcise and something to embrace.”

And over the course of 211 pages, she does just that. You Get What You Pay For is Parker’s memoir-in-essays that meditates on the intersection of Blackness and mental health in America. Through examining her own life, depression, therapy, and positioning as a Black woman in the world, Parker imagines how the psychological unburdening of Black people in America could open up our lives, our potential, and our futures.

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Voices

OPINION | It’s Never Too Late to Tell A Family Member You Love Them, Until It Is

After my brother’s unexpected death, I’m regretting the words I left unspoken. Despite our present polarization and political turmoil, we must create space for gratitude.

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This op-ed has been copublished with The Seattle Times.)

Thanksgiving is the day I speak to the dead.

It’s a ritual that began last year, the first Thanksgiving Day without my brother D’Marcus. No, there is no seance with the supernatural, nor summoning of spirits, just a jangle of regrets.

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Voices

OPINION | Social Media and Mental Health: Seeing Through the Fog in the Midst of Conflict

by Danielle Marie Holland

I was overseas when the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted into a brutal October wave. Each morning, away from my community in Seattle, I awoke hours before my family to scroll through an avalanche of social media. Post after post of opinions, rage, graphic images, and downright horror. Information was moving torrentially and shared with similar speed, third-party posters having no time to look into the validity, sources, or evidence of what they were sharing. Major news outlets were moving too fast and making huge errors in the process, and journalists covering disinformation, such as Shayan Sardarizadeh for the BBC, have since been doing the rounds on viral posts containing false claims, conspiracy theories, and hateful content about the war.

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Voices

OPINION | Why the Shirtless Man Shouting on the Street Isn’t in the Hospital

by Bruce L. Davidson M.D., M.P.H.

Have you wondered why that ill-kempt shirtless man shouting on the street isn’t in a hospital somewhere? If he were convulsing or sitting up clutching his chest instead, he would have been phoned in to Medic One and whisked away. But he’s on his own since so many inpatient mental health facilities and beds were taken away nationwide when bad conditions were revealed during the 1970s.

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Voices

OPINION | Building Resilience in Children at the Start of the New School Year

by Danielle Marie Holland

As the academic year kicks off, parents and guardians across Seattle fill out last-minute paperwork, pack backpacks and lunch sacks, and remind countless children to set out their clothes the night before. While adults nudge children and teenagers to grab a sweater on their way out the door, many can forget to actively check in and stay engaged with their kids’ mental health.

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News

Student Demands for Mental Health Services Are Being Met With New Investments

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by Luna Reyna

In May, Seattle’s Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) acknowledged the impact on youth mental health of social isolation due to remote learning and gun violence and responded to Seattle students’ demands for mental health services with the creation of the Student Mental Health Supports Pilot. In collaboration with schools, students, community organizations, Seattle Public Schools (SPS), and Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC), DEEL selected five pilot schools to receive $125,000 each to implement services through August 2023. Now, up to four additional schools can apply for funding for the fall 2023 school year.

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News

Local Community Efforts Aim to Deter Gun Violence

by Ronnie Estoque

Tascha Johnson was a graduate student at the University of Washington in 2018 when she was first introduced to CHOOSE 180, an organization focused on keeping youth out of the juvenile criminal legal system and breaking the school-to-prison pipeline. Sean Goode, executive director of CHOOSE 180 at the time, was a guest speaker in one of Johnson’s social work classes.

“When I heard him talking about the juvenile diversion program that they offer, and, you know, the impact on the community and working with systems to make changes within those systems, that really resonated with me, because I have family that has also been impacted by the juvenile legal system that then followed them into the legal system as they got older,” Johnson explained.

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News

Youth Lobby Day Highlights Underlying Issues Around Gun Violence

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by Dominique Morales and Marian Mohamed, GZR Newsroom

(This article is jointly published between Ground Zero Radio, an initiative of the Vera Project, and the South Seattle Emerald.)

Inside the heart of the Washington State Capitol building in Olympia, a sea of students in bright-orange shirts filled the Columbia Room. These students, representing different schools from all over Seattle, were getting ready to walk over to the steps of the Capitol to demand one thing: the end of gun violence in their communities. 

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Community

Affordable Housing and a New Community Space Is Coming to White Center

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by Agueda Pacheco Flores

A long-awaited community center and affordable housing complex in White Center will break ground later this year.

The White Center Community Development Association (WCCDA) received $4.9 million from the state’s Housing Trust Fund in December of last year.

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