Activists in Manhattan (Photo provided by Andrew Malekoff)
On March 24 I was proud to stand with the youth leaders of Stoneman Douglas High School and other youth activists across the U.S. As one of them said on a news broadcast, “Every voice matters.”
They demonstrated that by extending their reach to youth survivors beyond Parkland and broadened the frame to include gun violence in all domains.
Think for just a moment about the value-laden authenticity of these social justice youth warriors as compared to what masquerades as leadership in Washington D.C.
Think about Congress’s reliance on the likes of the NRA, Big Pharma and others for campaign financing and, even closer to home, the unending and sordid political corruption trials in municipalities across Long Island.
We have sunk so low in terms of greed, thirst for power and social dysfunction, that it will take our babies to save themselves.
And, some babies they are!
How long before their enemies try to delegitimize their efforts, even beyond characterizing them as inauthentic “crisis actors,” which only serves to reinforce their resolve?
How long before the tabloids attack them and attempt to rip them apart by manufacturing sordid headlines to discredit them?
How long before the NRA public relations corps attempts to marginalize them as ego-tripping puppets of the left and Hollywood elite, rather than the free-thinkers, born of trauma that they are?
How long? Not long. It’s already happening.
Their detractors cannot differentiate between the teens being resourceful in their partnering with adults and being dependent on them.
They don’t need our leadership. They’ve already eclipsed it. But, they will need soldiers of every generation to support them.
And, let us not forget that they have suffered post-traumatic injury and are grieving.
They’ve vowed not to let this go. We cannot lead or co-opt their revolution.
What we can do is follow and support or get out of the way.
Andrew Malekoff
Executive director of the nonprofit children’s mental health agency North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights www.northshorechildguidance.org
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 20, 2018 | Blog
One week ago, tens of thousands of students across the nation solemnly walked out of their schools, many holding candles and reading the names of the 17 high school students and teachers who died in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018.
In less than a month’s time, these students have created a nationwide movement. This coming Saturday, March 24, 2018, hundreds of thousands of people of every age will be participating in the March for Our Lives in numerous cities and towns all over the United States.
In a recent story on 60 Minutes, one of the teen survivors of the Parkland attack referred to himself and his peers as the “mass-shooting generation.” They were born after Columbine happened, and these kinds of events have been part of their consciousness for their entire lives. The difference in this case is that the students are taking their grief and outrage and turning it into action.
Emma Gonzalez, one of the survivors-turned-activists from the high school, wrote in Harper’s Bazaar: “We are tired of being ignored. So we are speaking up for those who don’t have anyone listening to them, for those who can’t talk about it just yet, and for those who will never speak again. We are grieving, we are furious, and we are using our words fiercely and desperately because that’s the only thing standing between us and this happening again.”
Judith Herman M.D., author of Trauma and Recovery, says trauma survivors who become activists “recognize a political or religious dimension in their misfortune and discover that they can transform the meaning of their personal tragedy by making it the basis for social action. While there is no way to compensate for an atrocity, there is a way to transcend it, by making it a gift to others. The trauma is redeemed only when it becomes the source of a survivor mission. Social action offers the survivor a source of power that draws upon her own initiative, energy and resourcefulness but that magnifies these qualities far beyond her own capacities.”
Andrew Malekoff, Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, says that taking action with and on behalf of others can open the door to increasing empathy among children and youth and help them to empower themselves to make a difference.
“Talking about the trauma is rarely if ever enough,” says Malekoff. “Kids need to learn how to make waves, big waves and gentle waves. Making waves is an inherently spiritual act, one that leads young people to think and feel deeply. Making waves is an empowering and hopeful act and an antidote to inertia and apathy.”
Sources:
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a18715714/protesting-nra-gun-control-true-story/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/parkland-shooting-what-stoneman-douglas-students-want-you-to-know/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/opinions/florida-shooting-no-more-opinion-kasky/index.html
https://www.unhookedmedia.com/um-articles/2016/7/25/finding-a-survivor-mission
Photo Credit: Fabrice Florin https://www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/38488882960
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 15, 2018 | In The Media, Long Island Business News
It wasn’t necessary for the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook to validate that there is evil in the world. But what it did affirm is that if the massacre of six- and seven-year-old children is not off limits, then nothing is.
Now there is Parkland.
In the last 40 years, the United States has mourned scores of mass murders. A number of the locales where these shootings took place were schools – Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and now Parkland – that have become iconic markers of epidemic violence.
And mass shootings are not only happening in the U.S. In 1996, 16 kindergarten children and their teacher were murdered by a lone gunman in Dunblane, Scotland. Still, those are unusual occurrences in other countries, whereas we have had more than a dozen school shootings since the beginning of this year alone.
After “thoughts and prayers” are paraded around by politicians from all sides, what happens next? Many gun rights advocates, refusing to allow for the fact that our forefathers were talking about the right to bear arms such as muskets and had no conception of guns that could shoot down dozens in an instant, stand in the position that it’s not about guns but rather mental illness.
As the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which serves children and their families facing issues such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, I have seen the many faces of mental illness and addictions for more than 40 years. It is incredibly rare for those who are labelled as mentally ill to be violent. In fact, they are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.
Nevertheless, we do need to have a discussion about mental illness at times like these. That discussion, however, needs to be about how insurance companies and the elected officials who count on their donations are failing miserably at having adequate numbers of providers on their lists who take insurance. Over and over again, we hear that, before they found North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which never turns anyone away for inability to pay, they made numerous calls to the mental health providers on their insurer’s list and found that they no longer take insurance or are booked for months.
We also need to talk about how violence against our youth is rampant, not just in mass shootings. The faces of violence against youths are many and the impact vast. In 2013, a statistical report by the research group Child Trends visualized a hypothetical U.S. high school class of 100 graduates. Among those graduates, it estimated:
- 71 have experienced physical assault
- 28 have been victimized sexually (including 10 reporting that they have been the victims of dating violence in the past year and 10 reporting they have been raped)
- 32 have experienced some form of child maltreatment
- 27 were in a physical fight
- 16 carried a weapon in the past year
- 39 have been bullied, physically or emotionally — 16 in the past year
- 29 felt “sad and hopeless” continually for at least two weeks during the past year
- 14 thought seriously about attempting suicide, and
- 6 made a suicide attempt.
If you read between the lines and the years of mass shootings in America, if only from Columbine to Parkland, there were many more horrific events in between that have all but faded from consciousness. As journalist Gary Smith suggested, “the clock is already ticking in the land of amnesia.”
How long before Parkland, too, is gone?
Malekoff is executive director of the nonprofit children’s mental health agency North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, NY.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 14, 2018 | Anton Media, Project Access
From Anton Media: Andrew Malekoff discusses the Struggle for Access to Mental Health Care
It’s a heartbreaking scenario that is far too common: someone makes the difficult decision to seek out professional help for a mental health or substance abuse problem for themselves or their loved one and is faced with a myriad of roadblocks. They start calling providers on their insurance plan and find that they are not taking new patients, or they no longer accept insurance and only want cash. And the cost of paying out of pocket is too much for many to afford.
Here is the reality: Health insurers are required by law to offer an adequate network of providers for their beneficiaries to choose from, and not just for physical illnesses. This requirement is known in the health insurance industry as network adequacy.
Along with the difficulty of finding a provider who will accept your insurance, the problem is often complicated by a family’s reluctance to seek help for a mental health or drug problem, as opposed to physical illnesses like cancer or diabetes. Despite progress in public education, stigma still looms large.
Once someone takes the leap of faith to ask for help, he or she is too often told, “I’m sorry, I don’t accept your insurance any longer.” When this happens there is a chance they will give up.
It is this reality that spurred North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center to launch a research initiative called Project Access. This entailed creating a survey that was completed by almost 650 people across Long Island. Here is some of what we found:
• Almost 50 percent of the participants said that it was more difficult finding help for mental health or drug problems than finding help for physical illnesses, especially when they were in crisis.
• Nearly 40 percent said that their insurance company did not have an adequate number of providers.
• 66 percent reported that their insurance company was not helpful in finding a suitable provider for themselves or a loved one.
One survey respondent wrote: “A family member within my household required therapy and we had difficulty finding a provider; when we did, scheduling was a nightmare because so many patients were trying to see him. I believe it was because he was one of the few willing to accept multiple insurance policies.” This was a familiar refrain.
Health insurers reimburse mental health and addictions care providers at such low rates that they flee health insurers in droves. This is a civil rights issue and a situation that puts lives at risk.
The NY State agency that Governor Cuomo has charged with monitoring and enforcing network adequacy is the Department of Financial Services. We are using the Project Access data to demand that Governor Cuomo and the Department of Financial Services launch a full scale investigation of access to care in New York State and to hold commercial health insurers’ feet to the fire.
If you agree, print this column, add a note saying “I agree” and include your name and address. You can write to the governor at: The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York State, NYS State Capitol Building, Albany, NY 12224; email him at Press.Office@exec.ny.gov; or call him at 518-474-8418.
To read the full Project Access report go to: www.northshorechildguidance.org and click on the Project Access tab.
Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.
