Yeah, it always gets ignored, and unfortunately yours isn’t the only story I’ve heard (or, like, lived through) about an effective mental health services provider becoming abruptly ineffective under new leadership. There’s such a chronic lack of resources. 🙁

No, that does make sense, and you’re not wrong. The issue for me is that “more investment” is literally the only answer. Nothing else works. There’s no magic bullet. This is a thorny and intractable problem, and pretending that we can solve it without an influx of money is just nonsense. So while I agree that we’re most likely not going to make the kind of expensive institutional changes that would be required to deal effectively with mental health in this country, I’m adamant about saying that’s what would have to happen if we want to solve some of these problems. And if we’re not going to do it, then we have to just say as a country (or a state or a city) that we do not care enough about mental health issues to spend the money. We can’t play like we care but not act like we care (is kind of where I’m at).

Oh excellent! I’ve bookmarked it to read for later — yeah, there’s a ton of different perspectives on this issue, and zero simple solutions.

I did it for five years starting when I was in college! I stopped when I moved to New York — it was difficult work but very rewarding, and I think it gave me a more realistic sense of the many many mannnnnyyyy mental health problems our country has yet to deal with.

I am nervous to share my list because I know it’s tragically incomplete. I am adding things as I think of them, and I am afraid people will see my incomplete list and say “pooh pooh! you have left out an obvious thing! the whole list is hereby invalidated!”

This is super interesting and also depressing. I appreciate, as you said, the book doesn’t try to provide a simple answer because as awesome as simple answers would be, they aren’t real.