Gardening helps! Unless the earth asplodes.
Plus Ethan Hawke, R.E.M., and things being terrible.
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The pandemic has shone a light in some ugly corners
An article by Sarah Sloat in Scientific American takes the position that mental health care should be available for everyone, not just the privileged classes. It’s maybe a little short on immediate solutions. It argues, for instance, that we should have universal health care, which, yes, of course, but that’s been a tough one.
The article is good at framing out the increased clarity of the problems.
Now experts in the mental health field are acknowledging that they must confront ugly truths in the American health-care system, including structural racism and classism. “The pandemic has caused universal harm to everybody's mental health, but for people who are most vulnerable, for people who are most traditionally oppressed and marginalized, that harm becomes greater and more significant,” says Ruth Shim, who researches equitable approaches to mental health care as director of cultural psychiatry at the University of California, Davis.
The pandemic was an urgent wake-up call for providers, community stakeholders and politicians, prompting them to reimagine mental health care and delivery. Shim and others are looking at how they can improve equity. What they are finding is that, to succeed in underserved communities, they need solutions that foster a sense of belonging. These include expanding access to care, improving research on community mental health and empowering people to tackle their own problems.
Gardening will solve everything, though
The clear solution to our mental health crisis is right at our feet. In the dirt. Possibly sprouting. Texas A & M reports on a recent study showing great improvement in a variety of mental health areas for people who get out and dig in the garden.
These benefits include:
Anxiety and stress reduction.
Attention deficit recovery.
Decreased depression.
Enhanced memory retention.
Improved happiness and life satisfaction.
Mitigation of PTSD.
Increased creativity, productivity and attention.
Reduced effects of dementia.
Enhanced self-esteem.
Look, I’m sure this is true. Personally, I’d rather just go buy some vegetables than wait all summer to make a disappointing salad, but that’s just me.
But! When placing this item next to the previous item, it strikes me that the most vulnerable populations don’t tend to have, you know, GARDENS. I mean, yeah, there are community green patches and all that but for the most part, people who can just go out and garden are people more likely to have easier recourse to a variety of other mental health improvement opportunities.
I’m generalizing but also, as with a lot of mental health treatments, the people most in need of it are the people least equipped to have access.
42 years ago this week the earth exploded
I was a kid in the Seattle area, not all that far from Mt St Helens, when the volcano blew. I was expecting lava (wouldn’t you?) but instead we got plumes of ash that buried Yakima, Spokane, and various points east.
One of my most vivid memories of the immediate aftermath is the footage that KOMO-TV cameraman Dave Crockett took of his efforts to get to safety. He speculates on whether he’s actually already dead as he tries to make his way through darkness. He’s on foot, having abandoned his car. The station made it clear that Crockett did get out before showing the footage but it is intense.
Decades after the eruption, KOMO did a follow up story with Crockett where he talked about the experience and the PTSD he dealt with since.
This is the best take I’ve seen on people blaming what happened in Buffalo on “mental illness”:
A story about an awkward encounter with Ethan Hawke
For some reason, I’ve heard a lot of stories about people running into Ethan Hawke over the years and without fail every story involves Ethan Hawke being kind of perplexed.
This one continues the motif:
He’s wearing a trucker hat and has a toothpick in his mouth (he always has a toothpick in his mouth), and he’s wearing this pajama-adjacent suit, which looked comfy and casual. So, I’m standing there waiting for my coffee, and I blurt out, ‘I really love your suit, it’s so cool, I want my husband to wear that.’ He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, thanks, my wife gave it to me for Christmas.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I love it so much, do you mind if I take a photo of you in that suit to show my husband?‘
Ethan himself has had some awkwardness of his own: