Friday, December 14, 2012

On the Heels of a Tragic Day, Pieces of Happy: Learning and Creating

Today, learning is helping me have some peace of mind on a horrifically chaotic and tragic day. How can an elementary school shooting happen? I don’t know. The Onion http://www.theonion.com/articles/fuck-everything-nation-reports,30743/ actually made me cry today with how completely it summed up my feelings.

Oddly enough, yesterday I concluded that I needed to research violent tendencies in male youth, to implement some new approaches with clients at work. We don’t know a lot about the Connecticut school shooter yet, so I am not going to assume all the research I did tonight could pertain to him. But I felt reassured at the wealth of information out there and early prevention strategies available. I wish we would shift as a country towards mental health intervention at the slightest sign of maladaptive tendencies in a person and towards prevention through cultivating coping skills and providing resources.

I don’t understand the stigma around care for mental health. We have all had maladaptive tendencies at some point, just like we’ve all had the flu or chicken pox. Sometimes we all need a doctor, acupuncturist, curandera, or specialist to cure our physical ailments. Sometimes we all need a therapeutic intervention which suits our personality to cure our mental ailments. We’re people. We fluctuate. We’re not always okay physically or mentally. One of my friends says, “We all have our crazy.”

The school shooting today made me antsy with desire to do something…anything. Small as it might be, I feel more inspired to continue seeking, researching, and over time, creating more interventions for at-risk youth. More prevention efforts must be devoted to violence and aggression. Unchecked, their reach can be even more exponential and devastating than a highly contagious physical illness, as today has demonstrated.

I say all this because I know a lot of people want to do something in the wake of this tragedy. Dissonant as we are, maybe a collective piece of our happy is creating a kinder world, however each of us see that. Instead of getting unproductively angry, we can all channel our energy into positive solutions we are passionate about, to prevent future tragedies.