Prevention Promotes Better Mental Health

Benefits of prevention: from a Combat Veteran and mental health worker

Prevention is cheaper and healthier than treatment.

Things that occur with trauma and anyone has been a victim of a crime are:

• fear
• triggers
• grief
• pain
• sleeplessness
• restlessness
• potential pill addiction
• therapy
• loss of opportunities (including employment)
• loss of relationships in an ideal time
• loss of quality family time
• loss of quality of life
• isolation
• depression
• blame
• homelessness
• and more

Negative components of prevention

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The only thing that can be considered negative are those rare times people get jealous, which comes off as us who live for prevention, being “inhumane”, but having no literal identification of anything less than human.

Prevention has facets of:

• love
• care
• self-care
• awareness
• minor intellect power
• putting value on another person or thing
• staying above water of life and being safe and dry

Some History

I have a client and this client’s story is as real as it gets.

This is her story, she:

• made all the wrong choices
• did not listen
• did not learn
• let her feelings run everything
• fed her diagnosis
• never asked for help in the right places

She was on the phone with me last week crying. She filled my ears with all of her regrets. She looked at where she was at and she tried everything in her power to scratch her way out of the fire. Just like some people going to jail for the first time, too, crying, fighting the guards, apologizing, and trying to redo the decision they made, she did the same. Just like feelings of those who made decisions that led to loss of limbs, she blamed others; she scratched, and yelled, trying to hear the words, “it wasn’t your fault.”

This is the wounded-heart-syndrome. A real sad reality!

So, what was she looking at that made her that emotional? What was she trying to get away from?

She lost everything and now she stood there and looked at a dark public shelter’s entrance. She laid in the same building as people she despised (women abusers and sex offenders). She screamed over the phone like she never screamed before. She tried SO HARD to reverse her whole life. She threatened this and threatened that. She tried everything to nudge people to rescue her. Going back all the way to wishing death upon the man who abused her as a child.

She sobbed.

Once we finished talking, she hung up the phone. She sadly looked at what was ahead of her. It was 8:00 p.m. and she had a choice to make. Walk in the building, give up her possessions and be locked in a dirty building with a mattress with bedbugs until 5:30 a.m. or risk the streets at night.

She had turned down my services until she had 2 weeks to eviction. I tried to prepare her, but she kept bringing up things that she could not control and things that did not matter to her current situation.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of the places on earth, also, that reality will strike. There was a time in Afghanistan when some parents let their boy out to play. It was real quiet, this summer day in the City of Kandahar. The boy took his soccer ball to play with friends. After a couple games, the boy grabbed his ball and started the journey home. He never made it. The parents got the report that because of the Taliban, their son, along with a dozen others, will not be going home today.

My Heart Breaks

My heart breaks whenever trauma effects anyone. Sometimes it is an accident that no one could do anything about. But other times, children in countries fighting terrorism need to be told “please use the other side of the street when you see a police station or soldiers. They may be targeted.”

Obama Administration

During the Obama Administration, a study about guns was conducted. In a story I wrote not long ago, I said this:

According to the National Research Council study done during Obama’s presidency, guns are used for self defense between: 500,000–3 Million Times Every Year (1,369–8,219 Times Every Day). 80% of the time, guns are not fired.

You are 1.4% likely to die by a gun versus defending yourself with one and you are 98.6% more likely to save yourself if you have one.

Prevention is cheaper and healthier than treatment

Conclusion

Hear my heart and my passion. I want my children to develop healthy!

The long-term financial impact of abuse and neglect is staggering.

For cases in 2015 alone, the estimated lifetime cost of lost worker productivity, health care costs, special education costs, child welfare expenditures, and criminal justice expenditures is over $830,000 per victim. The estimated U.S. economic burden of child maltreatment based on 2015 investigated incident cases (2,368,000 nonfatal and 1670 fatal victims) was $2 trillion.5

This could fund a college education for 70% of the children in the United States

Childhood abuse has been associated with a plethora of psychological and somatic symptoms,17–19 as well as psychiatric and medical diagnoses including depression,1,14,39 anxiety disorders,13,39 eating disorders,13 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD),39–41 chronic pain syndromes,20,40,42,43 fibromyalgia,19,44,45 chronic fatigue syndrome,44 and irritable bowel.7,16,42 Compared with nonabused adults, those who experienced childhood abuse are more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors including smoking,2,18 alcohol and drug use,9,13,18 and unsafe sex;9,18 to report an overall lower health status;9,16,46 and to use more health services.31

There is a link between trauma and trauma. Just as there is a link between falling and getting scratched. And the link between prevention and growth and strength.

Thanks for reading! Thanks for sharing!! Thanks for positive comments!!!