February 7, 2022

Good morning, MindSite News readers! In today’s newsletter: Members of Congress are taking Amazon to task for selling a compound promoted as a suicide drug by a shady website linked to numerous deaths. Rwanda is training a coterie of “mental health ambassadors” to link people with mental health struggles to care. Plus, high school students in Utah raise $66K to create a mindfulness room on campus.

High school students raise money to create a room for refuge and calm 

At Clearfield High School in Utah, students who are feeling overwhelmed now have a place to go and relax, thanks in large part to their own fundraising, according to an article on Salt Lake City’s ABC4.com. After a brief training from a school counselor on how to deploy mindfulness techniques, such as breathing to calm anxiety, they can retreat to the Clearfield Cares Mindfulness Center, which was designed by and partly funded through by students. A staff member checks students into the room, which offers a combination of soothing sounds, the smell of essential oils, and nice visuals – a wall posted with affirmations. Student body president Brady Echols ties the need for the center to pandemic stress. “A lot of my friends, especially, have been having a hard time because that second wave (of COVID cases) has been coming around. A lot of people have been missing school, so when they come back to school, they’re having trouble catching up and they’re just getting super overwhelmed with their lives.” Now, he says, they’re learning how to relax “so they can get back into class where they belong.”

Amazon has done nothing to stop sale of “suicide” compound, bereaved relatives charge

Photo: Shutterstock

Ten people, including a 16-year-old girl, died by suicide from sodium nitrite, a preservative they purchased on Amazon in the last two years, despite pleas by grieving relatives for the megacompany to stop selling the product, according to The New York Times. Parents also alleged that reviews warning about the compound’s dangers were removed from the Amazon site. (The preservative had been promoted on a dubious pro-suicide website investigated by the Times, as we reported in an earlier newsletter.) Amazon’s failure to act led a bipartisan group of Congressmembers to send a letter asking the company about the sales and its response to bereaved families. Amazon’s response: It extended condolences to the families and acknowledged that sodium nitrite “could unfortunately be misused.” Still, the company expected consumers to “use those products as intended by the manufacturer,” said Brian Huseman, Amazon’s VP for Public Policy. Congress members were unimpressed. “Amazon had the opportunity with their response to collaborate with us on this issue that’s tragically ending the lives of people across our nation,” said Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts and a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Instead, they failed to answer many of our most critical questions.”

Rwanda is training a coterie of mental health ambassadors 

Women widowed by Rwandan genocide work in coffee fields to make money. Photo: Shutterstock

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left a trail of trauma, with 10% of its people suffering from depression. Now the pandemic has sparked a rising rate of male suicide attempts. This year, health officials launched a mental health ambassador program to train people to do community outreach and bring counseling to those in need of support, according to an article in KTPress, part of the Rwandan news outfit Kigali Today. Lack of awareness about services, stigma about seeing a therapist and the dearth of providers in some areas are among the reasons that Rwandans don’t get mental health care. The Rwanda Graduate Genocide Survivors Organisation (GAERG) is training the mental health ambassadors, which include university students and members of a national youth council. “As youth, we have ways we communicate (that is) different from our parents,” said Odree Mugwaneza, a university student studying clinical psychology. “Since parents are not doing it right to talk to children, it is now our turn to do so – and better.”

Santa Clara County, CA, chooses a new jail over mental health facility

Image: Santa Clara County

By a vote of 3 to 2, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved a new $390 million jail in lieu of a mental health facility,  KQED Radio reported. Following protests after the murder of George Floyd, the board of supervisors voted unanimously to stop construction of the new jail and examine an alternative idea of building a mental health facility. What caused the reversal, proponents say, was the dilapidated conditions of the existing jails in the county. “What a lot of people might not understand is that we actually do not have a humane carceral facility to house those in our county right now,” said Supervisor Otto Lee, who referred to the jail system’s troubled history of neglect and abuse. Among those voting against the jail was Supervisor Susan Ellenberg. “I’m interested in a range of facilities that are run by health care professionals…that are not overseen by the Department of Corrections,” she said.

In other news:

Dying at age 75 on average, Black residents of California have the shortest life expectancy at birth of any other racial or ethnic group, six years shorter than the state average. In a report entitled “In Their Own Words: Black Californians on Racism and Health Care,” commissioned by the California Health Care Foundation, the Black-owned public opinion research firm EVITARUS interviewed 100 Black Californians from June to August 2021. Some key findings: participants valued holistic health ahd defined high-quality health care as proactive and patient-centered. What they said they often got, the report noted, was suboptimal care and encounters with racism that undermined participants’ health. 

A Kafkaesque reversal: Since it opened its doors in 2019, the Harm Reduction Institute of Santa Ana, California, has administered 34,000 doses of naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and has saved about 3,059 people. But the clinic shut down at the end of January after its permit was revoked for violating a zoning ordinance because it provides syringes to drug users, according to a story in the Daily Pilot, a publication of  the Los Angeles TImes. “The city’s position is pure fallacy. It is pretextual nonsense,” said the clinic’s attorney Jeremy Tolchin.

Feeling brain-dead at work? One evidence-based approach to escaping creative lows is to get moving, according to an article in Forbes.  Employers take note: “Employees need opportunities to move around, take breaks, get outside. And they need to be able to brainstorm in meetings without fear of judgment and reprimand,” according to author Bryan Robinson.

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If you or anyone you know is considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. And if you’re a veteran, press 1.

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