3 minute read
Getting ‘Productively Angry’
By Terri Morse, LMHC, CASAC-Master, Director, Essex County Mental Health and Community Services
This week, a colleague sent this message to my inbox. 107,000 fatal overdoses. Fentanyl seizures at the border through the roof and more acres planted in Afghanistan than ever before. Despite the opium market being saturated, the price of opium went up last week from $55/kilogram to $63/ kilogram due to high demand from exporters. Things are going to get worse, much worse. The Taliban and Iran are doing their best to make addicts in the west and China is doing the same with fentanyl. I hate to bring news of doom but what I predicted last year is happening.
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About every two weeks I receive similar pleas from this individual. I truly appreciate them, but they’re frustrating. Not in a bad way, but they provoke a sense of powerlessness – the way you would feel if someone challenged you to swim up the falls on the Niagara River. The most exasperating aspect of these messages is the sentence that’s missing, though certainly implied: “Do something!!!”
These messages, and their disguised plea, spur me on as a Director of Community Services in New York State to act, get groups together, and solve the problem. However, this problem, and other systemic problems like them, will never be solved by one person. Nor will they be solved with governmental policies, or through the allocation of oodles of money. Nope! It is going to take a lot more than that.
So, what’s it going to take to address my friend’s alert? If you want to reduce supply, you must reduce demand. It’s the only way. It’s simple in theory, but tough in practice. How do you reduce demand?
Well, in Essex County we’re focused on reducing demand through building a System of Care. We call ours BRIEF, which stands for Building Resilience in Essex Families. The vision of BRIEF is, “All families in Essex County will reach their full potential and achieve wellness.”
BRIEF will promote a proactive system that focuses on education, encourages empowerment, builds resilience, and reduces stigma for all families in Essex County. Why did we choose to focus on resiliency? Because we believe that resiliency – not the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” or “suck it up buttercup” resiliency of my childhood – but promoting the components of the following list which stem from the work of Nan Henderson.
• Increase prosocial bonding
• Set clear, consistent boundaries
• Teach “life skills”
• Provide caring and support
• Set and communicate high expectations
• Provide opportunities for meaningful participation
We are most excited to have over 58 active and enthusiastic members of BRIEF that include representatives from Essex County’s Department of Social Services, Health Department, Mental Health, Head Start, case management organizations (adult and children), local hospitals, Probation Department, Sheriff’s Department, Community Services Board, Board of Supervisors, providers from New York State Office of Mental Health, Office of Addictions Services And Supports, and Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities, schools, BOCES, primary care physician offices, youth commission, nurses, pediatric case managers, and family peers.
Whereas the structure of human services in the past was more crises-driven, and we had to wait for someone to develop an actual mental health diagnosis before we could offer help, BRIEF is focused on prevention.
Many of us got tired of watching the six-year-old who had a strong affinity for bullying develop into a sixteen-year-old who ran afoul of the law, quit school, and had no real focus on the future. The founders of BRIEF got…productively angry. Now, we’re focused on building and expanding services targeted on the birth-to-five population more than ever and supporting those who are raising them. Being a parent or caregiver is the most difficult job, especially now. They are not alone, and we want to partner with those who hold the future in their hands.
In Essex County, the BRIEF coalition is taking a systemwide, community approach to strengthening our community members from the very beginning, because if we don’t, we will repeat the patterns of the past that have led not just to a greater, generation-transcending demand for drugs, but to shattered families, broken social structures and unhappy lives. We can break these patterns, not with the help of a few, but with the help of many. All we have to lose is a monthly message in my inbox.
