Please Talk About Mental Health

In the United States, at least one in five adolescents lives with a mental health condition and less than half receive the support they need. Many young people report that they are afraid to ask for help, their concerns are ignored, or that adults tell them it is “just part of being a teenager.” These reactions show that there is a gap in understanding by adults of the mental health challenges facing young people. Unfortunately, this gap in understanding and a prevailing culture of silence lead to stigma surrounding mental health symptoms and results in fewer young people getting the help and support they need. This leads to more serious mental health diagnoses, crisis situations, and suicide. The team at the Wellness & Prevention Center aims to help both adults and teens get the support they need to have open and honest discussions about the stressors and very real mental health symptoms they experience.

Talking to teenagers is tough; there are many important topics that adults need to discuss with the young people they love. In 2020, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory calling on all of us to protect youth mental health—noting that in 2020, 25% of young people were struggling with

Letter to The Editor

LETTER TO REP. MIKE LEVIN ON CLIMATE CHANGE

JOANNA CLARK, San Juan Capistrano

I am writing to express my opposition to HR-1 (Lower Energy Costs Act), introduced by Steve Scalise (R-LA). If this bill becomes law, it will promote an increase, not decrease, in our reliance on fossil fuels, contributing to climate change, the driving force behind the sixth extinction.

The Republicans and climate deniers are correct when they claim that the Earth’s atmosphere has continually changed throughout its 4.5-billion-year history, cycling through periods of cooling and warming, glacial advance, and retreat. They tend to overlook, however, that these events occurred millions of years before our arrival.

The most recent—and famous—mass symptoms of clinical depression and 20% with symptoms of anxiety. haviors; do not minimize their emotions or encourage anyone to “move on”

• Be open to a conversation on the young person’s schedule

Here are some online resources:

• Mental Health First Aid: mentalhealthfirstaid.org/2017/06/5-tips-talking-teenager

• American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: aacap.org

• Crisis Text Line: 741741

• Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

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WELLNESS & PREVENTION

BY SUSAN PARMELEE

Talking to the young people in your life about their well-being is crucial to keeping them safe and healthy. Helping the one in five youth and their families learn how to navigate these symptoms of depression and anxiety is key to increasing positive longterm outcomes and healthy adulthoods.

It is important for youth to have safe places to discuss their questions and concerns about their mental well-being.

It is the responsibility of all adults in our community to be prepared to talk about mental health.

Here are some tips for adults about talking with young people:

• Practice talking about mental health with other adults in your life

• Remain curious and open to queries from youth about mental well-being—listen to their questions and ask them what they think

• Listen more than you talk

• Empathize with their feelings and be-

The month of May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and there will be activities in many communities that support mental health. The Wellness & Prevention Center and the Ocean Institute will hold a Mental Health Town Hall, The TALK, on May 10. Ocean Institute exhibits open at 5:30 p.m., The TALK begins at 6:30 p.m. To register for free tickets, go to bit.y/talktownhall.

Also, Orange County Community Foundation hosts its first annual Mental Health Giving Day on May 17 called Imagining Mental Wellness. Please consider donating to the Wellness & Prevention Center that day or any of the very worthy nonprofits that support the mental wellness of our community.

The Wellness & Prevention Center, is here to help as well. Please feel free to reach out with any questions you may have about supporting healthy teens. CD extinction came at the close of the Cretaceous period; it wiped out the dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ammonites, and pterosaurs.

Susan Parmelee is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and executive director of the Wellness & Prevention Center: wpc-oc.org. She can be reached at susan@wpc-oc.org.

PLEASE NOTE: In an effort to provide our readers with a wide variety of opinions from our community, The Capistrano Dispatch provides Guest Opinion opportunities in which selected columnists’ opinions are shared. The opinions expressed in these columns are entirely those of the columnist alone and do not reflect those of The Capistrano Dispatch or Picket Fence Media. If you would like to respond to this column, please email us at editorial@thecapistranodispatch .com.

The most important thing the deniers ignore is that these events occurred over millions of years, not a few years.

Our species—Homo sapiens—emerged about two hundred thousand years ago, in a section of eastern Africa, more than 65 million years after the last extinction event. More importantly, before our Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels averaged about 265 parts per million for almost 6,000 years of human civilization.

Since then, humans have generated an estimated 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 pollution, much of which will continue to warm the atmosphere for thousands of years.

Carbon dioxide levels now exceed the Pliocene climate optimum between 4.1 and 4.5 million years ago, when they were close to 400 ppm. During that time, sea levels were between 5 and 25 meters higher than today, high enough to drown many of the world’s largest cities.

The last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago, ushering in a new temperate interglacial period—known as the Holocene—and triggering the birth of agriculture and the rise of civilization.

Reliable surface temperature records have been available since around the 1850s.

“The science today is irrefutable: humans are altering our climate in ways that our economy and our infrastructure must adapt to,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “We can see the impacts of climate change around us every day. The relentless increase of carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa is a stark reminder that we take urgent, serious steps to become a more climate-ready nation.”

I urge you to vote no on the Lower Energy Costs Act.

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The Capistrano Dispatch, Vol. 21, Issue 8. The Dispatch (thecapistranodispatch) is published twice monthly by Picket Fence Media, publishers of the DP Times (danapointtimes.com) and the SC Times (sanclementetimes. com). Copyright: No articles, illustrations, photographs, or other editorial matter or advertisements herein may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts, art, photos or negatives. Copyright 2023. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

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