CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Mental health

Capital - 6/15/2020

Mental health

There have been three teenage suicides in the last year in the Broadneck community. Mental illness often goes unnoticed and untreated, because teenagers, in particular, keep it to themselves. They are afraid they will be considered weak or different or their friends and family will react negatively.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death nationally. At any given time, one in five young people may be experiencing mental health problems, according to the Maryland Mental Health Association. Yet, two-thirds of all young people with mental health problems are not getting the help that they need.

Mental health should be taken just as seriously as physical health. In the simplest terms, if you had high blood pressure, you would take medicine to regulate your blood pressure. Mental illness should be considered the same way; it is completely valid to take medication for or talk to a therapist about depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses.

Together, as a community, we should work to end the stigma of mental illness.

SARAH DUFFY

Annapolis

A larger reality

We are witnessing the tragedy of George Floyd's death morph into a larger reality.

History has shown that political change only comes if the oppressed rise up, march and demand it and the dominant leadership allows it to happen. It took women until 1920 to rise up, march, and demand the right to vote and generate enough white male support to agree.

In the 1960s African Americans rose up, marched and demanded equal rights and only after the TV scenes of police violently attacking peaceful marchers with batons, vicious dogs, fire hoses, etc., did the dominant white male leadership in Washington, D.C., vote to grant blacks full citizenship.

The reality is that ordinary white people, you and I, hold the key (power) to ending racial violence and build a culture free from institutional racism.

What actions can you take? If you are able join a march, educate yourself about white privilege, seek out media sources that aim to stimulate thinking rather than just encourage hate. Write letters to local newspapers in support of Black Lives Matter and your local NAACP.

Contact your local, state, and national elected leaders and share your insistence that policing reforms get passed. Join organizations like, ACT (Anne Arundel Connecting Together) that are working to ensure every student has equal learning opportunities. Register and vote!

The time for silence is long past. In 2020, if you are not part of the solution, you really are then part of the problem.

DON PATTERSON

Arnold

Future of policing

I see that our liberal Democrats, their friends the Hollywood elite and Black Lives Matter want to defund the police across the country. They want to hire more social workers, more counselors and more mental health professionals in their quest to eliminate police entirely.

How many of the aforementioned groups will be entering a school or building with an active shooter inside? Or, will they go in en mass a week later to see how the survivors, if any, are feeling? How many will go investigate a robbery, a murder or domestic violence?

My advice to any active police officer: Retire now! Get your pension, which you deserve. Why should politicians alone be on the public dole? To men and women who have thought about becoming a police officer, my suggestion is find another occupation now!

I have a great suspicion that private security companies will be increasing their staff in the very near future if what these fools want to accomplish comes to pass. Private companies have no rules, they do what they are tasked to do and answer only to the bottom line.

America, land of the free and home of the politically correct! Be very careful what you wish for!

BILL ZAMBIASI

Arnold

Political response

The coronavirus situation has brought to light a new unalienable truth. Twenty-first-century politicians are the worst people to have in charge of a crisis.

The earliest valid data indicated the young were the least vulnerable and the elderly the most. So they shut schools and day-care centers and sent infected elderly to nursing homes! The lockdowns were justified because "asymptomatic people might spread the virus." At that time they knew the virus was transmitted primarily by sneezing and coughing. Sneezing and coughing are - wait for it - symptoms!

The World Health Organization admitted this last week only to say 24 hours later they didn't really say what they said. The reason for the reversal was 100% political and 0% public health-related.

To quote former President Barack Obama: "Elections have consequences."

MAURY CHAPUT

Millersville