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- [Narrator] Thank you for joining us today for our PBA conversation series event, the mental health moment, COVID-19 and the next pandemic.

Today's event explores the effects of the pandemic on mental health and is produced in partnership with the Carter Center.

This presentation is brought to you in part by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

- We hear about mental health, We talk about it a lot in the news.

I heard a couple of weeks ago from tennis grand slam champ, Naomi Osaka discussing her issues with mental health as well.

So we know it's in the headlines and we know folks are struggling with anxiety and depression in the wake of this COVID pandemic.

And the mental health crisis just disproportionately affected members in the Brown, Black-Brown communities, communities of color and many young people are also experiencing a decline in mental health and wellbeing.

So we want to discuss today for this next hour, these topics more with our panelists, some experts in the field.

But first we do want to hear from Atlanta based CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

- Good morning.

What a pleasure it is to be with you.

Thank you to the Carter Center and the Atlanta Press Club for inviting me to join this meeting of the foremost authorities in mental health and substance use.

It is so important to keep these conversations going and to foster an environment where answers and solutions can be explored.

It is a particular honor to be part of a conversation that builds on the advocacy of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, Mrs. Carter was a pioneer 50 years ago when she championed the principle that health is a human right, and you cannot have true health without recognizing mental health as a critical component.

The recent recognition from the World Health Organization for her work and improving global health reflects just how influential Mrs. Carter's voice has been.

She continues to be a strong voice for mental health and substance use care.

And with her characteristic, courage, fortitude, and grace, she urges us to move forward on this critical issue.

CDC has been honored to partner with the Carter Center on this important issue over the years, including our support of the Rosalynn Carter Georgia Mental Health Forum.

The most recent forum introduced the unified vision for transforming mental health and substance use care as a roadmap for accelerating effective mental health as the nation struggles with the tragic and pervasive mental health impacts of COVID-19.

Here in the United States, we have made great progress in the fight against COVID-19.

And while I'm not yet ready to declare victory, I'm cautiously optimistic we are on the path to a more normal world, or shall I say an even better normal world.

As each week passes the decreases in cases, hospitalizations and deaths give me hope.

As we do the hard work of vaccinating the entire country, one by one, we are helping people make informed decisions about vaccinations, and we are working with public health leaders to make data-driven policies about how to safely get back to the activities we lost during the pandemic.

Still, we know that as the pandemic has progressed over months, behavioral health, mental health and substance use issues have increased.

COVID-19 not only exposed old cracks in our public health infrastructure, it intensified a broad range of factors that drive disparities in mental health and emotional wellbeing, including food and housing insecurity, coping with loss and racial and ethnic disparities.

The greatest burden has been carried by those who are already struggling.

We also know that the pandemic has taken an enormous toll on our youth.

A CDC study published last summer in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that younger adults, racial and ethnic minorities, essential workers and unpaid adult caregivers reported disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use and elevated suicidal ideation during the pandemic.

Another study recently published in JAMA Pediatrics found a staggering number of children, an estimated 37 to 43,000 were left orphaned by the COVID-19 pandemic with Black children, disproportionately affected.

Tragically the impact of those deaths will be felt for years to come.

I find these data extremely concerning both as a mother and as a physician.

I can tell you that CDC is working hard to support children and their families on a number of fronts.

We know what young people need to help them move forward.

They need knowledge and skills, access to services and strong connection to family, peers, and schools, often referred to as connectedness to soften the blow of how much trauma they have experienced.

We are addressing the mental health effects of isolation and remote schooling.

I have said from the very beginning of my move to CDC, that science and data would always lead the way and those data confirmed that we have the tools necessary to get our children back to in-person instruction safely, equitably and fully in the year ahead.

And of course, it's not just the children that we must consider, millions of healthcare personnel responding on the frontline have also felt this pressure.

A surge of new cases of depression, anxiety, and insomnia plus worsening of existing mental health issues, particularly among nurses has been attributed to limited resources, overwhelming workload, longer shifts, disruption to sleep and work-life balance, process in efficiencies, occupational hazards, and concerns about health and financial stability.

I saw these, lived these, firsthand with my own health care workers, my colleagues and dear friends at Massachusetts General Hospital.

President Biden, and all of the Department of Health and Human Services understand the need and are working vigorously to make behavioral health services available and accessible.

We are making a $3 billion investment in mental health and substance use block grants, the largest aggregate amount of funding to date and establishing a new HHS Behavioral Health Coordinating Council to address the nation's behavioral health needs.

And I am truly honored to be co-chairing the council's subcommittee on suicide prevention.

I want to thank the Carter Center and each of you for all you are doing to help America get back on her feet.

We are all in this together and together connected to each other we can see our way out of it.

I know the work you are doing will help lead the way.

Thank you.

- And we are going to now introduce our fabulous panel of women.

We're gonna begin with Dr. Eve Byrd, Director of the Mental Health Program at the Carter Center.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Shanti Das, former music industry, executive mental health advocate and founder of Silence the Shame.

Stephanie Foo, award-winning radio producer and journalists for This American Life and the New York Times.

And Dr. Debra Houry, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Thank you so much for joining us all of you.

We want to get right into some of the questions and we're gonna begin Stephanie with you, while you were a mental health journalism fellow at the Carter Center, you wrote a piece for Vox about post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, which you called your super power in the wake of the pandemic.

Now you've got a book coming out next year about your experiences.

So can you talk to us about writing about PTSD and explain how this pandemic actually affected you and your work?

- Sure, yeah.

So I think that the remarks that we just listened to, especially around mental health providers probably resonated with a lot of us as journalists.

I know that viewing suffering on such an enormous scale, it can be really, really difficult.

And in 2018 or yeah, 2018, after a couple of hard years of reporting on racism and the Trump administration, I just had a complete sort of breakdown at work and I wound up needing to quit my job.

And that led to a diagnosis of complex PTSD and really reckoning with the fact that I had endured a lot of violence as a child and seeing violence committed against other people of color on like a daily basis was extremely triggering and difficult for me.

And I think I took a lot of time in the next couple of years to really focus on my mental health and create healthy boundaries between myself and work.

And so certainly all of that really helped.

But I think that one thing that I really struggled with after that was this feeling of failure, was this feeling of, oh, my complex PTSD makes me broken.

It makes me not as effective journalist, makes me less resilient.

And then when the pandemic happened, the conversations about mental health really came to the forefront.

And all of my friends who I thought were really together saying people were posting on Instagram every day, like I can't get out of bed, I'm eating all day.

I just can't, I'm so depressed, I'm so sad.

And for me, I actually felt way more functional because this atmosphere of total fear is something that people, survivors of PTSD deal with all the time.

And we worked through it and I was kind of almost like, well, I'm used to this.

And it felt, I mean, look, it wasn't shot in (indistinct) or anything, but I was kind of like, oh, now you know, now the whole world knows what it feels like.

And that was so normalizing to me that it lifted this veil of shame that I had.

And that shame, that stigma, I think really made my PTSD much worse.

And without that pressure of shame, my PTSD actually became much more easy to deal with, made me much more high functioning and make me be able to support others during the pandemic.

And so I think it really illuminated for me the weight and the effect of shame and stigma and how, if we can work to show people that, so many mental illnesses actually can be advantages, can be super powers, like for PTSD.

For example, we always have understood that it makes us less functional, but that's not true with complex PTSD actually in times of intense stress, our minds completely dissociate, which is not necessarily a bad thing, because if you're like, if somebody's coming at you with a knife, it's really good to completely dissociate because you become hyper logical, you can like function really well.

You can kick ass.

That's what I felt like during the pandemic.

And if we can understand this upon diagnosis and when they're diagnosing you they can tell you like, look, you've got this thing, it may make you suffer but guess what?

You also have these secret advantages that make you kind of a bad ass.

That is, I think would change our experience of mental illness a lot and alleviate the symptoms considerably.

- So that's your superpowers that you speak of.

We appreciate that.

Sorry you had to go through that to experience what you have now.

And you know, you mentioned shame, our next panel is talks about that.

A dear friend, who I know has dealt with this up close and personal, Shanti Das, thanks for joining us.

Now you work with several celebrities as we're hearing about celebrities coming forward, discussing how mental illness is affecting them, do you think by them coming forward, sharing their stories that can help others?

- Thank you, Karen.

And it's good to share this platform with you my friend.

I do agree with you.

I think when celebrities and people of influence, right, whether they're actors or actresses or musicians or songwriters, influencers, that sort of thing, it certainly helps to eliminate some of the shame.

One of the things that we've done, probably since the inception of forming the movement Silence the Shame, that turned into a nonprofit, was to utilize celebrities, to really help to normalize the conversation.

In 2016, we did a soft launch with a musician and TV personality, Nick Cannon to start opening up the conversation and since then we've worked with artists such as Keri Hilson, Common, Anthony Hamilton, last year during the pandemic, it's interesting to hear Stephanie's testimony, we did see so many people talking about it on Instagram.

I actually started a platform called Yeah Wellness.

It was just like an IG live talk show.

And I talked to everyone from Erica Campbell to Chuck D, to Swiss Beats, Denies the famous DJ now.

And everybody, again, to Stephanie's point, was kind of having this sense of like, wow, okay, like I understand it, but I still think we have a long way to go.

It's interesting, I get a lot of personal texts and private DMs from some of my former colleagues.

I was an executive in the entertainment industry over 25 years.

And I think people are still a little like nervous, like, hey, do you think you can possibly connect me with a clinician?

I don't really want to talk about it much.

And that's not to say everyone has to be on Instagram sharing their stories.

When you think about it, we are on the eve of Juneteenth, right, and folks in the black community specifically, unfortunately, we've been taught to kind of don't share our secrets, right, and don't tell our thoughts and fears too much.

We just want to project what's great or what we want the public to think is great in our lives, right, on Instagram, which I like to call the highlight reel.

But I do think we all need to like have more, really open and honest conversations and start right there in your homes.

There's so many celebrations that are gonna be going on and food, I think it's certainly a big part of the celebration of Juneteenth.

So when you're sitting around that table, let's have these conversations about our thoughts and our feelings.

I coined this new acronym called RAP, being able to unlock those unfamiliar feelings and be able to talk about it in a thoughtful and meaning way.

So RAP, the R's is for recognizing those feelings, the A's for acknowledging them but then you got to accept it because how many times has something happened and we'll say, okay, that did happen, I don't really recognize that, but that's not me.

I don't want to accept this.

I'm gonna ignore it and act like that didn't happen, but you got to accept it and then you have to process through it.

So as our influencers and celebrities continue to help normalize the conversation, we got to actually do the work.

So it's wonderful that everyone's coming forward, but are you really taking that next step to find a therapist?

That is why it is so important, right, to educate yourselves around resources that are available, which I know we're gonna share before the end of the program, but you got to do the work.

And for me, when I was going through my own suicidal ideation in 2015, I was terrified for any celebrities or influences that I worked around.

And I'll end with this quick little story.

This was three years ago, I was in Los Angeles going to the Rock Nation brunch and Rock Nation is a company that rapper and philanthropist, Jay Z owns.

And so it's like the holy grail of events during the Grammy weekend.

And I really hadn't been in front of my colleagues since I had gone through a lot of my own suicidal ideation and started this movement.

And I was really terrified, I was embarrassed almost, and I've been doing the work, but there was still this level of fear for me to really go and share when people, cause there's always the small talk.

How are you doing?

How have you been?

What you're working on?

And, oh, well I thought about killing myself and take my own life and had this grand idea of starting this little movement.

But I prayed about it and I went in there and I said, I'm just gonna own up, right, I'm gonna continue to be transparent, continue to be vulnerable.

I'm not going to hide behind who I was on Instagram.

And those that love me and accept me will be okay and went in, got to talk to Beyonce and Jay Z, they were very thoughtful and caring and introduced me to one of their friends who was a psychiatrist that was attending the event.

And it was like a breath of fresh air.

So if anything, I want you all to take away the thing of just breathe, just breathe through it.

Just be able to process through it, and yes, let's take some of the influences and empowerment that we get from our influencers, but let's also do the work, right.

Cause we can all talk about it, but you gotta be about it.

If you're gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.

For me I lost my sister two years ago, grief has thrown me back into the throws of depression and anxiety.

And then just opening back up, I went to several events this week.

Now we're kind of post pandemic, if you will.

And I'll admit I was really anxious driving.

I was very nervous and I'm still a little apprehensive about confirming events in public.

So let's really get the tools that we need, once we learn about it, we gotta do something about it.

So that's kind of my, I guess my advice, even when I talk to a lot of the celebrities, like do the work, don't be afraid to go to therapy or don't even be afraid of medication because a lot of, that's a whole different panel discussion, but some people are afraid to be on antidepressants, but some of us can't just snap back out of it.

We do need medication and other healthy ways to cope.

So let's normalize the conversation, but let's also get the help that we need.

- Keeping it real both of you.

We appreciate that Shanti, love you for that.

Dr. Houry, you are next.

Did you have something to say before I ask your question?

- Oh, Eve Byrd, Dr. Byrd, I just wanted to add, we are so appreciative of our celebrities and VIP's coming forward because we know the stories are extraordinarily helpful and why Mrs. Carter started the journalism fellowship program to help journalists tell true and effective factual stories.

And I just wanted to dovetail with Shanti's point about doing the work, but also it's really at the end of the day, we're all humans and it's that person to person contact that makes so much difference and instills hope in people who are having issues.

Those that are, have had issues for years, and it's been exacerbated by the pandemic, those that this is the first time that there have been struggling with some of these symptoms.

And I just wanted to share, and particularly for our youth who we heard early are very much affected by the pandemic in astronomical portions, that peer to peer is so very important.

And I just want people to be aware of the Free Your Feels campaign, which voices for Georgia's children in the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.

You can just Google, Free Your Feels, wonderful toolkit.

And the whole game there is to try and to get used, to begin to talk amongst themselves and support each other because we know youth, peers are the most important, but there's also really great information for parents and great information for teachers and the school community as well.

- Great remarks.

Dr. Houry, let's talk to you about, we heard the statistics mentioned by Dr. Walensky, incidences of depression, even suicidal ideation and Shanti just talked about are up, especially among young people, the Washington Post reported that ER visits for suspected suicide attempts among teenage girls actually rose during this pandemic.

What can you tell us about those trends and how family members, which is most important, can help young people who may not show outward symptoms of mental illness or distress?

- Great question.

And I'm also an ER doc so this is a very real to me from the front lines.

I think what I would say is we've certainly seen an increase in suicidal ideations and suicidal attempts among young people, but I think it's important to take a step back and keep it in perspective.

And in 2019, we saw the first decline in suicide deaths in the U.S in about over a decade.

And our early data from 2020 are also showing a decrease in suicide deaths, including among youth.

Certainly there has been mental distress.

And I think it's important though, to realize that mental distress can result in more help seeking, which is exactly what we want.

And there's been great studies that have show after you contact the Crisis Line, the likelihood you'll die by suicide goes down.

So although these numbers are showing increases in suicidal ideation, I'm hopeful, and that people are then getting the services they need and we won't see an increase in suicide deaths.

We released the study, our first CDC Vital Signs ever on suicide a couple of years ago.

And what we showed were people that died by suicide, more than half did not have a known mental health diagnosis.

It was things like substance use, relationship issues, job loss, economic stressors that precipitated the death or led up to it, is one of the contributing causes.

Certainly mental health issues were part of that, but that's why with this pandemic, I worry about social isolation.

Some of the job stressors, some of the relationship issues and the increase in substance use because certainly that could lead to increase in suicide deaths.

But you know, what can we do about it?

I think both Stephanie and Shanti really hit on it, I think asking how people are feeling, connecting them, being there for them and referring them as appropriate.

And what Stephanie hit on too about trauma as a child, I think we don't talk about enough, but adverse childhood experiences and the trauma that you have in childhood can result in increased rates of things like mental health issues or substance use.

So it's so important during this pandemic that we focus on our kids now and make sure they have those safe, stable, nurturing relationships so that we can really provide those protective factors.

- Awesome, thank you.

And now Dr. Byrd, talk to us about mental health and how it's actually been impacted during the pandemic, both on a local scale and on a global scale, the Carter Center's Mental Health Program, doing a lot of work both here in Georgia and in places like Liberia, West Africa, how does this approach in behavioral health differ globally or does it at all differ?

- Now, I don't think that it differs, it differs in the fact that there are less services in low and middle income countries.

And there's probably a greater amount of stigma as well, because not as much work to date has been done on that.

However, what we can learn from our low income countries is that you don't, everybody doesn't have to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist, that you can put systems in place and supports in place as I mentioned earlier, the Free Your Feels or the peer support services, teaching lay persons through mental health first aid, how to recognize signs and symptoms of mental illness and how to direct somebody, how to have a conversation, support that individual and direct them to the services that they need.

And that may be just the beginning of having a conversation with a primary care provider and not necessarily a mental health specialist.

We certainly don't have enough mental health specialists here in the country nor do low and middle-income countries have it.

We never will.

So it really depends on the full community to address this and be actively participate.

Just as we teach people how to do first date or CPR, stop the bleed, things like this, really if mental health first aid became a priority for our population, supports like certified peer support specialists, people that have lived experience and know how to navigate and are not encumbered by stigma any longer and can help navigate for someone else, we can do a lot more.

And the pandemic is really, shown us that we don't have the supports or the specialists that we need.

So it really does need to be a public or a community health response.

- Can I answer that?

That is so important.

Thank you for those words, Eve, particularly I know amongst people in the Black community and young adults, we're trying to really do a push to make sure that psychiatry and psychology are seen as a viable career options, right.

And so really being able to put those programs in place, we're excited that we're gonna launch the Silence The Shame college ambassador program at HBCU in the fall and larger universities.

And then we're also going to launch our leadership programs, which will be probably 50 to a hundred students, maybe at a couple of schools, we're gonna pilot it.

And we're gonna teach leadership as well as mental wealth best practices, right.

Because our leaders need to be equipped.

We always hear people talking about, even in athletics and entertainment, that you gotta be mentally tough.

But what does that really mean?

I still don't think that a lot of the mental coaches that you find in some of the larger universities and institutions are coming from a perspective of clinical health, right.

And, or we wanna be able to pour back into them, but really make sure that we do, moving forward, have more clinicians that look like us because there's a thing called culture competency.

- Definitely, yes-- - When those professionals are trained they understand how to help communities of color, whether it's African-American community, the Asian American community, the Indian American community, and really being sensitive, right, to those cultural nuances that are able to help you once you do decide to get the help that you need.

We want to make sure that we have the best of the best available and the brightest of the brightest in terms of clinicians and especially in communities of color.

So we certainly look to partner with any organizations that are looking to make sure that we can add to that 5%, if it is, even 5% of clinicians of color, that can really help our communities.

- Shanti, I'm gonna go back to you right now, because you have been so open in dealing with your issues and what actually brought you to realize that there perhaps was a problem.

Can you talk about that?

Share again.

I know you've worked with Jack and Jill of America, kids that I know that you really helped them recognize some things that they may not have been aware of, but when it was for you, you were at the top of your game.

Things were going great.

Everybody knew Shanti by name.

And you had, as you said, traveled everywhere, knew everybody.

But what was that brought you to the point where you realized there's a problem?

- Thank you again for that.

Yeah, I am pretty much an open book now.

I love to share my story.

As mentioned, I had a great career in the entertainment industry.

It was probably 2009, I was at the height of my career making almost a half a million dollars a year and marketing some really great talent in our music community.

And it was a lot of things, Karen, it wasn't just one thing.

My mother developed dementia, which turned into full blown Alzheimer's.

I was literally riding in a taxi uptown in New York City one day and my entire right side went numb.

I was diagnosed with cervical spinal stenosis.

Talking now I'm in my mid to late thirties.

This is something that most people get diagnosed with in their sixties and seventies, but it was a direct result of the stress that I was dealing with in the workplace.

Self care and wellness and mental health, just 11 years ago was not a part of our everyday vernacular in entertainment.

We weren't talking about it.

Our organization didn't have a partnership with Calm or Headspace or any apps to help us through it.

And apps wasn't even a thing really back then, right, social media was just starting.

So it was tough for me.

I didn't know how to channel all of that stress.

And I literally was going into the office every day and I told my assistant don't call me unless it's my boss.

I just had gotten to a point where I couldn't function at work and so I quit and walked away and moved back home.

And as Debra mentioned, there are times where suicidal ideation can come from not even just the regular depression, just the stress of everyday life.

And so moving back home, starting over, my peers were still president of this, EVP of that, here I am starting as an entrepreneur trying to start over, that nest egg that I had went away, I almost lost my home in Alpharetta twice.

And it was just a lot at one time.

And then my best friend in 2014 took her own life the exact same way that my dad did from a gunshot wound to the head.

And that sent me, Karen, into a downward spiral.

Couldn't really figure out how to come out of it.

And it was my sister who encouraged me, again, going back to something Deborah said, I did call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is 1-800-273-TALK, that encouraged me to get the help that I needed.

Also that same evening, because I'm a member of Ebenezer Baptist Church, America's Freedom Church, I texted my pastor, Dr, now Senator Raphael G. Warnock and he said, I'll pray with you, but you got to go to the doctor.

So I did that with the encouragement of the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, my sister, my pastor, and I started on my antidepressants, going back to the medication conversation because we have to also erase the stigma around medication.

No, I don't think we should medicate everyone and our kids and our babies, but guess what if you need that, if those chemical imbalances can't balance out with regular healthy coping mechanisms, then you may have to take medication.

So I got on my antidepressants, which I like to call my happy pills and I did the work and I ended up, I kind of stopped taking them after three or four months, which is, again, you shouldn't do that.

You should talk to your doctor and win yourself off of them.

I do know that now, but the point is, I got the help that I needed and I still struggle, Karen, I'm five, six years in into doing this great work.

I'm speaking all around the world, sharing my story, but I still have my moments.

Yesterday I did a big thing for Warner Media talking to their Black employees around racial trauma and behavioral health.

And I still have my own issues of trauma when I see the police, right, as a person of color.

So it's an everyday thing but the difference is, and I said this last week on social media, my mom is in the late stages of Alzheimer's.

I didn't know she was going to make it last week.

The difference is I have the tools now, I know what to do, but I was a really dark place when I thought I almost lost my mom last week.

And so I had to take some time away.

I started walking, actually finding a better therapist because I liked my therapist, but I just think I need a little bit something more.

So I'm walking the walk and not just talking to the talk.

So as you go through this, it may be something people that suffer from, whether it's PTSD, depression, suicidal ideation, you may never fully recover from it but it is about recovery and resilience in behavioral health.

So it is important again, that you have the tools, that you know what you need to go through life every single day, as we push through our emotional health and wellness journey.

- Shanti, you always, you never cease to amaze me because you are such an open book.

And I know, just as we've talked about, Dr. Byrd, it's, social media, I think hurting a lot of people because it looks like life is fabulous, life is wonderful.

Shanti is one of the only people I know that will tell you really what's going on in her life and share every bit of it.

Stephanie, I'm gonna move to you because as a journalist you know how tough it can be to report on mental health issues, the challenges out there for us, not only in the journalistic sense, but also give reporters, we need to give them some tips.

You and I, we talked to before we went on to this panel about things that we as journalists need to be careful about when we're reporting some of these issues.

So help any who may be out there, I know I sent this out to my entire newsroom and to people at (indistinct) so I'm hoping some of them are watching as well, because this is important information.

- Yeah.

I think, first of all, there's like the physical things that you can do, which is physical boundaries, obviously, trying to work eight hour days when you can, if you have to work a weekend, get that comp day, take all your vacation time.

You need to be in direct communication with your editors about what you feel like you can or cannot take on.

And if you can't take on something or you're not in the space for it, or you'd rather do something else, say that to them and advocate for yourself.

I think all of that is really, really important.

I also think that there is, there are internal boundaries that need to be set as well and those are the more difficult ones.

It's easier to say, like, okay, and even though it's very difficult to block out these spaces in time and say like, I'm gonna say no to this much, I'm gonna say yes to this much, but it's a different thing to then not feel guilt about that, right, especially when you're a journalist.

And I think that the mental boundaries that I created for myself that were really helpful were, a, just accepting that, I think when you're a journalist, you kind of believe that you're part of this noble profession and that what you do really matters.

But like the truth of the matter is not every one of your stories really matters that much.

Like not every one of your stories is gonna change the world or be like this make or break thing.

Some of your stories are just gonna be good enough, that's okay.

That's like, that's everyone's career, right.

I mean, Tom Brokaw didn't only have, whatever, Pulitzer winning stories.

Sometimes he just reported on whatever, it's okay.

Another thing is that I think that you have to disconnect your emotional validation, your self-worth from your work.

That's really, really hard for journalists that take this so seriously.

I think one part of it is just that it's a really competitive industry.

So you see all of these other people around you working harder, working harder.

I had a real hard boss because there's a lot of old school journalists who are just going to be like, you have to dedicate your life to this or you're not taking this seriously enough.

I think that I kept working harder and harder and harder thinking that I was gonna catch up, that there was a point at which I would catch up or there was a point at which my boss would be like, okay, you're good enough now.

He wasn't that kind of guy.

It was never gonna be good enough.

And after I accepted that, and I just realized like, I need to take care of myself and what's right for me instead of trying to please you, cause you're kind of a jerk, like my life got a lot better.

And then, yeah, having also, in terms of like getting outside validation besides work, those boundaries allowed me to have more time to develop other things.

Like I got hobbies, I was better to my friends and family.

I found ways that I am important to this world that don't revolve around radio stories.

And so if I put out a crappy radio story or I'm not putting out any radio stories, I can still feel pretty good about myself.

I can still say, hey, I'm a good friend.

Or, I volunteer in Forest Park a lot and pulling weeds and helping trees survive, and I can say, hey, I saved a tree's life today, that's not bad.

And so I definitely think that having just a more healthy balanced life is really important.

I mean, it's great if you wanna be super ambitious, especially in your early twenties or whatever, but you, I have to caution people who are just doing like the 70 hour work week, you might be on top of the world now, you might be kicking ass now, there will be a time at which you burn out and you will have more longevity in your career, long-term if you pace yourself rather than just like astronomically hitting the moon and then crashing.

So those are my tips for journalists.

- I hope some bosses are listening to this because that, those are very important tips.

And people think, oh, I won't use all my vacation time or I won't take this time.

I want them to see how dedicated I am, silly, not smart because it affects your mental health when you are going, going, going, going.

I mean, you, I can see as Shanti is as well, I mean, she'd call me about stores where she's going under the bridge to feed the homeless or paying for funerals for some of the victims in some of our stories that can't afford funerals.

Those are the things that make you know that you're doing something positive, you're making a difference and it makes you feel good.

Dr. Houry, I wanna ask you about the CDC and you guys are doing some things to reduce the stigma in all populations, especially amongst the specific populations, like people of color who are hardest hit by this pandemic.

How are you doing that?

- Absolutely.

I wanted to just mention one thing about reporting too.

There's a reporting on suicide.org website, which really talks about safe reporting and really not glamorizing suicide, like pictures of memorials, but focusing, say like on a school photo, also not saying like successful suicide, but died by suicide.

Some of those subtle terms really make a difference and then focusing on warning signs and really the crisis line and how to seek help.

When we released that Vital Signs two years ago, that same week, there were two high profile celebrity suicides, but we had put out these safe reporting guidelines right beforehand and the media did an excellent job of reporting in inappropriate way.

And we saw increases in crisis lines.

So I just wanted to add that.

And certainly when we're looking at what to do with communities of color and decreasing stigma, I think conversations like this are really important and Shanti your story is amazing and thank you for sharing.

And I think it really goes to, people think that if somebody has a suicide attempt or suicidal ideations, it's inevitable that they'll die by suicide.

And we know that 5% of people who have a serious suicide attempt go on to die by suicide.

So by intervening, you can truly make that difference.

And I think by sharing stories, talking about what resources are, that's one big way to really decrease the stigma.

We're now funding communities to have community level approaches because we want it to be more than that individual level intervention.

So things like social emotional learning in schools, like good behavior game, teaching conflict resolution life skills is really important.

Afterschool programs.

If you don't have that caring adult in your life, afterschool programs can link you with that role model and then things like funding gatekeeper programs.

So if you do see someone at risk for suicide, what do you do?

These are the things that we're trying to do in communities, particularly those with increased risk for suicide to really increase those protective factors and get people to help they need and build community level resilience.

- I think what Dr. Houry we're saying about words matter in terms of suicide language, it is really important.

So one of the things that I say now is completed suicide as opposed to committed because just taking that a step further, when you say committed suicide, it kind of denotes a criminal act, right, and so most of the time when someone is having that suicidal ideation they are not in their right frame of mind, so we want to make sure that we don't criminalize suicide, right.

That we're very thoughtful about it.

And so an another term could be completed.

- Appreciate it.

Thank you.

And Dr. Byrd, can you speak to us about Mrs. Carter's influence in the area of mental health?

I know I've followed her, watched her as long as she's been here and at the Carter Center discuss the importance of mental health all over the world.

Was her work a personal influence for you?

- Almost definitely.

Being, having worked my whole career in Georgia, of course, you know who Mrs. Carter is and what she's done.

She has worked tirelessly and focused for 50 years to decrease, really discrimination that persons with mental illness experience because of the stigma.

And she's also worked very tirelessly to address policies that cause barriers for people to access services.

She's also really been a huge champion for persons with lived experience and bringing them to the table, encouraging them to tell their stories and also, as a big proponent of recovery, and showing that with people with services and supports that are necessary, all people can recover and leave lives with their own goals that they have for themselves.

She's worked tirelessly, and a real area of passion for her is parody.

People's eyes glaze over when we say parody, but that is basically the fact that we have federal legislation that says that our insurance, whether it be private or public,, has to pay for mental health care services and supports on par with other physical illnesses.

And our states, Georgia included, are not enforcing that federal legislation.

So we're working really very hard to make sure that there's the administrative policy and legislation in place so that people don't continue to have to pay for these services out of pocket when they would never consider that if they had a broken arm or have diabetes and need care.

So really worked very hard on that.

And then also we've talked a bit about prevention and early intervention.

This is something near and dear to Mrs. Carter's heart from prevention and intervention, early intervention for mental illness, but also for physical health.

She's been a proponent of vaccinations for years for children.

So really we hope that, although we need to act quickly with a community response to this pandemic, in this second pandemic of mental health, we've also got to continue to put prevention and early intervention, public health responses in place.

Some like I've mentioned, and that Dr.

Hourly mentioned another is social and emotional learning in all of our schools, mental health first aid, support clubs for kids, Silence the Shame, these kinds of things need to be universal in our communities.

- And what a perfect time to move on and hear from the wonderful and famed, Mrs. Rosalynn Carter herself.

She has a message for us.

Couldn't join us, but let's listen in.

- (dramatic upbeat music) I've worked on mental health issues since my husband was governor of Georgia, which is a very long time.

I worked on stigma and tried to overcome stigma because it holds back progress in the field.

People don't get help when they need it because of stigma.

(dramatic upbeat music) And when we came home from the White House, I knew I wanted to continue that work.

(dramatic upbeat music) I'm really proud that we have a great program here at the Carter Center.

To me, one of the best things that's happened in my mental health work is a program to educate journalists about mental health issues, we call it Mental Health Fellowships for Journalists.

(dramatic upbeat music) I want my mental health to carry on even after there is no more stigma, which I'm not sure will come at my lifetime, but I hope it will.

But even after we don't have stigma to work on, there's always gonna have to be a lobby to get the services that we need.

(dramatic upbeat music) And I think it will still be very important for the mental health community to come together the way they do now.

(dramatic upbeat music) We have a great opportunity to change things forever for everyone with mental illness, the solutions are truly within our reach.

We can overcome stigma and we can make services available to all who need them and offer every individual the chance to create a happy and fulfilling future.

(dramatic upbeat music) - Love that, love that.

She's so fabulous.

- She's a hero.

- Yes she is.

And she was ahead of this game before anybody else knew really what to do.

I remember going to some of her meetings, going to those workshops back, 80s, 90s, I'm dating myself, but she was always ahead of the game and I appreciate and applaud her and the work being done at the Carter Center for that.

We've got audience questions, I believe.

So we wanna take some of those.

- Yeah, I'll jump in with a question from the audience.

It was actually sent to us on email.

It's directed at Dr. Houry and it's about kids going back to school, after being out of school, kind of what teachers can expect and what teachers should look out for if young children.

I know we talk a lot about adolescents and twenties and adults, but in younger children, if there's things that teachers need to look out for, this was a question from a teacher.

- Oh, you know, teachers are so important because they recognize signs of like child abuse and neglect.

And we know that they're very frontline providers and we actually saw decrease initially of reporters because kids weren't in school.

So I think for, teachers just looking for any signs of neglect or issues, but I'm really positive.

And I've got a kid who is back in school in person now, and I can tell you how wonderful it has been for her.

I think just having those relations with teachers is really important, that connectedness and for teachers to understand, we should treat every child, in my mind with trauma-informed care, we do that with a lot of, we've given funding for groups to look at this, for those that have been exposed to drugs or substances in the home.

But in my mind, every child should be treated, not with what have they done wrong, but how can we help them?

We don't know what goes on in their home.

So if somebody comes in with late homework or not wearing, or wearing the same clothes from yesterday, realize there might be going something on in their home.

Don't point the blame at the child, talk with them in a very open and concerned way and be that safe person for that child.

I think kids will be excited to come back to school.

We don't know masks or no masks yet, but my child wears a mask in school.

(indistinct) just happy to be there as you know, children are resilient.

So I'm not really concerned about kids, I think it's more about that teachers recognizing what's going on in kids' lives and that kids may have experienced a loss and making sure we're connecting kids to the resources that they need.

- Perfect.

And we have one for Stephanie here.

Stephanie, what has it been like writing a book during a pandemic, especially since a lot of your writing has been about mental health?

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- I liked it.

(laughs) I definitely think that, everybody working from home, like working from home was really, really helpful for me because I was able to take the space that I needed.

And everybody, it seemed like had these sort of not eight hour, nine to five days anymore, people were kind of working when they could, and then they would go help out their kids or they would go cook or they would go on a walk and then they'd come back to it and it would be sort of jumbled.

And so that was definitely what my experience was writing a book, because I don't think you can write about trauma for eight hours straight.

You can like, for me writing about trauma for like four hours max, like that was a really, really good day.

So that sort of jumbled up schedule, that being normalized really made me feel still, really productive and good, I think, about that experience and being able to take, like a lot of nice mental health breaks and eat a snack if I wasn't feeling well or watch an episode of like "Avatar: The Last Airbender" if I needed to, just like get back into like a peaceful groove.

So yeah.

- Those are good points.

Now this next, I see a question that really moves us right into what we need to do before we leave, an HR professional should like to access any mental wellness, mental health resources that are out there.

And with that, let's go right to Ms. Shanti Das.

- [Shanti] The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as mentioned is 1-800-273-TALK.

Also, if you were in crisis, there is a wonderful organization called the Crisis Text Line organization, and it's not in place of therapy, but it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's totally confidential.

You can text the word silence to 741-741 and be immediately connected to a trained crisis counselor and then they can in turn help you find a therapist in your area.

Also SAMHSA's Treatment Locator is 1-800-662-4357.

The Disaster Distress Helpline is 1-800-985-5990.

The Veteran's Crisis Line is 1-800-273-TALK, and then you press the number one, or you can text to 83-82-55.

And then the Trevor Project is a great organization for the LGBTQ+ community.

And of course, silencetheshame.com.

We have a resource tab that you can tap right into, and it's so many other incredible organizations like that.

And then also I don't have the number handy, but the Georgia Crisis Access Line for those living in the state of Georgia is another wonderful resource to help families.

I know there was also a question around helping caregivers and family members and I want to also point out NAMI, which is the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

We have a partnership with NAMI.

They have local chapters in all major cities.

And so they have a lot of other programs around parents and caregivers.

So go to nami.org for that.

Also the national advocacy, there are several other advocacy, professional organizations, the American Psychiatric Association, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective, BEAM, that is a great organization that we've done some work with.

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, Mental Health America, and they do have a Mental Health America, Georgia office.

And again, NAMI, which I mentioned.

And the federal agencies, as you can see, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is also known as SAMHSA, the National Institute of Mental Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which Dr. Houry's representing today.

So check out their websites.

There's a lot of great information out there.

And then if you, within your own organizations that you work for, check with your EAP, employee assistance programs to find out what mental health resources might be there for you.

And then again, the external ones that we just reviewed.

- Thank you to our wonderful panel.

This was a great discussion today.

Thanks Karen for being our moderator.

Thank you to Dr. Deborah Houry from the CDC for being here, to Shanti Das for being here, journalist Stephanie Foo and Dr. Eve Byrd from the Carter Center.

We want to thank our friends at the Carter Center.

You can visit cartercenter.org and learn more about their mental health program.

And we also thank our sponsor today, AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

(upbeat music)