Donations were record setting! Thanks to your gifts The Overnight Walk raised a record setting $3.32 million for The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention! Every year suicide claims more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined, and yet suicide prevention doesn’t get anywhere near the funding given to other leading causes of death. In Texas alone suicide is the 2nd …
Author Archives: koyrob
The Overnight Walk! Boston
We’re doing it again! This time my son, Kash and I are participating in the Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk in Boston – an amazing event where participants from all over the country join together to walk 16-18 miles through the night on June 22. We’re fundraising to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Proceeds will help those …
May is Mental Health Awareness Month
My son, Kash and I volunteered at NAMI Walks of North Texas. This was a tremendous fundraiser event at the Frisco Roughriders baseball stadium. Proceeds benefitted NAMI North Texas (National Alliance on Mental Illness). NAMI North Texas is a grassroots organization that provides education, support, advocacy, and public awareness to improve the lives of people …
Social media “particularly risky” for youth
A year after the American Psychological Association issued a landmark health advisory on social media use in adolescence, they are urging legislators and technology companies to take greater measures to protect adolescent mental health. The APA says that social media platforms are intended for adults and not “inherently suitable for youth.” Technology companies have made few …
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Social Media’s impact on Teen Mental Health
Over the past decade evidence has been building about the potential negative psychological outcomes of social media use for teenagers. A more recent research study of American adolescents ages 12 to 15 suggest those who use social media for over three hours per day were twice as likely to suffer negative mental health outcomes including …
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Alarming CDC Report on Teen Girls
Results from the CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey recently published show a disturbing trend. Almost 3 in 5 adolescent girls (57%) said they felt “persistently sad or hopeless” – the highest rate in a decade. And 30% of girls said they have seriously considered dying by suicide — a number that’s risen 60% over …
988 Line Expands Reach
In the 6 months after launch the 988 Mental Health and Suicide Line has recorded over 2 million calls, text and chat messages. It could not come at a more ideal time as depression rates among children and adults continue to rise. The volume is more than officials could have anticipated and has led to …
988 is here today!
Today the National Suicide and Crisis hotline changes its number to 988 to make the system more accessible. One can text or call this number and be routed to a mental health counselor within 60-90 seconds. There is hope that this is the beginning of a bigger push for mental health care access, especially in …
Extreme Teenage Mental-Health Crisis
From 2009 to 2021 the percent of high school students reporting “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent according to a CDC study. This is the highest level of sadness ever recorded. Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic after analyzing CDC data that almost every measure of mental health …
Suicidal thoughts increasing in teens
New research indicates suicidal thoughts are on the rise among teens and young adults. The February 3rd issue of the Wall Street Journal (Apple News) recently published a great article titled “What Parents Can Do When Kids Have Suicidal Thoughts” by Andrea Petersen. Undoubtedly this trend has grown during the pandemic. A June 2020 survey …