From Valentine’s Day to Presidents’ Day: An Avalanche of Mental Health Concerns

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“And in the end

The love you take

Is equal to the love

You make.”

- from Paul McCartney singing “The End” at the end of SNL50, 2/16/25

On Valentine’s Day, our column began to discuss 2 related mental health concerns. They were obstacles to love for others and the environment.

As it turned out, there was much more. As the day wore on, in the environment there was an avalanche of mudslides in some of the areas already decimated by the Los Angeles wildfires. In other parts of the country, there were snowstorms contributing to accidents and injuries. But the most concerning avalanche was the executive orders and policies thundering down government hill.

Justification for these changes are cost savings and waste. Even if that is true—and probably some of it is, such as getting rid of pennies—aren’t there less stressful ways to address those goals? The goals actually remind me some of the development of managed care in medicine, where cost savings ended up being more important than quality of mental health care.¹

With the weekend giving a bit of a pause, let’s start to unpack the changes of mental health concern and see what can be rescued on this Presidents’ Day.

Here are some of the concerns emerging that we are likely to cover in the next few columns:

• Mass layoffs and their mental health repercussions
• Child mental disorders and the outcome of treatments
• Long-term use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants
• The Mideast War, now in a cease fire lull, but having an ongoing epidemic of posttraumatic stress disorders, grief, and survivors’ guilt on all sides
• The war in Ukraine, with a great loss of men on both sides
• The National Institutes of Health, which is crucial to scientific developments
• United States Agency for International Development’s help to the global world, such as the Rohingya Muslim refugees on the Thai border
• Threats to Medicaid, which cares for the poor
• And others that are emerging

At the very least we can bear witness to these mental health harms. That would include hearing from readers about what they notice of mental health concerns. Elder psychiatrists especially can be helpful, given their hoped-for wisdom and relative safety from any real or imagined backlash. At best, we can contribute to the containment and reversal of harmful mentally distressing developments.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

Reference

1. Moffic HS. Challenges & Solutions for Managed Behavioral Health. Jossey-Bass; 1997.