{"id":566,"date":"2011-01-14T21:57:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=566"},"modified":"2011-01-14T21:57:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T21:57:00","slug":"for-all-the-little-christinas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=566","title":{"rendered":"for all the little Christinas…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Besides volunteering at the Open Door Community<\/strong> outreach to the homeless in Atlanta this week (while looking at urban poverty issues), I’ve been doing research on various sets of other issues facing our country. \u00a0 At the forefront this week is the shooting in Arizona. \u00a0 The New York Times<\/em> \u00a0 noted that preliminary data around the shooter, Jared Loughlin, 22, “…seems to point to a man with delusional thinking and mental illness.”<\/strong> This would be a time to note that we could be doing a whole<\/em> \u00a0 lot better when it comes to dealing with mental illness. \u00a0 In an article for Emory University Magazine<\/em>, \u00a0 former First Lady Rosalyn Carter writes that there has been an explosive increase in scientific knowledge and understanding of mental illness of late. \u00a0 Brain scan technologies, groundbreaking research into genetic and environmental influence, and the development of powerful medications and other treatments. \u00a0 However, Carter said the system needs to catch up with these advances, ensuring their availability and affordability… \u00a0 I am a former counselor who has worked extensively with drug, alcohol and dysfunctional family system dynamics. \u00a0 (Initial reports also indicated Loughlin had illegal drug issues.) \u00a0 What’s needed, I believe, is a tremendously heightened focus on these issues. \u00a0 About 10 years ago, I spent three months researching the organization Take A Stand for Kids<\/strong> on the Monterey Peninsula in California. \u00a0 Citizens there banded together to put on in-home meetings, public seminars, school seminars… to raise peoples awareness about drug addiction, alcoholism, compulsive gambling, work addiction, dysfunctional parenting patterns, mental illness (depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia…), including teaching about a host of recovery options. \u00a0 This, in turn, made the peninsula a much healthier place emotionally. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 All the latter issues lead to a tremendous amount of social problems — domestic abuse, crimes, shootings (there are 100,000 shootings a year in America). \u00a0 It’s only common sense that we should step up our dealing with these things at their roots. \u00a0 For all the little Christina Taylor Greens of our society. \u00a0 I once told Ohio Magazine<\/em>: \u00a0 “Liz and I used to be concerned about how our kids did in English class. \u00a0 Now we’re more concerned about them being shot to death in English class.”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Besides volunteering at the Open Door Community outreach to the homeless in Atlanta this week (while looking at urban poverty issues), I’ve been doing research on various sets of other issues facing our country. \u00a0 At the forefront this week …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}