As usual, our explorations of social problems can make us depressed, even just by reading this chapter. However, several social programs are designed to alleviate some of the problems outlined in this chapter.

As the title of this chapter suggests, “It’s Okay not to be Okay.” This was one of the themes of the media response to COVID-19 and the related mental health problems people experienced due to the isolation and fear brought on by the pandemic. For example, the 2020 song OK Not to Be OK by Marshmello and Demi Lovato deals with this topic head on.

By the winter of 2020, the CDC reported that up to 40% of Americans reported mental health problems due to the pandemic (Kostic 2020). In conjunction with the White House, the CDC, and Health and Human Services, the Ad Council created a new advertising campaign that discussed coping skills for dealing with the pandemic. Feel free to watch the ad campaign Coping-19.

To explore alternative approaches to addressing this problem, let us examine two programs which increase mental health access to treatment in nontraditional manners.

12.5.1 CAHOOTS

Figure 12.25. CAHOOTS: The people in this picture are working together to create solutions for mental health issues. Where do you see interdependence in their work?

The Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) program in Eugene, Oregon, addresses mental health and drug-related issues integrated into the police and 911 emergency access services system operated jointly by the White Bird Clinic and the Eugene police. If you would like to learn more, please listen to ‘CAHOOTS’: How Social Workers And Police Share Responsibilities In Eugene, Oregon .

CAHOOTSs began as an offshoot of the counterculture movement in Eugene. The organization provided volunteer-operated mental health services to the community. It also presented periodic role-playing seminars to the Eugene police related to managing and defusing mental health-related situations in policing. In the 1980s, the police department began taking advantage of this community initiative, informally referring mental health cases to the CAHOOTS organization to reduce the direct involvement of police in noncrime-related scenarios. CAHOOTS volunteers still offer crisis response services and access to other community services to persons experiencing mental health or drug-related issues.

Following a 2015 lawsuit against the city for excessive use of force and racial discrimination in a fatal shooting of a veteran with PTSD by the Eugene police, the incidents helped focus public attention on Eugene’s response to a mental health crisis. In response, the Eugene city council committed $225,000 of the city police budget to fund 24/7 availability of the CAHOOTS services and access to the 911 dispatch system.

As the CAHOOTS organization began to respond to calls, the delays in responding to issues decreased significantly, to a level of about double the time required for a response by the police. CAHOOTS estimates that in 2021, roughly 17 percent of the calls to 911 in Eugene resulted in a dispatch of a CAHOOTS team—reducing the involvement of the official police significantly. Chris Skinner, the Eugene chief of police, commented before the pandemic hit that increasing the number of CAHOOTS teams is a benefit of probability—“the less time I put police officers in conflict with people, the less time those conflicts go bad.”

In 2019, Eugene voters approved a payroll tax to bring in $23 million for additional community-safety positions. In the initial proposal, two-thirds of this money was intended to go to the police department for additional positions. Reacting to the Black Lives Matter protests, the city council instead redirected that money to community organizations. CAHOOTS received some of that money and benefited from county use of federal CARES Act funding to open a 250-bed homeless shelter in buildings on the Lane County Fairgrounds. The federal funding expired in June of 2021, but talks are in place to expand the use of some police funds to maintain the program, roughly $1 out of every $50 committed to the police budget.

12.5.2 Loveland Foundation

A different approach by the Loveland Foundation addresses resources to communities of color in a number of locations nationwide, including Texas, Georgia, California, Ohio, and New York. The Loveland Foundation was established in 2018 by Rache Cargle in response to a fundraiser for therapy support for Black women and girls.

The organization partners with organizations providing culturally-competent therapy resources for Black women and girls in the areas where they operate. The organization funds all or part of the costs of access to therapy. Additionally the organization operates workshops for therapy providers to educate about eating disorders in Black women and girls in partnership with the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. The workshops are a six-part series focusing on providing the historical context, etiology, intergenerational trauma, and its impact on body image, assessment, and treatment.

One unusual feature is their approach to building future therapy support resources for specifically People of Color. According to the American Psychological Association, only 17 percent of therapists in the US identify as People of Color, and only 3 percent identify as Black or African American. The Loveland Foundation is investing significant scholarship funding in enabling undergraduate and graduate education for BIPOC people intending to offer therapy to the BIPOC community, including addressing the use of unpaid internships and the lack of dependable mentors to provide support resources to students wishing to address this need. If you would like to learn more about the services of the Loveland foundation, you can check out their site, The Loveland Foundation.

When we consider mental health, mental illness, and mental wellbeing, we notice interdependent solutions supporting social justice. Each of us has agency in our own mental health and the mental health of our friends and families. We can care for ourselves and each other. At the same time, we experience different rates of trauma, prejudice, and mental illness. We need equity in mental health resources and treatment options. Organizations like NAMI, CAHOOTS and the Loveland Foundation work to address the systemic inequities in mental health experiences. Working together we can weave interdependent solutions for mental resilience and social justice.

12.5.3 Licenses and Attributions for Mental Health Is Social Justice

Open Content, Original

“Mental Health is Social Justice” by Kathryn Burrows, David Boyes and Kimberly Puttman is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 12.25. “White Bird/CAHOOTS Photo” from “Best Programs for the Homeless” © Todd Cooper, Eugene Weekly is all rights reserved and included with permission.