Mental Health
The connections between social issues and health are wide spread. But mental health is an incredibly important crossroads.
I recently came across a free PBS documentary that poses the disturbing question: Have America’s jails and prisons become its new asylums? Check out the following link to see the full documentary: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/view/
As many of you know, I have been working on a new documentary, David the Piano Player, which tells the story about trauma and HIV. Trauma is the mental health issue that often gets trivialized or ignored. In “All of Us”, trauma was where the ‘all of us’ argument completely fell apart. For the past two years, I have been studying trauma and men to complete the story I started about HIV in urban communities.
It’s impossible to tell that story without mental health.
I am an Ethiopian- American public health physician that is using oral histories to teach about health. I have been listening to stories as a public health practitioner for a long time and as a physician for the past six years. In medicine, there is a true moral compass that points north. These stories are meant only to serve the patient. This blog is my attempt at documenting the stories that have the potential to teach how to heal for us all.
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