Posted on March 31, 2023
As a mental health advocate and educator, I often use statistics to illustrate impact. “One in five” illustrates how many people are affected by mental illness in any given year. But, according to a recent national poll, one in five also indicates how many Americans have experience with gun violence.
As we grapple with yet another school shooting, this time at a small, private school in Nashville, Tenn., where three 9-year-old children, three school employees, and the shooter lost
This entry was posted in Uncategorized.
Posted on October 22, 2019
The question, “Are you thinking of killing yourself?” feels rather unsettling. A few months ago, I became a Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) instructor with 13 of my colleagues in the state of Delaware. We practiced asking our peers this challenging question and it didn’t get any easier each additional time we said it out loud. In 2017, more than 47,000 people in the U.S. died by suicide, making it one of the leading causes of death. There were more than twice as many suicides that year as there were homicides. The more that we empower the people in our community to get trained in YMHFA and learn how to speak to someone struggling with suicidal thoughts, the more likely the number of suicides will start to decrease.
Posted on July 13, 2018
Last month, federal immigration agents separated a 10-year-old girl with Down syndrome from her mother at the border. Nine months before that, agents did the same to a 16-year-old boy with autism, taking him from his caregiver grandmother.
Unimaginably unconscionable, their separations and those of some 2,300 other children at the border from their parents and other caregivers came in the wake of president Trump’s zero tolerance policy against immigrants allegedly entering the country illegally. Though the president eventually signed an executive order June 20 calling for children to instead be detained with their families through the duration of immigration proceedings, the damage is done.
Posted on October 20, 2017
Let’s begin with SWEET:
“Have a good day, sir!” Ian Snitch said enthusiastically to a guest exiting the Courtyard by Marriot – a courteous and attentive act that Ian executed even before his supervisor, a front-desk specialist, had gotten the chance.
It would be just one of many things Ian said and did on Disability Mentoring Day (DMD) that impressed and amazed me. A first-year student in the University of Delaware’s Career and Life Studies Certificate (CLSC) program, Ian, along
This entry was posted in Center for Disability Studies, community living, developmental disabilities, diversity, Education, employment, inclusion, independent living, intellectual Disabilities, people with disabilities, Uncategorized, University of Delaware and tagged Courtyard by Marriott, Disability Mentoring Day, Office of Disability Employment Policy, Senator Chris Coons, University of Delaware.
Posted on November 22, 2016
More than a month after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, the disability community shows little sign of letting go of its grief and fear and no wonder.
In Clinton, the community heard a candidate who took turns applauding people with disabilities (they’ve “changed things for the better in our country”) and advocating for them (they’re “too often invisible, overlooked and undervalued”).
She promoted a plan designed to push states to require health coverage for autism services in private insurance plans,
This entry was posted in autism, civil rights, community living, developmental disabilities, diversity, employment, inclusion, people with disabilities, physical disabilities, politics, public policy, subminimum wage, transportation, Uncategorized and tagged American Association of People With Disabilities, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, disability community, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, IDEA funding, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, National Council on Independent Living, New York Times, Rehabilitation Act, Serge Kovaleski.
