Mental health is something we talk a lot about in today's stressful world, but what does is actually mean? Is it just about not having a diagnosable mental health condition? Does being mentally healthy mean we have to be happy all the time? While both of those are related to the meaning of mental health, the truth is that it's a lot more complicated than just being free of mental illness and having a positive state of mind.
Mental health is a term used to describe emotional, psychological, and social well-being.1 A person's mental health quality is often measured by how adaptively they can cope with everyday stressors. Mental health allows people to use their abilities, be productive, make decisions, and play an active role in their communities.
Having poor mental health is often confused with having a mental illness. But mental health actually refers to a person's state of mental well-being whether or not they have a psychiatric condition.2 The truth is that mental health is about a lot more than just avoiding conditions like anxiety or depression. It's also about
I often think foreign threats to the American people are much over played. America is isolated from much of the world by geography, we are the predominant economic force and have enormous energy resources. Even if we didn’t have much of a military it would be a challenge for other countries to pose a threat to the everyday life of most Americans.
Drug use is an exception – it’s common. Alcohol and caffeine are legal stimulates and depressants, and in a majority of states marijuana is now legal. That said, other drugs are strictly criminalized because of politics and their perceived dangerousness in how they alter consciousness or become addictive. But a lot of threat of drugs isn’t their use themselves but the clandestine and unregulated nature mandated by their prohibition.
Fentanyl isn’t inherently evil or even poison but it often unpredictable in quantity and strength in street drugs because it’s unregulated and unmeasured. It’s a powerful and cheap synthetic opiod, a little goes a long way in feeding an addiction. And it easily can go beyond a high to become deadly. Certainly much comes from overseas where there are smart chemists and little regulation, but some may be manufactured in the US too.
Truth is that there are some nasty toxic things like children’s toys with lead paint imported from third world countries like China. It’s not just fentanyl. Even if those products aren’t going into kids mouths their toxins are getting into our local environment in landfills and smoke stacks all around. We need better regulations and inspections on imports, we should get rid of commercial de minis tax free direct to consumers shipments from other countries. Trump isn’t wrong on this for sure – and that would help stem the flow of Fentanyl.
But what’s really needed is not less Fentanyl but less demand for opioids and pain killers more generally. Why are so many people in pain in the first place? First and foremost, unsafe working conditions. But secondary is poor diet and poor health due to processed foods loaded with inflammatory saturated fats and sugar. The things so advertised and pushed in supermarkets is killing us all. We also need more opportunities for people to get ahead, have reason for hope as tomorrow gets better for them. People use drugs primarily to dull the pain. If people had less pain, they wouldn’t need so many drugs, especially those potentially boosted with Fentanyl.
Truth is that outside of high oil prices caused by international affairs, illegally imported Fentanyl might actually be the one thing in foreign affairs that impacts people in local communities the most. If an active foreign war was going on, then maybe you could add injured and dead soldiers to that list but because we live in peace time and oil is relatively cheap, you could reasonably say Fentanyl is the greatest foreign threat to everyday Americans lives.
