How do we turn this around? I thought abolishing poverty would help. Studies bear out the fact that money influences your happiness a lot if you’re stressed with day-to-day needs and make below a certain amount. My presidential campaign became a feel-good movement for some who loved the idea of putting buying power into people’s hands.
I hope that the Forward Party can become a positive, uplifting movement and community for people who want a different, more humanizing approach to politics. The connection between people, families and our well-being and what is actually being legislated has been broken. Restoring it is our best hope.
This week on the
podcast I interview Andrew Frawley, who is starting a movement to advocate for mental health – The Good Life Movement. “There is a mental health crisis in America. Everyone knows it. After COVID-19, everyone seems to care about it. So, why are we not seeing a major political presence for mental health? Why are we not seeing major legislative reform? Many people think the problem is that we do not have the science or policy to transform our mental health. This is not true. While there is more research to do, we know more than enough to improve outcomes and save lives.”
He’s certainly right on about the depths of the problem. One in five American adults experiences a mental illness annually. Depression is worsening and is now 10 times more common than it was 50 years ago. Suicide is now a top 10 leading cause of death. Fundamentally, people are dispirited. 25% of Americans say they do not have a strong sense of meaning in their lives and 58% say they are lonely.
We know there’s a problem that millions of people are both affected by and passionate about.
"The reality is that the mental health crisis is like a house on fire. And with mental health care the way it is, it's like we haven't even built the fire department." Andrew is
also right that there are many things that we could do that would help people live better lives. These range from teaching social and emotional learning in school to equal insurance coverage of therapy and mental health services or expanding the suite of urgent care services to include things like mobile crisis teams. "To end the crisis, though, we must think bigger and stop individualizing societal problems," Andrew says. “Health care itself only explains a small portion of our health outcomes. We must rebuild our communities by focusing on meaning, social determinants, and whole person solutions." This means that The Good Life Movement could also make a case for measures like the Child Tax Credit or more park spaces or paid family leave.
“Mental health is bi-partisan and resoundingly popular because everyone is affected by mental health issues, whatever your politics, whether you’re rural or urban, military veterans to kids,” Andrew says. “Despite this, our leaders are lethargic. The main thing that’s missing is thousands of people taking action to pressure politicians to pass legislation they already have. That’s what The Good Life Movement can provide. Think March for Our Lives for mental health. It's shocking but no one is doing this.”
I personally love the idea of millions of Americans advocating for common sense measures that would lead our people to live better lives. It’s not coming from within our current politics, because we are meant to blame each other and clash only on certain litmus test issues. Mental health has the chance to be a unifying issue that can bring people together. How our kids and our families are doing ought to be the point of our policy. What is keeping us from living the Good Life, indeed, and how can we change it? It will start with us and other everyday Americans.
To support Andrew or find out more, go to
GoodLifeMovement.org.
To check out volunteer opportunities at Forward Party, click
here – I’m heading to Utah this week!
