WHAT IS TODAY'S AMERICA MAKING OUR CHILDREN SUSCEPTIBLE TO?

By Andrew Malekoff© June 22, 2018

There are a few great films that have lingered in my consciousness; images are seared in, memorable lines are indelible and feelings evoked are still close to the surface. 

The White Ribbon (2010) is one such film that has left a lasting residue. It depicts the residents of a northern German village, dominated by a baron, sometime before World War I.

Inhabitants of the village young and old are sliding down a slippery slope of moral decline. A number of men in leadership positions are despicable, especially in their treatment of women and children.

The cruelest scene of the movie was not one that showed physical violence, but verbal abuse towards a woman that served faithfully as caretaker and more for the town's widowed physician.

As for some of the children, although it is only suggested it appears that they are budding sociopaths that perform serial acts of meanness.

Movie reviewer Mike LaSalle wrote about the film, “No child is trained to become a martinet, and no one says anything about a master race. Rather, the kids, from their elders, get quiet lessons in moral absolutism, sternness, emotional violence and heartlessness.”

Weeks after seeing the film, I started thinking more deeply about the children in this pre-World War I town. I realized that they would become young adults during the time Hitler would rise to power.

They lived an incubator in which they adopted the brutality that they experienced, often against unsuspecting victims. They were being unwittingly primed for carrying out the atrocities that later came to characterize their future lives in Nazi Germany.

Seeing this film has led me to wonder about what the times we live in today are a prequel for.

As LaSalle remarked, “It didn't have to be Nazism that took hold a generation later. It might have been any ideology that encourages blind devotion that flatters people's vanity by telling them they're intelligent for not thinking and that they're virtuous for believing themselves better than their fellow citizens.”

The White Ribbon begs the question: What is today’s America making our children morally susceptible to?

Published in the Blank Slate Media in June 2018

WHEN ARE THE CARTOONS GONNA COME BACK ON?

Violence—random, sudden, illogical, and lethal—has become a fact of life. Shootings and acts of terror, homegrown and imported, with or without racial or religious overtones, have become gruesome signposts along a seemingly endless path of public and private horrors. They are taking a toll on our children.

No child should have to wake up each day as if he or she was on 24-hour-a-day guard duty. But in the United States this is the reality.

We can no longer think of these as isolated incidents, aberrations or confined to urban settings. Denial, an emotional trap door, is not a viable escape in a world where a sense of imminent threat is ever present.  

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attack, writer Jeph Loeb and artist J. Scott Campbell produced a nine-framed cartoon entitled “Please Stand By,” that featured a very young girl watching cartoons.

By the third and fourth frames, the image on the screen changed to a live feed of the Twin Towers ablaze. As the little girl stood transfixed, stuffed animal in hand, the commentator announced, “We interrupt this program to take you live…,” the little girl turned away and called, “Mommy…” The next three frames began with her mother dropping a basket of laundry. Then, with her face contorted in anguish, she embraced her daughter to shield her from the unrelenting images. The final frame is a close up of the little girl asking, “Mommy, when are the cartoons gonna come back on?”

Among those who are left in the wake of violent acts are the survivors - friends and family members of victims, who live with the emptiness, frustration, and rage of incomprehensible death by violence.

Earlier this month, as the mother of the oldest child of Alton Sterling, the black man fatally shot by Baton Rouge, Louisiana police, expressed sorrow and outrage at his death, Cameron Sterling, 15, the oldest of Sterling’s children wept inconsolably by her side, for the entire world to see and experience his heartbreak.

One day later a St. Paul, Minnesota Montessori school cafeteria supervisor Philando Castile met a similar fate. Just one day after his shooting, five police officers, protecting  hundreds of people in Dallas, Texas, who were peacefully protesting the two shootings, were gunned down and murdered, ambush-style, by a lone shooter who was fueled by racial hatred and bent on misguided revenge. Ten days after the Dallas shootings, three Baton Rouge police officers met a similar fate.

Beyond those left in the direct wake of violence are growing numbers of young people who are fed a regular diet of horrific episodes of violence through graphic media accounts such as the live streaming of a bloodied and gasping Philando Castile, filmed by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds who wanted the world to join her in bearing witness as he took his last breaths.

In the aftermath of trauma, children (and others) feel fearful, unprotected, hyper-vigilant, and hopeless and on their own; similar to orphans who feel they must take care themselves.

We are living in world gone mad, a place where the rich diversity of colors, shades, languages, orientations, beliefs and rituals should be shared and celebrated rather than drawn as battle lines. The answers do not lie in books of psychology or popular bromides, or in aspiring national leaders who have proven to be untrustworthy.

The answer lies in being mindful - paying attention on purpose, making connections with one another and building a sense of communality.

https://longislandweekly.com/cartoons-gonna-come-back/

Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.

IN THE WAKE OF SANDY HOOK - SIX MONTHS LATER

In the Wake of Sandy Hook - Six Months Later

by Andrew Malekoff

On June 3, 2013, at a White House conference on mental health, President Obama urged Americans to “help bring mental illness out of the shadows” and pledged that his administration will provide new resources to support the effort. He called for an open dialogue on mental illness. He said a lack of public understanding about mental illness leads to a lack of treatment. These are timely and encouraging words.

On April 3, 2013, I participated as a panelist in a National Public Health Week event, organized by Hofstra University School Health Sciences and Human Services, on mental health issues in the wake of Sandy Hook. My emphasis was on eradicating stigma and improving access to quality mental health care and child care.

The American reality today is one out of five children has a serious emotional disturbance and more children suffer from psychiatric illness than from autism, leukemia, diabetes and AIDS combined. Yet, we continue to treat illnesses above the neck differently than those below the neck. 

People with mental health problems, and their families, often feel a sense of shame and suffer in silence; while people with physical health problems evoke the sympathy, support and comfort of others. It is shameful that the editors of major metropolitan newspapers exploit and discredit people suffering with mental illnesses with malicious name-calling that reinforces fear, mistrust and stigma, causing labeled persons to lose status and experience discrimination.

We know that the most violent acts are not committed by people with mental illness. In fact, people with mental illness are disproportionately the victims of violence. New gun laws require that the names of designated individuals with severe mental illness be recorded in a national data-base. Whether this will improve public safety or generate a witch hunt that further stigmatizes the mentally ill remains to be seen. In any case, what it does not do is address the problem of better access to quality mental health care.

Here are the facts: seventy-five percent of all serious mental illness occurs before the age of 24; and 50% before the age of 14. Yet, only one out of five children who have emotional disturbances receive treatment from a mental health specialist. We must do more to identify mental health problems early and then, when indicated, provide ready access to quality community-based mental health care.

Early screening by schools and pediatricians is a promising development. Yet, New York State has implemented a "clinic reform" plan that assures continued access to care only to children and families with Medicaid insurance coverage. This leaves a significant number of children and adults in the lurch. 

What’s more, New York State does not support universal access to quality child care, which is critical to a child’s healthy emotional development. By lowering income-eligibility levels for child-care subsidies, thousands of Long Island children are now being denied quality child care, leaving parents to either curtail work or leave their children in unlicensed child-care settings.

When elected representatives and appointed officials champion early mental health screening in schools and pediatrician’s offices, while denying universal access to child care and community-based mental health care, there is only the illusion of caring, political sleight of hand and insult to the children and adults who died at Sandy Hook.

 

THEY LOBBY FROM THEIR GRAVES

THEY LOBBY FROM THEIR GRAVES

by Andrew Malekoff © 2013

It was not necessary for the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School to validate what we are reminded of daily - that there is evil in the world. But what it did do is to affirm that if the massacre of six- and seven-year-old children is not off limits, then nothing is.

Immediately after the murderous rampage in Newtown, CT, mental health experts offered tips to speechless parents about how to soothe their children. The advice sounded like this: Be available emotionally, be compassionate, limit media exposure, reassure safety, offer distractions to prevent obsessive worry, monitor for angry outbursts and depression and, if symptoms persist, seek professional help.

Can you imagine how the advice might have sounded if parents spoke from their guts instead of their heads and hearts? The advice might have sounded like this: It’s a cruel world, evil is everywhere, toughen up, watch your back, be vigilant, don’t trust anyone and (for older children) just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.

In the last 30 years, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders. After some time passes, the latest homegrown massacre will become another tombstone in our collective psyche, alongside Columbine, the World Trade Center, the Long Island Railroad, Virginia Tech, Oak Creek, Aurora and more.

We seem always to move forward believing that we have seen the last and worst of it; until the next time. Denial is a healthy defense when the alternative is all-consuming, paralyzing and debilitating fear. We do all we can to protect our children emotionally, as well as physically. And, so we support their denial, using psychological bromides to seal their emotional scars.

The two major talking points since Newtown are preventing gun violence and promoting mental health. On the issue of gun violence, I wholeheartedly support the right to bear arms and taking steps to get certain guns out of uncertain hands. On the issue of mental health care, the chronic under-funding of children's outpatient community-based mental health services in Nassau County and New York State, is a disgrace.

New York State has ensured easy access to community-based mental health care for Medicaid recipients and neglected the needs of underinsured middle class and working poor families. Their answer is always that the marketplace will take care of it. It won’t. They know full well that private practitioners often do not accept private insurance and will not provide the labor-intensive services that licensed community-based mental health agencies do.

The gun lobby is formidable and well-heeled. Children, on the other hand, don’t have a voice until they are in the ground. Children are killed, grieving parents become tireless advocates and laws are passed. Timothy’s Law (mental health parity), Megan’s Law (making information available to the public regarding registered sex offenders) and Katie’s Law (making aggravated vehicular homicide a crime) come to mind.

Think about it. After the Newtown shootings there was not one parent in the United States who was able to escape the tyranny of imagining their child being murdered in their neighborhood school. How many more children will be taken from us before lawmakers devote the same energy and resources it takes to launch their re-election campaigns, to safeguarding our children?

Wake up lawmakers, elected and appointed officials, and government bureaucrats. Our children are suffering and dying, families are struggling and desperate. Support the constitutional right to bear arms, take steps to prevent gun violence and provide adequate funding for community-based mental health centers to support the emotional well-being of all of our children.

LOST LOVE

LOST LOVE

By Andrew Malekoff© 2010

Last past spring brought the tragic news of the death of Yeardley Love, a member of the University of Virginia women’s lacrosse team, allegedly at the hands of her boyfriend, a UVA men’s lacrosse team player, in an alcohol-fueled fit of rage. Both teams competed in NCAA championship tournaments after Love was buried.

News of the tragedy and the school’s subsequent decision to play on, led me to wonder about how Love’s surviving teammates and friends coped with their emotional turmoil. Being a student-athlete requires a difficult balancing act. Yet there can be no preparation for sudden, inexplicable and violent death.

To explore this further, I interviewed Bob Malekoff, professor of sports studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., and former men’s lacrosse and women’s soccer coach at Princeton University. Bob is also my younger brother and the author of the critically acclaimed book, On the Mark: Putting the Student Back in Student-Athlete.

Andy: What do you think about the decision of the UVA teams to play after Love’s death?

Bob: While the two coaches were likely consulted, the ultimate decision would lie with the athletic director and senior university administration - including the president. Although cancellation may have been a wise course of action, there was a great deal of discussion about honoring the wishes of the Love family, which were for both teams to compete in the tournament.

Andy: How do intercollegiate athletics fare when it comes to monitoring off-field behavior?

Bob: Competitive success typically trumps behavioral conduct. This can be seen at all levels from youth sports through professional ranks and, certainly, in intercollegiate athletics. As interest in the game of lacrosse has grown, there is increasing pressure on coaches to win championships. This might lead to less vigilance regarding the off-field behavioral issues of some athletes.

Andy: How does the culture of intercollegiate athletics affect young people just out of high school?

Bob: This depends on the coach and administration. There are coaches who focus on the whole person. Others focus almost exclusively on winning. The shame in the latter is that it doesn't have to be an either-or proposition. Although some conveniently blame coaches, they ought to look, as well, at college leaders who reward competitive success and little else. Coaches who consistently make values-based decisions should be supported and lauded.

Andy: Some reports suggest that, prior to Love’s death, there were signs of violence by her boyfriend.

Bob: No one can blame Yeardley Love’s teammates or members of the men’s lacrosse team for this tragedy. However, there is no doubt that they are now far more aware of what a lethal combination unchecked anger and alcohol can be and how they can contribute to domestic violence.

At UVA’s graduation in May, Yeardley Love received a posthumous bachelor’s degree. In his final speech before retiring, University President John Casteen III recalled some things he would never forget about the school: "The sounds of children on the lawn during Halloween. The chapel's bells. The cheers at games... And the name of Yeardley Love."

Published in 18 Anton Newspapers on Long Island, NY, the week of July 26, 2010.

WHAT TEENS NEED

WHAT TEENS NEED

By Andrew Malekoff©

Cries of “hate” ring out in the slaying of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero, allegedly by a group of seven Patchogue-Medford High School students. The victim seems to have been targeted for his ethnicity, and the crime is horrific. But our community will benefit more over the long run by recognizing that while it is not normal to be involved in a murder such as this, it is normal for every adolescent to face the issue of diversity.

Those of us who work with youth in schools, community centers and counseling practices face the challenge of helping teenagers to address the question openly and honestly. We need to encourage discussions about ethnic identity, prejudice, and inter-group relations not as taboo, but as a normal part of growing up.

We can help young people to tune in to ethnically and racially charged local, national and international events impacting on them. When stories like the killing of Marcelo Lucero dominate the media, young people’s stereotyping and polarization are too often reinforced.

A meeting I had with a group of teenagers on Long Island in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings comes to mind. The teenagers talked about their feelings regarding profiling and stepped up security in schools and in the community.

One member, Carlos, recalled being stopped by a police officer who asked to check his arms. “He was looking for gang tattoos. He thought I was MS 13,” Carlos explained as he slowly pulled his shirt sleeve back across his forearm as if back in the moment. “I told the cop, ‘First, of all I’m Salvadorian and proud of it. Second, I’m not a gang banger.’ ”

“A week later,” Carlos continued, “I saw the same cop at my restaurant job. It was the same cop! Well, I work as a maitre de and I was wearing my tuxedo. He looked me over and seemed really confused, puzzled. I smiled and said to him ‘See I’m the same person.’ ”

A healthy exchange of ideas and opinions about controversial subjects, especially in the safe environment of a professionally moderated group, enables young people to test out their beliefs and attitudes, to practice listening to others’ views, to respectfully express differences, and to discover common ground.

Carlos’ revelation led another member to share an experience with a different kind of bias. Jackie, a 15-year-old girl with a stud in her tongue and hoops in her left ear, told the group the story about how when she got her tongue pierced, all of a sudden, “Everybody looked at me differently, like I was from another planet, a dirt bag. But I’m the same! I’m still a good student. I’m the same kid as before.”

Jackie’s reflection illustrates that in addition to advancing an understanding of cultural differences, we can reach for common experiences among young people across cultures. This can open pathways for relating among different ethnic groups.

Presently, we all face the sad possibility of seeing a dramatic erosion of empathy and loss of community amid the struggle for economic survival. We cannot afford to allow the development of empathy to slip away from our youth in the process.

I have a hypothesis about the recent presidential election that relates to this issue. This was a campaign in which the possible effects of racism were frequently and publicly expressed — much more than ever before. Long after Barack Obama’s speech about race, there was constant fear expressed in the media about a “Bradley effect,” in which potential voters would tell pollsters they supported Obama and then pull the lever for a white candidate instead.
Perhaps this open discussion about race — somewhat analogous to a group session — gave a number of people a chance to process their feelings and ultimately feel comfortable voting for a black president.

Ironically neither candidate touched the issue of immigration in the debates and town hall meetings. If the presidential election marks a step forward in racial sensitivity, I wonder, did we take a step backward with respect to attitudes about immigration?

Published in NEWSDAY, Sunday, November 16, 2008, pp. A48-A49

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TRAUMATIZED TEENS NEED HELP

Truamatized Teens Need Help
by Andrew Malekoff©

Reports of teens murdering their parents have a way of getting reactions from the public that tell us a lot about ourselves. The first question many people raise is: Should these kids be tried as adults or subject to a more humane and child-friendly legal standard? But this doesn't address the problem of prevention. How do we stop them from killing in the first place?

In a culture that often glorifies violence increasing numbers of young people, when they reach a boiling point of anger or actual mental illness, might literally do anything to satisfy their frustrations or to gain attention. Bravado, especially for teenagers, is everything, and for any action that seems the slightest bit threatening - a put-down, a disagreement, a dirty look - they often will seek immediate retaliation.

The recent cases of a 12-year-old girl accused of strangling her mother in Freeport and a 17-year-old boy charged with choking his father in Wyandanch represent extreme outcomes, of course. But their origins are common: Children are caught in an escalating situation, usually with people they know, from which they cannot disengage, and they lack skills, aside from violence, for defusing it.

When the result is murder, the story gets into the news. But those of us who work with teenagers for a living are seeing an unpublicized increase in the kinds of cases that can lead to this sorry end: children and teens with serious emotional disturbances who are victims of childhood trauma or have witnessed domestic violence, and who are exhibiting unmanageable behavior.

When a child wakes up each morning with a sense of dread and fear, he approaches the day in a state of arousal and anxiety. He is likely to cope by lashing out and moving from impulse to action without pausing to reflect. Or, absent a capacity to soothe himself, he will turn his feelings inward, fueling depression, and suicidal and other self-destructive behaviors.

Society expects parents to do everything that's needed to solve this problem: to counter violent messages in the media, teach children problem-solving skills, and then keep them physically and emotionally safe. These are unrealistic expectations. Too many parents lack the information and wherewithal to accomplish this on their own, and many are themselves emotionally troubled. Parents need a system of support.

And children need order and consistency in their lives. They need safe places to go, with worthwhile things to do and opportunities for belonging. And they need relationships with competent adults who understand and care about them.If a young person can get all of this naturally within the family and from neighbors, a highly structured support program may not be necessary. The problem is that supportive communities and social structures have largely disappeared, especially in widely dispersed suburban communities like those on Long Island, where the first feature one notices are garages that are easy to slip into without interacting with or even seeing a neighbor.

Just weeks after the Columbine High School shootings, I met with a group of about 25 teens and adults from Long Island who gathered to address the impact of a distant horror that had hit so close to home. To the surprise of most of the adults, the teenagers said that what they really needed and wanted was closer relationships with adults - at home, at school and in the community. They were starving for someone to pay attention to them.Yet, they admitted that they also push grown-ups away. "Is this what you really want to happen?" I asked. The overwhelming response was an emphatic "No."This is a paradoxical aspect of young people's psychology that often confounds adults. They have a strong need for adult contact, coexisting with the need to be separate, expressed as "Understand me, but leave me alone."

This suggests that teenagers want adult support but are unlikely to go out of their way to seek it out. On Long Island there has been steady progress in the human services community toward programs that are based on partnerships with parents, schools, government agencies and community-based organizations that bring adult support out of private offices to where the teenage action is.

A prime example is the Intensive Support Program, a school-based mental health partnership between Nassau BOCES' Department of Special Education and my agency, North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center. The program targets children and youth aged 5 to 21 with serious emotional disturbances, aiming to improve their social, emotional and academic development and prevent costly long-term placements in residential institutions by keeping them at home.

An effort intended to steer children away from violent activity and gang involvement by offering such services as conflict resolution, cultural activities and tutoring is occurring in the Westbury and Port Washington schools in the Helping Each Other Program for Latino youth. This collaboration with The Place Adolescent Services Center, which is also affiliated with the North Shore guidance center, matches trained high school mentors of Hispanic heritage with younger students.

The cutting edge of youth service work in the suburbs is to be where the kids are. Of course, there is a cost. But it's just a fraction of the cost to house troubled teenagers in a mental-health or juvenile justice institution.If legislators and government officials can get past the cost-cutting ploy of referring to such services as "discretionary," we will see much less youth violence, and certainly fewer murders, in the long run. These are essential human services that require a significant investment now, before it is too late.

Originally published in Newsday, July 2005.