Councilmember Walla Blegay (D-At-Large)
“The mental health forum that we had on [May 4 at Sharon Bible Fellowship in Lanham, Maryland] was really helpful to the community.
“We were able to hear from a mother who is taking care of a child who has schizophrenia and how they are struggling with knowing what resources the county provides. And we were able to talk about that. We even had a few people talk about their experiences in an emergency room.
So we’re making sure now to let people know what resources the county has to assist them in mental health. And that’s extremely important.
“I value our mental health in Prince George’s County, which is why I hosted the mental health town hall. This is a priority for us because mental health impacts all of the services. A lot of our crime is connected to mental health. A lot of our poverty is connected to mental health. Almost every day that the county encounters, our seniors, they are impacted with mental health. We talked about loneliness.
“We are seeing a higher number of suicides… We have a high number of unemployed who are experiencing mental health. So mental health is becoming a focus and a priority for all of us. And we realize in almost every area of government, we have to focus on mental health.
“Coming from representing nurses, seeing how much that impacted mental health, I am committed to addressing mental health at the county level and beyond.”
Keith Battle, pastor of Zion Church
“When I think of overall health and its totality and how we’re integrated as human beings by that— I mean, if you’re not eating healthy, you have a poor diet, if you’re not exercising regularly and taking care of your physical body, it tends to make you feel bad.
“If you’re overweight, If you’re feeling sickly and weak because of your poor physical health habits, it will bleed into how you feel emotionally and what you think about life and about everything, it is all connected, and then when you feel bad emotionally. And when you feel depressed or down or defeated or lacking hope, you tend to repeat the habits that got you there in the first place, which sticks a deeper hole.
“So when I think of mental health, I think of overall wellness, treating ourselves well, taking good care of ourselves, eating and drinking the right things, moving our bodies physically and doing the kind of physical exercise and training that helps us physically and mentally.
“One of the things we’re doing at our church on July 26, is a health focus where we get down to some of the medical things and health things that are important for people to keep in mind.
I think mental health cannot be separated or compartmentalized from the overall physical health as well.”
Rev. Henry Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church of Highland Park in Landover, Maryland
“Mental health month is important because God is mind, body, and soul. We try as a church to minister to those in the three aspects of the person.”
And so not just because it’s mental health month, but we need to be spiritually healthy, emotionally healthy, and financially healthy. All of those things have a way of working together.
And so what we try to do is to give people the kinds of tools that can help them to navigate through life. Of course, this ministry is focused on all our seniors, our millennials, young people. We have in our church what we call the guiding ministry. We have persons who would love to bring people to the Lord.”
Rev. Caralis Kimbrue, staff chaplain at Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center
“One of the things that can happen with the elderly and older population, is that I realize that as they get older and families sometimes move away in a distance. Whether it’s a social civic organization or where they live in their facility or something, the challenge is trying to change the language from being isolated, to being insulated.
“[Perhas] there’s a book reading club or a prayer group among the elderly, maybe there’s an organization to pick them up once a week, or where they can take [seniors] out so that they can find a way to be more insulated.
“The other thing is, maybe journaling. They can find a way because sometimes we come to the place where people are not always present, but sometimes we need to work and find a way to have a presence of mind, and give a value to who we are as elderly and older people.
“So I think it’s trying to find mechanisms to be insulated, greater than being isolated. Because you can be in a crowd of people and be isolated. But you can be out by yourself and be insulated. And so if we can just trying to work toward that, then in that framework, we can minimize the impact of depression that leads to other elements of mental health.”
