Quote by Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW

“We need a revolution in mental health awareness to help us grasp the wonder and complexity of human behavior, health and functioning, and the nuances and intersections of brilliance and madness. This starts with dismantling myopic myths that prevent us from seeing the simultaneous wonder and complexity of our fullest selves. It involves providing access to the tools that mitigate being overtaken by the ravages of burnout and mental decompensation: the very risks of living in the modern world. Our sense-making approaches need to be comprehensive- grounded both scientifically and medically, steeped in love, and in ways that account for the multidimensionality of emotional and spiritual essence. Those that go beyond what the mind can first conceive of. This new mental health imperative relies upon universal precautions and a vehement resistance to linear checklists and binary labels that frame our gorgeous spirits solely as either complex and fraught or indomitable and wondrous. It also relies not on good will and best practices but the moral courage of policy makers to treat human beings like human beings. Dogs are often treated better than people. This is our new imperative: to radically change the way we care for ourselves and one another. We cannot extricate ourselves from the fact that the lines we walk are incredibly thin and blurry, and our only hope is to rewrite and navigate them together in solidarity, with every measure of creative reason and conscious community that can be mustered...”

Quote by Kristen Lee, EdD, LICSW