Welcome to or welcome back to New Hampshire. I'm sure you're very aware
that May is uh Mental Health Awareness Month. Our own Governor Sununu signed
*** proclamation and this week, I, I think it's uh maybe Thursday um is
National Mental Health Action Day. So you talked about mental health um in
this, in your state of Indiana and the importance of providing it for everyone.
I'm *** psychologist. I've been *** psychologist for 40 years now and I'm
*** grandmother as well and I'm seeing *** national mental health crisis. This
is *** marathon and it's not *** sprint. The Children and teenagers that I see
um are in for *** long haul in their challenges. I'm very concerned about
the 22 plus suicides *** day in our military. The LGBT Q community is at
high risk for mental health crises. And one out of three adolescent girls are
considering suicide and are depressed and or anxious. So given all of that,
what are your presidential plans to directly concretely um address this
issue? And would you be willing to appoint *** mental health czar and ***
commission to go along with that? Well, I I think it's *** marvelous idea. I've
never liked the term,
but I don't know what else to use.
Make such *** great point in the wake of the worst pandemic in 100 years.
There's *** new epidemic in America
and it's *** mental health crisis among young people, among various groups of
Americans.
And I think some of it comes out of COVID. I would, you're the psychologist.
I think some of it comes out of the isolation in COVID for young people. I
think it also comes out of the isolation in social media, which sounds
like an oxymoron. But actually kids that are living on their phone instead
of interacting with friends in person, end up really struggling with
depression and with loneliness. And so I, I think, I think we've got to lean
into this effort. I I I mentioned my wife Karen before when one of her
initiatives, when she was Second Lady of the United States was called Events
initiative. It was to prevent suicide among our veterans. But during COVID,
we broadened it out across the country to kind of raise awareness. My, my wife
coined the phrase uh during those days, she said it's, it, it's OK to say
you're not OK. And it's something I'm sure you know, you, you tell your
patients on *** regular basis is just first come, come forward and tell
people you're struggling with an issue and then, and then making sure that
that states and localities have the resources to come alongside people. But
it, in, in *** very real sense, we're, we're going through um for our kids and
for many people in the population and an epidemic of mental health and, and,
and, and we, I think we can deal with it. We can look to the experts, we can
engage, we can strengthen families in America. I love that Bible verse that
says he puts the lonely in families and so strengthening families is also ***
way that we deal with helping people achieve *** greater sense of wholeness
in their lives. Uh But uh but at the, at, at the end of the day when it comes
to people that might represent *** threat to themselves or *** danger to
others, I think we gotta get back to institutional mental health care. I, I,
I really do. We, in the 19 seventies, we all walked away from it as ***
country.
I worked in patient as well, but we gotta keep working on it. And I, I
think *** great lead and, and you know, this in public service relies on those
who are experts in their fields. And that when I was governor, that's why we
broke ground and built the first mental health hospital in 30 years in Indiana
because I heard from mental health experts, I heard from law enforcement,
they just said, we just, we just don't have anywhere to go when we've got
someone that has *** problem could potentially be *** danger to themselves
or others. But I think we need to think more broadly about that, particularly,
it's also the relationship between mental health, benign, not dangerous
issues. And homelessness is, is extraordinary. And there are many
people living in, in homeless lives today
that we ought to as *** nation have somewhere they can be cared for and we
ought, we ought to seek to do that. But I appreciate your work. Thank you very
much. Thank you.