Katie Pool is currently a Manager in the Creative Music Strategy department at Paramount, where she creatively supports both series and promos across music brands (MTV, VH1, BET, CMT) as well as marketing for Showtime. Previous to Paramount, she was a part of the Film/TV team at both Warner Music Group and Warner/Chappell Music, creatively pitching their extensive catalogs on both the label and publishing side. Prior to Warner, she got her start with roles at TuneCore Music Publishing and Universal Music Group.
The Issue: Mental Health
According to this Fact Sheet: Our country faces an unprecedented mental health crisis among people of all ages. Two out of five adults report symptoms of anxiety or depression. And, Black and Brown communities are disproportionately undertreated – even as their burden of mental illness has continued to rise. Even before the pandemic, rates of depression and anxiety were inching higher. But the grief, trauma, and physical isolation of the last two years have driven Americans to a breaking point. Our youth have been particularly impacted as losses from COVID and disruptions in routines and relationships have led to increased social isolation, anxiety, and learning loss. More than half of parents express concern over their children’s mental well-being. An early study has found that students are about five months behind in math and four months behind in reading, compared with students prior to the pandemic. In 2019, one in three high school students and half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, an overall increase of 40 percent from 2009. Emergency department visits for attempted suicide have risen 51 percent among adolescent girls. At the center of our national mental health crisis is a severe shortage of behavioral health providers. More than one-third of Americans live in designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas, communities that have fewer mental health providers than the minimum their level of population would need. Even outside of these shortage areas, the fragmentation of the current system makes it hard for mental health providers to meet people where they are. We must dramatically expand the supply, diversity, and cultural competency of our mental health and substance use disorder workforce – from psychiatrists to psychologists, peers to paraprofessionals – and increase both opportunity and incentive for them to practice in areas of highest need. Our crisis response infrastructure must also be strengthened to ensure that those facing acute behavioral health challenges can be seamlessly connected to necessary services. Less than half of Americans with mental health conditions receive treatment. The average delay from the onset of mental health symptoms to treatment is 11 years. Too often, costs prevent people from accessing care far. At the same time, those with mental illness are often misunderstood, mistreated, mislabeled, and misdirected to services. It is imperative that we promote better pathways to care and make it as easy as possible for all Americans with behavioral health needs – including common and pervasive conditions like anxiety and depression – to access the resources that will improve their well-being. We must fight to ensure that every American can access mental health and substance use disorder care through their insurance coverage, while integrating mental health services and supports into a variety of other settings, online and in the community. ACTION: Make a donation to: The Anxiety and Depression Association of America Or The Trevor Project Or American Foundation for Suicide Prevention OR, write to your Senator to ask them to support legislation that makes mental health care more affordable and accessible. Here's an example. Please edit it to reflect your own feelings and experience: Dear Senator [Name], I’m a constituent from [zip]. Thank you for the work you do to represent our state. In his State of the Union address, President Biden announced a strategy to address our national mental health crisis. There has been so much suffering during the pandemic and we really need legislation to make mental health care affordable and to make sure that insurers pay for these needed services. I’m concerned for all people including children, adolescents and people from marginalized groups who don’t have as much access to mental health care. As someone who has family members who suffer from mental health problems and as someone who has struggled myself, this issue is especially important to me. Please support any upcoming legislation that would make mental health care more affordable and accessible to everyone. Thank you for listening. [your name] If you don’t live in the United States, you have the option either of making a donation or of writing to your elected representative in your country on an issue that concerns you. We care deeply about the issues we are highlighting but our overriding motivation is to support everyone in their participation in the democratic process. So no matter where you’re from please look into the facts and learn about the issue for yourself. If an action doesn’t sit right with you, write to your representative about any issue that you care about. Results:
23 Donations equaling $552
And 22 letters to Senators
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