For over a year now, as I have been pushing forth with my research on Polykinetics and whatnot, and I have been seeing a term continuously pop up over the internet and it immediately caught my attention and enthusiasm….
“MENTAL HEALTH FIRST AID”
…Now, I’m thinking, “wow, someone beat me to the punch” because that is exactly what I call Polykinetics, a “mental health first aid solution” because it is a physical technique that one who is suffering from symptoms can utilize at anytime, any place, that offers real-time relief when they have no other alternatives, and the best part is that there is a butt-load of research and evidence to back it up. I often compare Polykinetics to an inhaler…saying what an inhaler is to an asthmatic, Polykinetics is to someone suffering from a panic attack or intrusive thoughts or compulsions to hurt themselves…etc. This MHFA program compares itself to CPR…cute coincidence right? –And then, I took a closer look at the program details and saw that it was less a physical method and more educational/informational learning about identifying symptoms of mental illnesses and how to give advice/talk to friends/loved ones….a new mainstream form of talk therapy…a very educational one, great for mental health awareness, but….talk therapy none the less; which to MILLIONS of silent sufferers of trauma and mental illness is not even remotely effective in helping them when they need help most.
Let me explain….
Many people, myself included, are not fond or, and often at times, completely avoid, verbally speaking out over and over about the gory and disgusting details of every traumatic event that has happened in my life.
I’m stubborn and I don’t want people having that kind of information about me, nor do I want to instigate any type of pity because that does no one any good. And this is why I believe Polykinetics to be so important to the world of mental health. It is a vital technique that can physically save a life when “talk therapy” falls short.
FOR EXAMPLE: Polykinetics is for the teen who’s locked in their room, who is dealing with persistent suicidal thoughts and fighting against physical compulsions of self-harm in the middle of the night while everyone else is asleep. Or for the combat soldier who wakes up every night with horrendous night terrors due to PTSD. Both individuals are in critical need of help, but both individuals are physically alone with no one but themselves; and to me, that is when sufferers are most vulnerable to succumbing to their illnesses. During THOSE moments. I have been in those moments many times in the past, and they are truly terrifying.
People in THOSE situations need more than just talking and information about their illness….they need an actual real-time process to utilize in order to overcome the intensity of their symptoms. To help stop the intrusive thoughts or physical compulsions. That is why Polykinetics is so vital and very different from the talk-therapy form of “mental health first aid”.
Now that is not to say that the talk-therapy form of “mental health first aid” is, in anyway, useless, because education is NEVER useless….Polykinetics just takes it a step further. It is designed to be so simple to learn that the teen locked in their room and the combat soldier experiencing insomnia can utilize the Polykinetics method whenever they feel they may need it the most.
They don’t need anyone else but themselves to benefit from this method. No friend, no family member, no certified instructor, no doctors…just themselves and a determination to fight against their struggles.
They are the ones I think about most when pursuing to get the word out about Polykinetics. They are the reason why I will never stop what I having been doing for the last several years…because their lives could very much depend on it. I say, enough talk.
It’s time to put the peddle to the metal, roll up our sleeves and dive straight into the belly of the beast because that is the only way we, as a mental health community, will win this war against mental illness.
With massive ACTION.
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