In the third installment of the San Diego 6 News series “Mind Your Health,” Neda Iranpour looks into a place many of us spend a lot of our time: at work. Iranpour profiles Dr. Bronner’s, a socially-conscious soap-maker to find out why offering free wellness and health care to employees pays off.
During my fellowship project, I chose to focus on the impact of historical trauma and unresolved grief on the lives of Native peoples and ways that they are healing from the trauma and building resiliency. Here's what I learned along the way.
While we may think doctors and medical students don’t have time to “sit still,” UC San Diego is finding that the act of meditating is helping create better medical professionals. The school's Center for Mindfulness is now serving as an example to many universities and hospitals.
Elvia works as a medical interpreter in the Ventura County. Today, she is accompanying the occupational therapist Rachel Pile, who speaks only English. Every Monday, they work on 2-year-old Miguel’s therapy. His mother, Eulalia, only speaks and understands Mixteco.
"I overdosed on heroin and I was staying in a motel," Susan Ireland says on a tour of El Centro. "The guy that worked at the motel found me, raped me and called the cops. I woke up in the hospital two weeks later, clean and sober and pregnant. That's why I'm clean and sober today."
An estimated 165,000 indigenous Mexican immigrants live and work in the fields of California. Some 80% of them do not speak English or Spanish. This cultural and language barrier makes it difficult to treat mental illnesses in the community.
In the fields in the Ventura County some of the workers speak Mixteco. Many of these indigenous farm workers, like Florino, are living in the country illegally. They typically don’t have access to health care. Most of them face poor living conditions and backbreaking daily labor in the fields.
Older approaches to homelessness required people to achieve sobriety or enter treatment before being moved into permanent housing. Under Housing First, people receive support to stay in their homes and are later paired with services such as health care, substance abuse treatment, and job counseling.
Decades ago we made our criminal justice policies tougher, but in a way that turned out to be neither just nor equitable. As the prison population has soared, we've come to realize our justice system is also terrible for your health. And the forces driving lockups and bad health are often the same.
Many homeless people have severe mental disorders yet remain on the streets for months or even years. The challenge for social service providers and authorities is that these vulnerable and sometimes volatile people often refuse help.
