Jan 13, 2020
In our latest episode, I had the
chance to speak with congressional candidate Lindsey
Boylan.
She is a candidate for Congress in NY’s 10th district.
I found myself getting
emotional a few times during my conversation with her.
She has a very personal reason for pushing a mental health
agenda as part of her campaign. If you do nothing more than
watch her short
video on why mental health is such a big part of her platform
here.
In this episode, Lindsey explains
how the people in her district are spending more time
searching for things like mental health, depression, and anxiety on
Google, versus gun control, climate change and
plumbers. Not to diminish those other issues, but
her constituents need a candidate who cares about what they care
about. Americans needs politicians who care about what we
struggle with because they have experienced it
personally.
Lindsey is a New Yorker, a lifelong
public servant and has done some great work in her service efforts
to help secure hundreds of millions of dollars for underfunded
public housing in NY, she’s worked to generate job growth in NY
state, and she was heavily involved in the fight for a $15 minimum
wage in NY.
She is a Board Member at the
Design Trust for
Public Space, she is on the Powerhouse Committee at
“Run for
Something” which is a group that encourages young
progressives to run for state and local office, and she spends time
advocating for NAMI-NYC (National Alliance on Mental
Illness).
You can connect with Lindsey
Boylan and learn more about her work here: Campaign
Website, LinkedIn, ‘Mental Health is
Personal’ Video, Twitter
SOME OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:
- What made you decide to
run for congress? Lindsey talks about how she’s
spent most of her career focused on solving problems to make
systems better for people. She’s always been very driven
to help other people.
- In Manhattan, more people
are googling “depression, anxiety, and therapy” than “gun control,
climate change, and plumbers.” Not to minimize the latter
issues, but our leaders aren’t really focused on the issues
that the people are most concerned about. People want to see
politicians focused on mental health, and Lindsey is laser-focused
on it from a policy perspective. Lindsey is running for
congress to help bring these very personal issues around mental
health, to the forefront in government.
- Lindsey talks about how
mental illness has impacted her and her family. She
is very passionate about changing the mental health
system. Mental
health is a core component of her campaign and it drives her
personally, as well as professionally.
- Lindsey produced a video
called “Mental Health is Personal” – in the video she
explains that we don’t have a mental health care system in
this country. Instead, we have a
patchwork of resources for those who can afford
it. We
talk about why there is no real mental healthcare
system. Lindsey
gives an example about how in NYC it’s almost impossible to
see a therapist that is paid for by insurance. We have this archaic barter
system of a scale of payment that is very opaque. If you’re experiencing a
crisis or a hardship, and you don’t know where to go that is
affordable, then it’s extremely daunting.
- We don’t treat mental
health the same way we treat physical health in this
country.
We talk about the pool of resources that are out there to help
people with various ailments and diseases. We also talk about how many
research dollars are available for things like diabetes and heart
disease versus dollars available for mental health research.
The
legislation is required to get more funding flowing to
mental health research.
- We talk about this forced
narrative that exists around violence and mental
health.
Most people with mental health concerns are not perpetrating
violence. People often want to
only talk about mental health around tragedies and gun
control. It’s
frustrating that the only time the mental health conversation comes
up in some circles is around tragic gun violence situations.
Lindsey explains how frustrated she gets when people force the gun
conversation and the mental health conversation to take place in
the same breath.
- We talked at length bout
political appetite for mental health bills in congress.
Lindsey explains that when she decided to run for congress, she
spent a lot of time thinking about how we can move policy forward
with regards to mental health. At first, she wondered who
the members of the mental health caucus are, and if any are from
her state of NY (as it turns out, only one congressman from NY is
apart of the mental health caucus – it is Rep. John Katko from the
24th District of NY – a republican). She realized that the people
in NY are concerned about mental health and the elected officials
from NY are not focused on this problem.
- We talked about what
inspires her as a politician. Lindsey explained that she
decided to run and was most inspired by leaders who have made
politics personal. Personal experience with the
problems we are trying to solve help us inform the
debate.
She is personally motivated to solve problems around mental health
and once elected, can use her personal experience to help drive
real change on this topic.
- We talked
about the bipartisanship we saw in 2018 around Tyler’s
Law. We
talked about what can get done, and how much willingness there is
to pass mental health legislation in Congress. Lindsey explains
that with the Affordable Care Act, we were able to move the
conversation forward. Parity laws were important as
well. Lindsey is a
proponent of Medicare for all which would help drive more money and
more coverage to more people who need mental health care as
well. Lindsey
explains how we have had several decades of lackluster investment
in research.
As we start to revamp our
healthcare system in the country, we need to make mental health a
central part of whatever system we have in the
future.
- We talked about how there
isn’t really a great way to deal with crisis in this country when
the problem stems from a mental health problem.
There are so few
resources available that most people call the police whenever there
is a problem.
Police often escalate a situation that doesn’t need to be
escalated. This
can make a situation more severe than it needs to be. We need to reform how we
treat moments of crisis. Most people facing a mental
health crisis are mostly potentially harmful to themselves, so we
need to re-think about how we resource the emergency management
system in this country. The current system moves
toward hospitalization and police involvement. We can do better.
- We talked about prison
reform at length as well, which in our opinion, has a lot to do
with mental health. Lindsey told me that 40% of
the people in Riker’s Island jail have a serious mental
illness. Are we
dealing with people in a way that is putting these people in prison
who used to go to mental institutions? Are there more humane ways
to deal with these people? Could we all live more
productive lives if we get this right? We need to spend money
researching this so we can have the answers and reform these
systems.
Connect with the Stigma
Podcast in the following ways: Website,
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Facebook, LinkedIn, Email
Connect with host Stephen
Hays here: Stephen Hays Personal
Website, Twitter,
LinkedIn, What If Ventures (Mental
Health Venture Fund)