Good for you. Both for helping this to happen, and for being so "in tune" as to comment upon it here, in the midst of such misinformation.
________________________________ From: "Pamela Paradowski [email protected] [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, August 8, 2014 4:42 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Mental Health in the Fairfield and Meditating Communities I don't ever respond to anything on FF but read posts all the time but felt somewhat compelled to after seeing this thread. I can tell you that the mental health coalition was started by a TM meditator that moved to FF about a year ago. He is a practicing counselor (has his Ph.D or Ed.D but is working under a Master's license in Iowa I believe) and felt that he wanted to do something for the community since mental health was being ignored. He has tried for a year to get this going. It was his initiative --not the school's from my understanding--that started this. He was a student there in the 80's, as I was in the 70's. I am a psychologist and will be doing some work in the community as time goes by--I still live in CA but have a house in FF. I have met with many of the therapists in town to get to know them and I can tell you that everyone is on the same page. These people are well trained and don't buy into everything the official TM community may state. However, many of them meditate and are very open to TM---they just disagree with the assumption that meditation cures bipolar, severe depression etc. They are very aware of the suicides---and having myself found out information about them--as always they were a long time in the making with the people who decided to take their lives. The sadness in the town is that it is so stigmatized to seek help. There is a lot of help there---and cheap---as people do sliding scales. However, the school has not been open to it. All of this is beginning to change right now so the students can get help. They are just normal kids going through normal things but as everyone knows--the so called negative emotions are not given much weight. So people cannot always feel free to express those aspects. And of course there will always be people who have more serious mental health conditions that tends to manifest around those ages. The townspeople need education. That has been tried but did not take. There was a depression/suicide talk at the library a therapist did that was poorly attended. Having worked in the field for years, having meditated since 15 and been a student at MUM 18-22 I have a lot of opinions. I was angry when I left, as that was when we were told if we did not go to the dome we would create a world war. I never bought into it but did not have any desire to go back to FF for a number of years. You can take what is good from TM and a very loving community and not buy into all of it. I find FF now full of people who are very well-balanced (and many who are not). I live in Berkeley and it is certainly the same way here. I don't know how this coalition will turn out as it is a group with many diverse opinions. As with any group, I already hear people talking outside of it about the way certain things are being done. That is just the nature of any group. However, it is a start. The students seek help anyway--that I know--it is just that it may not be paid for by the school or looked down upon.
