Rabbi Binyomin Babad at the Torah Umesorah Presidents Conference 12-22-2017 (Part 1 of 5)

good afternoon thank everything thank you to everybody for joining us here this afternoon and a special thanks to charm Asura for giving us this opportunity to discuss these very very important topics the topic of this session is the training community responses to the abuse addictions and suicide what our successes and what are our failings and how can our schools help in 45 minutes or less abuse addiction and suicide are three very very very large and complicated topics they need to be look together they need to be looked at as a group together because very often the abuse leads to the addiction which leads to the suicidality but they also need to be looked at as three very very separate issues because in many cases they are separate somebody can be dealing with an addiction started can deal with abuse something can do and suicidality and they have necessarily nothing to do with each other so they need to really be looked at in both ways so let's start with our successes bah Hashem much has been accomplished there are programs that are available programs that that we've had the privilege of working with return Asura the mesquita program and other programs that are giving rebbe a.m. and Mohonasen and half face the tools that they need to pick up problems in the earliest stages there are other programs also dealing with with early intervention there's a program I was just had the opportunity this morning to speak to somebody in the hallway who has a program that's really working like you in private of teaching our own children the basics of the moon up so that when they hit the bumps of life and we all do should be thrown off the rails so all these ideas are incredibly important that they all help us very very much in reaching out and getting to problems before they before they reach crisis proportions in addition to that many many issues today have in-house programming dealing with mental health issues and you may be surprised to know that even some of the biggest best well-known tier one issue is if you will are quietly bringing in mental health professionals into the achievers to help them deal with the problems that are very very real certainly we've seen a lot of success in raising awareness and for that we have to give a specially I should class to a number of it special individuals I'd like to start with thanking men decline organizations like a mood them and others have really brought these issues to the forefront sometimes a great personal peril but maybe the biggest sign of success is that we're able to harness the kind of this incredible deceiver when organizations like turbo survey relief and amou demand others can work together and work off each other's strengths and together be able to achieve much more than any of us would be able to do as individuals this is the real class consumer this is the real success but now let's discuss the failings but I think rather than calling them failings I'd rather call and challenges do they think that's actually more accurate some of the issues that we're dealing with are growing at a pace that's faster than we can keep up with I think that a common conversation that we have is how many phone calls we're getting and how we're trying to deal with the incredible influx of calls the growing and alarming trend of the rise in use of drugs in our community and it comes in many flavors we often think of teens at risk being being the ones that are using drugs the most but and of course there are those to you that are that are falling into this darkness of addictions but it goes beyond them we see a tremendous rise in the use of alcohol if people come home every Chaves from a kid is drunk of Balaban regular bell-bottom with the quote unquote recreational use of marijuana that is gone out of control and then there are people who become addicted to pain medications altogether all of these issues like I said are growing faster than we can keep up with and this is a real challenge I'd like to focus for a second though on the third issue the issue of suicide and suicidality the stories that we hear about are incredibly tragic each one is an individual case with a complex set of circumstances but those are the ones that we know about at relief we get on average probably between two to three moderate to severe least suicidal cases a day every single day bhavish at most these people won't act out on their feelings but their feelings are real and they need to be addressed with addressed in fact when I was driving here from the airport a woman called me up about her husband that her husband has been depressed for the last ten years and he's tried everything and he's given up hope that normally when they say they tried everything when we go through with them they didn't really try everything so there is what to do in in this person's case he did try just about everything so there's one or two maybe you can hold downs but so far we haven't come up with with the Mahalo to help him out and his total despondency is understood it's very very real but again it needs to be it needs to be addressed there are two parts in the world the world of mental issues that we deal with there's the as I mentioned before the prevention in the early intervention to help avoid problems and relief has been privileged to work with thermistor and others to work on some of the projects that they're involved in using some of the data that we've collected to spot trends and see patterns but the main focus of relief is the other side which is treatment our main issues to deal with the issues that there are at hand as I just mentioned the addictions are a growing problem and when faced with a problem that's this complex and people are unsure what to do if they desperately want to do something this is a recipe for disaster I had of well known about sadaqa called me the other day that somebody had called him to help him to ask him to help pay for somebody's rehab so I asked if he could speak to people directly which is normally what we do and the first question I asked when they said the person needs rehab is who said that doesn't sound very nice but when you work in this field you'll find out that very very often again people want to do something that desperate did do something and so the first thing I said is let's sensoring him you'd be in this case again the person was advised to go to rehab by somebody who had absolutely no experience at all in the world of addictions so it's something that we have to be aware of but when the person does need we have or does need a higher level of care where do they go how much will it cost how will they pay for it and they're often getting advice from well-meaning but often ill informed people there are thousands of programs out there and they've all look great on paper they have beautiful brochures and beautiful websites with rolling hills and horses and the ones in Florida with swaying palm trees they all look great but it's not Club Med it's serious business and it cost serious money and you need to know which places are serious programs and which are snake oil salesmen who are looking to make money off of your problem at a case the other week woman I'm a woman called me up her son needed rehab and she's paying thirty six thousand dollars a month for him now that sounds like a lot of money and it is a lot of money but for those of you who are aware of the costs of rehab it's not so strange except here's the kicker her son isn't even there her son is home they're charging her thirty six thousand dollars a month to speak to him on the phone for a few euros a day these people are get on the joker's and as the saying goes if the world is real joke is why am i laughing so in order to deal with this relief is embark on a project of researching these facilities of understanding who does what for how much how long is the treatment model what are the minimum credentials of the staff what's the weekend staff ratio what's in place for aftercare and much much more we've worked with leading clinicians and other organizations to gather this information and when we have it done we'll have it available that anybody who needs this information should be able to tap into it we're hopeful that in this small way we can help those who need the help get back on the track to good health and that will be our biggest success I'd like to ask men decline to say a few words [Music] you [Music]