Tools that they can walk you through to say hey, you know what it sounds like. maybe there might be something going on. okay, So one is severity how severe is it is it impacting your daily life and your ability to function daily? Are you are you finding that even small things are difficult for you to navigate and the things that you usually don't overwhelm. you are overwhelming you okay. So that's one severity but when it's coupled with persistence, then you really know you've got to pay attention and persistence is all about not just being in a funk for a couple of days, but two days turns into five days and turns into two weeks and believe it or not. In our field, we say if those feelings if that sense of being overwhelmed with not being able to manage your daily life functions for more than two weeks, it's time you need to call your general practitioner and you know, get an assessment and figure out what's going on perfect and certainly if you've ever dealt with anything previously recognize that you're you know that you're vulnerable. I mean I've I've had a lot of people reach out to me who had not had. With depression or anxiety, or whatever at some point in time in their life and have maybe been on medication and therapy, and we're feeling better and now suddenly are having a recurrence of those symptoms again. So the good news is they recognized it but that's that would be common because we're in the midst of what we're dealing with and so you have this added strain and and maybe you're not getting you're not able to do some of the things you ordinarily do do to take good care of yourself so that would make sense so pay attention as well. You're. Like I'm to myself, knowing that I've had depression once before It means I'm more vulnerable, so I've got to be paying close attention to to myself and then practicing some self care right now is really important as well. Yeah absolutely well for the audience Karen and I both have a hard stop at seven. So we're about 10 minutes to seven right now. so we're gonna take a couple of these questions. and Karen I'll tell you that two of the questions are. With mental health issues and two of them are just general campaign questions so once we get through the mental health ones and we'll be able to let you go and get on with your evening but the first question is from Kelly. What are some tangible ways we can help the communities that we're already struggling coveted when so many of our normal ways of connecting or are gone or have have changed. Oh, that's a great question. I was actually on a webinar. recently we talked about. That because we're talking about the isolation and loneliness that in particular, our elderly community is you know which I see them as another vulnerable community right senior citizens. So I think this really requires some out-of-the-box thinking, but also sometimes maybe some some going back to old school kind of being as well. So I think utilizing whatever ways we can to connect with people is really important so whether that's phone texting writing letters. you know if they're gonna. Folks in your community showing up on there, you know I love all the sidewalk Chas stuff that's been going on right like what are those messages that we can be sending ourselves. Maybe that's dropping off just you know a note at our neighbors. You know I love there was somebody recently that was sharing that they've moved into a new neighborhood and the neighborhood girl had written her a note. actually I think it was done Howard now that I think about it it's posted about it on Facebook that the nine -year-old girl that lives a couple of houses down, wrote a really sweet note and said welcome to the neighborhood. I'm sorry that. Moving in the midst of all of this, you know never underestimate the power of that, especially if you've got kids home right now, just like do your own little campaign of writing, some letters and making some colorful notes that maybe you're dropping off on every doorstep. you know it's still a time when we can bring meals to each other. It's still a time when if you're in that place where you are able to make a donation to food banks or to other organizations that are doing some of that really good work reaching out to vulnerable communities, making sure. You're doing that even though this can be a little stressful at times the constant video conferencing we know that now that that wears on our brain as well, I think using video technology whenever you can to connect with people is really important as well. I think actually, if you ask these folks, they would probably come up with some ideas of things. they've been doing to overcome that, but I you know I think this is the time of creativity innovation and and how can we? Reach out and make sure that people that are isolated alone, don't feel quite so isolated alone, and I think it's sometimes little things sometimes in the midst of what we're experiencing right now, we sort of feel like what's the point. It's such a big issue. How can I make a difference? and I think it's so important that we recognize the power of each of us doing small things that really add up to this kind of monumental sort of experience of connecting us and really powerful ways. Awesome. Alright. Thank you so we. On this next question a little bit, but we'll just go through it again, Nancy says. How do you think this will affect suicide rates, financial burdens and emotional distress always increases suicides in this concerns? me Yes, absolutely. and we did talk about that Nancy early on. We were saying that we know already that that absolutely you know suicides were already surging even before this happened and so we're anticipating and in fact I know having last week talked to the Travis. Sheriff's Office they were saying they've already seen an increase as well in suicide attempts and suicide. so we do know that this is a huge issue because again, people are feeling despair and so I think it's really important that we recognize that that's one and then again being aware of what the signs might be and I often say I think if we're paying attention to the people that are close to us suicide many times it carries with it a language of despair. People will often talk about the hopelessness piece of that and and so I think it's really important that as we recognize the folks in our community who are losing jobs or maybe concerned about being able to feed their families pay their rent that again, we're figuring out ways as a community to what are those organizations that can help support that and then really connecting folks to resources when we can I have to tell you I I I struggle with this particular issue because I at times feel that we can put a lot of. Things in place, but this is I have a vast impact and so the best that we can all do right now is again pay attention now develop again the space and create the space for people to talk more openly about mental health support those organizations that are helping vulnerable folks and you know and I think understanding the power of again little things expressing gratitude learning breathing exercises. I'm big on that. How do we like learn to manage our anxieties? By taking some time every day to practice breathing exercises, I mean just all kinds of things that we can do to help ourselves build some of again that resiliency and developing some good emotional language with our kids as well so that they understand how to use that language also is really gonna be important in the weeks and months ahead of us. Yeah. Well, we had two more questions coming in that revolve around mental health. so I'm gonna try and get to those really really quickly Lauren asks Does Nami Central Texas offer bilingual services or services in Spanish? No. We don't Okay something that we are working hard to do. In fact we just had a conversation this last week about it. It's such a challenge for us and I think part of the challenges for us right now. we're using technology to figure out how to how can we use the technology to help us circumvent some of those barriers as well because we know that there's a great deal of a need and that folks that are Spanish speakers would definitely. Benefit from being able to access our services and part of it is because we're volunteer led and so utilizing so we just hired a brand new person who will be starting next week, who is a Spanish Speaker. So we're moving in the right direction, But right now we currently don't have access to that. Alright. Well, we'll look forward to seeing what your group can do with that. And then lastly, Becca wants to know if you have any tips on children's mental health during this crisis. we're actually I'm getting off. This-we're doing a webinar this evening, I encourage you to join us if you go to our website and go to Nami Central TX dot Org. Click on the events and you'll see mind matters there and we're doing a mind matters tonight on emotional regulation. We also have a whole calendar there of other webinars that we've done previously and there's one that we did specifically on children's mental health. but tonight we do have a woman that's from AISD who deals specifically with children's mental health, is gonna talk. About emotional regulation and kind of developing some of those skills around there, but I do think you know, don't underestimate the power of creating that space for your kids to have that language to know. yes, this is hard. you know, I'm struggling. I'm mad. I'm you know whatever those things are we've been in really encouraging families to again practice breathing exercises with their kids and themselves because that's one of the really great tools for helping folks. I mean we when we're stressed we breathe. So I think that's a great tool. we've also been encouraging things like meditation apps as well. but join us this evening at 730. We're doing that webinar on emotional regulation. I think it's gonna be fantastic and it's completely free. Go to our website and you can register there and join us for that. perfect. Thank you so much and Karen before I let you go. Can you give us those hotline phone numbers and your website one more time. Yes. So our website is Nami NAMI St. TX dot Org, and I think your staff has been putting those that website address in there. so that's how you find us and there's tons of resources crisis resource information. All of these numbers are on there as well. So it's a great place to find all that. but I wanna give you first the health and Human Services phone number, and that's eight 398 61919 and so that's the statewide number where you can access all kinds of mental again. someone who's answering the phone. To some of those questions that you have or help you find resources in your community, the other big number is suicide prevention lifeline. That's 18 hundred 2738 255, and all of these numbers. you can easily sur online as well and then get to know your local mental health authority. That's Bluebonnet trails in Williamson counties. You can easily search for them and then that Central County services in Bell County and again, I know they've been dropping those numbers in there as well. so get familiar with those put the. On your phone cuz you never know when you're gonna need them so you wanna have access to them really easily perfect. Well. Karen I cannot. Thank you enough for being with us tonight. You have provided us with us with some amazing information. I know that this is a concern for a lot of people. I get a lot of questions about this so thank you so much for being here and I'm gonna let you sign off and then for my audience. I'm gonna answer the rest of y'all's questions here. Real quickly. Goodnight Karen Thank you. Doctor Mann you guys take care. Thank you. Bye Bye. Alright guys. so I have just a couple of questions here that our campaign related or just general questions that I'm gonna answer before I have to get off so I'm gonna kinda run through this as quickly as I can so that I can answer everyone first one is from Sam. many companies are now pulling the hazard pay essential workers like me were receiving because we are now quote unquote open as a state with what could be done in Congress to better protect workers during pandemics like this in the future. So the first thing I'm gonna say. At the whole way that we have handled this pandemic has been a disaster from the beginning. we need a functioning federal government with a functioning plan for pandemics and we need a Congress that recognizes that are essential workers are where we should be giving the relief not to the top one percent not to the stock market. We need our essential workers to be provided for so from my perspective. Of the way that all of the legislation the relief packages have come down have been the exact opposite of what we need and so future Congresses would be wise to prioritize where the money goes into essential workers and front line workers. So we need a huge overhaul on that. see and then James asks Jared Kush. Made comments on the possibility of postponing November elections. I see Trump trying this, but is this a possibility anything's possible but in reality the date of the elections is set by Congress. there isn't a way for Jared Kushner or Donald Trump to legally go around that I feel like there might be some tricks they pull out of their hats to make the voting in November as. As possible, but I don't see that there's a possibility that they can unilaterally change the date of the election as of now, and I'm sure that's something we'll be talking about on future town halls and throughout the campaign season so that's oh wait there is one more question. Jay asks, has my office seen any improvements and PE the answer is not really we still are having to get donations from the community from. And so forth, and we still can't get the right swabs for our test kits for doing covid- 19. I use the same mask in the same gown every day for several weeks in a row because we just don't have enough of a supply for me to change out and change that every day. so it's it's still challenging so thank you guys for being here tonight and I hope you guys tune in next week next week we. Going to have two guests, we're gonna have Stanley and we're gonna have Lucio Del Toro, both of whom are running for office in Williamson County and we're gonna be talking about incarcerated communities and their vulnerabilities during Covid- 19 to continue our focus on those vulnerable communities. just remember that I absolutely do need your support and your donations for this camp. As always my website is behind me, It's Christine for Congress dot com. these races are expensive and any of you who are stable financially through all of this, I could really use your donations so we can make sure we can get out the vote so I will say goodnight at this point. Thank you guys for being here and I will see you online and next week for our next town Hall. Thank you.