Shadee Elmasry – Issues You Can’t Talk to Family About Call Us.

This organization is called in the sea. Hmm. And let's bring him on

from based in Canada. It's a hotline if a child if a youth is

suicidal, and we ask Allah offense, and I'm from that, but I

found this was an excellent organization. It's a nonprofit

organization. Brother, I'll see you. Does that clock in for coming

on?

Welcome to the live stream. Why don't you tell us right away? What

is the organization? What was the impetus to the organization to the

point of it all is CD, what we're finding the majority of the calls

we get, especially with what's going now what's going on now,

overseas in the Middle East, we get a lot of calls, people are

sad, they're depressed, they're dismayed. They don't know what to

do. And what we find is the best thing for anybody is to be able to

talk to somebody. And unfortunately, there's so much

stigma in our community around mental health around depression,

as you stated, you know, it's, it's it's frowned upon to even say

that you're feeling sad or depressed. Why are you sad? Why

are you depressed, do do some liquor, and you'll be okay.

Unfortunately, not everybody to your point, has had that

background has had that training. Not everybody has a sheriff or a

teacher that they can sit with and talk to. So this helpline, which

is toll free, confidential, it's non judgmental, is for people to

pick up the phone and call and you know, it's not just young people.

We're getting calls from adults. It's interesting, what one of the

directors told me, it was very, it was a very sad and emotional

story. He said, he recalled receiving a gift in the mail, it

was a handwritten letter with a small desk be from somebody in

Palestine, who wrote them a letter and said, I've been using your

service. And it's helped me to get through some very trying times.

That was about two years ago, we don't know where that person is,

or what's happened to them. So this is the condition of the

community, and they just need somebody to talk to you. So we've

set up this helpline, and, you know, it's interesting. So we have

the helpline, we were getting calls, we get about three 400

calls a month, and then the pandemic happened. Everybody's at

home.

What do you think happened to the number of calls we'll take? Over

the roof? No, the calls dropped? Oh, really? Support? They got

their family support? No, it's because your privacy, you're

sitting in the room with everybody else? How are you going to pick up

the phone and call somebody and say, Hey, I'm feeling depressed.

So we started, we started to text line. And our text numbers went

through the roof.

You know, once or twice a month, I get stories back where we've,

we've actually prevented a suicide by text. So it's an important

service. And really, you know, I just wanted the opportunity to

come on here. And just let your audience know that

not everybody is as lucky as you to have somebody like Dr. Shadi to

talk to, and bounce these ideas off of them. If you or somebody

you know is struggling, it's dealing with these problems. Pick

up the phone, call the CEO, it's really simple. 1866 Naseeha, you

can call or you can text and and secondly, because we are now

expanding into the US. We need help. We need volunteers if you're

interested in helping. You know, I know the New Jersey community, I

grew up in the New Jersey community. I know people want to

roll up their sleeves and help. This is this is really, really

important task. Class people need our help. Yeah, what are the

qualifications of someone who wants to help?

So we are starting to look for people now who are in the field or

are studying in the field of mental health or medicine to come

on as counselors. We do have a training program that we put them

through all of our counselors, by the way, see the our their peer

counsellors, so they're young adults, answering the phone, and

then we have clinicians on staff. In addition to counseling, though,

you know, we want to do programs in New Jersey, like the one we did

at MCMC. You know, we want to bring in guys like machmood and

other people to talk about their struggles with mental health. And

for that we need boots on the ground. Right? We need people in

New Jersey to say, hey, yeah, you know, come to NBC. Let's run a

basketball camp. And then let's have a discussion. We've started

working with the Molson center in Chicago. We're gonna start working

with the Molson center in Chicago. We want to do healing circles.

It's like a study circle, but you come to the circle, bring your

parents and just have a discussion in a safe space about what you're

going through what you're feeling. And

so you receive the calls, do you follow up and does that person

who connects with them the first point of contact, call them back

every two days? Or is it just a one way street? Yeah. So what we

do is that are the names are anonymized on the call center.

What we don't want is callers that are coming in to then become

dependent on somebody's an individual as their support line.

So our counselors are trained primarily to listen, and to

assess. And if it's seemed that somebody is in a situation where

they may harm themselves or others, then take the appropriate

action, we do allow repeat callers to come in. But if we find the

calls are coming in, we do try to point them or direct them to

another source for long term care. Now in Canada, interestingly, we

started web therapy, we're actually offering free web therapy

in Canada. And now in the US, we're looking at the different

states to see how we can do that. Because, you know, clinical

therapy is expensive, especially if you don't have insurance. So

that is a program that we're looking to roll out in the US in

the new year and shout loud, but

yeah, it's mostly it's just active listening and making sure that the

person who's calling is safe, and then directing them somewhere

where they can get help. Can people text? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Almost almost half our calls are coming through text 1866

nasiha. Is that for Canada only, or the US? Its global. Its global.

That's we're getting people from all over the world.

You don't cover addiction therapy has nothing to do with this,

right? Someone called I'm depressed because I'm an addict. I

can't stop doing this. Do you cover that to? Anything? Anything?

Any type of? Yeah, so almost half of our calls, I think 39% of our

calls that come in, have to deal with some type of an addiction,

whether it's drugs, alcohol, and unfortunately, the big one these

days is looking at things you're not supposed to look at, on the

screens. That's a that's a big one. And we do have, we have

people that are actually trying to provide these types of therapies.

You have my good friend, Dr. Ray hands ad on, I think last month or

a couple of months, you look like his cousin.

I don't know who's the lucky one in that example.

So Rehan actually is doing this very same thing with individuals

like he, you know, he's bought a place and he's providing this type

of personal therapy. So I think there's enough to do that. Many,

many people get get can get involved, and we will still need

more help in this area.