Mental Wellbing and HIV

New research by Positively UK, presented in their States of Mind Report, shows that three quarters of all HIV positive people experience mental health issues.  

For more about this, see:  
Positive Nation 
Mental Health Today
 
Mental health can impact on treatment, as people can miss doses of their meds as a result of depression and other mental health issues. 

The report highlights the need for mental health support for people living with HIV.  However, mental health services are shrinking due to budgetary constraints.  

This report may not be telling us anything we don't already know.  But as people of African heritage are already over-represented within mental health service users, and HIV is still spreading rapidly in areas where there are large numbers of African people, such as inner-city London, this is something we need to be very concerned about.  

Click here for a short audio on the benefits of meditation.  Meditation can have a very powerful effect on our wellbeing.  

 

Connecting with Our Feelings and Needs

Click here to read about Nonviolent Communication.

This is a repeat and update of an earlier post.

I read about these killings of young people, by other young people. It surely cannot be natural for children to kill.

We need to find more love in our hearts. Sorry if this sounds airy-fairy. I am talking in purely practical terms. We need to find more love and learn how to express it better or, I fear, our species is not going to survive much longer.

We can find more love. There are methods that work. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a highly effective method. I have seen the effect it has had in my own life and I am determined to help make it available as widely as possible, particularly within African Diasporic communities.

We can use NVC to help improve our communication at home, at work, at school, with partners, loved ones, and with ourselves. Nonviolent Communication is very practical and its results are exceptional. It is used by children as young as four. It is used by people all over the world, including places where there is a history of extreme violence, such as Rwanda and Burundi, Sierra Leone, and Israel and Palestine.

Click here to find out more about Creative Communication.

Click here to read about Nonviolent Communication.

See also: How to Get Our Needs Met, NVC vs. Anger Management. These are both old posts, so the links are probably out of date.

Lama Rangdrol's Visit

I was privileged to meet Lama Rangdrol earlier this year, when he visited the London Buddhist Centre. He was fresh from giving one of the keynote speeches at the Beyond Race and Caste conference in San Francisco.

We had two meetings with him at the LBC. I asked him about how we can spread the Dharma in the Black community and spoke of my concern about the rising number of young people killing each other. Many of these murders happen in South London, and even in my neighbourhood of Camberwell, but mostly in adjoining areas such as Peckham.

Lama Rangdrol said we would need to practice for others who can't do it for themselves. Many of the young Black men he grew up with in Oakland, CA did not make itout of the ghetto alive. Those who did were often too scarred by their experience to be able to explore the life of peace and contemplation which Buddhism can offer.

I was glad to be able to meet an experienced Buddhist who is committed to exploring and demonstrating the relationship Buddhism has to the experience of people of African heritage.

We will be screening Lama Rangdrol's film, "Festival Cancelled Due to Heavy Rain", on Saturday at the LBC. Click here for more details.