People referred to the center will be eligible to stay for up to 5 days and referrals will be available for continued counseling. Walk-ins will not be admitted.
“In my heart, I’m committed to making this an addition to the neighborhood that will make the neighborhood a safer place and not a more difficult place,” said Jay Flynn, a vice president of the Mental Health Center of Denver, which helped spearhead the initiative.
Not everyone is on board. Residents near the center site have voiced their concern about neighborhood safety. “It’s not that we don’t understand the needs of homelessness in our community,” said one resident at a community meeting held to discuss the center. “The fact is that our community is extremely stressed and we need to preserve a safe environment.”
The center is scheduled to open in 2020.
Is masculinity really toxic?
A new ad by Gillette raises questions about what it means to be male. The ad initially presents a more traditional view of men as boors, bullies, and sexual oppressors, then morphs into a call for a sea change to males with empathy, compassion, and a need to help. The ad came a few months after the American Psychological Association issued new practice guidelines for boys and men, in which traditional masculinity ideology was conceptualized as limiting.
Those developments prompted an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that considered whether masculinity really is toxic.
“Some of the angry responses to the [Gillette] ad were over the top, and yet the detractors have a point. Take the way the ad exhorts men to start doing and saying ‘the right thing,’ and then continues, ‘Some already are. But some is not enough.’ This suggests decent men are a minority while brutes are the norm,” wrote Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
“What’s more, some of the ‘toxic’ behavior shown is pretty innocuous, such as teenage boys ogling bikini-clad babes on television. (Should we shame girls who drool over cute male pop stars?) The ad also blurs the line between fighting and roughhousing, implicitly condemning the physical play styles more common among boys,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, the psychologists pointed out that, in light of many factors, including higher death rates in the United States for boys and men – compared with those of girls and women – understanding “how boys and men experience masculinity is an important cultural competency.”
Dementia and an aging workforce
As the American workforce continues to age, employers are having tough conversations about dementia and other cognitive issues, according an article from the Associated Press.
“And it’s not just managing missed deadlines,” Sarah Wood, director of global work-life services at an organization called Workplace Options, said in the piece. “If this person has been a dependable employee for 40 years and is now missing meetings, they’ll be beating themselves up over this.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of U.S. workers aged 65-74 years was expected to skyrocket by 55% between 2014 and 2024.
Those aged 65 years and older are more likely to face dementia diagnoses. Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers with dementia – including Alzheimer’s – are protected, “depending on the employee’s position and level of impairment,” according to the article.
Employers can accommodate employees by taking steps such as writing instructions rather than communicating verbally and reassigning employees who operate heavy machines to desk work, according to David K. Fram, director of the Americans with Disabilities Act equal opportunity services at the National Employment Law Institute. But employees must be able to do the “essential functions of the job,” he said.