 Hi guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here bringing you this video from the first annual Jerusalem Mental Health Expo being held today at the Nefesh Benefesh campus just outside Cinema City here in Jerusalem. This is the first time that a mental health expo to the best of my knowledge has been organized for English speakers and it's a whole day event. It started at 9.30 this morning. It's continuing through to 7pm tonight and it's a day full of panels in which basically covering key issues related to mental health for English speakers. I just attended a fantastic, incredible hour-long panel regarding halacha and mental health touching on the various Jewish law, Jewish religious issues that come with seeking therapy. Amazing speakers and they made very clear that this mental health expo is not going to be a one-hit wonder. They're going to be convening another expo and hopefully sooner than one year from this one as well as resources for the Hebrew community. So I really, really think that this is a terrific event from Nefesh Benefesh. Inside there's 40 different booths from various organizations providing mental health services to English speakers, giving information. I've been very transparent on this channel that I have suffered myself from anxiety and depression and use both therapy and psychiatry and it's definitely a bit of a minefield navigating this world. So it's really, really great that Nefesh Benefesh have put this event on, not specifically just because we're merging from Corona and that's been a very difficult period for a lot of people, but also because mental health services for immigrants in general are extremely badly needed. We know the tragic statistics that a disproportionate amount of suicides in Israel, one-third are committed by olim kaddashim or new immigrants and therefore it's in our shared interest to get better access, better information to mental health resources out there to those who need it. This is again the first annual Jerusalem Mental Health Expo. I hope there'll be many, many more and I'm going to go inside now and talk to some of those exhibiting in-site. Hello, my name is Razel DeRanfeldo Bryan. I'm the founder of Mental Health Education Israel. I'm a mental health education specialist and I work with people on the preventative side of mental health care, teaching you just like you taught, we're taught in school how to eat well and exercise to take care of your body. I teach you how your mind, your emotions function in your mind and your body and also practical behavioral skills and strategies you can integrate into your life to take care of your mental health. I work in schools speaking directly to students, giving them lessons, as well as giving staff trainings again for schools and in the workplace. I think Israel has an amazing potential. As you can see from this Expo, we have so many gorgeous and very highly skilled mental health practitioners. However, the mental health stigma in Israel is very deep, so while there is a lot of opportunity for amazing, high quality mental health care in Israel, unfortunately the stigma often time holds people back from going after that mental health care. I offer people to create and establish a self-care routine. Take care of your holistic health, your body, your mind and your social life. Practice positive self-care routines so that when you find yourself in a state of mental health challenge, you already have practice those positive coping mechanism skills to help yourself through that time in your life. My name is Daniel Landau. I'm the founder of a new organization called Men's Helpline, which is an organization that helps men when dealing with miscarriage, infant loss, stillbirth and infertility. My name is Sean Littman. I am the founder and CEO of Catch-22 Nonprofit Marketing, an agency that focuses on non-profit organizations helping them make money, and Daniel for Men's Helpline happens to be one of our favorite clients because he is really gone out the door and just started swinging and he's been growing ever since. When someone goes through a miscarriage or infant loss or stillbirth or infertility, 99.99% of the time the focus on the woman, the men are standing side by them suffering in silence. So I felt it was time to end that as men need to have a conversation, need to have a resource of how to deal with it. This is why I started Men's Helpline, especially since I personally experienced both going through fertility treatments and suffering a miscarriage when the embryo transfer did not work and I had nowhere to turn to. I didn't feel comfortable going to other organizations because they were run by women, women talking about their issues, didn't feel comfortable. I was lost. The only support I had was a Facebook group that I posted in and it turns out I wasn't alone and I realized that's something more needed to be done. The statistics are one in four pregnancies ended in a miscarriage, one in a couple struggle with infertility, one in 160 births and in a stillbirth and one in a thousand babies die of SIDS or infant loss through over the years. So the fact that I knew that I wasn't alone when a guy to my left, a guy to my right could have been going through this and was suffering in silence to me that was a problem and I had to do something about it. First of all, men's mental health is an interesting thing, right? Traditionally we are trained as men to be strong, to not want to talk to these things, not want to cry, to hold it in. But what I've learned the stigma is it's a bad stigma, why? Because if you hold it in and you don't talk about it and you and you don't cry about it, it destroys you. I've heard too many stories of men's marriages ending with divorce, turning to alcohol, turning to drugs, turning to depression because they're not talking about it. As far as the resources for men in general, mental health in Israel, there really isn't anything. Men's mental health is not talked about because men are strong and they believe that this is how we were built. We're problem solvers, we want to fix things. So the fact that that is how we were trained and educated, this is a problem. So there really is not enough resources out there for men. Men's Helpline offers a podcast where men can come on and share their story. We also offer a Facebook support group, a WhatsApp group, now a hotline which is going to be launched within the week, a 1-800 number hotline where you can call in and get support and just the ability to reach out and talk to someone if you need it because remember, you're not alone. I'm Shloma Yaakov Leifer. I am Shmuel Zacharias, Menachem Endomex, Pashit Jabethinsky, Yaakov and Aronstein. We are coming at you live from Yeshiva's Gula show, the first Yeshiva of the Gula opened up on day one of lockdown from the pandemic. We have a tripartite revolution to bring to the world in mental health, in Tyra and in politics, but really it's the same thing because we offer a new mahalik in Tyra where it's not forcing people to do it and based on this book Jutimonia, Simkhashel Mitzvah is the revolution. It's being happy. So we are Simkhavitayv Levav. That's Jutimonia, Aristotelian Jutimonia. Tov Levav. EU is good and Dayamon is spirit. Tov Levav, goodness of spirit. We are Oved Hashem in Simkhav and in Superchil. This is the Superchil revolution, the tripartite Superchil revolution that we are bringing to the world. It's not forcing people to take bills and not forcing people to get shots Rachmano Litzvan, but the revolution of in mental health is with Tyra and Elevation of Consciousness. We have to be active participants in our own healing. We are not just going to a doctor, the psyche, the soul, the nevish, it's not like a foot, you go to a doctor, you can be passive, he just fixes it up, but for us we are active participants in our own healing of ourselves and healing of the world. That's the revolution in mental health. Learning Tyra, freeing ourselves, that is and so our service is that we help people free themselves and it's not that oh everyone has to follow a certain path, everyone figures it out themselves and we help facilitate that. My name is Yisrael Cohen. I work for the aliyah department of the Jerusalem municipality assisting New Olim to settle in Jerusalem. The area is very interested in showing New Olim just how much services are available for you if you were to choose to make aliyah to Jerusalem and this opportunity of having so many English speaking mental health services available for New Olim in Jerusalem is really a very important celebration and we're very honored to be part of this. There have been panels, there have been people coming around, a huge amount of networking as well with mental health professionals. It's good for our limb to know not only for those Olim who are coming here you know it's it's a tricky time making aliyah know that the support exists but also if you're a mental health professional yourself know how many options there are for employment in a huge amount of mental health organizations here in Israel. I think this is a most unique amazing event that has brought something to the public that I think the public has has waited a long time to see not only the professionals who have come together to collaborate on behalf of the public but also for the public to be able to come and experience and and listen and speak one-on-one to the different services and resources that have been present today. One of the reasons that Nefesh Ben Nefesh is so proud to be one of the co-hosts of today's event is because immigration brings its own challenges whether you are a child, a teen, a parent, an individual, you're looking for employment, you're looking to find your place, whomever you are aliyah brings challenges and that is why we are so happy to bring the resources that can help people find answers to those challenges here at our campus. So United Solo Psychotroma Response Unit is activated and deployed in all extreme emergency situations like a terror attack or unexpected fatality. Our responders, our initial responders who provide care for the physical injuries make sure that there is no life-threatening emergencies in place and then the Psychotroma Response Unit is called in to provide stabilization for anyone having an acute stress reaction. There's a, we have a actually a cute little card of this is the range of the of the reaction that someone might have it's sort of like a pain scale from zero to ten it's called standard units of disturbance and if someone is at a ten see them perhaps are even curled up in a ball, overwhelmed and unable to process what has occurred and what we'll start with treatment for an acute stress reaction and initialing initializing care to give them the strength to continue. The question about how common is it to see a situation with a PTSD so post-traumatic stress disorder is a late-stage development following an acute stress disorder which is what follows what was started out as an acute stress reaction. Many people in the course of their lives will be faced by something that is extreme and will develop an acute stress reaction which is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. If that abnormal reaction is not treated and responded within the initial moments then that has a possibility to develop into an acute stress disorder. Hatsala, United Hatsala is, we're fast. We get there when the situation is happening when the you know sometimes even while the bullets are still flying so we can get there and give that intervention to the people having an acute stress reaction and prevent that from becoming an acute stress disorder and then becoming a post-traumatic stress disorder. Everyone in the field is a volunteer we obviously have a professional staff that guides the team. We have a professional staff running the organization but in the field all services are provided free and provided by volunteers. Professionally trained volunteers all services provided free. My name is Yasi Wachtel from Haksiva. We're located in Ramapay Chemesh and we help teens at no matter where they're coming from what their backgrounds are or where they are going we are there for them. We have a drop-in center on a daily basis for boys and for girls and any kid can come in and be there and call that place a home for them. We have mentoring, we have therapy, we have a big clinic of professionals and that's how we help our children. We're working with both. We're a lot of Anglos, a lot of Israelis. Ramapay Chemesh is an American community and a neighborhood but there are less olim today in Ramapay Chemesh and a lot of the teens today that are there are actually born already in Israel for American families and they do have an identity mix up of where they're coming and what they are doing. There's a lot of alcohol, there's a lot of drugs. I have to say that COVID actually brought in a lot of new drugs. A lot of more people were stuck at home in basements and there's a lot of stronger drugs that today have been using more than the regular weed if we can call it that way. Alcohol is more of a girls problem than a boys problem. That's a different topic. Both genders are suffering from abuse of drugs and alcohol. I think the thing that makes us some of the one of the most unique organizations at the expo is that we really combine a two track approach to handling mental health crisis. The first approach is the referral. The idea of giving support, customized support to a family. We don't only give the support in terms of funding the right therapist, psychiatrist, maybe it's a hospital, but we actually take the client hand in hand explaining the process every step of the way in real time. You're at the hospital or you're even on the way. We explain the process will go with you. We'll sit with you in the waiting room if that's what you even need. We will actually be there after you leave the hospital. What's your aftercare plan? And very often people, especially Olim who might not be familiar with the system, we take the time not to only say call this place, but we explain how to get it, what the goals would be and what they could expect in the process, what might be seamless and easy, what might be a little more challenging. So they're fully informed. We also look at mental health in terms of what practically is going to be helpful for you. That takes form of providing food in moments of crisis, Monday, Wednesday and Shabbos. Home cooked, delicious food delivered to each family. What's going on with the family? We might be able to coordinate cleaning help as well support for the kids. We also create an environment of complete support available whatever the hour, whatever the day, whether that's on phone, whether that's by email, whether that's in person or even on messaging. We are available to support clients in extremely unique ways. The system of mental health is complicated no matter where you live, including in the States and yes here in Israel. Our goal is to make sure that nobody does it alone. Everyone feels empowered and supported so that they can all have great mental health at some level for every person of the family. I would answer it's actually amazing here. There is an amazing amount of practitioners, highly qualified professionals and available programs in a much more affordable and accessible way. Where we get stuck is very often the language and cultural gaps as well as the communications even at a professional level to be aware of who does what, to understand on a individual level as a professional. When we're referring people to tell them what to do, we're the Olim or even if you're on a different a student or a tourist visa, where they're not able to navigate this. Is it coming from a mental health place? Is it becoming coming maybe from a language barrier as well as a mental health issue that's causing them to shut down? So I actually think our resources are amazing. I think accessing them through professionals also gets patchy because we don't have enough communication with each other and I see it getting better and better every day. What we want to do is close the gap. Our organization does not provide the therapy. We provide the connection to access it effectively and efficiently. We are the only free kosher Shoma Shabbat Residential Treatment Center in Jerusalem or sorry in Israel. You treat both alcoholism and drugs? We focus on substance abuse addiction. So not process addiction but chemical dependence and drugs alcohol. Okay the big question I have is you know there's this whole thing about Jews not having drinking problems. Jewish alcoholics don't exist. Tell us about the level of alcoholism you guys see among the community in Jerusalem and whether you see them on English speaker sorry Israelis or Olim both like what's it like out there in the field? I don't see any difference versus the Jewish community or in Jerusalem or with Olim or with Israelis the question really isn't about is there more or less drug and alcohol addiction the question is the resources available to helping with the problem. So in Israel I would say it's a little bit behind in many aspects the initiatives that are available locally are old school initiatives and it does feel like abroad they have abroad abroad outside of Israel they have a wider understanding until there are more solutions and treatments available outside of the country. So I don't think there's any more or I don't think there's any more drug addiction in any specific place where there's alcohol where there's drugs people are going to do that and the drugs and alcohol are everywhere and people are everywhere. What would a typical intervention look like from your guys perspective like someone comes how long do they stay in your place? How does that work? So our house is an eight month long program it's broken up into two phases the first phase is our intensive inpatient phase where they go to four groups a day take care of the house they cook they clean they do their own laundry they go to a meeting every day they have a sponsor they work through the 12 steps in that first portion of our program and we just focus on changing the way that they do things the way that they live and help them develop a way of life that doesn't demand drugs and alcohol in order to deal with it. The second phase of our program is a reintegration or transitional living where we help them find a job they save money that last four to five months or so and then they move out into their own apartment and move on with their lives. Our our idea is to help them develop a community that they can take with them we they basically by the time they leave our house are just changing where they sleep there's nothing really else that they need to do because what we learn in the house it's all practical and stuff that they take with them. Cool Ariane thank you so much for your time really appreciate this has been an absolutely incredible experience um as you can see i've talked to guys from the Hadzala Psycho Trauma team um i've talked to people involved in addiction support uh men's mental health which is a super super important topic that i've said many many times on this channel is under address not just here in israel but also across the board and i commend the area Nefesh Benefesh everybody else who got involved in making this happen i'm not i've as a just person who attended this no hand in organizing i say with some confidence the excitement in this room the enthusiasm is at such a level i doubt very much this will be the last Jerusalem Mental Health Expo and indeed i hope there will be many more thank you very much for watching if you'd like to get more videos from me please subscribe to this youtube channel