Mental Disability Surveillance

Listen (29 min)
Friday, February 17, 2:30 pm PST

This week, a national CDC study found that nearly 3 in 5 (57%) of teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021 — double that of boys.  This is a nearly 60% increase and the highest level in the past decade.

For the young people, their families, and friends, it was just a reminder of something they already knew.  We have a national mental health crisis in the U.S. and there is a stunning lack of resources to help.

In addition, in the North Bay of California, deaths involving fentanyl went up a whopping 2,550% in the five years since 2017.  This is on top of the opioid crisis across the U.S.

The CDC recommended more support for girls and other teens in their schools and Sonoma County put up billboards warning about the death-dealing power of fentanyl.

But other people have a technological solution, one that will make them rich from our mental health and addiction crisis.  Their monitoring solutions could affect millions of people with mental and emotional disabilities and addiction problems.

As our guest Sarah Roth explains, it could put many of us into virtual asylums.

Sarah Roth is Development and Communications Fellow at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

She has a BA in Political Science and Psychology from Vassar and has been a congressional intern.  Her organizing work with anti-militarism groups resisting incursions on human, democratic, and civil rights around the globe has led her to work on local policing, criminal procedure, and Dept of Homeland Security policies.

She’s here today to talk about the scale and speed at which mass surveillance is discriminating and violating civil liberties.  Her recent article on this topic is titled, The Virtual Asylum Replacing Mental Health Care.

Go further.  Read the Daily Beast article Sarah Roth co-wrote with Evan Enzer on disability surveillance in schools.

Produced and hosted by Adrienne Lauby

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