Thanks to the Bentonville Special Education Equality Network!! I found the old link was not working and realized the Community Resource Guide has been updated. There have been many developments in the services in NWA since the original guide in 2014. Here's the new link:
I have now had numerous cases of children addicted to cannabis which has impacted their school and family life in such a way that they seek mental health treatment. This has ranged from severe psychotic reactions to mild cases of addiction and self-treatment. Children are accessing medical cannabis through friends and family and giving it to other kids at school. There is widespread use of medical cannabis by parents of the children I treat. The parents often give children these products due their own experiences.
My opinions have been confirmed by what I see in the clinic and in the larger public. Cannabis should be a legal recreational substance for adults like alcohol. Cannabis is not a recommended medical treatment for psychiatric disorders. Like alcohol, it can be helpful for acute anxiety and depression in adults. Like alcohol it can be overused and create negative consequences. Cannabis should not be given to children for any psychiatric diagnosis. Cannabis is not a treatment for Autism. Cannabis has unpredictable side effects for all individuals. The commercially available products are extremely potent. Cannabis delivered through vape cartridge is powerfully addictive. Like alcohol, children can not moderate their consumption of cannabis when they have free access to it.
Vaccine hesitancy is rampant. I don't understand why. Herd immunity is the key to getting us back to normal. Young healthy adults and kids are some of the most hesitant to get vaccinated. I admit, they are the group least likely to be affected by the virus, but they are also the most likely to be spreading it. We owe it to our fellow humans to get vaccinated right now! The vaccine is safe. The longer the virus mutates through unvaccinated individuals the more strains we will be dealing with and the harder it will be to predict the next epidemic.
Vaccines are considered by historians and medical professionals to be the greatest inventions of all time. Vaccines have saved millions of lives. The history of vaccines and inoculation goes back hundreds of years beginning with measles and small pox preventions. Diseases of the past have been virtually eliminated due to vaccines for polio, pertussis, meningitis, cholera and yellow fever among others. Travel between continents was one of the greatest causes of new disease until the past 2 centuries when universal vaccines helped boost our immunity. Explorers and conquerors were spreading disease to new places for hundreds of years. With the global nature of our modern economy, now we can all see the impact of a pandemic.
The Covid-19 vaccine is based on years of science. It is NOT a new idea, and should not scare anyone. We got extremely lucky in this pandemic. Scientists were doing the groundwork to prepare for the world's next super virus way before Covid hit. The technology that went into mRNA vaccine has been around for almost thirty years. It all started at the Salk Institute (Jonas Salk is the guy who invented the polio vaccine). Look up Katalin Kariko and why she is so important. She was working on this in 1990, and her work has spawned billions of dollars of research to get us where we are. We would not have been able to produce such a rapid supply of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson Vaccine if not for years of vaccine research.
