Wellness & Well-being Highlights June 17

Wellness & Well-being Highlights

for the

Week of June 17, 2024

This week’s edition of our Worker Wellness & Well-being blog highlights to how there may be a link between hair treatment, race, and cancer—to how efforts are being made to protect workers from this summer’s heat—to more evidence that alcohol can be dangerous. This week I would like to discuss culture. It is no secret that many of our union members (including me) own firearms for sporting purposes. To be clear, I have NEVER felt threatened that the “US Government” was coming to take my firearms from me…whether a R or D was in Office. Like most things in life, there are plusses and minuses. Think cellphones: On one hand, they are great for instantaneously communicating with others around the world; on the other hand, as reported in this blog more than once, experts believe there is a link between teens’ negative mental health and being “addicted” to their cellphones. As such guns are no doubt part of our country’s social fabric. I find it interesting that in states like Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska there is a link between guns and suicides. Thankfully, a MT community is addressing this matter. If you go back a few issues in this blog, I promoted a course called CALM (Conversations on the Access to Lethal Means). This course offers a variety of tools we can use to prevent accidental deaths and suicides. Lock boxes for medications, gun locks, and gun safes are just a few of these measures. Which takes us to the second article. Last week, the US Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks…these devices essentially convert a semi-automatic gun into an automatic gun. Having an older brother and sister-in-law who were caught in the crossfire in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017 (THE DEADLIEST MASS SHOOTING IN US HISTORY), I must say that this recent decision is one that leans away from common sense. Allowing a person to operate a firearm as an automatic weapon beyond the battlefield seems senseless to most of the people I have talked to on this issue. Having the highest court in the land support such nonsense while ignoring ethical issues in their own house is nothing short of hypocrisy. Sadly, “speaking with a forked tongue” appears to be the soup du jour in today’s culture!

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/14/bump-stocks-supreme-court-machine-gun-bruen-cargill/

Canada & Workplace MH

Guns / Suicide / MT

STL / Teens / Drug Treatment?

Outdoor Heat Safety

Criminalizing Tiny Homes?

Hair Relaxers / Cancer / Race?

Racism / Depression / Youth

Sadfishing

Is there a correlation between burnout & inclusion?