Mary Houston-Harvey dies, age 80
Herewith a proposal to create a prototype for an entirely new type of mental health facility/community using current healing modalities that balance body, mind and spirit providing a safe, healthy, healing environment for children and teenagers from 10-18 who have mental and emotional health problems.
By Mary Houston-Harvey
Editor’s note: Mary passed away peacefully Tuesday night at her home in Oriental, with her husband Richard by her side. This proposal is on its way to RFK, Jr., director of the United States Health & Human Services Department in Washington, DC. Our hope is that the document will become part of Mary’s legacy.
As a former Journalist, Nutritional Consultant and mother, my concern for young people comes from a lifetime of searching for a safe, supportive, healing environment for our daughter Dani — a talented ballet dancer (considered a prodigy) who suffered from severe mental illness.
During the years of her illness, I watched as many talented young people were relegated to repetitive hospital stays and a life of suffering for themselves and family. We searched for years for a supportive healing facility in the USA, Europe and Mexico to no avail. Diets and therapy are standardized. The same unhealthy food and drugs with serious side effects are used in all of them with little variability and cause dangerous, lasting side effects. Facilities basically manage patients and suppress symptoms with drugs. They are mostly warehouses for the mentally ill.
The need in our country is great. The loss of lives, the financial and emotional drain on families and communities has sky-rocketed since WWII. Each decade more children suffer from greater mental health challenges than the decade before. The anxiety levels of those born in the 1980’s is greater than the psychiatric child patients of the 1950’s.
I propose D.A.N.I’s HAVEN (Developmental And Nutritional Integration) – a prototype to eventually expand across the country using more current modalities, a balancing of body/mind/spirit. Rather than a psychiatric hospital, it would be a living thriving community with the goal of having healthy young adults prepared to re-enter regular life. The result? Young people well prepared to not only thrive, but also to contribute to their families and communities.
The community would include living and working facilities for patients; on or off site medical professionals including therapists, nutritionists, homeopaths, body workers, etc. It would include gardening (based on the Japanese model of School Farms that teach gardening, patience and service as part of the curriculum)) art therapy, music, exercise. and visiting medical doctors with expertise in the relationship between body, mind and spirit. It would include in-depth lab testing for imbalances, vitamin, mineral and enzyme deficiencies. Aptitude tests and purpose driven philosophies would guide each student to a focused healthy life, which they are best suited for. We would pull together the leading new theories and projects that are successfully treating the most vulnerable in our society. As of now these groups are working independently from each other across the US and Canada.
Young adults would then be invited into Apprenticeship programs outside the Healing Center within their local Communities. Thereby providing careers, a living wage, while serving their community, culture and country. We ask for your guidance as we gather support and momentum for the very first D.A.N.I’s HAVEN. Email: maryandrichard31@gmail.com
