Center in the News
Distinguished psychology professor Vickie Mays has received the 2024 Association for Psychological Science James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award for Transformative Scholarship.
Without workers, no amount of funding or tweaking mental health policies will be enough, says Vickie Mays, a psychology professor and director of the BRITE Center for Science, Research, and Policy (Bridging Research Innovation, Training, and Education) at UCLA. She says the state and federal government need to increase mental health training programs and encourage more students to enter the field.
How will low-income, housing-insecure, and Black folks access the resources they deserve? Will mental health services be available in the aftermath? These were all questions that crossed Vickie Mays' mind as she watched news reports when New York City's skyline disappeared behind a cloud of grainy orange haze earlier this month.
There's a vulnerability that happens when there are disasters and wildfires, even at a distance," Dr. Vickie Mays, a professor of psychology at UCLA College of Letters and Sciences, told ABC News. 'You need to kind of just check in with yourself and say, 'Wow, am I having a response to this? If so, do I need to do something about this? Don't just ignore it.'
"Even anticipation of discrimination can be internalized and affect one's health," said Vickie Mays, professor of health policy and management and psychology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Mental illness is sorely underfunded. California is actually one of the leaders because we have what's known as the millionaire's tax, which is the mental health services act, which gives us more resources than the typical state to deal with mental health problems, and you see, we're not getting it right. The first thing we need to do is look at how we finance mental health, some people think that if people get all of the treatment that they want, that we will break the bank. And that's not a good way to think about it. Instead what we need to do is when people go to their primary care setting
Dr. Vickie Mays, a health policy and management professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said vaccine education efforts aimed at communities of color don’t always adequately take into consideration a community’s beliefs, culture, or understanding of health.
Segment One: Vickie Mays is a professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA and Dr. Ninez Ponce is the principal investigator of a study by UCLA’s Center for Health Policy discuss that study with Hal. The findings show that the mental health of young people- as young as 13- has taken a serious hit since the COVID-19 pandemic. "The news isn't good as far as mental health for youth," Ponce said. This data is actually bringing attention to the problem ... What we're getting from this is the alert. Minority population impact? explain. Vickie Mays: The UCLA CHPR goes out of its way to make sure
"Early in the epidemic, a lot of the data did not have a person’s race or ethnicity,” Mays said. “When data is not collected in a systematic way, when people don’t prioritize making sure a record has race included in it, it really slows down the response, particularly in a public health emergency."
"One thing we need to do right away is to target who was experiencing this the worst,” Mays said. “We need to decisions made at the state, the federal level, about what is acceptable quality data, meaning you cannot send a form in if it is missing certain variables.”