Mind Matters: The hidden hunger in America

Posted by Dr. Kayta Gajdos on March 7, 2013

Recently I attended a county mental health advisory board meeting. I did not like what I heard: that there is a rising population of the homeless hidden among the affluent. A school administrator reported on how he encounters children every day in his suburban school district who are in need of food and shelter.

When we hear the word “homeless,” we, unfortunately, need to expand our images from the lonely man, chronically mentally ill, who has been discharged from the state hospital ten years ago.

Include now working families living out of their cars or hoping from acquaintance to friend for shower and bed. These are real cases in our community. We used to have strong safety nets, but with the tenor of the times those safety nets are being ripped asunder.

After the meeting, as I drive back to my office, I turn on NPR. Synchronistically, I hear an interview of two documentarians, Lori Silverbush and Kristy Jacobson, discussing hunger in America. They have just directed their film, “A Place at the Table,” which airs in March, 2013. They noted that 80 percent of the families receiving food stamps (the SNAP program) are working full time. In other words, many hard working Americans are not earning a living wage. These researchers also report that there are children in the schools who can’t concentrate for lack of nutrition. Our brains do funny things to us when we are hungry, actually starving for the nutrients we lack even if we appear “well-fed.” One little girl in the film says she is told to focus but when she looks at her teacher she imagines her to be a banana. She is malnourished. Silverbush and Jacobson cite the term “food insecurity” because the hunger may be invisible, hidden in the bodies of those who are obese due to lack of proper diet and nutrition. Cheap and filling food is not usually healthy food.

Meanwhile the expectation is that churches will do it all. I am a Red Cross volunteer and I know how difficult it is to recruit volunteers. Volunteerism can be inconsistent and spotty, and we are all busy. So we expect the homeless and hungry to be cared for with stopgap emergency measures in the basement of the non-profits. Yes, these are great assets to a community but they depend on volunteers and cannot serve everyone. Moreover, the fact that we need them in the first place is scandalous.

That the need for food banks and shelters is on the rise is a disgrace in an affluent, developed country — the greatest nation in the world, we are wont to say.

We may think, what, whoa, not in my neighborhood. Yet, although I live in a prosperous county of Pennsylvania, on my drive from that mental health meeting, the story of homelessness and hunger was being played out before me. I noticed in the coffee shop I visited, there was a woman sleeping in the corner, big bags at her feet. I thought, hmm, this might be her safe place of refuge for a few hours. Not 15 minutes later, I noticed a man with a burlap sack on his back, other scruffy bags in hand, walking along the road. My guess is that he is holed up somewhere in the woods between the Mc-mansion housing developments.

Perhaps for starters we can all view this new movie “A Place at the Table” and then take action in America that supports the common good. As abstract as the term “common good” is, in fact, it is about real people, the children and families of our communities.

* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.