PeerGalaxy Original Calendar

Welcome to PeerGalaxy Calendar featuring over 99,000+ monthly offerings of FREE telephone- and online-accessible peer support, recovery support + wellness activities!

Over 30+ warmlines plus webinars, workshops, job postings, special events, consumer input opportunities and more.

WE ARE PEER FOR YOU!

Click the Accessibility Button on the right side, halfway down in the middle, for enhanced viewing and/or access options!  Click the Translate Button in the lower left corner for language options. 

Your use of this site is subject to the Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions of Use.  Reminder: Fees or charges may be charged by your carrier for sending or receiving SMS text messaging, phone, or data.

If you have an event to add, email us: webmail@peergalaxy.com

How Events are Sorted:

First, at the top of the list: SAMHSA Disaster Helpline and similar links.

Next in the list: Bundled “All Day” Events for organizations with events happening at multiple times throughout the day and/or in many formats or locations; these are bundled into a single listing to prevent endless scrolling.  Usually these offer a lookup by zip code or other criteria. 

Lastly, Time-Specific Events listed by start time from 12:01am early morning to 11:59pm late night.  Warmlines and places east of Oregon’s time zone tend to start earlier (e.g. 4am in Oregon is 7am in New York).

Mar
18
Mon
2024
0 – Bundled Event – Inspire – Drug Abuse Communities and More – Online Via Website or IOS APP – 24/7 – Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website
Mar 18 all-day
0 - Bundled Event - Inspire - Drug Abuse Communities and More - Online Via Website or IOS APP - 24/7 - Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website

Inspire Support Communities

A place that’s safe for sharing and always free for members

We’ve carefully designed an environment where it’s okay to open up about personal experiences and share sensitive health information. Joining Inspire is — and always will be — free for members.

To Open an Inspire Account, Use this link:https://www.inspire.com/

Inspire: The Vital Health Community

Inspire is the vital community of more than two million patients and caregivers —a carefully designed environment where everyone feels comfortable and safe to open up about personal health experiences and share sensitive health information. These genuine connections instill hope and drive greater understanding. Patients and caregivers from around the world discover advice and information they can’t find elsewhere, and by understanding patients’ rich and varied health journeys on Inspire, researchers and health practitioners around the world are advancing treatments and making breakthrough discoveries.

 

FIND A COMMUNITY OF SUPPORT

Click Here To See Our Support Communities

 

About the Inspire Community Platform

Create A personal Journal

Your journal belongs to you; you may choose to have your journal entries show up in some, all, or none of your communities. Journal entries are generally longer and can be on any topic.

Join Community Discussions

Discussions belong to the community and are generally shorter than journal entries and are meant to encourage conversations between members. For example, if you wanted to ask for other members’ experiences with a particular treatment, you would post a discussion in the appropriate community. If you wanted to talk about your day, something more personal or off-topic, you would post a journal entry.

Create and Manage A Friends List

Friends are other members whom you may grow to trust and want to share more information with, or with whom you want to exchange private messages. You will be able to post journal entries that only your “friends” can read, and you will be able to send messages to your friends through our site without giving out your email address.

Use Inspire A.I. for quick answers

Inspire AI is a new feature on inspire that uses artificial intelligence to provide quick responses to member questions. The responses are automatically generated. The tool leverages a large language model (LLM), similar to what is used for popular tools such as ChatGPT. When you post on Inspire, you can choose whether you want to receive a response from InspireAI in addition to receiving replies from Inspire members. InspireAI is currently available in select cancer communities.

0 – Bundled Event – MHA – Mental Health America – Inspire Support Groups and Discussion Community – 24/7 Weekends & Weekends @ Online via Inspire plus Apps
Mar 18 all-day

INSPIRE online community forum

About this Online Tool

Our Inspire communities provide a place for people with similar interests to support and encourage each other 24/7 online. Inspire is the largest provider of health-specific communities. MHA (Mental Health America) staff moderate the online support groups and communities.

Link to INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/

 

Link to Mental Health America groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/mental-health-america/

 

Browse All Groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/

Apps are available to download as well.

 

About Mental Health America

Mental Health America (MHA) – founded in 1909 – is the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans. Our work is driven by our commitment to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all; early identification and intervention for those at risk; integrated care, services, and supports for those who need it; with recovery as the goal.

https://screening.mhanational.org/content/mental-health-america-inspire

 

0 – Bundled Events – HeyPeers – PeerGalaxy Peer Support Groups and More @ Online Via Zoom
Mar 18 all-day

 

 

 

 

HeyPeers Is a Peer Support Community that. That offers peer support groups, one-to-one coaching, and private chat rooms where you can find meetings and conversations that can help you on your journey.

HeyPeers hosts hundreds of support groups meetings, including offerings from PeerGalaxy:

If you’re new to HeyPeers, you can sign-up / onboard with PeerGalaxy and access MyJourneyTracker for FREE while available:https://heypeers.com/members/sign_up?org=PeerGalaxy
If you’re an existing HeyPeers member, you can check out PeerGalaxy offerings:
02 – Urgent Info – Services and Resources for Families and Children in Response to the Recent Tragic Events Across the Country
Mar 18 all-day

 

Some Resources for Families and Communities:

Due to recent tragic events across the country

 

Agency Logo

Racial Stress and Self-care:

Parent Tip Tool

How race-related stress affects you and your relationship with your child

What effect does racism have on your health and well-being?

Not only does racism impact you as a parent, it can also impact how you interact with your children. Experiences of racism build on each other and can chip away at your emotional, physical and spiritual resources as a parent, contributing to race-related stress. Race-related stress can make it hard to have the space needed to take care of yourself as a parent, which reduces the emotional space you need to adequately take care of your children.

Racism can impact parents emotionally, physically and spiritually

Physical effects

Physical Effects

Physical Effects can include increased hypertension, illness and risky behaviors such as substance use.

Emotional effects

Emotional Effects

Emotional effects can include depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and aggression.

Spiritual effects

Spiritual Effects

Spiritual effects can include a decreased sense of purpose, lack of connection with the larger community, isolation from larger social groups and reduced involvement in communal activities that you enjoy.

Potential reactions to racial stress or trauma

Insecure feelings

Insecure Feelings

Feelings of shame and lack of confidence due to feeling that a situation cannot be changed.

Lack of trust

Lack of Trust

Feeling detached or a lack of trust for others due to experiencing multiple losses or letdowns. This can make it very difficult to seek out help and to identify potential safe sources of support.

Triggers

Triggers

Reminders of the event, such as particular people or situations, can also trigger strong emotional or physical responses (e.g., crying or rapid heartbeat).

Emotions

Difficulty Controlling Emotions

Difficulty controlling emotional responses (going from “zero to one hundred”) can occur as the body helps you adapt to potentially unsafe situations, making you feel constantly on “alert.”

The body’s response to the experience of racism can make accessing resources to cope with the situation difficult. Race-related stress is unique in that it threatens psychological resources that are needed to cope and fulfill basic needs such as financial support, housing, access to jobs, etc.

When your body is in stress mode, it is geared up to help you and your child survive, which sometimes leads to impulsive decisions. If you live in a chronic state of stress related to racism, you can start to engage in survival coping. Survival coping can help you to deal with very hard or potentially life-threatening situations. However, if you continue to exist in this mode long-term, it can make it difficult to enjoy being in the moment with your child and can reduce your ability to feel safe and in control.

What impact can racial stress have on your parenting?

Experiencing race-related stress can also impact the quality of parenting relationships in the following ways:

Impostor syndrome

When you are exposed to racism repeatedly, you often start doubting yourself and can feel like you are an imposter in dominant culture settings or in settings where you feel as though you do not belong. Your inner thoughts might sound something like: “Am I being judged?” “Am I worthy?” “I got lucky.” “I only got this because I am Black.”

Being overly alert (hypervigilance)

Experiencing racial stress can make you more aware of potential dangers and negative experiences that can occur. This, in turn, can make the experience of parenting even more stressful. When you interact with your children, you can sometimes be reminded of negative race-related experiences that you had when you were a child. This reminder can amp up emotional responses, or hyperarousal, making it hard for you to “keep your cool” and be open to flexible problem solving.

“Helicopter parenting” (monitoring in fear)

These experiences of racism and unwarranted blame or lack of acceptance can make you want to protect your children so much, that you don’t allow them to explore in the way that they need to. You may shelter them from failures, which everyone needs to experience in order to learn how to manage everyday life. You may tend to be overly cautious or suspicious. Examples can include not allowing your children to have sleepovers or go to the park, even with your supervision.

Difficulty regulating emotions

  • When your past influences your emotional state, it can affect your emotional responses to both big and minor stressors with children, such as when they misbehave. This, in turn, can lead to being overprotective or overuse of physical discipline, as a means of survival.
  • For children, having parents who can keep perspective (stay cool) when children are upset, or misbehaving is very important. Likewise, it is important to stay calm when disciplining a child, otherwise discipline may go overboard. Both of these things can be hard if you are having difficulty controlling your emotions.

Avoidance

  • Avoiding situations that are related to racism can be a needed strategy to survive; such as instances that may involve violence or threat to yourself or your family. Sometimes you may avoid reminders of past experiences due to the pain or discomfort they cause.
  • If you find yourself avoiding strong feelings or situations with your child that bring up painful memories, it may make it hard to show affection and support for your child. It may even make it difficult to know how to provide emotional support for your child during times of stress. For instance, if your child brings up their own experience of oppression or an event in their life reminds you of something from your own childhood.

Mistrusting others

  • Racism can lead to distrust or mistrust of other communities. Internalized racism is when you begin to accept negative messages about your own abilities and inherent worth by the dominant group in society.
  • When you use society’s norms to judge yourself, you can feel depressed, unworthy and just not good enough. You are taught in many ways to take these feelings and paint them onto another group.
  • Intra and interracial violence, contention among disenfranchised communities or color, and the way the media conveys information about people of color, contribute to this.
  • This kind of coping can make you more vulnerable to racism, because on some level you may believe in racial hierarchy and difference when you belittle other groups. And when you show your children that it is right to discriminate against certain other groups, you make them more vulnerable to discrimination that they face.

Minimizing racism

  • Racism is overwhelming, as is the history of violence. You are sometimes taught that accepting this and minimizing racism is the only thing you can do. But when you ignore racism, and accept powerlessness, you encourage your kids to internalize racism. This can lead to increased levels of depression, anxiety and externalizing behaviors (e.g., engaging in risky behaviors, such as alcohol or substance use).
  • When you believe that you should be able to handle and manage it all without a break or without asking for help, you are at increased risk for health problems and can miss important cues about your well-being and safety.

Self-blame

Experiencing chronically unfair and dangerous discriminatory practices due to race can lead to feelings of low worth. For parents, this can also lead to a questioning of your parenting choices and abilities.

Unbalanced Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES)

Unbalanced messaging or communication about race and ethnicity occurs when you only promote messages of mistrust, preparation for bias, or only give racial pride messages to your children.

So, what can you do to mitigate racial stress?

As parents, it is important to develop positive identities and share your cultural identities with your children. Positive cultural identity and advocacy are protective factors against racism, which can help to reduce and prevent racial stress.

There are many other ways to cope with stress and everyone has different preferences. Reducing stress can also allow you to model healthy coping strategies for your child. Here are some suggestions with links you can try.

Agency Logo
Talking with Children About Tragic Events

What do we tell our children? How do we reassure them of their own safety?

At The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, we’ve provided grief support groups for children, teens, young adults and their parents or adult caregivers since 1982.

Based on our experience, here are some things for adults to keep in mind as you struggle with how to talk with children following tragic events, such as natural disasters, plane crashes, or school shootings.

1. Don’t project your fears onto your children. They take their cues from the adults around them.
You can’t hear the news about children being murdered or communities devastated by natural disasters without thinking about how you’d feel if it happened to your family, friends, or hometown. The outpouring of care and empathy for the families who lost loved ones will be powerful, and…we all know it could have been our friends, our child, our family and community members who died or were injured.

Identifying with the senselessness and randomness makes us all feel more vulnerable. But we should remember that children don’t always see things the same way that adults do, and it won’t be helpful to them for us to fall apart. They need to see that we care, that we feel terrible about this tragedy, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. They will take their cues from our behavior.

It’s okay to show emotion. We can model for children that feeling sad, scared, and upset is normal after tragedies. But we don’t want to overwhelm them with our emotions, or put them in the position of having to ‘parent,’ or take care of, the adults around them. Make sure you also model taking care of yourself, by sharing with trusted and supportive adult friends, eating (and drinking) healthfully.

2. Try to limit their access to the recurring news and exposure to the tragedy over and over.
Over-exposure to the graphic and emotional news can be overwhelming for children and can cause unnecessary anxiety and fear. Some children who repeatedly watched the footage of planes crashing into the towers on 9/11 thought it was happening again and again. Some children (and some adults) may have difficulty getting graphic scenes and images out of their minds. Too much exposure can fuel their fear, so don’t let them sit and watch the news over and over. Better yet, set the example of not doing so yourself as well.

3. Understand that you can’t completely shield them from what happened.
It would be next to impossible to hide these events from children, as much as we wish we could. You might be able to shield your own child in your home, for example, by not turning on (or owning) a television, but you can’t protect your children from hearing about it from other kids. The fact is, they will hear about it, so although they don’t “need” to know about it, pretending we can shield them is magical thinking.

That said, you don’t need to give them more information than they can handle, or more than they’re asking for. A simple, “Did they talk about what happened in _____ today at school?” would be a good starter. They need to know that you’re not trying to hide the truth from them, that you’re open to talking about it, but that you’re also not forcing them to do so.

4. Model truth-telling and build trust with your children by letting them hear things, even hard things, from you directly.
Eight days after the 9/11 attacks, I was meeting in small groups with pre-school workers in New York City, talking about how to respond to the young children in their care about the events. A man asked to speak to me privately after one of the trainings, and asked for my advice around his 7-year-old daughter. For the last week, since September 12th, she had been having stomach aches and difficulty sleeping. He said it was not tied to the events of 9/11 because, “We don’t have a television.” As his story unfolded it was evident that he did not want to have to explain to his child why people would do such horrible things, a normal dilemma that we face as parents and adults. This child was experiencing physical reactions, as it turned out, not primarily because of her reaction to the events of 9/11, but because she was unable to share her fears and concerns and questions in her own home, faced with her parents’ denial.

Here are some principles to keep in mind as you talk with children:

1. There is no one typical reaction one can or should expect from children.
Their responses will vary all over the ‘emotional’ map, from seeming disinterest to nightmares, eating issues, and anxiety. How any specific child will respond will depend on their age, previous experience with death and loss, and their personality style. Fearful children will tend to worry; quiet children may keep their feelings to themselves; those who want to appear unfazed may exhibit a sense of bravado or lack of caring. Of course, children directly affected – those who had a family member die; those who witnessed the tragedy; those who had friends die – will tend to have longer-term reactions and needs. Watch for changes in behavior, or concerning trends. While it would be normal to have heightened anxiety and sleeplessness, any concerning behavior or troubling symptoms should be taken seriously, and if warranted, professional help sought.

2. Many children will have an increased sense of fear about their safety.
Understandably. So will many adults. After a shooting at an Oregon mall in December 2012, the news outlets were filled with people who said they’d never take their children there again. Others said they’d return as soon as it opened in order to support the stores and employees who had experienced the traumatic events, and whose livelihoods were going to suffer as a result of the several day closure. Some runners in the Boston Marathon vowed to return; others said they would never do so again.

While we can’t guarantee to our children that nothing bad will ever happen to them, we can provide assurance that these events are relatively rare, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. Children may have many questions about the events, particularly about natural disasters. Answer their questions with language that fits their developmental stage. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question. If it’s a question that might have an answer, offer to look up more information. You can also ask children what they think the answer is as they often have thoughts and ideas they want to share with you. In the case of natural disasters, if your child is fearful of something like that happening in your community, talk with them about the safety plan that you have in place for your family and home. You can also look into what community safety measures are in place and whatever elements are relevant with your children. Many children will be reassured knowing that there are specific, tangible things they and your family can do if something occurs. Some examples include, picking a meeting place, keeping flashlights in every bedroom, talking about where you will keep emergency water and food.

3. Children want, need, and deserve the truth.
In over 30 years of providing grief support to thousands of children and teens at The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families, we have never heard a child say, “I’m glad I was lied to.” Many, however, struggle with anger and lack of trust toward parents or other adults who lied to them. When we don’t tell the truth, they learn that we cannot be trusted. As difficult as it can be at times, and as horrendous as the truth may be, children want, need, and deserve the truth. Being able to talk openly and honestly with your children about tragic events and other losses, creates a foundation of trust, enabling them to come to you in the future with their questions, fears, and concerns.

 

 

Daniel Tiger

Helping Children with Tragic Events in the News

In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.

Some Scary, Confusing Images

The way that news is presented on television can be quite confusing for a young child. The same video segment may be shown over and over again through the day, as if each showing was a different event. Someone who has died turns up alive and then dies again and again. Children often become very anxious since they don’t understand much about videotape replays, closeups, and camera angles. Any televised danger seems close to home to them because the tragic scenes are taking place on the TV set in their own living room. Children can’t tell the difference between what’s close and what’s far away, what’s real and what’s pretend, or what’s new and what’s re-run.

The younger the children are, the more likely they are to be interested in scenes of close-up faces, particularly if the people are expressing some strong feelings. When there’s tragic news, the images on TV are most often much too graphic and disturbing for young children.

“Who will take care of me?”

In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grown-ups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.

Helping Children Feel More Secure

Play is one of the important ways young children have of dealing with their concerns. Of course, playing about violent news can be scary and sometimes unsafe, so adults need to be nearby to help redirect that kind of play into nurturing themes, such as a hospital for the wounded or a pretend meal for emergency workers.

When children are scared and anxious, they might become more dependent, clingy, and afraid to go to bed at night. Whining, aggressive behavior, or toilet “accidents” may be their way of asking for more comfort from the important adults in their lives. Little by little, as the adults around them become more confident, hopeful and secure, our children probably will, too.

Turn Off the TV

When there’s something tragic in the news, many parents get concerned about what and how to tell their children. It’s even harder than usual if we’re struggling with our own powerful feelings about what has happened. Adults are sometimes surprised that their own reactions to a televised crisis are so strong, but great loss and devastation in the news often reawaken our own earlier losses and fears – even some we think we might have “forgotten”

It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.

Talking and Listening

Even if we wanted to, it would be impossible to give our children all the reasons for such things as war, terrorists, abuse, murders, major fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If they ask questions, our best answer may be to ask them, “What do you think happened?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then the simplest reply might be something like, “I’m sad about the news, and I’m worried. But I love you, and I’m here to care for you.”

If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.

Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”

Helpful Hints

  • Do your best to keep the television off, or at least limit how much your child sees of any news event.
  • Try to keep yourself calm. Your presence can help your child feel more secure.
  • Give your child extra comfort and physical affection, like hugs or snuggling up together with a favorite book. Physical comfort goes a long way towards providing inner security. That closeness can nourish you, too.
  • Try to keep regular routines as normal as possible. Children and adults count on their familiar pattern of everyday life.
  • Plan something that you and your child enjoy doing together, like taking a walk, going on a picnic, having some quiet time, or doing something silly. It can help to know there are simple things in life that can help us feel better, in good times and in bad.
  • Even if children don’t mention what they’ve seen or heard in the news, it can help to ask what they think has happened. If parents don’t bring up the subject, children can be left with their misinterpretations. You may be really surprised at how much your child has heard from others.
  • Focus attention on the helpers, like the police, firemen, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and volunteers. It’s reassuring to know there are many caring people who are doing all they can to help others in this world.
  • Let your child know if you’re making a donation, going to a town meeting, writing a letter or e-mail of support, or taking some other action. It can help children to know that adults take many different active roles and that we don’t give in to helplessness in times of worldwide crisis.

 

03 – Job / Career Fairs, Events, Openings and Internships – Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness
Mar 18 all-day

 

 

 

 

 

JOB / CAREER FAIRS, EVENTS, OPENINGS, AND INTERNSHIPS 2024

Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness

NOTE: Information here is provided solely as a courtesy without any guarantees or warranties or liability of any kind whatsoever.  Use at your own risk and expense.

If you learn of any opportunities not listed here, please share via social media or email: webmail@peergalaxy.com.

NW Instituto Latino

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

¡Estamos contratando! ¡Estamos buscando un Personal de Apoyo Bilingüe para El Centro de Recuperación en el condado de Washington! Envíe una carta de presentación y un currículum a dmichael@nwilpdx.com

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

Position Description Recovery Center Support Staff

Position Description Mentor Job Description

MHAAO – Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon is recruiting for several positions.  For more details visit the link below:

* MHAAO Careers

Oregon Peer Warmline / CCS – Community Counseling Solutions

* CCS Job Openings Page

Folktime

FOLKTIME Career Page

Multnomah County Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center (CATC)

* Telecare CATC Overview

Telecare CATC Careers

Lines for Life:

Lines for Life – Jobs Page

JOB BOARDS

MHACCBO – Mental Health and Addictions Certification Credentialing Board of Oregon

MHACCBO Job Board

State of Oregon

* State of Oregon – Jobs Page

Partners in Diversity

Jobs Board

Indeed.com

Job Board for Peer Support Specialist positions

Job Board for Certified Recovery Mentor positions

MAC’S LIST features many nonprofit opportunities

MAC’S List

04 – Resources – Autism Resources, Articles, Support
Mar 18 all-day
04 - Resources - Autism Resources, Articles, Support

 

 

 

 

What is Autism?

What you should know

Autism is a severe developmental disorder that affects the way a child sees and interacts with the rest of the world. It limits their ability to interact with others socially, in fact many autism suffers avoid human contact.

Autism is part of a larger group of disorders called pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). More information about autism: Click on each of these links

 

Autism-Definition

Autism is a developmental disability that comes from a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain. It is characterized by the abnormal development of communication skills, social skills, and reasoning. Males are affected four times as often as females. Children may appear normal until around the age of 30 months.

 

Click each of these following titles learn more….

Autism Symptoms

Autism Symptoms vary widely in severity, include impairment in social interaction, fixation on inanimate objects, inability to communicate normally, and resistance to changes in daily routine. Characteristic traits include lack of eye contact, repetition of words or phrases, unmotivated tantrums, inability to express needs verbally, and insensitivity to pain.

Behaviors may change over time. Autistic children often have other disorders of brain function; about two thirds are mentally retarded; over one quarter develop seizures.

What Autism is Not

Autism can be confused with several other disorders which may have similar behaviors. Here is a list of autism like disorders that you should look at.

What Causes Autism

It remains unclear, but a psychological one has been ruled out. Neurological studies seem to indicate a primary brain dysfunction, and a genetic component is suggested by a pattern of autism in some families. It is largely believed that autism is a genetic disorder that involves several genes related to gene function. However it is unclear to researchers what causes these genes to turn on. Learn more about other causes of autism.

Autism Research

There are many exciting developments in autism research going on at the top universities. They are focusing on inherited autism and autism gene research.

Other Autism Spectrum Disorders

Asperger’s Syndrome – A child with asperger’s disorder has the same common problems as children with autism however they don’t have language development problems of a autistic child.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder and not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) – This child has autism but doesn’t meet the criteria for high functioning autism.

High-Functioning Autism – This child has autism but has normal learning and cognitive and learning skills. Language development is difficult initially but they become proficient eventually.

 

FAQ about Autism Special Education and IEP

This is an important list of questions and answers to help you deal with special education issues at your school.

 

Autism Tips for working with Teachers

This is a great check list of items to be aware of when you work with your child’s teacher and your child’s Individual Education Plan.

Tip: Go to our Autism education discussion boards and post a question with other parents.

Early Origins of Autism

 

ADDITIONAL LINKS TO RESOURCES AND EXPERTISE

Ask an Expert on Autism

Health Finder

Talk to Autism Expert

National Institutes of Mental Health

Combined Health Information Database

Abstracts on Autism

 

 

Searchable Directory of Autism Resources

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE DIRECTORY PAGE 

Or Click on the Topic area directly below

Adult Resources

Attorneys & Advocates

Behavior/Family Training

Community Living

Education

Medical Providers/Diagnosis

Non-English Resources

Respite Care Providers

Safety

Sports & Camps

Therapy Providers

 

Autism NOW Center’s fact sheets on topics of importance to people with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities are a resource you and your family members, as well as educators, employers, physicians and others, can use to get information in an easy-to-read and understand format.  The fact sheets are available in several languages in PDF form which can be printed out for your convenience. See the full list of topics and language choices below.

English:

Spanish:

Find the resources you need 1-885-828-847

 

Article Links

Follow this page link for listings of over 800 articles and resources

https://autismnow.org/resources/

Interagency Autism Coordination Committee

 

About Autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that is estimated to affect about 1 in 36 children and approximately 2.21% of adults. Autism affects the way a person experiences the world and can result in significant challenges in social communication and interaction, as well as repetitive behaviors and unusual or intense interests.

People on the autism spectrum often have a strong preference for routines and predictability, and some are challenged in adapting to change. Many people on the autism spectrum experience sensory differences, including high or low sensitivity to sounds, light, textures, tastes, and physical touch. Some have accompanying language and/or intellectual disabilities, and some may be intellectually gifted or possess other unique abilities, talents, or strengths.

ASD can be diagnosed at any age, but differences generally appear in the first two years of life. ASD is known as a “spectrum” condition because it encompasses a wide variation in the type, combination, and severity of disabilities, as a well as a range of unique abilities and strengths, many of which can change over the course of a person’s lifespan. The type and intensity of supports and services that a child or adult on the autism spectrum may require, ranging from minimal to intensive, will vary depending on their unique needs.

With appropriate supports and an environment that promotes inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment, people on the autism spectrum can fully participate in community life and achieve their full potential.

This page includes resources that provide general information about autism.

 

Websites and Programs

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network was created by autistic people and for autistic people. This page provides an overview of typical characteristics of autism.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This tool kit provides families of children ages four and under with guidance on how to access services the first 100 days after an autism diagnosis.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 2020

This report from provides an overview of 2016 data collected by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network and Early ADDM. ADDM provides estimates of the prevalence of ASD among 8-year-old children. Early ADDM estimates ASD prevalence and monitors early identification of 4-year-old children. Full findings of the data on 8-year-old and 4-year-old children are available.

March 2020

The CDC released their first estimate of the prevalence of autism in adults based on 2017 data. They estimated that 2.21 percent of adults in the United States have ASD.

More Reports

Videos

April 24, 2019

NIMH Director Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. interviews Ann Wagner, Ph.D., National Autism Coordinator, and Lisa Gilotty, Ph.D., program chief of NIMH’s chief of NIMH’s Research Program on Autism Spectrum Disorders, to discuss advances on the study of autism in adulthood.

 

Federal Departments and Agencies

This list includes federal departments and agencies that provide funding, programs, and support for issues related to autism and other developmental disabilities.

Independent Agencies

  • National Council on Disability (NCD)
    • Meetings and Events The NCD is an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities. Their meetings are open to the public.
    • Resources This page includes information on disability rights and links to resources and services on education, employment, financial assistance and incentives, health care, housing, and more.
  • National Science Foundation (NSF)
    • About NSF The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA)
    • Disability Benefits The Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability programs provide assistance to people with disabilities. This page explains these benefits and the application process.
    • Spotlight on Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Accounts Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) allows individuals with disabilities to make tax-free saving accounts to cover qualified disability expenses. Individuals can save up to $100,000 without counting against their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility.

Transition from youth to adulthood

Websites and Programs

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

ASAN partnered with the Family Network on Disabilities to produce this guide, which prepares transition age youth for adulthood. The first half provides information on preparing for transition and the second half gives in-depth information on post-secondary education, employment, housing and independent living, and healthcare.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 22, 2018

This report examines guardianship and makes recommendations for its use. Recommendations are based on disability law and policy, how people with disabilities are treated in the legal system, alternatives to guardianship, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

March 13, 2019

This report describes the demographics, disability, education, and health characteristics of teens and young adults ages 12-23 on the autism spectrum.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

This webinar provided information about supports and resources to improve access to competitive, integrated employment for youth and young adults on the autism spectrum and enhance their career pathways.

 

 

Employment

National data has shown that many autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed, even when compared to people with other disabilities and in spite of having needed skills and abilities for the workplace. Researchers and policy makers have worked to develop programs that can increase opportunities for employment and improve employment outcomes. This includes job training and recruitment programs, as well as supports for employees and employers to increase retention and success in the workplace. This page provides information related to employment for people with autism and other disabilities.

Websites and Programs

This program helps public and private sectors recruit, hire, train, and retain job seekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This plain language toolkit explains the existing policies that help people with disabilities people find and keep good jobs, and solve employment problems.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

October 9, 2018

Of the 74 state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies that responded to GAO’s survey, most reported expanding services to help students with disabilities transition from school to work as required under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), enacted in July 2014. Most state agencies reported serving more students and providing work-based learning experiences and other activities.

May 12, 2020

Researchers analyzed Rehabilitation Services Administration data to determine the association of vocational rehabilitation services with employment outcomes for students ages 16-21. Students with autism were less likely to receive job-related services less than comparison groups.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

In this webinar, Scott Michael Robertson Ph.D. provides information about government supports and resources that help youth and young adults with autism access competitive, integrated employment and enhance their careers. Full Transition Aged Youth Webinar Series.

Housing

Housing plays an important role in ensuring the well being of people on the autism spectrum and helping them integrate into the community. Some people can live independently with minimal or no supports, while others require high levels of support. There is a variety of federal and private resources that can enable people to live in settings that best fit their needs. This page provides information about models of housing for people with disabilities and resources and programs related to disability housing.

Websites and Programs

  • Medicaid.Gov
    • Home & Community Based Services This page provides information on Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) regulations. The page includes a training series for stakeholders, transition plans for individual states, technical assistance, and more. The Final Regulation page provides an overview of rules and regulations states must follow when providing HCBS under Medicaid.
  • The Arc
    • Housing Overview This page provides an overview of housing issues that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) encounter as well the Arc’s advocacy efforts. The page also describes key federal housing initiatives that enable people with I/DD to live in the community and links to additional resources.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This handbook is designed to help people with disabilities find and use resources that promote independent living. It includes information on support services and waivers, housing, employment, and community resources. This handbook was created in partnership with Autism NOW Center.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

May 24, 2019

This report that examines occurrences of institutionalization of people with disabilities, as well as thwarted threats of institutionalization, during hurricanes and the California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. The NCD found that people with disabilities are frequently institutionalized during and after disasters due to conflicting federal guidance; a lack of equal access to emergency and disaster-related programs and services; and a lack of compliance with federal law.

June 2018

The Residential Information Systems Project (RISP) studies trends in residential service settings, funding, and expenditures for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States. The most recent report uses data through Fiscal Year 2016.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

July 23, 2019

This workshop focused on the housing needs of people on the autism spectrum and included examples of various housing models. Meeting details.

July 26, 2017

JaLynn Prince, Adrienne McBride, and Desiree Kameka present Madison House Autism Foundation’s Autism After 21 initiative. Madison House aims to raise awareness of the abilities of and issues facing adults with autism. They also promote housing options for adults with autism and other I/DD through the Autism Housing Network. Meeting details.

 

For Service Providers and Public Services

Unlocking Potential: Innovative Library Programs Enhancing the Lives of Autistic Individuals

http://librarysciencedegreesonline.org/libraries-and-autism/

 

Making Entertainment and Public Spaces More Autistim-Friendly

https://happiful.com/making-entertainment-and-public-spaces-more-autistic-friendly

 

 

04 – Resources – VA & ODVA – Veterans Support Groups, Resources, Education, Mental Health and Advocacy
Mar 18 all-day

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

LOCATE SERVICES IN OREGON

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

Veteran Services by County

Click on the link blow for interactive map  access resources in your county in Oregon.

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

Web Resources

Oregon Health Plan – Enrollment Page

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/hsd/ohp/pages/apply.aspx

 

SAMHSA Treatment Locator

https://findtreatment.gov/

VA National Center on PTSD

 PTSD Treatment Decision Aid

 Educational Materials

  Mobile Apps

  Whiteboard Videos

  Consultation Program

 

VA Healthcare – Community Care network

https://www.va.gov/COMMUNITYCARE/providers/Community_Care_Network.asp

 

VA’s Center for Women Veterans (CWV)

https://www.va.gov/womenvet/

Minority Veterans of America

https://www.minorityvets.org/

 

Vet Centers:

Central Oregon Vet Center

Eugene Vet Center

Grants Pass Vet Center

Portland Vet Center

Salem Vet Center

 Community Based Outpatient Clinics:

Bend CBOC

Morrow County VA Telehealth Clinic (Boardman OR)

Brookings VA Clinic

Wallowa County VA Telehealth Clinic (Enterprise OR)

Eugene Health Care Center

Eugene VA Downtown Clinic

Fairview Clinic

Grants Pass West VA CBOC

Hillsboro CBOC

Klamath Falls CBOC

La Grande CBOC

Lincoln City Clinic

North Bend VA Clinic

Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC)

Salem CBOC

North Coast CBOC

 

Additional Resources By Phone:

Veterans Crisis Line: 800-273-8255, Press 1

Women Veterans Hotline: 855-829-663

Vet Center Call Center: 877-WAR-VETS (927-8387)

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Caregiver Support Line: 855-260-3274

Lines for Life Military Help Line:  Call 1-888-457-4838

Senior Loneliness Line:  Call 503-200-1633

The Trevor Project:  866-488-7386

PEER SUPPORT AND PEER TRAINING

USE THIS LINK TO APPLY

PTSD Self Screening

This self-screen can help you find out if your feelings and behaviors may be related to PTSD.

Only a trained provider can diagnose PTSD. Your responses here are private and secure—they are not collected or shared. You may take a screenshot or print this screen to share with a provider.

Do not take the self-screen for someone else. If you are concerned that someone you care about might have PTSD, please share this screen with them instead.

Start Screen

PTSD Information Voice Mail: (802) 296-6300
Email: ncptsd@va.gov
Also see: VA Mental Health

05 – Warmline – GA – Gamblers Anonymous and more – (855) 222-5542 – Weekdays and Weekends @ Phone
Mar 18 all-day

 

GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from a gambling problem.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop gambling.

There are no dues or fees for Gamblers Anonymous membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. Gamblers Anonymous is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any cause. Our primary purpose is to stop gambling and to help other compulsive gamblers do the same.”

From the Gamblers Anonymous Website:

Types of Meetings

Closed Meeting:
Only those with a gambling problem, or those who think they may have a gambling problem, and have a desire to stop gambling, may attend and participate.

Modified Closed Meeting:
Same as a “Closed Meeting” but the members would vote to include certain groups such as health professionals, guests attending with first time members, and persons with other addictions in need of a meeting

Open Meeting:
Spouses, family, and friends of the gambler are welcome
to attend and observe the meeting.

Chat:
https://m2.icarol.com/ConsumerRegistration.aspx?org=66046&pid=454&cc=en-US

Gamblers Anonymous:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/zip/table/0/na/na/na/21401/50?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

National GA Telephone Meetings
Day and Time
Call-in Number and Meeting Code
Contact Email

Sunday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5338 code 836083 #
Sunday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Monday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4925 code 554671 #
Monday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Tuesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4943 code 253824 #
Tuesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Wednesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4160 code 611704 #
Wednesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Thursday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4981 code 872853 #
Thursday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Friday Noon PT
1-712-770-4979 code 703758 #
Friday3pmHelp@gmail.com (TBD)

Friday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4996 code 595094 #
Friday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Saturday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5335 code 491301 #
Saturday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Gamblers Anonymous 12-Steps Virtual Online Support Groups in California:

https://gasteps.org/virtual-meeting-directory

Gamblers Anonymous Support Groups in Oregon:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/state/table/OR/na/na/na/na/10?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

Gamblers Anonymous Hotlines Website:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/hotlines

Oregon Toll-Free Hotline Number:
1-855-2CALLGA (855-222-5542)

Gam-Anon for Family and Friends Website:
http://www.gam-anon.org/
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/content/gam-anon-help-family-friends

AA OR A58 – Alcoholics Anonymous Oregon Area 58 – Find A Meeting In Oregon – English, Spanish, Hearing Impaired – Weekdays & Weekends
Mar 18 all-day

 

 

Find an AA Meeting In Oregon

Meetings in Spanish – Hearing Impaired Meetings – Online & In-Person – Hot Lines – Phone Apps

Looking for a local AA meeting?

Meeting lists are provided by local Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices.

You can use the district map page to find the District you’re interested in and then visit the meeting list and/or website for that district.  If a District has no website, the nearest Intergroup or Central Office may be listed.

Hotline phone numbers listed below may also help.

If interested, you can download the meeting guide app from following the links below.

 

District Websites With Meeting Lists

Link: 

https://www.aa-oregon.org/find-meetings/#districtlinks 

Click the link above for the List of Oregon AA Districts with AA Meetings and Hotlines plus Phone Apps.

AA Portland Districts map page.

For a detailed view of Districts in the Portland area, visit the map page.

Link:

https://www.aa-oregon.org/portland-districts/

NOTE: Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices are independent service entities; Oregon Area 58 is not responsible for the content of their web sites.

Higher resolution maps of the District boundaries in Portland and in Oregon are also available for download.

District Websites

 

Hotlines

Tel: (971) 601-9220  Astoria / Seaside

Tel: (503) 739-4856  Tillamook

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 2

Depoe Bay, Lincoln City, Newport, Siletz, South Beach, Toledo and Waldport

24-Hour Hotline

Tel: (541) 265-1953

 

Para Preguntas Llamar:

Tel: (541) 574-7842

 

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 3

Arlington, Boardman, Condon, Fossil, Hepper, Hermiston, Ione, Mission, Pendleton and Pilot Rock

 

Hotline

Tel: (800) 410-5953

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

Districts 4 & 28

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 5

Bend, Burns, Chemult, Culver, John Day, La Pine, Madras, Metolius, Mt. Vernon, Prineville, Redmond, Sisters, Sunriver, Terrabonne, Tumalo, and Warm Springs

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 6

Emerald Valley Intergroup:

Eugene, Alvadore, Cottage Grove, Creswell, Junction City, Lowell, Springfield, Veneta

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 7

Josephine County Intergroup & Central Office

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 474-0782

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 8

Coos Bay, Florence, Gardiner, Lakeside, Mapleton, North Bend, Reedsport

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 269-3265

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 9

Northwest/Downtown Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list 

 

District 10

Beaverton, Portland, Tigard

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 11

Gresham & East County

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 12

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Meeting schedule (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 13

Roseburg, Canyonville, Drain, Glendale, Riddle

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 673-7552

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 14

Bingen/White Salmon WA, Carson WA, Goldendale WA, Hood River, Maupin, Moro, Odell, Parkdale, Stevenson WA, The Dalles, Tygh Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (833) 423-3683 = (833-HAD-ENUF)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 15

Clackamas, Milwaukie, West Linn

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 16

Applegate, Ashland, Butte Falls, Central Point,
Eagle Point, Gold Hill, Jacksonville, Medford,
Phoenix, Prospect, Rogue River, Ruch, Talent,
& White City

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 773-4848

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 17

Klamath & Lake Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 883-4970

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 18

Clatskanie, Ranier, St. Helens, Scappoose, Vernonia

 

24-hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 366-0667  Columbia County

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 19

Southwest of Eugene

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 20

Springfield

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Web site (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 21

Albany, Corvallis, Lebanon, Willamette Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 967-4252

Link: Web site & meeting list

 

District 22

McMinnville, Newberg

24-Hour Hotlines:
Tel: (503) 472-1172 (McMinnville)
Tel: (888) 472-1172 (Newberg)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 23

Tualatin

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 24

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 25

Estacada, Gresham

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 26

North Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 27

Southeast Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

Districts 28 (and 4)

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline:

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 29

Baker, Union & Wallowa Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 624-5117

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 30

Oregon South Coast – Bandon, Brookings, Coquille, Gold Beach, Langlois, Myrtle Point, Port Oxford

 

24-Hour Hotlines:

Tel: (541) 347-1720  Bandon

Tel: (541) 469-2440  Brookings

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 31

Hillsboro

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: 503-684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 32

Canyon City, John Day, Mount Vernon

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meeting list (Central Oregon Intergroup)

 

Districts 34 & 35

Spanish Language districts for the entire state.

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

District 36

Southwest Portland and parts of Lake Oswego

 

Link: Website and meeting list

 

District 37

Wilsonville, Sherwood, and West Linn

 

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

Download District maps of Portland and Oregon in higher resolution formats:

 

Portland Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 670.00 KB

 

Portland Districts Map 36×42

1 file(s) 1.06 MB

 

Oregon Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 755.71 KB

 

~~~

 

Meetings en Español

 

Directorio de Grupos Hispaños:

 

Directory of Spanish-speaking Groups

1 file(s) 105.75 KB

 

~~~

 

Distrito 28, 34 & 35

Oficina Intergrupal Hispaña De Salem Oregon
2495 Lancaster Dr. NE | Salem, OR 97303
(503) 899-2652

 

Distrito 28

Salem

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting schedule

 

Distrito 34

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

Distrito 35

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Website

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

~~~

 

Meetings for the Hearing Impaired

 

AA Meeting Schedule for the Hearing Impaired

Hotline Phone Numbers by City

Albany/Corvallis:                 541-967-4252
Astoria-Gearhart:                 971-601-9220
Baker City:                         541-624-5117
Bandon, Coquille:                541-347-1720
Boardman                          800-410-5953
Clatskanie, Rainier,              503-366-0667
  Scappoose, St Helens,

  Vernonia

Coos Bay, North Bend,          (541) 469-2440
  Lakeside, Reedsport,

  Florence, Gardiner,

  Mapleton

Bend:                                541-548-0440
Brookings:                          541-469-2440
Burns:                               541-548-0440
Cannon Beach:                    503-861-5526
Condon                              800-410-5953
The Dalles/Hood River:         800-999-9210
Echo                                  800-410-5953
Enterprise                          541-624-5117
Eugene:                             541-342-4113
Grants Pass:                       541-474-0782
Heppner                             800-410-5953
Hermiston:                         800-410-5953
Klamath:                            541-883-4970
La Grande:                         541-624-5117
Lincoln City:                       541-265-1953
Medford (District):               541-773-4848
McMinnville:                        503-472-1172
Newberg:                           888-472-1172
Newport:                            541-265-1953
Ontario (includes Boise):       208-344-6611
Pendleton:                          800-410-5953
Pilot Rock                           800-410-5953
Portland:                            503-223-8569
Westside Central Office:        503-684-0415
Roseburg:                          541-673-7552
Salem:                               503-399-0599
Seaside:                             971-601-9220
Siletz:                                541-265-1953
Umatilla                             800-410-5953
Yachats, Waldport, Toledo:    541-265-1953

 

 

AA Meeting Finder Applications

Meeting Guide App For Android

Meeting Guide App For iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

AM – All Month – OMH – Office of Minority Health US Department of Health and Human Services – Resource’s and Publications
Mar 18 all-day

 

 

NATIONAL MINORITY MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

OMH – Office of Minority Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

Resource’s and Publications

LGBTQIA+

Mental Health Disorders and Treatment

Substance Use

Trauma and Violence

COVID-19

BRMA – Brown Mamas – The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms
Mar 18 all-day

 

The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms

Brown Mamas – Pittsburgh & U.S.  – Brown Mamas, Inc. has been around for seven years in the Pittsburgh region.  Brown Mamas began in the living room of Muffy Mendoza.  What started as 5 moms has grown to over 4000  Our mamas love our Pittsburgh chapter so much that we are expanding.  If you are mom who is ready to not just find her tribe, but to inspire other mothers and be the change she wants to see in her community, click here to learn more about starting your own Brown Mamas chapter.

Black Moms Connect – Canada & U.S.

Mommin’ Society – North Carolina & Online

Moms of Black Boys United – Atlanta & Online

Moms Make It Work – NYC

Mocha Moms, Inc. – U.S. (seriously, everywhere)

Whine & Cheese – 27 Chapters in U.S. (including D.C., PA, South Carolina, New York, etc.)

Black Women Do Breastfeed

Motherwork by Mater Mea – NYC

Beautiful Brown Girls Brunch Club – New Jersey

District Motherhued’s DMV MomTribe – D.C. Metro Area

Soul Food for Your Baby – Hawthorne, Calif.

Black Moms Blog Events – Atlanta, GA

Birthing Beautiful Communities – Cleveland, OH

Tessera Collective – Online, Self-Care Support

Melanin Mommies – Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle –

Not-So Melinated Support Groups for Black Moms

Moms Club

La Leche League

Circle of Moms

Meetup.com

Facebook Support Groups for Black Moms

Black Stay-At-Home Mom Village

Black Moms Connection

Black Moms in Charge

Single Black Mothers

Moms of Black Daughters

Moms of Black Sons

Black Moms in College & Beyond

Breast Milk Donation for Black Moms

Sisterhood for Young Black Moms

CGAA – Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous – Support Meetings, Support Chat for Family and Friends, Resources – Weekdays and Weekends @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 18 all-day

 

Who We Are

Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of people who support each other in recovering from the problems resulting from excessive game playing. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop video gaming, which is completely up to you. CGAA has no dues or fees. Our groups share their collective experience and the principles that helped them, but CGAA has no experts, hierarchy, or required beliefs. We have etiquette and traditions, but no strict rules.
If you are struggling with compulsive gaming, leave your contact info at 970-364-3497 and a CGAA member will call you back
Or email us at helpline@cgaa.info
For other issues, contact us at support@cgaa.info

 

ZOOM MEETINGS

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 
ZOOM MEETING

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 

Gamers Find A Local Support Group

Use the link below to get more information about local groups and a notification when a local meeting is started. Due to the COVID pandemic, most meetings are currently held in an outdoor setting or online.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LOCAL GROUP FINDER TOOL

 

CONTACT GROUPS IN OREGON BY LOCATION

 

 

SUPPORT FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

What Can I Do?

Video gaming is a common pastime. To many people, it is surprising that it can become a serious addiction, that is, an activity that is engaged in compulsively, without control or concern for consequences.

Video gaming addiction is a very serious problem that is harmful to everyone it touches. Since everyone involved suffers from it, everyone involved needs some help. Here are some important things to know.

First, no one is responsible for someone else’s compulsive gaming. As the Al-Anon slogan goes, “I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it.”

You didn’t cause it.

Some people partly blame themselves for the dysfunctional behavior of their family members, particularly with addicts who are very quick to shift responsibility off themselves and blame others. Perhaps you played games with your loved one, purchased games, or encouraged it, thinking it was a harmless leisure activity. Maybe you’ve been involved in some conflict and wonder if that has driven him or her to hide away in gaming. But no one is responsible for another person’s behavior or mental disorders.

You can’t control it.

You may have already tried to talk to your friend or family member. Perhaps you have bargained with them, or given ultimatums. You have tried to help them see what damage they are doing to themselves and others. And none of it has worked. This is baffling to you. Why don’t they seem to understand or care? Why can’t they see what is obvious to you? This is actually a symptom of the disease of addiction, one that destines efforts for control to failure.

You can’t cure it.

We all would like to believe that we have the ability to help those we love. We often think that if we can just get the right information, figure out the right thing to say or do, perhaps change something about ourselves, we can fix the problem. People should be able to solve their own problems. Why can’t we do that with this one? There is a simple reason. There is no cure for addiction. It requires treatment. The recovery process is long and difficult. And there is only one person who can start that process, the one who is gaming compulsively. There are things you can do. Here are some suggestions that you may want to consider, that other family members and friends have found helpful.

Get information.

The literature of recovery fellowships for family and friends of addicts (such as Al-Anon) has much helpful guidance, some of which is available online as well. There are people who have been in situations very similar to yours, who have learned much from them, and who are willing to share the lessons learned, their experience, strength and hope. We hope you avail yourself of such resources.

Detach with love.

Putting energy into arguing with someone who is playing compulsively will not help either of you. Your loved one has a serious problem that you are powerless to control or cure, and that they will not get help until they want it. As much as you love someone, you cannot force this process on another person.

Stop enabling.

Paradoxically, at the same time people are arguing with, bargaining with or shaming a compulsive gamer, they are often (perhaps without realizing it) supporting the addiction in many ways. Anything that shields an addict from the consequences of his or her behavior is enabling, and can include such basic things as providing food, shelter, money, companionship, housekeeping, and covering for employment and legal difficulties. Helping a compulsive gamer keep up an appearance of normalcy is helping him or her continue in the destructive behavior. While you cannot change him or her, you can make changes for yourself. You can shift your energy away from enabling behaviors and toward meeting your own needs.

Take care of yourself.

Whether or not your loved one ever stops gaming, you deserve to have a healthy and happy life. Once you have accepted that you are powerless over their gaming behavior, you can begin to focus on what you can do for yourself, to accomplish your own goals. With the help of others who have been where you are, you can learn to set healthy boundaries and stick to them.

Join our WhatsApp Chat Site for Family and Friends!

Game-Anon

WhatsApp Group Invite

Visit whatsapp.com/dl on your mobile phone to install.

By installing WhatsApp, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

 

Chat Using A Macintosh

 

Mac OS X 10.10 and higher. WhatsApp must be installed on your phone.

By clicking the Download button, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

DOWNLOAD FOR MAC OS X

Download for Windows 8 and higher (64-bit)
Download for Windows 8 and higher (32-bit)

 

 


Things To Do Instead of Gaming

One of the things we were trying to do with our gaming was meet some basic needs. If we do not meet those needs in normal healthy ways, we will suffer much stronger urges to game again. Some basic needs to cover are social needs, self expression, creativity, a sense of challenge and accomplishment, stress relief, a sense of purpose and meaning, and a sense of safety through control and predictability.

Here are some ideas for activities that will help meet these needs, reduce cravings, help with recovery from addiction, and fill some of the hours freed from compulsive gaming.

Please don’t let the length of this list overwhelm you. The idea is not to start ten new things and try to change everything all at once. We seek small bits of progress, not perfection. A good place to start is to put first things first. What need is currently most important? What’s right in front of me? What opportunity has come my way recently? If we take steps of small improvement with one or two areas each day, we are moving in the right direction.

 

Stress Relief

  • Talking with a sponsor or recovery buddy, CGAA meetings, or step work
  • Getting outside for fresh air and sunlight by taking a walk or doing some outdoor work
  • Meditation, coloring, craft work, journaling, or reading
 

Sense of safety through freedom, control, and predictability

  • Goal setting
  • Counseling or psychotherapy
  • Home organization, renovation, or spring cleaning
 

Sense of purpose, meaning, and self-respect

  • Supporting and growing the larger CGAA fellowship through service work like helping run a meeting, starting a local meeting, doing outreach to professionals, or attending CGAA business meetings
  • Attending a spiritual group like meditation, yoga, spiritual retreat, or religious gathering
  • Doing volunteer work like teaching, helping others, animal care, or building community places
  • Caring for a pet, house plants, or garden
 

Social needs

  • Attending CGAA meetings, connecting outside of meetings, reaching out to newcomers, or calling someone
  • Joining a hobby group like theater, a hiking group, art workshop, book club, public speaking, board games or card game group
  • Hosting a fun event like board games night or karaoke
  • Playing team sports, taking up martial arts, or playing one-on-one sports
  • Going to fun events like concerts, dances, or events on meetup.com
  • Calling up, video conferencing, or visiting with friends, family, neighbors, or other communities
 

Self expression and creativity

  • Journaling, opening up to a CGAA sponsor, or sharing openly in a meeting
  • Art work like drawing, photography, sculpting, or creative writing
  • Performance art like theater, singing, playing music, or writing music
 

Sense of challenge and accomplishment

  • Working the steps with a sponsor
  • Crafts like woodworking, origami, knitting
  • Outdoor activities like gardening, geocaching, bird watching, star gazing, tracking, plant identification, survival skills, or boating
  • Learning something like a foreign language, dancing, magic tricks, mechanical repair, cooking, a musical instrument, or computer programming
  • Career goals like getting a new job, starting a business, enrolling in school, or taking classes
 

Reconnection to one’s body and whole self

  • Meditating on breath, sounds, or bodily sensations
  • Exercise like walking, hiking, swimming, cycling, yoga, jogging, going to a gym, or playing a sport

If you are in your first week or two off of games, it’s likely that few of these ideas will appeal to you. That’s normal. Until our minds and bodies have some time to heal, we have low interest, energy, and motivation. This list will probably not give you something that you can plug in place of video games and immediately throw yourself into with the same zeal. This list is meant to help us explore new ways of spending our time, meeting our needs, and connecting with people. Find a few that hold some appeal and try taking some small steps in their direction. If you can’t seem to think of anything fun to do except game, you can come back to this list, find the most appealing thing, and just take a couple of little steps in its direction.

Consider setting reminders for yourself or keeping a schedule of your time and new activities. It is important to appreciate the small victories of exercising willpower, regaining motivation, and socializing. It helps to discuss our progress and the challenges we experience with a CGAA sponsor, recovery buddy, personal counselor, or therapist.

Rediscovering What is Fun

It is normal to think that nothing but gaming sounds fun. For most of us, our years of compulsive gaming warped and narrowed our idea of fun. As small children, it meant almost anything new or interesting or social or even mildly rewarding. Years of pulling the dopamine lever with video games changed our concept of fun to require instant gratification, frequent rewards, clear and constant progress, excitement, intense visuals, control, and/or predictability.

Part of recovery is letting our concept of fun expand back outward to a wide world of possible new challenges and experiences, many of which are calm and subtle compared to video games. It takes time to overcome withdrawals and heal from the damage, but the change does happen if we abstain from all gaming long term and focus on new pursuits and improving our lives. This list has many activities that do not meet the old, narrow, warped idea of “fun,” but those of us who persist at exploring them do find many to be gratifying and enjoyable.

Take, for example, a hike up a mountain. To a group of hikers excited to venture into the wilderness with friends and see wildlife and panoramic views from on high, all while getting a great workout, it’s a ton of fun. To someone who is uninterested in hiking, out of shape, and focused on every little unpleasant aspect of it, it’s a torturous death march. It is exactly the same hike in either case. The difference is in the attitude and conditioning.

The same is true with every item of these lists. Whether or not an activity sounds fun or torturous depends entirely upon attitude and conditioning. Every one of them has the potential to be gratifying and enjoyable if we adopt a positive attitude, try to have fun, and persist at it, especially when we involve friends and like-minded people.

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource number (1-800-698-2411) & Veteran Resource Listings
Mar 18 all-day

 

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource Number (1-800-698-2411) & Veterans Resource Listings
Mar 18 all-day

 

VA now allows veterans in suicidal crisis to go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for free emergency healthcare

Veterans in acute suicidal crisis can now go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for emergency health care at no cost — including inpatient or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days.

Veterans do not need to be enrolled in VA health care to use this benefit. This expansion will increase access to acute suicide care for up to 9 million veterans who are not currently enrolled in the VA system.

The final policy, which took effect on Jan. 17, allows the VA to:

  • Provide, pay for, or reimburse for treatment of eligible individuals’ emergency suicide care, transportation costs, and follow-up care at a VA or non-VA facility for up to 30 days of inpatient care and 90 days of outpatient care.
  • Make appropriate referrals for care following the period of emergency suicide care.
  • Determine eligibility for other VA services and benefits.
  • Refer eligible individuals for appropriate VA programs and benefits following the period of emergency suicide care.

Eligible individuals, regardless of VA enrollment status, are:

  • Veterans who were discharged or released from active duty after more than 24 months of active service under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces, including reserve service members, who served more than 100 days under a combat exclusion or in support of a contingency operation either directly or by operating an unmanned aerial vehicle from another location who were discharged under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces who were the victim of a physical assault of a sexual nature, a battery of a sexual nature, or sexual harassment while serving in the armed forces.

If you or someone you know is struggling: Don’t wait. Reach out. Visit www.va.gov/REACH for resources and information, or call 988 (then press 1) to quickly connect with caring, qualified crisis support 24/7.

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

RR – REFUGE RECOVERY – Addiction Support Group Meetings – Daily @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 18 all-day

 

Refuge Recovery is a practice, a process, a set of tools, a treatment, and a path to healing addiction and the suffering caused by addiction. The main inspiration and guiding philosophy for the Refuge Recovery program are the teachings of Siddhartha (Sid) Gautama, a man who lived in India twenty-five hundred years ago. Sid was a radical psychologist and a spiritual revolutionary. Through his own efforts and practices he came to understand why human beings experience and cause so much suffering. He referred to the root cause of suffering as “uncontrollable thirst or repetitive craving.” This “thirst” tends to arise in relation to pleasure, but it may also arise as a craving for unpleasant experiences to go away, or as an addiction to people, places, things, or experiences. This is the same thirst of the alcoholic, the same craving as the addict, and the same attachment as the codependent.

Eventually, Sid came to understand and experience a way of living that ended all forms of suffering. He did this through a practice and process that includes meditation, wise actions, and compassion. After freeing himself from the suffering caused by craving, he spent the rest of his life teaching others how to live a life of well-being and freedom, a life free from suffering.

Sid became known as the Buddha, and his teachings became known as Buddhism. The Refuge Recovery program has adapted the core teachings of the Buddha as a treatment of addiction.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT REFUGE RECOVERY

List of Recovery Meetings Available 7 days a week

Online Via ZOOM Select the Meeting link for ZOOM Address and Passwords

Time Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-The Magnificent 7! at 7am PST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery -Rise and Shine – 07:30am Eastern – 06:30am Central – 04:30am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Moonday Warrior-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-It’s Noon Somewhere!-Online-English-11 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Rainbow Refuge Meeting – Online – Mondays 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Aloha Mondays – Hawaii – 4pm HST – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Buddha Eye Monday-Eugene-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-In Terminus-Atlanta GA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery ‘Refuge Renegados’ – Mondays – 8pm PST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It’s Tuesday in Tokyo- 7am EST-6am CST-4am PST-US-English-TO JOIN FROM US Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Women’s Meeting – Tuesdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery The Rock Tumbler – Online -7:30 am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery Three Gems – Online – 10:30am PST – 1:30pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Just Breathe (formerly Chicago meeting) – Online – 8 pm Eastern -7 pm Central – 5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Trillium Group Book Study – Tuesdays – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery True North – Codependency / Relationship / Friends & Family – Online – Tuesdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery and Meditation – Newport, OR – Tuesdays – 5:15pm-Hybrid Meeting Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It Takes Two-Olympia, WA-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Los Angeles Venice-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Прибежище-Moscow-Russian Language-6PM-Moscow Standard Time Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Phoenix Rising-Online-English-1130 PM Eastern-1030 PM Central-830 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -It’s Tuesday in Tokyo-9pm Japan Standard Time-English-TO JOIN FROM JAPAN Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-10:30pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Eastern Early Bird – Online – Wednesdays – 6:30am EST – 3:30am PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Lucky 7- Online-English-7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-English-7:30am Middle European Standard Time Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Rising Sun Awareness Sangha-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Safe Harbor’ – 4pm PST | 7pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery ‘Sober Over The Rainbow’ – Wednesdays – 5pm PST – 7pm CST -8pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Men’s Meeting– 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Bond Street Tattoo – St. Catharines, ON – Wednesdays – Online – 6pm EST – 3pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery- Triangle- Garner 7:00 PM Eastern 6:00 PM Central 5:00 PM Mountain 4:00 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Eugene Wednesday Evening-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery – Recovery Is Possible – Online – Wednesdays – 7:30pm PST – 10:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Indianapolis – Beginner’s Mind RR Book Study Group – 8:00pm Eastern – 7:00pm Central – 5:00 Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Seven Samurai’ – Thursdays – 7am PST – 10am EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery East Coast Morning – 7:30am EST – 4:30am PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Dr. Strangeloving Kindness Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept Impermanence-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Focus On Food – All Are Welcome’ – Thursdays – 10am PST – 1pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Vancouver Sangha – Thursdays – 1pm PST – 4pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-4 Noble Truths-Online-English-9 pm Eastern-8 pm Central-6 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Big Dig-Inventory Meeting’ – Online – 6:30pm PST – 9:30pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Madison, WI-Online-English-7:30 pm Eastern-6:30 pm Central-4:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Getting Free – HYBRID MEETING – Boston InPerson + Online – 7pm EST- 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Strong Hearts, Fearless Minds’ – Thursday – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery LFK Lotus Mtg – Online – Thursdays – 7pm CST – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Thursday Night Meeting – Online – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery- Redding CT – Thursday – 7pm EST – 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Sandy, UT-Online – 7:30 PM Central Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Belmar, NJ-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-San Francisco-Online-English-11 pm Eastern-10 pm Central-8 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-60 minutes – 7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery- ‘No Matter Where You Go, There You Are’ – Los Angeles, CA – Online -10:30 am EST | 7:30am PST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Asheville Friday Morning Metta 8:00 AM Eastern 7:00 AM Central 5:00 AM Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Gimme Shelter-Online-English-3 pm Eastern-2 pm Central-12 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Divine Energy’ – Online – Fridays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Greensboro, NC-Online-English-5 pm Eastern-4 pm Eastern-2 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Houston – Online – 3:45pm PST – 5:45pm CST – 6:45pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Buddha Eye Friday – Online – 7pm PST – 10:00pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Taking Refuge-Tom’s River, NJ-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Dharma Rain-Portland, OR-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Raleigh, NC-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery ‘And on Ananda’ BOOK STUDY- Online – Saturdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Saturday Morning Live New York – 8am EST – 5am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Saturday Samadhi – 12:30pm EST | 9:30am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Ottawa Ontario Canada – Online – Saturdays – 4pm EST – 1pm PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Yurt-Eugene OR-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – The Saturday Night Speaker Meeting – Saturdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – Wise Effort – San Francisco Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Dragon Spirit-Indianapolis-Online-English-7pm Central-8 pm Eastern-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-East Coast Harmony-Sundays: 08:00am Eastern – 07:00am Central – 05:00am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Morning Spiritual-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Mindful on the Mountain-Online-English-1:30 pm Eastern-12:30 pm Central-10:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Food for Thought: Exploring Addictive Patterns in Our Relationship to Food’ – Online – Sundays – 11am PST – 2pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Sylva, NC-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sacramento Buddha Brunch- 2pm PST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Bainbridge Island, WA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Medford, OR-Online-English-8:30 pm -Eastern-7:30 pm Central-5:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Florida Awakening-Online-English-6 pm Eastern-5 pm Central-3 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Monkey Mindz-Ventura-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Funday-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Kootenay Rockies Refuge’ – Online – Sundays – 8pm PST – 9pm MST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Virtually Recovered-Online-English-12 am Eastern-11 pm Central-9 pm Pacific Online Meeting

 

SEARCHABLE LIST OF REFUGE RECOVERY MEETINGS

Mar
19
Tue
2024
0 – Bundled Event – Inspire – Drug Abuse Communities and More – Online Via Website or IOS APP – 24/7 – Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website
Mar 19 all-day
0 - Bundled Event - Inspire - Drug Abuse Communities and More - Online Via Website or IOS APP - 24/7 - Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website

Inspire Support Communities

A place that’s safe for sharing and always free for members

We’ve carefully designed an environment where it’s okay to open up about personal experiences and share sensitive health information. Joining Inspire is — and always will be — free for members.

To Open an Inspire Account, Use this link:https://www.inspire.com/

Inspire: The Vital Health Community

Inspire is the vital community of more than two million patients and caregivers —a carefully designed environment where everyone feels comfortable and safe to open up about personal health experiences and share sensitive health information. These genuine connections instill hope and drive greater understanding. Patients and caregivers from around the world discover advice and information they can’t find elsewhere, and by understanding patients’ rich and varied health journeys on Inspire, researchers and health practitioners around the world are advancing treatments and making breakthrough discoveries.

 

FIND A COMMUNITY OF SUPPORT

Click Here To See Our Support Communities

 

About the Inspire Community Platform

Create A personal Journal

Your journal belongs to you; you may choose to have your journal entries show up in some, all, or none of your communities. Journal entries are generally longer and can be on any topic.

Join Community Discussions

Discussions belong to the community and are generally shorter than journal entries and are meant to encourage conversations between members. For example, if you wanted to ask for other members’ experiences with a particular treatment, you would post a discussion in the appropriate community. If you wanted to talk about your day, something more personal or off-topic, you would post a journal entry.

Create and Manage A Friends List

Friends are other members whom you may grow to trust and want to share more information with, or with whom you want to exchange private messages. You will be able to post journal entries that only your “friends” can read, and you will be able to send messages to your friends through our site without giving out your email address.

Use Inspire A.I. for quick answers

Inspire AI is a new feature on inspire that uses artificial intelligence to provide quick responses to member questions. The responses are automatically generated. The tool leverages a large language model (LLM), similar to what is used for popular tools such as ChatGPT. When you post on Inspire, you can choose whether you want to receive a response from InspireAI in addition to receiving replies from Inspire members. InspireAI is currently available in select cancer communities.

0 – Bundled Event – MHA – Mental Health America – Inspire Support Groups and Discussion Community – 24/7 Weekends & Weekends @ Online via Inspire plus Apps
Mar 19 all-day

INSPIRE online community forum

About this Online Tool

Our Inspire communities provide a place for people with similar interests to support and encourage each other 24/7 online. Inspire is the largest provider of health-specific communities. MHA (Mental Health America) staff moderate the online support groups and communities.

Link to INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/

 

Link to Mental Health America groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/mental-health-america/

 

Browse All Groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/

Apps are available to download as well.

 

About Mental Health America

Mental Health America (MHA) – founded in 1909 – is the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans. Our work is driven by our commitment to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all; early identification and intervention for those at risk; integrated care, services, and supports for those who need it; with recovery as the goal.

https://screening.mhanational.org/content/mental-health-america-inspire

 

0 – Bundled Events – HeyPeers – PeerGalaxy Peer Support Groups and More @ Online Via Zoom
Mar 19 all-day

 

 

 

 

HeyPeers Is a Peer Support Community that. That offers peer support groups, one-to-one coaching, and private chat rooms where you can find meetings and conversations that can help you on your journey.

HeyPeers hosts hundreds of support groups meetings, including offerings from PeerGalaxy:

If you’re new to HeyPeers, you can sign-up / onboard with PeerGalaxy and access MyJourneyTracker for FREE while available:https://heypeers.com/members/sign_up?org=PeerGalaxy
If you’re an existing HeyPeers member, you can check out PeerGalaxy offerings:
02 – Urgent Info – Services and Resources for Families and Children in Response to the Recent Tragic Events Across the Country
Mar 19 all-day

 

Some Resources for Families and Communities:

Due to recent tragic events across the country

 

Agency Logo

Racial Stress and Self-care:

Parent Tip Tool

How race-related stress affects you and your relationship with your child

What effect does racism have on your health and well-being?

Not only does racism impact you as a parent, it can also impact how you interact with your children. Experiences of racism build on each other and can chip away at your emotional, physical and spiritual resources as a parent, contributing to race-related stress. Race-related stress can make it hard to have the space needed to take care of yourself as a parent, which reduces the emotional space you need to adequately take care of your children.

Racism can impact parents emotionally, physically and spiritually

Physical effects

Physical Effects

Physical Effects can include increased hypertension, illness and risky behaviors such as substance use.

Emotional effects

Emotional Effects

Emotional effects can include depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and aggression.

Spiritual effects

Spiritual Effects

Spiritual effects can include a decreased sense of purpose, lack of connection with the larger community, isolation from larger social groups and reduced involvement in communal activities that you enjoy.

Potential reactions to racial stress or trauma

Insecure feelings

Insecure Feelings

Feelings of shame and lack of confidence due to feeling that a situation cannot be changed.

Lack of trust

Lack of Trust

Feeling detached or a lack of trust for others due to experiencing multiple losses or letdowns. This can make it very difficult to seek out help and to identify potential safe sources of support.

Triggers

Triggers

Reminders of the event, such as particular people or situations, can also trigger strong emotional or physical responses (e.g., crying or rapid heartbeat).

Emotions

Difficulty Controlling Emotions

Difficulty controlling emotional responses (going from “zero to one hundred”) can occur as the body helps you adapt to potentially unsafe situations, making you feel constantly on “alert.”

The body’s response to the experience of racism can make accessing resources to cope with the situation difficult. Race-related stress is unique in that it threatens psychological resources that are needed to cope and fulfill basic needs such as financial support, housing, access to jobs, etc.

When your body is in stress mode, it is geared up to help you and your child survive, which sometimes leads to impulsive decisions. If you live in a chronic state of stress related to racism, you can start to engage in survival coping. Survival coping can help you to deal with very hard or potentially life-threatening situations. However, if you continue to exist in this mode long-term, it can make it difficult to enjoy being in the moment with your child and can reduce your ability to feel safe and in control.

What impact can racial stress have on your parenting?

Experiencing race-related stress can also impact the quality of parenting relationships in the following ways:

Impostor syndrome

When you are exposed to racism repeatedly, you often start doubting yourself and can feel like you are an imposter in dominant culture settings or in settings where you feel as though you do not belong. Your inner thoughts might sound something like: “Am I being judged?” “Am I worthy?” “I got lucky.” “I only got this because I am Black.”

Being overly alert (hypervigilance)

Experiencing racial stress can make you more aware of potential dangers and negative experiences that can occur. This, in turn, can make the experience of parenting even more stressful. When you interact with your children, you can sometimes be reminded of negative race-related experiences that you had when you were a child. This reminder can amp up emotional responses, or hyperarousal, making it hard for you to “keep your cool” and be open to flexible problem solving.

“Helicopter parenting” (monitoring in fear)

These experiences of racism and unwarranted blame or lack of acceptance can make you want to protect your children so much, that you don’t allow them to explore in the way that they need to. You may shelter them from failures, which everyone needs to experience in order to learn how to manage everyday life. You may tend to be overly cautious or suspicious. Examples can include not allowing your children to have sleepovers or go to the park, even with your supervision.

Difficulty regulating emotions

  • When your past influences your emotional state, it can affect your emotional responses to both big and minor stressors with children, such as when they misbehave. This, in turn, can lead to being overprotective or overuse of physical discipline, as a means of survival.
  • For children, having parents who can keep perspective (stay cool) when children are upset, or misbehaving is very important. Likewise, it is important to stay calm when disciplining a child, otherwise discipline may go overboard. Both of these things can be hard if you are having difficulty controlling your emotions.

Avoidance

  • Avoiding situations that are related to racism can be a needed strategy to survive; such as instances that may involve violence or threat to yourself or your family. Sometimes you may avoid reminders of past experiences due to the pain or discomfort they cause.
  • If you find yourself avoiding strong feelings or situations with your child that bring up painful memories, it may make it hard to show affection and support for your child. It may even make it difficult to know how to provide emotional support for your child during times of stress. For instance, if your child brings up their own experience of oppression or an event in their life reminds you of something from your own childhood.

Mistrusting others

  • Racism can lead to distrust or mistrust of other communities. Internalized racism is when you begin to accept negative messages about your own abilities and inherent worth by the dominant group in society.
  • When you use society’s norms to judge yourself, you can feel depressed, unworthy and just not good enough. You are taught in many ways to take these feelings and paint them onto another group.
  • Intra and interracial violence, contention among disenfranchised communities or color, and the way the media conveys information about people of color, contribute to this.
  • This kind of coping can make you more vulnerable to racism, because on some level you may believe in racial hierarchy and difference when you belittle other groups. And when you show your children that it is right to discriminate against certain other groups, you make them more vulnerable to discrimination that they face.

Minimizing racism

  • Racism is overwhelming, as is the history of violence. You are sometimes taught that accepting this and minimizing racism is the only thing you can do. But when you ignore racism, and accept powerlessness, you encourage your kids to internalize racism. This can lead to increased levels of depression, anxiety and externalizing behaviors (e.g., engaging in risky behaviors, such as alcohol or substance use).
  • When you believe that you should be able to handle and manage it all without a break or without asking for help, you are at increased risk for health problems and can miss important cues about your well-being and safety.

Self-blame

Experiencing chronically unfair and dangerous discriminatory practices due to race can lead to feelings of low worth. For parents, this can also lead to a questioning of your parenting choices and abilities.

Unbalanced Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES)

Unbalanced messaging or communication about race and ethnicity occurs when you only promote messages of mistrust, preparation for bias, or only give racial pride messages to your children.

So, what can you do to mitigate racial stress?

As parents, it is important to develop positive identities and share your cultural identities with your children. Positive cultural identity and advocacy are protective factors against racism, which can help to reduce and prevent racial stress.

There are many other ways to cope with stress and everyone has different preferences. Reducing stress can also allow you to model healthy coping strategies for your child. Here are some suggestions with links you can try.

Agency Logo
Talking with Children About Tragic Events

What do we tell our children? How do we reassure them of their own safety?

At The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, we’ve provided grief support groups for children, teens, young adults and their parents or adult caregivers since 1982.

Based on our experience, here are some things for adults to keep in mind as you struggle with how to talk with children following tragic events, such as natural disasters, plane crashes, or school shootings.

1. Don’t project your fears onto your children. They take their cues from the adults around them.
You can’t hear the news about children being murdered or communities devastated by natural disasters without thinking about how you’d feel if it happened to your family, friends, or hometown. The outpouring of care and empathy for the families who lost loved ones will be powerful, and…we all know it could have been our friends, our child, our family and community members who died or were injured.

Identifying with the senselessness and randomness makes us all feel more vulnerable. But we should remember that children don’t always see things the same way that adults do, and it won’t be helpful to them for us to fall apart. They need to see that we care, that we feel terrible about this tragedy, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. They will take their cues from our behavior.

It’s okay to show emotion. We can model for children that feeling sad, scared, and upset is normal after tragedies. But we don’t want to overwhelm them with our emotions, or put them in the position of having to ‘parent,’ or take care of, the adults around them. Make sure you also model taking care of yourself, by sharing with trusted and supportive adult friends, eating (and drinking) healthfully.

2. Try to limit their access to the recurring news and exposure to the tragedy over and over.
Over-exposure to the graphic and emotional news can be overwhelming for children and can cause unnecessary anxiety and fear. Some children who repeatedly watched the footage of planes crashing into the towers on 9/11 thought it was happening again and again. Some children (and some adults) may have difficulty getting graphic scenes and images out of their minds. Too much exposure can fuel their fear, so don’t let them sit and watch the news over and over. Better yet, set the example of not doing so yourself as well.

3. Understand that you can’t completely shield them from what happened.
It would be next to impossible to hide these events from children, as much as we wish we could. You might be able to shield your own child in your home, for example, by not turning on (or owning) a television, but you can’t protect your children from hearing about it from other kids. The fact is, they will hear about it, so although they don’t “need” to know about it, pretending we can shield them is magical thinking.

That said, you don’t need to give them more information than they can handle, or more than they’re asking for. A simple, “Did they talk about what happened in _____ today at school?” would be a good starter. They need to know that you’re not trying to hide the truth from them, that you’re open to talking about it, but that you’re also not forcing them to do so.

4. Model truth-telling and build trust with your children by letting them hear things, even hard things, from you directly.
Eight days after the 9/11 attacks, I was meeting in small groups with pre-school workers in New York City, talking about how to respond to the young children in their care about the events. A man asked to speak to me privately after one of the trainings, and asked for my advice around his 7-year-old daughter. For the last week, since September 12th, she had been having stomach aches and difficulty sleeping. He said it was not tied to the events of 9/11 because, “We don’t have a television.” As his story unfolded it was evident that he did not want to have to explain to his child why people would do such horrible things, a normal dilemma that we face as parents and adults. This child was experiencing physical reactions, as it turned out, not primarily because of her reaction to the events of 9/11, but because she was unable to share her fears and concerns and questions in her own home, faced with her parents’ denial.

Here are some principles to keep in mind as you talk with children:

1. There is no one typical reaction one can or should expect from children.
Their responses will vary all over the ‘emotional’ map, from seeming disinterest to nightmares, eating issues, and anxiety. How any specific child will respond will depend on their age, previous experience with death and loss, and their personality style. Fearful children will tend to worry; quiet children may keep their feelings to themselves; those who want to appear unfazed may exhibit a sense of bravado or lack of caring. Of course, children directly affected – those who had a family member die; those who witnessed the tragedy; those who had friends die – will tend to have longer-term reactions and needs. Watch for changes in behavior, or concerning trends. While it would be normal to have heightened anxiety and sleeplessness, any concerning behavior or troubling symptoms should be taken seriously, and if warranted, professional help sought.

2. Many children will have an increased sense of fear about their safety.
Understandably. So will many adults. After a shooting at an Oregon mall in December 2012, the news outlets were filled with people who said they’d never take their children there again. Others said they’d return as soon as it opened in order to support the stores and employees who had experienced the traumatic events, and whose livelihoods were going to suffer as a result of the several day closure. Some runners in the Boston Marathon vowed to return; others said they would never do so again.

While we can’t guarantee to our children that nothing bad will ever happen to them, we can provide assurance that these events are relatively rare, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. Children may have many questions about the events, particularly about natural disasters. Answer their questions with language that fits their developmental stage. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question. If it’s a question that might have an answer, offer to look up more information. You can also ask children what they think the answer is as they often have thoughts and ideas they want to share with you. In the case of natural disasters, if your child is fearful of something like that happening in your community, talk with them about the safety plan that you have in place for your family and home. You can also look into what community safety measures are in place and whatever elements are relevant with your children. Many children will be reassured knowing that there are specific, tangible things they and your family can do if something occurs. Some examples include, picking a meeting place, keeping flashlights in every bedroom, talking about where you will keep emergency water and food.

3. Children want, need, and deserve the truth.
In over 30 years of providing grief support to thousands of children and teens at The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families, we have never heard a child say, “I’m glad I was lied to.” Many, however, struggle with anger and lack of trust toward parents or other adults who lied to them. When we don’t tell the truth, they learn that we cannot be trusted. As difficult as it can be at times, and as horrendous as the truth may be, children want, need, and deserve the truth. Being able to talk openly and honestly with your children about tragic events and other losses, creates a foundation of trust, enabling them to come to you in the future with their questions, fears, and concerns.

 

 

Daniel Tiger

Helping Children with Tragic Events in the News

In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.

Some Scary, Confusing Images

The way that news is presented on television can be quite confusing for a young child. The same video segment may be shown over and over again through the day, as if each showing was a different event. Someone who has died turns up alive and then dies again and again. Children often become very anxious since they don’t understand much about videotape replays, closeups, and camera angles. Any televised danger seems close to home to them because the tragic scenes are taking place on the TV set in their own living room. Children can’t tell the difference between what’s close and what’s far away, what’s real and what’s pretend, or what’s new and what’s re-run.

The younger the children are, the more likely they are to be interested in scenes of close-up faces, particularly if the people are expressing some strong feelings. When there’s tragic news, the images on TV are most often much too graphic and disturbing for young children.

“Who will take care of me?”

In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grown-ups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.

Helping Children Feel More Secure

Play is one of the important ways young children have of dealing with their concerns. Of course, playing about violent news can be scary and sometimes unsafe, so adults need to be nearby to help redirect that kind of play into nurturing themes, such as a hospital for the wounded or a pretend meal for emergency workers.

When children are scared and anxious, they might become more dependent, clingy, and afraid to go to bed at night. Whining, aggressive behavior, or toilet “accidents” may be their way of asking for more comfort from the important adults in their lives. Little by little, as the adults around them become more confident, hopeful and secure, our children probably will, too.

Turn Off the TV

When there’s something tragic in the news, many parents get concerned about what and how to tell their children. It’s even harder than usual if we’re struggling with our own powerful feelings about what has happened. Adults are sometimes surprised that their own reactions to a televised crisis are so strong, but great loss and devastation in the news often reawaken our own earlier losses and fears – even some we think we might have “forgotten”

It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.

Talking and Listening

Even if we wanted to, it would be impossible to give our children all the reasons for such things as war, terrorists, abuse, murders, major fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If they ask questions, our best answer may be to ask them, “What do you think happened?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then the simplest reply might be something like, “I’m sad about the news, and I’m worried. But I love you, and I’m here to care for you.”

If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.

Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”

Helpful Hints

  • Do your best to keep the television off, or at least limit how much your child sees of any news event.
  • Try to keep yourself calm. Your presence can help your child feel more secure.
  • Give your child extra comfort and physical affection, like hugs or snuggling up together with a favorite book. Physical comfort goes a long way towards providing inner security. That closeness can nourish you, too.
  • Try to keep regular routines as normal as possible. Children and adults count on their familiar pattern of everyday life.
  • Plan something that you and your child enjoy doing together, like taking a walk, going on a picnic, having some quiet time, or doing something silly. It can help to know there are simple things in life that can help us feel better, in good times and in bad.
  • Even if children don’t mention what they’ve seen or heard in the news, it can help to ask what they think has happened. If parents don’t bring up the subject, children can be left with their misinterpretations. You may be really surprised at how much your child has heard from others.
  • Focus attention on the helpers, like the police, firemen, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and volunteers. It’s reassuring to know there are many caring people who are doing all they can to help others in this world.
  • Let your child know if you’re making a donation, going to a town meeting, writing a letter or e-mail of support, or taking some other action. It can help children to know that adults take many different active roles and that we don’t give in to helplessness in times of worldwide crisis.

 

03 – Job / Career Fairs, Events, Openings and Internships – Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness
Mar 19 all-day

 

 

 

 

 

JOB / CAREER FAIRS, EVENTS, OPENINGS, AND INTERNSHIPS 2024

Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness

NOTE: Information here is provided solely as a courtesy without any guarantees or warranties or liability of any kind whatsoever.  Use at your own risk and expense.

If you learn of any opportunities not listed here, please share via social media or email: webmail@peergalaxy.com.

NW Instituto Latino

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

¡Estamos contratando! ¡Estamos buscando un Personal de Apoyo Bilingüe para El Centro de Recuperación en el condado de Washington! Envíe una carta de presentación y un currículum a dmichael@nwilpdx.com

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

Position Description Recovery Center Support Staff

Position Description Mentor Job Description

MHAAO – Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon is recruiting for several positions.  For more details visit the link below:

* MHAAO Careers

Oregon Peer Warmline / CCS – Community Counseling Solutions

* CCS Job Openings Page

Folktime

FOLKTIME Career Page

Multnomah County Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center (CATC)

* Telecare CATC Overview

Telecare CATC Careers

Lines for Life:

Lines for Life – Jobs Page

JOB BOARDS

MHACCBO – Mental Health and Addictions Certification Credentialing Board of Oregon

MHACCBO Job Board

State of Oregon

* State of Oregon – Jobs Page

Partners in Diversity

Jobs Board

Indeed.com

Job Board for Peer Support Specialist positions

Job Board for Certified Recovery Mentor positions

MAC’S LIST features many nonprofit opportunities

MAC’S List

04 – Resources – Autism Resources, Articles, Support
Mar 19 all-day
04 - Resources - Autism Resources, Articles, Support

 

 

 

 

What is Autism?

What you should know

Autism is a severe developmental disorder that affects the way a child sees and interacts with the rest of the world. It limits their ability to interact with others socially, in fact many autism suffers avoid human contact.

Autism is part of a larger group of disorders called pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). More information about autism: Click on each of these links

 

Autism-Definition

Autism is a developmental disability that comes from a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain. It is characterized by the abnormal development of communication skills, social skills, and reasoning. Males are affected four times as often as females. Children may appear normal until around the age of 30 months.

 

Click each of these following titles learn more….

Autism Symptoms

Autism Symptoms vary widely in severity, include impairment in social interaction, fixation on inanimate objects, inability to communicate normally, and resistance to changes in daily routine. Characteristic traits include lack of eye contact, repetition of words or phrases, unmotivated tantrums, inability to express needs verbally, and insensitivity to pain.

Behaviors may change over time. Autistic children often have other disorders of brain function; about two thirds are mentally retarded; over one quarter develop seizures.

What Autism is Not

Autism can be confused with several other disorders which may have similar behaviors. Here is a list of autism like disorders that you should look at.

What Causes Autism

It remains unclear, but a psychological one has been ruled out. Neurological studies seem to indicate a primary brain dysfunction, and a genetic component is suggested by a pattern of autism in some families. It is largely believed that autism is a genetic disorder that involves several genes related to gene function. However it is unclear to researchers what causes these genes to turn on. Learn more about other causes of autism.

Autism Research

There are many exciting developments in autism research going on at the top universities. They are focusing on inherited autism and autism gene research.

Other Autism Spectrum Disorders

Asperger’s Syndrome – A child with asperger’s disorder has the same common problems as children with autism however they don’t have language development problems of a autistic child.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder and not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) – This child has autism but doesn’t meet the criteria for high functioning autism.

High-Functioning Autism – This child has autism but has normal learning and cognitive and learning skills. Language development is difficult initially but they become proficient eventually.

 

FAQ about Autism Special Education and IEP

This is an important list of questions and answers to help you deal with special education issues at your school.

 

Autism Tips for working with Teachers

This is a great check list of items to be aware of when you work with your child’s teacher and your child’s Individual Education Plan.

Tip: Go to our Autism education discussion boards and post a question with other parents.

Early Origins of Autism

 

ADDITIONAL LINKS TO RESOURCES AND EXPERTISE

Ask an Expert on Autism

Health Finder

Talk to Autism Expert

National Institutes of Mental Health

Combined Health Information Database

Abstracts on Autism

 

 

Searchable Directory of Autism Resources

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE DIRECTORY PAGE 

Or Click on the Topic area directly below

Adult Resources

Attorneys & Advocates

Behavior/Family Training

Community Living

Education

Medical Providers/Diagnosis

Non-English Resources

Respite Care Providers

Safety

Sports & Camps

Therapy Providers

 

Autism NOW Center’s fact sheets on topics of importance to people with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities are a resource you and your family members, as well as educators, employers, physicians and others, can use to get information in an easy-to-read and understand format.  The fact sheets are available in several languages in PDF form which can be printed out for your convenience. See the full list of topics and language choices below.

English:

Spanish:

Find the resources you need 1-885-828-847

 

Article Links

Follow this page link for listings of over 800 articles and resources

https://autismnow.org/resources/

Interagency Autism Coordination Committee

 

About Autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that is estimated to affect about 1 in 36 children and approximately 2.21% of adults. Autism affects the way a person experiences the world and can result in significant challenges in social communication and interaction, as well as repetitive behaviors and unusual or intense interests.

People on the autism spectrum often have a strong preference for routines and predictability, and some are challenged in adapting to change. Many people on the autism spectrum experience sensory differences, including high or low sensitivity to sounds, light, textures, tastes, and physical touch. Some have accompanying language and/or intellectual disabilities, and some may be intellectually gifted or possess other unique abilities, talents, or strengths.

ASD can be diagnosed at any age, but differences generally appear in the first two years of life. ASD is known as a “spectrum” condition because it encompasses a wide variation in the type, combination, and severity of disabilities, as a well as a range of unique abilities and strengths, many of which can change over the course of a person’s lifespan. The type and intensity of supports and services that a child or adult on the autism spectrum may require, ranging from minimal to intensive, will vary depending on their unique needs.

With appropriate supports and an environment that promotes inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment, people on the autism spectrum can fully participate in community life and achieve their full potential.

This page includes resources that provide general information about autism.

 

Websites and Programs

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network was created by autistic people and for autistic people. This page provides an overview of typical characteristics of autism.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This tool kit provides families of children ages four and under with guidance on how to access services the first 100 days after an autism diagnosis.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 2020

This report from provides an overview of 2016 data collected by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network and Early ADDM. ADDM provides estimates of the prevalence of ASD among 8-year-old children. Early ADDM estimates ASD prevalence and monitors early identification of 4-year-old children. Full findings of the data on 8-year-old and 4-year-old children are available.

March 2020

The CDC released their first estimate of the prevalence of autism in adults based on 2017 data. They estimated that 2.21 percent of adults in the United States have ASD.

More Reports

Videos

April 24, 2019

NIMH Director Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. interviews Ann Wagner, Ph.D., National Autism Coordinator, and Lisa Gilotty, Ph.D., program chief of NIMH’s chief of NIMH’s Research Program on Autism Spectrum Disorders, to discuss advances on the study of autism in adulthood.

 

Federal Departments and Agencies

This list includes federal departments and agencies that provide funding, programs, and support for issues related to autism and other developmental disabilities.

Independent Agencies

  • National Council on Disability (NCD)
    • Meetings and Events The NCD is an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities. Their meetings are open to the public.
    • Resources This page includes information on disability rights and links to resources and services on education, employment, financial assistance and incentives, health care, housing, and more.
  • National Science Foundation (NSF)
    • About NSF The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA)
    • Disability Benefits The Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability programs provide assistance to people with disabilities. This page explains these benefits and the application process.
    • Spotlight on Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Accounts Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) allows individuals with disabilities to make tax-free saving accounts to cover qualified disability expenses. Individuals can save up to $100,000 without counting against their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility.

Transition from youth to adulthood

Websites and Programs

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

ASAN partnered with the Family Network on Disabilities to produce this guide, which prepares transition age youth for adulthood. The first half provides information on preparing for transition and the second half gives in-depth information on post-secondary education, employment, housing and independent living, and healthcare.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 22, 2018

This report examines guardianship and makes recommendations for its use. Recommendations are based on disability law and policy, how people with disabilities are treated in the legal system, alternatives to guardianship, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

March 13, 2019

This report describes the demographics, disability, education, and health characteristics of teens and young adults ages 12-23 on the autism spectrum.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

This webinar provided information about supports and resources to improve access to competitive, integrated employment for youth and young adults on the autism spectrum and enhance their career pathways.

 

 

Employment

National data has shown that many autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed, even when compared to people with other disabilities and in spite of having needed skills and abilities for the workplace. Researchers and policy makers have worked to develop programs that can increase opportunities for employment and improve employment outcomes. This includes job training and recruitment programs, as well as supports for employees and employers to increase retention and success in the workplace. This page provides information related to employment for people with autism and other disabilities.

Websites and Programs

This program helps public and private sectors recruit, hire, train, and retain job seekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This plain language toolkit explains the existing policies that help people with disabilities people find and keep good jobs, and solve employment problems.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

October 9, 2018

Of the 74 state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies that responded to GAO’s survey, most reported expanding services to help students with disabilities transition from school to work as required under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), enacted in July 2014. Most state agencies reported serving more students and providing work-based learning experiences and other activities.

May 12, 2020

Researchers analyzed Rehabilitation Services Administration data to determine the association of vocational rehabilitation services with employment outcomes for students ages 16-21. Students with autism were less likely to receive job-related services less than comparison groups.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

In this webinar, Scott Michael Robertson Ph.D. provides information about government supports and resources that help youth and young adults with autism access competitive, integrated employment and enhance their careers. Full Transition Aged Youth Webinar Series.

Housing

Housing plays an important role in ensuring the well being of people on the autism spectrum and helping them integrate into the community. Some people can live independently with minimal or no supports, while others require high levels of support. There is a variety of federal and private resources that can enable people to live in settings that best fit their needs. This page provides information about models of housing for people with disabilities and resources and programs related to disability housing.

Websites and Programs

  • Medicaid.Gov
    • Home & Community Based Services This page provides information on Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) regulations. The page includes a training series for stakeholders, transition plans for individual states, technical assistance, and more. The Final Regulation page provides an overview of rules and regulations states must follow when providing HCBS under Medicaid.
  • The Arc
    • Housing Overview This page provides an overview of housing issues that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) encounter as well the Arc’s advocacy efforts. The page also describes key federal housing initiatives that enable people with I/DD to live in the community and links to additional resources.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This handbook is designed to help people with disabilities find and use resources that promote independent living. It includes information on support services and waivers, housing, employment, and community resources. This handbook was created in partnership with Autism NOW Center.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

May 24, 2019

This report that examines occurrences of institutionalization of people with disabilities, as well as thwarted threats of institutionalization, during hurricanes and the California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. The NCD found that people with disabilities are frequently institutionalized during and after disasters due to conflicting federal guidance; a lack of equal access to emergency and disaster-related programs and services; and a lack of compliance with federal law.

June 2018

The Residential Information Systems Project (RISP) studies trends in residential service settings, funding, and expenditures for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States. The most recent report uses data through Fiscal Year 2016.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

July 23, 2019

This workshop focused on the housing needs of people on the autism spectrum and included examples of various housing models. Meeting details.

July 26, 2017

JaLynn Prince, Adrienne McBride, and Desiree Kameka present Madison House Autism Foundation’s Autism After 21 initiative. Madison House aims to raise awareness of the abilities of and issues facing adults with autism. They also promote housing options for adults with autism and other I/DD through the Autism Housing Network. Meeting details.

 

For Service Providers and Public Services

Unlocking Potential: Innovative Library Programs Enhancing the Lives of Autistic Individuals

http://librarysciencedegreesonline.org/libraries-and-autism/

 

Making Entertainment and Public Spaces More Autistim-Friendly

https://happiful.com/making-entertainment-and-public-spaces-more-autistic-friendly

 

 

04 – Resources – VA & ODVA – Veterans Support Groups, Resources, Education, Mental Health and Advocacy
Mar 19 all-day

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

LOCATE SERVICES IN OREGON

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

Veteran Services by County

Click on the link blow for interactive map  access resources in your county in Oregon.

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

Web Resources

Oregon Health Plan – Enrollment Page

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/hsd/ohp/pages/apply.aspx

 

SAMHSA Treatment Locator

https://findtreatment.gov/

VA National Center on PTSD

 PTSD Treatment Decision Aid

 Educational Materials

  Mobile Apps

  Whiteboard Videos

  Consultation Program

 

VA Healthcare – Community Care network

https://www.va.gov/COMMUNITYCARE/providers/Community_Care_Network.asp

 

VA’s Center for Women Veterans (CWV)

https://www.va.gov/womenvet/

Minority Veterans of America

https://www.minorityvets.org/

 

Vet Centers:

Central Oregon Vet Center

Eugene Vet Center

Grants Pass Vet Center

Portland Vet Center

Salem Vet Center

 Community Based Outpatient Clinics:

Bend CBOC

Morrow County VA Telehealth Clinic (Boardman OR)

Brookings VA Clinic

Wallowa County VA Telehealth Clinic (Enterprise OR)

Eugene Health Care Center

Eugene VA Downtown Clinic

Fairview Clinic

Grants Pass West VA CBOC

Hillsboro CBOC

Klamath Falls CBOC

La Grande CBOC

Lincoln City Clinic

North Bend VA Clinic

Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC)

Salem CBOC

North Coast CBOC

 

Additional Resources By Phone:

Veterans Crisis Line: 800-273-8255, Press 1

Women Veterans Hotline: 855-829-663

Vet Center Call Center: 877-WAR-VETS (927-8387)

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Caregiver Support Line: 855-260-3274

Lines for Life Military Help Line:  Call 1-888-457-4838

Senior Loneliness Line:  Call 503-200-1633

The Trevor Project:  866-488-7386

PEER SUPPORT AND PEER TRAINING

USE THIS LINK TO APPLY

PTSD Self Screening

This self-screen can help you find out if your feelings and behaviors may be related to PTSD.

Only a trained provider can diagnose PTSD. Your responses here are private and secure—they are not collected or shared. You may take a screenshot or print this screen to share with a provider.

Do not take the self-screen for someone else. If you are concerned that someone you care about might have PTSD, please share this screen with them instead.

Start Screen

PTSD Information Voice Mail: (802) 296-6300
Email: ncptsd@va.gov
Also see: VA Mental Health

05 – Warmline – GA – Gamblers Anonymous and more – (855) 222-5542 – Weekdays and Weekends @ Phone
Mar 19 all-day

 

GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from a gambling problem.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop gambling.

There are no dues or fees for Gamblers Anonymous membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. Gamblers Anonymous is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any cause. Our primary purpose is to stop gambling and to help other compulsive gamblers do the same.”

From the Gamblers Anonymous Website:

Types of Meetings

Closed Meeting:
Only those with a gambling problem, or those who think they may have a gambling problem, and have a desire to stop gambling, may attend and participate.

Modified Closed Meeting:
Same as a “Closed Meeting” but the members would vote to include certain groups such as health professionals, guests attending with first time members, and persons with other addictions in need of a meeting

Open Meeting:
Spouses, family, and friends of the gambler are welcome
to attend and observe the meeting.

Chat:
https://m2.icarol.com/ConsumerRegistration.aspx?org=66046&pid=454&cc=en-US

Gamblers Anonymous:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/zip/table/0/na/na/na/21401/50?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

National GA Telephone Meetings
Day and Time
Call-in Number and Meeting Code
Contact Email

Sunday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5338 code 836083 #
Sunday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Monday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4925 code 554671 #
Monday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Tuesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4943 code 253824 #
Tuesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Wednesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4160 code 611704 #
Wednesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Thursday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4981 code 872853 #
Thursday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Friday Noon PT
1-712-770-4979 code 703758 #
Friday3pmHelp@gmail.com (TBD)

Friday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4996 code 595094 #
Friday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Saturday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5335 code 491301 #
Saturday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Gamblers Anonymous 12-Steps Virtual Online Support Groups in California:

https://gasteps.org/virtual-meeting-directory

Gamblers Anonymous Support Groups in Oregon:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/state/table/OR/na/na/na/na/10?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

Gamblers Anonymous Hotlines Website:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/hotlines

Oregon Toll-Free Hotline Number:
1-855-2CALLGA (855-222-5542)

Gam-Anon for Family and Friends Website:
http://www.gam-anon.org/
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/content/gam-anon-help-family-friends

AA OR A58 – Alcoholics Anonymous Oregon Area 58 – Find A Meeting In Oregon – English, Spanish, Hearing Impaired – Weekdays & Weekends
Mar 19 all-day

 

 

Find an AA Meeting In Oregon

Meetings in Spanish – Hearing Impaired Meetings – Online & In-Person – Hot Lines – Phone Apps

Looking for a local AA meeting?

Meeting lists are provided by local Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices.

You can use the district map page to find the District you’re interested in and then visit the meeting list and/or website for that district.  If a District has no website, the nearest Intergroup or Central Office may be listed.

Hotline phone numbers listed below may also help.

If interested, you can download the meeting guide app from following the links below.

 

District Websites With Meeting Lists

Link: 

https://www.aa-oregon.org/find-meetings/#districtlinks 

Click the link above for the List of Oregon AA Districts with AA Meetings and Hotlines plus Phone Apps.

AA Portland Districts map page.

For a detailed view of Districts in the Portland area, visit the map page.

Link:

https://www.aa-oregon.org/portland-districts/

NOTE: Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices are independent service entities; Oregon Area 58 is not responsible for the content of their web sites.

Higher resolution maps of the District boundaries in Portland and in Oregon are also available for download.

District Websites

 

Hotlines

Tel: (971) 601-9220  Astoria / Seaside

Tel: (503) 739-4856  Tillamook

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 2

Depoe Bay, Lincoln City, Newport, Siletz, South Beach, Toledo and Waldport

24-Hour Hotline

Tel: (541) 265-1953

 

Para Preguntas Llamar:

Tel: (541) 574-7842

 

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 3

Arlington, Boardman, Condon, Fossil, Hepper, Hermiston, Ione, Mission, Pendleton and Pilot Rock

 

Hotline

Tel: (800) 410-5953

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

Districts 4 & 28

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 5

Bend, Burns, Chemult, Culver, John Day, La Pine, Madras, Metolius, Mt. Vernon, Prineville, Redmond, Sisters, Sunriver, Terrabonne, Tumalo, and Warm Springs

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 6

Emerald Valley Intergroup:

Eugene, Alvadore, Cottage Grove, Creswell, Junction City, Lowell, Springfield, Veneta

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 7

Josephine County Intergroup & Central Office

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 474-0782

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 8

Coos Bay, Florence, Gardiner, Lakeside, Mapleton, North Bend, Reedsport

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 269-3265

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 9

Northwest/Downtown Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list 

 

District 10

Beaverton, Portland, Tigard

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 11

Gresham & East County

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 12

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Meeting schedule (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 13

Roseburg, Canyonville, Drain, Glendale, Riddle

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 673-7552

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 14

Bingen/White Salmon WA, Carson WA, Goldendale WA, Hood River, Maupin, Moro, Odell, Parkdale, Stevenson WA, The Dalles, Tygh Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (833) 423-3683 = (833-HAD-ENUF)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 15

Clackamas, Milwaukie, West Linn

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 16

Applegate, Ashland, Butte Falls, Central Point,
Eagle Point, Gold Hill, Jacksonville, Medford,
Phoenix, Prospect, Rogue River, Ruch, Talent,
& White City

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 773-4848

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 17

Klamath & Lake Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 883-4970

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 18

Clatskanie, Ranier, St. Helens, Scappoose, Vernonia

 

24-hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 366-0667  Columbia County

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 19

Southwest of Eugene

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 20

Springfield

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Web site (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 21

Albany, Corvallis, Lebanon, Willamette Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 967-4252

Link: Web site & meeting list

 

District 22

McMinnville, Newberg

24-Hour Hotlines:
Tel: (503) 472-1172 (McMinnville)
Tel: (888) 472-1172 (Newberg)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 23

Tualatin

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 24

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 25

Estacada, Gresham

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 26

North Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 27

Southeast Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

Districts 28 (and 4)

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline:

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 29

Baker, Union & Wallowa Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 624-5117

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 30

Oregon South Coast – Bandon, Brookings, Coquille, Gold Beach, Langlois, Myrtle Point, Port Oxford

 

24-Hour Hotlines:

Tel: (541) 347-1720  Bandon

Tel: (541) 469-2440  Brookings

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 31

Hillsboro

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: 503-684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 32

Canyon City, John Day, Mount Vernon

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meeting list (Central Oregon Intergroup)

 

Districts 34 & 35

Spanish Language districts for the entire state.

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

District 36

Southwest Portland and parts of Lake Oswego

 

Link: Website and meeting list

 

District 37

Wilsonville, Sherwood, and West Linn

 

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

Download District maps of Portland and Oregon in higher resolution formats:

 

Portland Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 670.00 KB

 

Portland Districts Map 36×42

1 file(s) 1.06 MB

 

Oregon Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 755.71 KB

 

~~~

 

Meetings en Español

 

Directorio de Grupos Hispaños:

 

Directory of Spanish-speaking Groups

1 file(s) 105.75 KB

 

~~~

 

Distrito 28, 34 & 35

Oficina Intergrupal Hispaña De Salem Oregon
2495 Lancaster Dr. NE | Salem, OR 97303
(503) 899-2652

 

Distrito 28

Salem

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting schedule

 

Distrito 34

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

Distrito 35

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Website

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

~~~

 

Meetings for the Hearing Impaired

 

AA Meeting Schedule for the Hearing Impaired

Hotline Phone Numbers by City

Albany/Corvallis:                 541-967-4252
Astoria-Gearhart:                 971-601-9220
Baker City:                         541-624-5117
Bandon, Coquille:                541-347-1720
Boardman                          800-410-5953
Clatskanie, Rainier,              503-366-0667
  Scappoose, St Helens,

  Vernonia

Coos Bay, North Bend,          (541) 469-2440
  Lakeside, Reedsport,

  Florence, Gardiner,

  Mapleton

Bend:                                541-548-0440
Brookings:                          541-469-2440
Burns:                               541-548-0440
Cannon Beach:                    503-861-5526
Condon                              800-410-5953
The Dalles/Hood River:         800-999-9210
Echo                                  800-410-5953
Enterprise                          541-624-5117
Eugene:                             541-342-4113
Grants Pass:                       541-474-0782
Heppner                             800-410-5953
Hermiston:                         800-410-5953
Klamath:                            541-883-4970
La Grande:                         541-624-5117
Lincoln City:                       541-265-1953
Medford (District):               541-773-4848
McMinnville:                        503-472-1172
Newberg:                           888-472-1172
Newport:                            541-265-1953
Ontario (includes Boise):       208-344-6611
Pendleton:                          800-410-5953
Pilot Rock                           800-410-5953
Portland:                            503-223-8569
Westside Central Office:        503-684-0415
Roseburg:                          541-673-7552
Salem:                               503-399-0599
Seaside:                             971-601-9220
Siletz:                                541-265-1953
Umatilla                             800-410-5953
Yachats, Waldport, Toledo:    541-265-1953

 

 

AA Meeting Finder Applications

Meeting Guide App For Android

Meeting Guide App For iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

AM – All Month – OMH – Office of Minority Health US Department of Health and Human Services – Resource’s and Publications
Mar 19 all-day

 

 

NATIONAL MINORITY MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

OMH – Office of Minority Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

Resource’s and Publications

LGBTQIA+

Mental Health Disorders and Treatment

Substance Use

Trauma and Violence

COVID-19

BRMA – Brown Mamas – The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms
Mar 19 all-day

 

The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms

Brown Mamas – Pittsburgh & U.S.  – Brown Mamas, Inc. has been around for seven years in the Pittsburgh region.  Brown Mamas began in the living room of Muffy Mendoza.  What started as 5 moms has grown to over 4000  Our mamas love our Pittsburgh chapter so much that we are expanding.  If you are mom who is ready to not just find her tribe, but to inspire other mothers and be the change she wants to see in her community, click here to learn more about starting your own Brown Mamas chapter.

Black Moms Connect – Canada & U.S.

Mommin’ Society – North Carolina & Online

Moms of Black Boys United – Atlanta & Online

Moms Make It Work – NYC

Mocha Moms, Inc. – U.S. (seriously, everywhere)

Whine & Cheese – 27 Chapters in U.S. (including D.C., PA, South Carolina, New York, etc.)

Black Women Do Breastfeed

Motherwork by Mater Mea – NYC

Beautiful Brown Girls Brunch Club – New Jersey

District Motherhued’s DMV MomTribe – D.C. Metro Area

Soul Food for Your Baby – Hawthorne, Calif.

Black Moms Blog Events – Atlanta, GA

Birthing Beautiful Communities – Cleveland, OH

Tessera Collective – Online, Self-Care Support

Melanin Mommies – Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle –

Not-So Melinated Support Groups for Black Moms

Moms Club

La Leche League

Circle of Moms

Meetup.com

Facebook Support Groups for Black Moms

Black Stay-At-Home Mom Village

Black Moms Connection

Black Moms in Charge

Single Black Mothers

Moms of Black Daughters

Moms of Black Sons

Black Moms in College & Beyond

Breast Milk Donation for Black Moms

Sisterhood for Young Black Moms

CGAA – Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous – Support Meetings, Support Chat for Family and Friends, Resources – Weekdays and Weekends @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 19 all-day

 

Who We Are

Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of people who support each other in recovering from the problems resulting from excessive game playing. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop video gaming, which is completely up to you. CGAA has no dues or fees. Our groups share their collective experience and the principles that helped them, but CGAA has no experts, hierarchy, or required beliefs. We have etiquette and traditions, but no strict rules.
If you are struggling with compulsive gaming, leave your contact info at 970-364-3497 and a CGAA member will call you back
Or email us at helpline@cgaa.info
For other issues, contact us at support@cgaa.info

 

ZOOM MEETINGS

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 
ZOOM MEETING

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 

Gamers Find A Local Support Group

Use the link below to get more information about local groups and a notification when a local meeting is started. Due to the COVID pandemic, most meetings are currently held in an outdoor setting or online.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LOCAL GROUP FINDER TOOL

 

CONTACT GROUPS IN OREGON BY LOCATION

 

 

SUPPORT FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

What Can I Do?

Video gaming is a common pastime. To many people, it is surprising that it can become a serious addiction, that is, an activity that is engaged in compulsively, without control or concern for consequences.

Video gaming addiction is a very serious problem that is harmful to everyone it touches. Since everyone involved suffers from it, everyone involved needs some help. Here are some important things to know.

First, no one is responsible for someone else’s compulsive gaming. As the Al-Anon slogan goes, “I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it.”

You didn’t cause it.

Some people partly blame themselves for the dysfunctional behavior of their family members, particularly with addicts who are very quick to shift responsibility off themselves and blame others. Perhaps you played games with your loved one, purchased games, or encouraged it, thinking it was a harmless leisure activity. Maybe you’ve been involved in some conflict and wonder if that has driven him or her to hide away in gaming. But no one is responsible for another person’s behavior or mental disorders.

You can’t control it.

You may have already tried to talk to your friend or family member. Perhaps you have bargained with them, or given ultimatums. You have tried to help them see what damage they are doing to themselves and others. And none of it has worked. This is baffling to you. Why don’t they seem to understand or care? Why can’t they see what is obvious to you? This is actually a symptom of the disease of addiction, one that destines efforts for control to failure.

You can’t cure it.

We all would like to believe that we have the ability to help those we love. We often think that if we can just get the right information, figure out the right thing to say or do, perhaps change something about ourselves, we can fix the problem. People should be able to solve their own problems. Why can’t we do that with this one? There is a simple reason. There is no cure for addiction. It requires treatment. The recovery process is long and difficult. And there is only one person who can start that process, the one who is gaming compulsively. There are things you can do. Here are some suggestions that you may want to consider, that other family members and friends have found helpful.

Get information.

The literature of recovery fellowships for family and friends of addicts (such as Al-Anon) has much helpful guidance, some of which is available online as well. There are people who have been in situations very similar to yours, who have learned much from them, and who are willing to share the lessons learned, their experience, strength and hope. We hope you avail yourself of such resources.

Detach with love.

Putting energy into arguing with someone who is playing compulsively will not help either of you. Your loved one has a serious problem that you are powerless to control or cure, and that they will not get help until they want it. As much as you love someone, you cannot force this process on another person.

Stop enabling.

Paradoxically, at the same time people are arguing with, bargaining with or shaming a compulsive gamer, they are often (perhaps without realizing it) supporting the addiction in many ways. Anything that shields an addict from the consequences of his or her behavior is enabling, and can include such basic things as providing food, shelter, money, companionship, housekeeping, and covering for employment and legal difficulties. Helping a compulsive gamer keep up an appearance of normalcy is helping him or her continue in the destructive behavior. While you cannot change him or her, you can make changes for yourself. You can shift your energy away from enabling behaviors and toward meeting your own needs.

Take care of yourself.

Whether or not your loved one ever stops gaming, you deserve to have a healthy and happy life. Once you have accepted that you are powerless over their gaming behavior, you can begin to focus on what you can do for yourself, to accomplish your own goals. With the help of others who have been where you are, you can learn to set healthy boundaries and stick to them.

Join our WhatsApp Chat Site for Family and Friends!

Game-Anon

WhatsApp Group Invite

Visit whatsapp.com/dl on your mobile phone to install.

By installing WhatsApp, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

 

Chat Using A Macintosh

 

Mac OS X 10.10 and higher. WhatsApp must be installed on your phone.

By clicking the Download button, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

DOWNLOAD FOR MAC OS X

Download for Windows 8 and higher (64-bit)
Download for Windows 8 and higher (32-bit)

 

 


Things To Do Instead of Gaming

One of the things we were trying to do with our gaming was meet some basic needs. If we do not meet those needs in normal healthy ways, we will suffer much stronger urges to game again. Some basic needs to cover are social needs, self expression, creativity, a sense of challenge and accomplishment, stress relief, a sense of purpose and meaning, and a sense of safety through control and predictability.

Here are some ideas for activities that will help meet these needs, reduce cravings, help with recovery from addiction, and fill some of the hours freed from compulsive gaming.

Please don’t let the length of this list overwhelm you. The idea is not to start ten new things and try to change everything all at once. We seek small bits of progress, not perfection. A good place to start is to put first things first. What need is currently most important? What’s right in front of me? What opportunity has come my way recently? If we take steps of small improvement with one or two areas each day, we are moving in the right direction.

 

Stress Relief

  • Talking with a sponsor or recovery buddy, CGAA meetings, or step work
  • Getting outside for fresh air and sunlight by taking a walk or doing some outdoor work
  • Meditation, coloring, craft work, journaling, or reading
 

Sense of safety through freedom, control, and predictability

  • Goal setting
  • Counseling or psychotherapy
  • Home organization, renovation, or spring cleaning
 

Sense of purpose, meaning, and self-respect

  • Supporting and growing the larger CGAA fellowship through service work like helping run a meeting, starting a local meeting, doing outreach to professionals, or attending CGAA business meetings
  • Attending a spiritual group like meditation, yoga, spiritual retreat, or religious gathering
  • Doing volunteer work like teaching, helping others, animal care, or building community places
  • Caring for a pet, house plants, or garden
 

Social needs

  • Attending CGAA meetings, connecting outside of meetings, reaching out to newcomers, or calling someone
  • Joining a hobby group like theater, a hiking group, art workshop, book club, public speaking, board games or card game group
  • Hosting a fun event like board games night or karaoke
  • Playing team sports, taking up martial arts, or playing one-on-one sports
  • Going to fun events like concerts, dances, or events on meetup.com
  • Calling up, video conferencing, or visiting with friends, family, neighbors, or other communities
 

Self expression and creativity

  • Journaling, opening up to a CGAA sponsor, or sharing openly in a meeting
  • Art work like drawing, photography, sculpting, or creative writing
  • Performance art like theater, singing, playing music, or writing music
 

Sense of challenge and accomplishment

  • Working the steps with a sponsor
  • Crafts like woodworking, origami, knitting
  • Outdoor activities like gardening, geocaching, bird watching, star gazing, tracking, plant identification, survival skills, or boating
  • Learning something like a foreign language, dancing, magic tricks, mechanical repair, cooking, a musical instrument, or computer programming
  • Career goals like getting a new job, starting a business, enrolling in school, or taking classes
 

Reconnection to one’s body and whole self

  • Meditating on breath, sounds, or bodily sensations
  • Exercise like walking, hiking, swimming, cycling, yoga, jogging, going to a gym, or playing a sport

If you are in your first week or two off of games, it’s likely that few of these ideas will appeal to you. That’s normal. Until our minds and bodies have some time to heal, we have low interest, energy, and motivation. This list will probably not give you something that you can plug in place of video games and immediately throw yourself into with the same zeal. This list is meant to help us explore new ways of spending our time, meeting our needs, and connecting with people. Find a few that hold some appeal and try taking some small steps in their direction. If you can’t seem to think of anything fun to do except game, you can come back to this list, find the most appealing thing, and just take a couple of little steps in its direction.

Consider setting reminders for yourself or keeping a schedule of your time and new activities. It is important to appreciate the small victories of exercising willpower, regaining motivation, and socializing. It helps to discuss our progress and the challenges we experience with a CGAA sponsor, recovery buddy, personal counselor, or therapist.

Rediscovering What is Fun

It is normal to think that nothing but gaming sounds fun. For most of us, our years of compulsive gaming warped and narrowed our idea of fun. As small children, it meant almost anything new or interesting or social or even mildly rewarding. Years of pulling the dopamine lever with video games changed our concept of fun to require instant gratification, frequent rewards, clear and constant progress, excitement, intense visuals, control, and/or predictability.

Part of recovery is letting our concept of fun expand back outward to a wide world of possible new challenges and experiences, many of which are calm and subtle compared to video games. It takes time to overcome withdrawals and heal from the damage, but the change does happen if we abstain from all gaming long term and focus on new pursuits and improving our lives. This list has many activities that do not meet the old, narrow, warped idea of “fun,” but those of us who persist at exploring them do find many to be gratifying and enjoyable.

Take, for example, a hike up a mountain. To a group of hikers excited to venture into the wilderness with friends and see wildlife and panoramic views from on high, all while getting a great workout, it’s a ton of fun. To someone who is uninterested in hiking, out of shape, and focused on every little unpleasant aspect of it, it’s a torturous death march. It is exactly the same hike in either case. The difference is in the attitude and conditioning.

The same is true with every item of these lists. Whether or not an activity sounds fun or torturous depends entirely upon attitude and conditioning. Every one of them has the potential to be gratifying and enjoyable if we adopt a positive attitude, try to have fun, and persist at it, especially when we involve friends and like-minded people.

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource number (1-800-698-2411) & Veteran Resource Listings
Mar 19 all-day

 

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource Number (1-800-698-2411) & Veterans Resource Listings
Mar 19 all-day

 

VA now allows veterans in suicidal crisis to go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for free emergency healthcare

Veterans in acute suicidal crisis can now go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for emergency health care at no cost — including inpatient or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days.

Veterans do not need to be enrolled in VA health care to use this benefit. This expansion will increase access to acute suicide care for up to 9 million veterans who are not currently enrolled in the VA system.

The final policy, which took effect on Jan. 17, allows the VA to:

  • Provide, pay for, or reimburse for treatment of eligible individuals’ emergency suicide care, transportation costs, and follow-up care at a VA or non-VA facility for up to 30 days of inpatient care and 90 days of outpatient care.
  • Make appropriate referrals for care following the period of emergency suicide care.
  • Determine eligibility for other VA services and benefits.
  • Refer eligible individuals for appropriate VA programs and benefits following the period of emergency suicide care.

Eligible individuals, regardless of VA enrollment status, are:

  • Veterans who were discharged or released from active duty after more than 24 months of active service under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces, including reserve service members, who served more than 100 days under a combat exclusion or in support of a contingency operation either directly or by operating an unmanned aerial vehicle from another location who were discharged under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces who were the victim of a physical assault of a sexual nature, a battery of a sexual nature, or sexual harassment while serving in the armed forces.

If you or someone you know is struggling: Don’t wait. Reach out. Visit www.va.gov/REACH for resources and information, or call 988 (then press 1) to quickly connect with caring, qualified crisis support 24/7.

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

RR – REFUGE RECOVERY – Addiction Support Group Meetings – Daily @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 19 all-day

 

Refuge Recovery is a practice, a process, a set of tools, a treatment, and a path to healing addiction and the suffering caused by addiction. The main inspiration and guiding philosophy for the Refuge Recovery program are the teachings of Siddhartha (Sid) Gautama, a man who lived in India twenty-five hundred years ago. Sid was a radical psychologist and a spiritual revolutionary. Through his own efforts and practices he came to understand why human beings experience and cause so much suffering. He referred to the root cause of suffering as “uncontrollable thirst or repetitive craving.” This “thirst” tends to arise in relation to pleasure, but it may also arise as a craving for unpleasant experiences to go away, or as an addiction to people, places, things, or experiences. This is the same thirst of the alcoholic, the same craving as the addict, and the same attachment as the codependent.

Eventually, Sid came to understand and experience a way of living that ended all forms of suffering. He did this through a practice and process that includes meditation, wise actions, and compassion. After freeing himself from the suffering caused by craving, he spent the rest of his life teaching others how to live a life of well-being and freedom, a life free from suffering.

Sid became known as the Buddha, and his teachings became known as Buddhism. The Refuge Recovery program has adapted the core teachings of the Buddha as a treatment of addiction.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT REFUGE RECOVERY

List of Recovery Meetings Available 7 days a week

Online Via ZOOM Select the Meeting link for ZOOM Address and Passwords

Time Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-The Magnificent 7! at 7am PST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery -Rise and Shine – 07:30am Eastern – 06:30am Central – 04:30am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Moonday Warrior-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-It’s Noon Somewhere!-Online-English-11 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Rainbow Refuge Meeting – Online – Mondays 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Aloha Mondays – Hawaii – 4pm HST – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Buddha Eye Monday-Eugene-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-In Terminus-Atlanta GA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery ‘Refuge Renegados’ – Mondays – 8pm PST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It’s Tuesday in Tokyo- 7am EST-6am CST-4am PST-US-English-TO JOIN FROM US Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Women’s Meeting – Tuesdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery The Rock Tumbler – Online -7:30 am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery Three Gems – Online – 10:30am PST – 1:30pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Just Breathe (formerly Chicago meeting) – Online – 8 pm Eastern -7 pm Central – 5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Trillium Group Book Study – Tuesdays – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery True North – Codependency / Relationship / Friends & Family – Online – Tuesdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery and Meditation – Newport, OR – Tuesdays – 5:15pm-Hybrid Meeting Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It Takes Two-Olympia, WA-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Los Angeles Venice-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Прибежище-Moscow-Russian Language-6PM-Moscow Standard Time Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Phoenix Rising-Online-English-1130 PM Eastern-1030 PM Central-830 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -It’s Tuesday in Tokyo-9pm Japan Standard Time-English-TO JOIN FROM JAPAN Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-10:30pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Eastern Early Bird – Online – Wednesdays – 6:30am EST – 3:30am PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Lucky 7- Online-English-7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-English-7:30am Middle European Standard Time Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Rising Sun Awareness Sangha-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Safe Harbor’ – 4pm PST | 7pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery ‘Sober Over The Rainbow’ – Wednesdays – 5pm PST – 7pm CST -8pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Men’s Meeting– 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Bond Street Tattoo – St. Catharines, ON – Wednesdays – Online – 6pm EST – 3pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery- Triangle- Garner 7:00 PM Eastern 6:00 PM Central 5:00 PM Mountain 4:00 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Eugene Wednesday Evening-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery – Recovery Is Possible – Online – Wednesdays – 7:30pm PST – 10:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Indianapolis – Beginner’s Mind RR Book Study Group – 8:00pm Eastern – 7:00pm Central – 5:00 Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Seven Samurai’ – Thursdays – 7am PST – 10am EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery East Coast Morning – 7:30am EST – 4:30am PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Dr. Strangeloving Kindness Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept Impermanence-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Focus On Food – All Are Welcome’ – Thursdays – 10am PST – 1pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Vancouver Sangha – Thursdays – 1pm PST – 4pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-4 Noble Truths-Online-English-9 pm Eastern-8 pm Central-6 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Big Dig-Inventory Meeting’ – Online – 6:30pm PST – 9:30pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Madison, WI-Online-English-7:30 pm Eastern-6:30 pm Central-4:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Getting Free – HYBRID MEETING – Boston InPerson + Online – 7pm EST- 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Strong Hearts, Fearless Minds’ – Thursday – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery LFK Lotus Mtg – Online – Thursdays – 7pm CST – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Thursday Night Meeting – Online – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery- Redding CT – Thursday – 7pm EST – 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Sandy, UT-Online – 7:30 PM Central Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Belmar, NJ-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-San Francisco-Online-English-11 pm Eastern-10 pm Central-8 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-60 minutes – 7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery- ‘No Matter Where You Go, There You Are’ – Los Angeles, CA – Online -10:30 am EST | 7:30am PST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Asheville Friday Morning Metta 8:00 AM Eastern 7:00 AM Central 5:00 AM Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Gimme Shelter-Online-English-3 pm Eastern-2 pm Central-12 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Divine Energy’ – Online – Fridays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Greensboro, NC-Online-English-5 pm Eastern-4 pm Eastern-2 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Houston – Online – 3:45pm PST – 5:45pm CST – 6:45pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Buddha Eye Friday – Online – 7pm PST – 10:00pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Taking Refuge-Tom’s River, NJ-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Dharma Rain-Portland, OR-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Raleigh, NC-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery ‘And on Ananda’ BOOK STUDY- Online – Saturdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Saturday Morning Live New York – 8am EST – 5am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Saturday Samadhi – 12:30pm EST | 9:30am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Ottawa Ontario Canada – Online – Saturdays – 4pm EST – 1pm PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Yurt-Eugene OR-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – The Saturday Night Speaker Meeting – Saturdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – Wise Effort – San Francisco Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Dragon Spirit-Indianapolis-Online-English-7pm Central-8 pm Eastern-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-East Coast Harmony-Sundays: 08:00am Eastern – 07:00am Central – 05:00am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Morning Spiritual-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Mindful on the Mountain-Online-English-1:30 pm Eastern-12:30 pm Central-10:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Food for Thought: Exploring Addictive Patterns in Our Relationship to Food’ – Online – Sundays – 11am PST – 2pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Sylva, NC-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sacramento Buddha Brunch- 2pm PST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Bainbridge Island, WA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Medford, OR-Online-English-8:30 pm -Eastern-7:30 pm Central-5:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Florida Awakening-Online-English-6 pm Eastern-5 pm Central-3 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Monkey Mindz-Ventura-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Funday-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Kootenay Rockies Refuge’ – Online – Sundays – 8pm PST – 9pm MST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Virtually Recovered-Online-English-12 am Eastern-11 pm Central-9 pm Pacific Online Meeting

 

SEARCHABLE LIST OF REFUGE RECOVERY MEETINGS

Mar
20
Wed
2024
0 – Bundled Event – Inspire – Drug Abuse Communities and More – Online Via Website or IOS APP – 24/7 – Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website
Mar 20 all-day
0 - Bundled Event - Inspire - Drug Abuse Communities and More - Online Via Website or IOS APP - 24/7 - Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website

Inspire Support Communities

A place that’s safe for sharing and always free for members

We’ve carefully designed an environment where it’s okay to open up about personal experiences and share sensitive health information. Joining Inspire is — and always will be — free for members.

To Open an Inspire Account, Use this link:https://www.inspire.com/

Inspire: The Vital Health Community

Inspire is the vital community of more than two million patients and caregivers —a carefully designed environment where everyone feels comfortable and safe to open up about personal health experiences and share sensitive health information. These genuine connections instill hope and drive greater understanding. Patients and caregivers from around the world discover advice and information they can’t find elsewhere, and by understanding patients’ rich and varied health journeys on Inspire, researchers and health practitioners around the world are advancing treatments and making breakthrough discoveries.

 

FIND A COMMUNITY OF SUPPORT

Click Here To See Our Support Communities

 

About the Inspire Community Platform

Create A personal Journal

Your journal belongs to you; you may choose to have your journal entries show up in some, all, or none of your communities. Journal entries are generally longer and can be on any topic.

Join Community Discussions

Discussions belong to the community and are generally shorter than journal entries and are meant to encourage conversations between members. For example, if you wanted to ask for other members’ experiences with a particular treatment, you would post a discussion in the appropriate community. If you wanted to talk about your day, something more personal or off-topic, you would post a journal entry.

Create and Manage A Friends List

Friends are other members whom you may grow to trust and want to share more information with, or with whom you want to exchange private messages. You will be able to post journal entries that only your “friends” can read, and you will be able to send messages to your friends through our site without giving out your email address.

Use Inspire A.I. for quick answers

Inspire AI is a new feature on inspire that uses artificial intelligence to provide quick responses to member questions. The responses are automatically generated. The tool leverages a large language model (LLM), similar to what is used for popular tools such as ChatGPT. When you post on Inspire, you can choose whether you want to receive a response from InspireAI in addition to receiving replies from Inspire members. InspireAI is currently available in select cancer communities.

0 – Bundled Event – MHA – Mental Health America – Inspire Support Groups and Discussion Community – 24/7 Weekends & Weekends @ Online via Inspire plus Apps
Mar 20 all-day

INSPIRE online community forum

About this Online Tool

Our Inspire communities provide a place for people with similar interests to support and encourage each other 24/7 online. Inspire is the largest provider of health-specific communities. MHA (Mental Health America) staff moderate the online support groups and communities.

Link to INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/

 

Link to Mental Health America groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/mental-health-america/

 

Browse All Groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/

Apps are available to download as well.

 

About Mental Health America

Mental Health America (MHA) – founded in 1909 – is the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans. Our work is driven by our commitment to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all; early identification and intervention for those at risk; integrated care, services, and supports for those who need it; with recovery as the goal.

https://screening.mhanational.org/content/mental-health-america-inspire

 

0 – Bundled Events – HeyPeers – PeerGalaxy Peer Support Groups and More @ Online Via Zoom
Mar 20 all-day

 

 

 

 

HeyPeers Is a Peer Support Community that. That offers peer support groups, one-to-one coaching, and private chat rooms where you can find meetings and conversations that can help you on your journey.

HeyPeers hosts hundreds of support groups meetings, including offerings from PeerGalaxy:

If you’re new to HeyPeers, you can sign-up / onboard with PeerGalaxy and access MyJourneyTracker for FREE while available:https://heypeers.com/members/sign_up?org=PeerGalaxy
If you’re an existing HeyPeers member, you can check out PeerGalaxy offerings:
02 – Urgent Info – Services and Resources for Families and Children in Response to the Recent Tragic Events Across the Country
Mar 20 all-day

 

Some Resources for Families and Communities:

Due to recent tragic events across the country

 

Agency Logo

Racial Stress and Self-care:

Parent Tip Tool

How race-related stress affects you and your relationship with your child

What effect does racism have on your health and well-being?

Not only does racism impact you as a parent, it can also impact how you interact with your children. Experiences of racism build on each other and can chip away at your emotional, physical and spiritual resources as a parent, contributing to race-related stress. Race-related stress can make it hard to have the space needed to take care of yourself as a parent, which reduces the emotional space you need to adequately take care of your children.

Racism can impact parents emotionally, physically and spiritually

Physical effects

Physical Effects

Physical Effects can include increased hypertension, illness and risky behaviors such as substance use.

Emotional effects

Emotional Effects

Emotional effects can include depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and aggression.

Spiritual effects

Spiritual Effects

Spiritual effects can include a decreased sense of purpose, lack of connection with the larger community, isolation from larger social groups and reduced involvement in communal activities that you enjoy.

Potential reactions to racial stress or trauma

Insecure feelings

Insecure Feelings

Feelings of shame and lack of confidence due to feeling that a situation cannot be changed.

Lack of trust

Lack of Trust

Feeling detached or a lack of trust for others due to experiencing multiple losses or letdowns. This can make it very difficult to seek out help and to identify potential safe sources of support.

Triggers

Triggers

Reminders of the event, such as particular people or situations, can also trigger strong emotional or physical responses (e.g., crying or rapid heartbeat).

Emotions

Difficulty Controlling Emotions

Difficulty controlling emotional responses (going from “zero to one hundred”) can occur as the body helps you adapt to potentially unsafe situations, making you feel constantly on “alert.”

The body’s response to the experience of racism can make accessing resources to cope with the situation difficult. Race-related stress is unique in that it threatens psychological resources that are needed to cope and fulfill basic needs such as financial support, housing, access to jobs, etc.

When your body is in stress mode, it is geared up to help you and your child survive, which sometimes leads to impulsive decisions. If you live in a chronic state of stress related to racism, you can start to engage in survival coping. Survival coping can help you to deal with very hard or potentially life-threatening situations. However, if you continue to exist in this mode long-term, it can make it difficult to enjoy being in the moment with your child and can reduce your ability to feel safe and in control.

What impact can racial stress have on your parenting?

Experiencing race-related stress can also impact the quality of parenting relationships in the following ways:

Impostor syndrome

When you are exposed to racism repeatedly, you often start doubting yourself and can feel like you are an imposter in dominant culture settings or in settings where you feel as though you do not belong. Your inner thoughts might sound something like: “Am I being judged?” “Am I worthy?” “I got lucky.” “I only got this because I am Black.”

Being overly alert (hypervigilance)

Experiencing racial stress can make you more aware of potential dangers and negative experiences that can occur. This, in turn, can make the experience of parenting even more stressful. When you interact with your children, you can sometimes be reminded of negative race-related experiences that you had when you were a child. This reminder can amp up emotional responses, or hyperarousal, making it hard for you to “keep your cool” and be open to flexible problem solving.

“Helicopter parenting” (monitoring in fear)

These experiences of racism and unwarranted blame or lack of acceptance can make you want to protect your children so much, that you don’t allow them to explore in the way that they need to. You may shelter them from failures, which everyone needs to experience in order to learn how to manage everyday life. You may tend to be overly cautious or suspicious. Examples can include not allowing your children to have sleepovers or go to the park, even with your supervision.

Difficulty regulating emotions

  • When your past influences your emotional state, it can affect your emotional responses to both big and minor stressors with children, such as when they misbehave. This, in turn, can lead to being overprotective or overuse of physical discipline, as a means of survival.
  • For children, having parents who can keep perspective (stay cool) when children are upset, or misbehaving is very important. Likewise, it is important to stay calm when disciplining a child, otherwise discipline may go overboard. Both of these things can be hard if you are having difficulty controlling your emotions.

Avoidance

  • Avoiding situations that are related to racism can be a needed strategy to survive; such as instances that may involve violence or threat to yourself or your family. Sometimes you may avoid reminders of past experiences due to the pain or discomfort they cause.
  • If you find yourself avoiding strong feelings or situations with your child that bring up painful memories, it may make it hard to show affection and support for your child. It may even make it difficult to know how to provide emotional support for your child during times of stress. For instance, if your child brings up their own experience of oppression or an event in their life reminds you of something from your own childhood.

Mistrusting others

  • Racism can lead to distrust or mistrust of other communities. Internalized racism is when you begin to accept negative messages about your own abilities and inherent worth by the dominant group in society.
  • When you use society’s norms to judge yourself, you can feel depressed, unworthy and just not good enough. You are taught in many ways to take these feelings and paint them onto another group.
  • Intra and interracial violence, contention among disenfranchised communities or color, and the way the media conveys information about people of color, contribute to this.
  • This kind of coping can make you more vulnerable to racism, because on some level you may believe in racial hierarchy and difference when you belittle other groups. And when you show your children that it is right to discriminate against certain other groups, you make them more vulnerable to discrimination that they face.

Minimizing racism

  • Racism is overwhelming, as is the history of violence. You are sometimes taught that accepting this and minimizing racism is the only thing you can do. But when you ignore racism, and accept powerlessness, you encourage your kids to internalize racism. This can lead to increased levels of depression, anxiety and externalizing behaviors (e.g., engaging in risky behaviors, such as alcohol or substance use).
  • When you believe that you should be able to handle and manage it all without a break or without asking for help, you are at increased risk for health problems and can miss important cues about your well-being and safety.

Self-blame

Experiencing chronically unfair and dangerous discriminatory practices due to race can lead to feelings of low worth. For parents, this can also lead to a questioning of your parenting choices and abilities.

Unbalanced Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES)

Unbalanced messaging or communication about race and ethnicity occurs when you only promote messages of mistrust, preparation for bias, or only give racial pride messages to your children.

So, what can you do to mitigate racial stress?

As parents, it is important to develop positive identities and share your cultural identities with your children. Positive cultural identity and advocacy are protective factors against racism, which can help to reduce and prevent racial stress.

There are many other ways to cope with stress and everyone has different preferences. Reducing stress can also allow you to model healthy coping strategies for your child. Here are some suggestions with links you can try.

Agency Logo
Talking with Children About Tragic Events

What do we tell our children? How do we reassure them of their own safety?

At The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, we’ve provided grief support groups for children, teens, young adults and their parents or adult caregivers since 1982.

Based on our experience, here are some things for adults to keep in mind as you struggle with how to talk with children following tragic events, such as natural disasters, plane crashes, or school shootings.

1. Don’t project your fears onto your children. They take their cues from the adults around them.
You can’t hear the news about children being murdered or communities devastated by natural disasters without thinking about how you’d feel if it happened to your family, friends, or hometown. The outpouring of care and empathy for the families who lost loved ones will be powerful, and…we all know it could have been our friends, our child, our family and community members who died or were injured.

Identifying with the senselessness and randomness makes us all feel more vulnerable. But we should remember that children don’t always see things the same way that adults do, and it won’t be helpful to them for us to fall apart. They need to see that we care, that we feel terrible about this tragedy, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. They will take their cues from our behavior.

It’s okay to show emotion. We can model for children that feeling sad, scared, and upset is normal after tragedies. But we don’t want to overwhelm them with our emotions, or put them in the position of having to ‘parent,’ or take care of, the adults around them. Make sure you also model taking care of yourself, by sharing with trusted and supportive adult friends, eating (and drinking) healthfully.

2. Try to limit their access to the recurring news and exposure to the tragedy over and over.
Over-exposure to the graphic and emotional news can be overwhelming for children and can cause unnecessary anxiety and fear. Some children who repeatedly watched the footage of planes crashing into the towers on 9/11 thought it was happening again and again. Some children (and some adults) may have difficulty getting graphic scenes and images out of their minds. Too much exposure can fuel their fear, so don’t let them sit and watch the news over and over. Better yet, set the example of not doing so yourself as well.

3. Understand that you can’t completely shield them from what happened.
It would be next to impossible to hide these events from children, as much as we wish we could. You might be able to shield your own child in your home, for example, by not turning on (or owning) a television, but you can’t protect your children from hearing about it from other kids. The fact is, they will hear about it, so although they don’t “need” to know about it, pretending we can shield them is magical thinking.

That said, you don’t need to give them more information than they can handle, or more than they’re asking for. A simple, “Did they talk about what happened in _____ today at school?” would be a good starter. They need to know that you’re not trying to hide the truth from them, that you’re open to talking about it, but that you’re also not forcing them to do so.

4. Model truth-telling and build trust with your children by letting them hear things, even hard things, from you directly.
Eight days after the 9/11 attacks, I was meeting in small groups with pre-school workers in New York City, talking about how to respond to the young children in their care about the events. A man asked to speak to me privately after one of the trainings, and asked for my advice around his 7-year-old daughter. For the last week, since September 12th, she had been having stomach aches and difficulty sleeping. He said it was not tied to the events of 9/11 because, “We don’t have a television.” As his story unfolded it was evident that he did not want to have to explain to his child why people would do such horrible things, a normal dilemma that we face as parents and adults. This child was experiencing physical reactions, as it turned out, not primarily because of her reaction to the events of 9/11, but because she was unable to share her fears and concerns and questions in her own home, faced with her parents’ denial.

Here are some principles to keep in mind as you talk with children:

1. There is no one typical reaction one can or should expect from children.
Their responses will vary all over the ‘emotional’ map, from seeming disinterest to nightmares, eating issues, and anxiety. How any specific child will respond will depend on their age, previous experience with death and loss, and their personality style. Fearful children will tend to worry; quiet children may keep their feelings to themselves; those who want to appear unfazed may exhibit a sense of bravado or lack of caring. Of course, children directly affected – those who had a family member die; those who witnessed the tragedy; those who had friends die – will tend to have longer-term reactions and needs. Watch for changes in behavior, or concerning trends. While it would be normal to have heightened anxiety and sleeplessness, any concerning behavior or troubling symptoms should be taken seriously, and if warranted, professional help sought.

2. Many children will have an increased sense of fear about their safety.
Understandably. So will many adults. After a shooting at an Oregon mall in December 2012, the news outlets were filled with people who said they’d never take their children there again. Others said they’d return as soon as it opened in order to support the stores and employees who had experienced the traumatic events, and whose livelihoods were going to suffer as a result of the several day closure. Some runners in the Boston Marathon vowed to return; others said they would never do so again.

While we can’t guarantee to our children that nothing bad will ever happen to them, we can provide assurance that these events are relatively rare, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. Children may have many questions about the events, particularly about natural disasters. Answer their questions with language that fits their developmental stage. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question. If it’s a question that might have an answer, offer to look up more information. You can also ask children what they think the answer is as they often have thoughts and ideas they want to share with you. In the case of natural disasters, if your child is fearful of something like that happening in your community, talk with them about the safety plan that you have in place for your family and home. You can also look into what community safety measures are in place and whatever elements are relevant with your children. Many children will be reassured knowing that there are specific, tangible things they and your family can do if something occurs. Some examples include, picking a meeting place, keeping flashlights in every bedroom, talking about where you will keep emergency water and food.

3. Children want, need, and deserve the truth.
In over 30 years of providing grief support to thousands of children and teens at The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families, we have never heard a child say, “I’m glad I was lied to.” Many, however, struggle with anger and lack of trust toward parents or other adults who lied to them. When we don’t tell the truth, they learn that we cannot be trusted. As difficult as it can be at times, and as horrendous as the truth may be, children want, need, and deserve the truth. Being able to talk openly and honestly with your children about tragic events and other losses, creates a foundation of trust, enabling them to come to you in the future with their questions, fears, and concerns.

 

 

Daniel Tiger

Helping Children with Tragic Events in the News

In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.

Some Scary, Confusing Images

The way that news is presented on television can be quite confusing for a young child. The same video segment may be shown over and over again through the day, as if each showing was a different event. Someone who has died turns up alive and then dies again and again. Children often become very anxious since they don’t understand much about videotape replays, closeups, and camera angles. Any televised danger seems close to home to them because the tragic scenes are taking place on the TV set in their own living room. Children can’t tell the difference between what’s close and what’s far away, what’s real and what’s pretend, or what’s new and what’s re-run.

The younger the children are, the more likely they are to be interested in scenes of close-up faces, particularly if the people are expressing some strong feelings. When there’s tragic news, the images on TV are most often much too graphic and disturbing for young children.

“Who will take care of me?”

In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grown-ups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.

Helping Children Feel More Secure

Play is one of the important ways young children have of dealing with their concerns. Of course, playing about violent news can be scary and sometimes unsafe, so adults need to be nearby to help redirect that kind of play into nurturing themes, such as a hospital for the wounded or a pretend meal for emergency workers.

When children are scared and anxious, they might become more dependent, clingy, and afraid to go to bed at night. Whining, aggressive behavior, or toilet “accidents” may be their way of asking for more comfort from the important adults in their lives. Little by little, as the adults around them become more confident, hopeful and secure, our children probably will, too.

Turn Off the TV

When there’s something tragic in the news, many parents get concerned about what and how to tell their children. It’s even harder than usual if we’re struggling with our own powerful feelings about what has happened. Adults are sometimes surprised that their own reactions to a televised crisis are so strong, but great loss and devastation in the news often reawaken our own earlier losses and fears – even some we think we might have “forgotten”

It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.

Talking and Listening

Even if we wanted to, it would be impossible to give our children all the reasons for such things as war, terrorists, abuse, murders, major fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If they ask questions, our best answer may be to ask them, “What do you think happened?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then the simplest reply might be something like, “I’m sad about the news, and I’m worried. But I love you, and I’m here to care for you.”

If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.

Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”

Helpful Hints

  • Do your best to keep the television off, or at least limit how much your child sees of any news event.
  • Try to keep yourself calm. Your presence can help your child feel more secure.
  • Give your child extra comfort and physical affection, like hugs or snuggling up together with a favorite book. Physical comfort goes a long way towards providing inner security. That closeness can nourish you, too.
  • Try to keep regular routines as normal as possible. Children and adults count on their familiar pattern of everyday life.
  • Plan something that you and your child enjoy doing together, like taking a walk, going on a picnic, having some quiet time, or doing something silly. It can help to know there are simple things in life that can help us feel better, in good times and in bad.
  • Even if children don’t mention what they’ve seen or heard in the news, it can help to ask what they think has happened. If parents don’t bring up the subject, children can be left with their misinterpretations. You may be really surprised at how much your child has heard from others.
  • Focus attention on the helpers, like the police, firemen, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and volunteers. It’s reassuring to know there are many caring people who are doing all they can to help others in this world.
  • Let your child know if you’re making a donation, going to a town meeting, writing a letter or e-mail of support, or taking some other action. It can help children to know that adults take many different active roles and that we don’t give in to helplessness in times of worldwide crisis.

 

03 – Job / Career Fairs, Events, Openings and Internships – Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness
Mar 20 all-day

 

 

 

 

 

JOB / CAREER FAIRS, EVENTS, OPENINGS, AND INTERNSHIPS 2024

Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness

NOTE: Information here is provided solely as a courtesy without any guarantees or warranties or liability of any kind whatsoever.  Use at your own risk and expense.

If you learn of any opportunities not listed here, please share via social media or email: webmail@peergalaxy.com.

NW Instituto Latino

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

¡Estamos contratando! ¡Estamos buscando un Personal de Apoyo Bilingüe para El Centro de Recuperación en el condado de Washington! Envíe una carta de presentación y un currículum a dmichael@nwilpdx.com

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

Position Description Recovery Center Support Staff

Position Description Mentor Job Description

MHAAO – Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon is recruiting for several positions.  For more details visit the link below:

* MHAAO Careers

Oregon Peer Warmline / CCS – Community Counseling Solutions

* CCS Job Openings Page

Folktime

FOLKTIME Career Page

Multnomah County Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center (CATC)

* Telecare CATC Overview

Telecare CATC Careers

Lines for Life:

Lines for Life – Jobs Page

JOB BOARDS

MHACCBO – Mental Health and Addictions Certification Credentialing Board of Oregon

MHACCBO Job Board

State of Oregon

* State of Oregon – Jobs Page

Partners in Diversity

Jobs Board

Indeed.com

Job Board for Peer Support Specialist positions

Job Board for Certified Recovery Mentor positions

MAC’S LIST features many nonprofit opportunities

MAC’S List

04 – Resources – Autism Resources, Articles, Support
Mar 20 all-day
04 - Resources - Autism Resources, Articles, Support

 

 

 

 

What is Autism?

What you should know

Autism is a severe developmental disorder that affects the way a child sees and interacts with the rest of the world. It limits their ability to interact with others socially, in fact many autism suffers avoid human contact.

Autism is part of a larger group of disorders called pervasive developmental disorders (PDD). More information about autism: Click on each of these links

 

Autism-Definition

Autism is a developmental disability that comes from a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain. It is characterized by the abnormal development of communication skills, social skills, and reasoning. Males are affected four times as often as females. Children may appear normal until around the age of 30 months.

 

Click each of these following titles learn more….

Autism Symptoms

Autism Symptoms vary widely in severity, include impairment in social interaction, fixation on inanimate objects, inability to communicate normally, and resistance to changes in daily routine. Characteristic traits include lack of eye contact, repetition of words or phrases, unmotivated tantrums, inability to express needs verbally, and insensitivity to pain.

Behaviors may change over time. Autistic children often have other disorders of brain function; about two thirds are mentally retarded; over one quarter develop seizures.

What Autism is Not

Autism can be confused with several other disorders which may have similar behaviors. Here is a list of autism like disorders that you should look at.

What Causes Autism

It remains unclear, but a psychological one has been ruled out. Neurological studies seem to indicate a primary brain dysfunction, and a genetic component is suggested by a pattern of autism in some families. It is largely believed that autism is a genetic disorder that involves several genes related to gene function. However it is unclear to researchers what causes these genes to turn on. Learn more about other causes of autism.

Autism Research

There are many exciting developments in autism research going on at the top universities. They are focusing on inherited autism and autism gene research.

Other Autism Spectrum Disorders

Asperger’s Syndrome – A child with asperger’s disorder has the same common problems as children with autism however they don’t have language development problems of a autistic child.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder and not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) – This child has autism but doesn’t meet the criteria for high functioning autism.

High-Functioning Autism – This child has autism but has normal learning and cognitive and learning skills. Language development is difficult initially but they become proficient eventually.

 

FAQ about Autism Special Education and IEP

This is an important list of questions and answers to help you deal with special education issues at your school.

 

Autism Tips for working with Teachers

This is a great check list of items to be aware of when you work with your child’s teacher and your child’s Individual Education Plan.

Tip: Go to our Autism education discussion boards and post a question with other parents.

Early Origins of Autism

 

ADDITIONAL LINKS TO RESOURCES AND EXPERTISE

Ask an Expert on Autism

Health Finder

Talk to Autism Expert

National Institutes of Mental Health

Combined Health Information Database

Abstracts on Autism

 

 

Searchable Directory of Autism Resources

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE DIRECTORY PAGE 

Or Click on the Topic area directly below

Adult Resources

Attorneys & Advocates

Behavior/Family Training

Community Living

Education

Medical Providers/Diagnosis

Non-English Resources

Respite Care Providers

Safety

Sports & Camps

Therapy Providers

 

Autism NOW Center’s fact sheets on topics of importance to people with autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities are a resource you and your family members, as well as educators, employers, physicians and others, can use to get information in an easy-to-read and understand format.  The fact sheets are available in several languages in PDF form which can be printed out for your convenience. See the full list of topics and language choices below.

English:

Spanish:

Find the resources you need 1-885-828-847

 

Article Links

Follow this page link for listings of over 800 articles and resources

https://autismnow.org/resources/

Interagency Autism Coordination Committee

 

About Autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that is estimated to affect about 1 in 36 children and approximately 2.21% of adults. Autism affects the way a person experiences the world and can result in significant challenges in social communication and interaction, as well as repetitive behaviors and unusual or intense interests.

People on the autism spectrum often have a strong preference for routines and predictability, and some are challenged in adapting to change. Many people on the autism spectrum experience sensory differences, including high or low sensitivity to sounds, light, textures, tastes, and physical touch. Some have accompanying language and/or intellectual disabilities, and some may be intellectually gifted or possess other unique abilities, talents, or strengths.

ASD can be diagnosed at any age, but differences generally appear in the first two years of life. ASD is known as a “spectrum” condition because it encompasses a wide variation in the type, combination, and severity of disabilities, as a well as a range of unique abilities and strengths, many of which can change over the course of a person’s lifespan. The type and intensity of supports and services that a child or adult on the autism spectrum may require, ranging from minimal to intensive, will vary depending on their unique needs.

With appropriate supports and an environment that promotes inclusion, acceptance, and empowerment, people on the autism spectrum can fully participate in community life and achieve their full potential.

This page includes resources that provide general information about autism.

 

Websites and Programs

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network was created by autistic people and for autistic people. This page provides an overview of typical characteristics of autism.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This tool kit provides families of children ages four and under with guidance on how to access services the first 100 days after an autism diagnosis.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 2020

This report from provides an overview of 2016 data collected by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network and Early ADDM. ADDM provides estimates of the prevalence of ASD among 8-year-old children. Early ADDM estimates ASD prevalence and monitors early identification of 4-year-old children. Full findings of the data on 8-year-old and 4-year-old children are available.

March 2020

The CDC released their first estimate of the prevalence of autism in adults based on 2017 data. They estimated that 2.21 percent of adults in the United States have ASD.

More Reports

Videos

April 24, 2019

NIMH Director Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. interviews Ann Wagner, Ph.D., National Autism Coordinator, and Lisa Gilotty, Ph.D., program chief of NIMH’s chief of NIMH’s Research Program on Autism Spectrum Disorders, to discuss advances on the study of autism in adulthood.

 

Federal Departments and Agencies

This list includes federal departments and agencies that provide funding, programs, and support for issues related to autism and other developmental disabilities.

Independent Agencies

  • National Council on Disability (NCD)
    • Meetings and Events The NCD is an independent federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities. Their meetings are open to the public.
    • Resources This page includes information on disability rights and links to resources and services on education, employment, financial assistance and incentives, health care, housing, and more.
  • National Science Foundation (NSF)
    • About NSF The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education in all non-medical fields of science and engineering.
  • Social Security Administration (SSA)
    • Disability Benefits The Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability programs provide assistance to people with disabilities. This page explains these benefits and the application process.
    • Spotlight on Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Accounts Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) allows individuals with disabilities to make tax-free saving accounts to cover qualified disability expenses. Individuals can save up to $100,000 without counting against their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) eligibility.

Transition from youth to adulthood

Websites and Programs

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

ASAN partnered with the Family Network on Disabilities to produce this guide, which prepares transition age youth for adulthood. The first half provides information on preparing for transition and the second half gives in-depth information on post-secondary education, employment, housing and independent living, and healthcare.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

March 22, 2018

This report examines guardianship and makes recommendations for its use. Recommendations are based on disability law and policy, how people with disabilities are treated in the legal system, alternatives to guardianship, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

March 13, 2019

This report describes the demographics, disability, education, and health characteristics of teens and young adults ages 12-23 on the autism spectrum.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

This webinar provided information about supports and resources to improve access to competitive, integrated employment for youth and young adults on the autism spectrum and enhance their career pathways.

 

 

Employment

National data has shown that many autistic adults are unemployed or underemployed, even when compared to people with other disabilities and in spite of having needed skills and abilities for the workplace. Researchers and policy makers have worked to develop programs that can increase opportunities for employment and improve employment outcomes. This includes job training and recruitment programs, as well as supports for employees and employers to increase retention and success in the workplace. This page provides information related to employment for people with autism and other disabilities.

Websites and Programs

This program helps public and private sectors recruit, hire, train, and retain job seekers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This plain language toolkit explains the existing policies that help people with disabilities people find and keep good jobs, and solve employment problems.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

October 9, 2018

Of the 74 state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies that responded to GAO’s survey, most reported expanding services to help students with disabilities transition from school to work as required under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), enacted in July 2014. Most state agencies reported serving more students and providing work-based learning experiences and other activities.

May 12, 2020

Researchers analyzed Rehabilitation Services Administration data to determine the association of vocational rehabilitation services with employment outcomes for students ages 16-21. Students with autism were less likely to receive job-related services less than comparison groups.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

March 23, 2020

In this webinar, Scott Michael Robertson Ph.D. provides information about government supports and resources that help youth and young adults with autism access competitive, integrated employment and enhance their careers. Full Transition Aged Youth Webinar Series.

Housing

Housing plays an important role in ensuring the well being of people on the autism spectrum and helping them integrate into the community. Some people can live independently with minimal or no supports, while others require high levels of support. There is a variety of federal and private resources that can enable people to live in settings that best fit their needs. This page provides information about models of housing for people with disabilities and resources and programs related to disability housing.

Websites and Programs

  • Medicaid.Gov
    • Home & Community Based Services This page provides information on Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) regulations. The page includes a training series for stakeholders, transition plans for individual states, technical assistance, and more. The Final Regulation page provides an overview of rules and regulations states must follow when providing HCBS under Medicaid.
  • The Arc
    • Housing Overview This page provides an overview of housing issues that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) encounter as well the Arc’s advocacy efforts. The page also describes key federal housing initiatives that enable people with I/DD to live in the community and links to additional resources.

More Websites and Programs

Toolkits and Guides

This handbook is designed to help people with disabilities find and use resources that promote independent living. It includes information on support services and waivers, housing, employment, and community resources. This handbook was created in partnership with Autism NOW Center.

More Toolkits and Guides

Reports

May 24, 2019

This report that examines occurrences of institutionalization of people with disabilities, as well as thwarted threats of institutionalization, during hurricanes and the California wildfires in 2017 and 2018. The NCD found that people with disabilities are frequently institutionalized during and after disasters due to conflicting federal guidance; a lack of equal access to emergency and disaster-related programs and services; and a lack of compliance with federal law.

June 2018

The Residential Information Systems Project (RISP) studies trends in residential service settings, funding, and expenditures for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States. The most recent report uses data through Fiscal Year 2016.

More Reports

Research Articles

More Research Articles

Videos

July 23, 2019

This workshop focused on the housing needs of people on the autism spectrum and included examples of various housing models. Meeting details.

July 26, 2017

JaLynn Prince, Adrienne McBride, and Desiree Kameka present Madison House Autism Foundation’s Autism After 21 initiative. Madison House aims to raise awareness of the abilities of and issues facing adults with autism. They also promote housing options for adults with autism and other I/DD through the Autism Housing Network. Meeting details.

 

For Service Providers and Public Services

Unlocking Potential: Innovative Library Programs Enhancing the Lives of Autistic Individuals

http://librarysciencedegreesonline.org/libraries-and-autism/

 

Making Entertainment and Public Spaces More Autistim-Friendly

https://happiful.com/making-entertainment-and-public-spaces-more-autistic-friendly

 

 

04 – Resources – VA & ODVA – Veterans Support Groups, Resources, Education, Mental Health and Advocacy
Mar 20 all-day

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

LOCATE SERVICES IN OREGON

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

Veteran Services by County

Click on the link blow for interactive map  access resources in your county in Oregon.

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

Web Resources

Oregon Health Plan – Enrollment Page

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/hsd/ohp/pages/apply.aspx

 

SAMHSA Treatment Locator

https://findtreatment.gov/

VA National Center on PTSD

 PTSD Treatment Decision Aid

 Educational Materials

  Mobile Apps

  Whiteboard Videos

  Consultation Program

 

VA Healthcare – Community Care network

https://www.va.gov/COMMUNITYCARE/providers/Community_Care_Network.asp

 

VA’s Center for Women Veterans (CWV)

https://www.va.gov/womenvet/

Minority Veterans of America

https://www.minorityvets.org/

 

Vet Centers:

Central Oregon Vet Center

Eugene Vet Center

Grants Pass Vet Center

Portland Vet Center

Salem Vet Center

 Community Based Outpatient Clinics:

Bend CBOC

Morrow County VA Telehealth Clinic (Boardman OR)

Brookings VA Clinic

Wallowa County VA Telehealth Clinic (Enterprise OR)

Eugene Health Care Center

Eugene VA Downtown Clinic

Fairview Clinic

Grants Pass West VA CBOC

Hillsboro CBOC

Klamath Falls CBOC

La Grande CBOC

Lincoln City Clinic

North Bend VA Clinic

Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC)

Salem CBOC

North Coast CBOC

 

Additional Resources By Phone:

Veterans Crisis Line: 800-273-8255, Press 1

Women Veterans Hotline: 855-829-663

Vet Center Call Center: 877-WAR-VETS (927-8387)

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Caregiver Support Line: 855-260-3274

Lines for Life Military Help Line:  Call 1-888-457-4838

Senior Loneliness Line:  Call 503-200-1633

The Trevor Project:  866-488-7386

PEER SUPPORT AND PEER TRAINING

USE THIS LINK TO APPLY

PTSD Self Screening

This self-screen can help you find out if your feelings and behaviors may be related to PTSD.

Only a trained provider can diagnose PTSD. Your responses here are private and secure—they are not collected or shared. You may take a screenshot or print this screen to share with a provider.

Do not take the self-screen for someone else. If you are concerned that someone you care about might have PTSD, please share this screen with them instead.

Start Screen

PTSD Information Voice Mail: (802) 296-6300
Email: ncptsd@va.gov
Also see: VA Mental Health

05 – Warmline – GA – Gamblers Anonymous and more – (855) 222-5542 – Weekdays and Weekends @ Phone
Mar 20 all-day

 

GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from a gambling problem.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop gambling.

There are no dues or fees for Gamblers Anonymous membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. Gamblers Anonymous is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any cause. Our primary purpose is to stop gambling and to help other compulsive gamblers do the same.”

From the Gamblers Anonymous Website:

Types of Meetings

Closed Meeting:
Only those with a gambling problem, or those who think they may have a gambling problem, and have a desire to stop gambling, may attend and participate.

Modified Closed Meeting:
Same as a “Closed Meeting” but the members would vote to include certain groups such as health professionals, guests attending with first time members, and persons with other addictions in need of a meeting

Open Meeting:
Spouses, family, and friends of the gambler are welcome
to attend and observe the meeting.

Chat:
https://m2.icarol.com/ConsumerRegistration.aspx?org=66046&pid=454&cc=en-US

Gamblers Anonymous:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/zip/table/0/na/na/na/21401/50?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

National GA Telephone Meetings
Day and Time
Call-in Number and Meeting Code
Contact Email

Sunday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5338 code 836083 #
Sunday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Monday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4925 code 554671 #
Monday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Tuesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4943 code 253824 #
Tuesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Wednesday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4160 code 611704 #
Wednesday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Thursday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4981 code 872853 #
Thursday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Friday Noon PT
1-712-770-4979 code 703758 #
Friday3pmHelp@gmail.com (TBD)

Friday 6pm PT
1-712-770-4996 code 595094 #
Friday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Saturday 6pm PT
1-712-770-5335 code 491301 #
Saturday9pmHelp@gmail.com

Gamblers Anonymous 12-Steps Virtual Online Support Groups in California:

https://gasteps.org/virtual-meeting-directory

Gamblers Anonymous Support Groups in Oregon:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/locations/state/table/OR/na/na/na/na/10?#gmap-nodemap-gmap0

Gamblers Anonymous Hotlines Website:
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/hotlines

Oregon Toll-Free Hotline Number:
1-855-2CALLGA (855-222-5542)

Gam-Anon for Family and Friends Website:
http://www.gam-anon.org/
http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/content/gam-anon-help-family-friends

AA OR A58 – Alcoholics Anonymous Oregon Area 58 – Find A Meeting In Oregon – English, Spanish, Hearing Impaired – Weekdays & Weekends
Mar 20 all-day

 

 

Find an AA Meeting In Oregon

Meetings in Spanish – Hearing Impaired Meetings – Online & In-Person – Hot Lines – Phone Apps

Looking for a local AA meeting?

Meeting lists are provided by local Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices.

You can use the district map page to find the District you’re interested in and then visit the meeting list and/or website for that district.  If a District has no website, the nearest Intergroup or Central Office may be listed.

Hotline phone numbers listed below may also help.

If interested, you can download the meeting guide app from following the links below.

 

District Websites With Meeting Lists

Link: 

https://www.aa-oregon.org/find-meetings/#districtlinks 

Click the link above for the List of Oregon AA Districts with AA Meetings and Hotlines plus Phone Apps.

AA Portland Districts map page.

For a detailed view of Districts in the Portland area, visit the map page.

Link:

https://www.aa-oregon.org/portland-districts/

NOTE: Districts, Intergroups and Central Offices are independent service entities; Oregon Area 58 is not responsible for the content of their web sites.

Higher resolution maps of the District boundaries in Portland and in Oregon are also available for download.

District Websites

 

Hotlines

Tel: (971) 601-9220  Astoria / Seaside

Tel: (503) 739-4856  Tillamook

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 2

Depoe Bay, Lincoln City, Newport, Siletz, South Beach, Toledo and Waldport

24-Hour Hotline

Tel: (541) 265-1953

 

Para Preguntas Llamar:

Tel: (541) 574-7842

 

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 3

Arlington, Boardman, Condon, Fossil, Hepper, Hermiston, Ione, Mission, Pendleton and Pilot Rock

 

Hotline

Tel: (800) 410-5953

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

Districts 4 & 28

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

~~~

 

District 5

Bend, Burns, Chemult, Culver, John Day, La Pine, Madras, Metolius, Mt. Vernon, Prineville, Redmond, Sisters, Sunriver, Terrabonne, Tumalo, and Warm Springs

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 6

Emerald Valley Intergroup:

Eugene, Alvadore, Cottage Grove, Creswell, Junction City, Lowell, Springfield, Veneta

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website & meetings list

 

~~~

 

District 7

Josephine County Intergroup & Central Office

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 474-0782

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 8

Coos Bay, Florence, Gardiner, Lakeside, Mapleton, North Bend, Reedsport

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 269-3265

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 9

Northwest/Downtown Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list 

 

District 10

Beaverton, Portland, Tigard

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 11

Gresham & East County

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 12

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Meeting schedule (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 13

Roseburg, Canyonville, Drain, Glendale, Riddle

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 673-7552

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 14

Bingen/White Salmon WA, Carson WA, Goldendale WA, Hood River, Maupin, Moro, Odell, Parkdale, Stevenson WA, The Dalles, Tygh Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (833) 423-3683 = (833-HAD-ENUF)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 15

Clackamas, Milwaukie, West Linn

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 16

Applegate, Ashland, Butte Falls, Central Point,
Eagle Point, Gold Hill, Jacksonville, Medford,
Phoenix, Prospect, Rogue River, Ruch, Talent,
& White City

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 773-4848

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 17

Klamath & Lake Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 883-4970

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 18

Clatskanie, Ranier, St. Helens, Scappoose, Vernonia

 

24-hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 366-0667  Columbia County

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 19

Southwest of Eugene

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Website (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 20

Springfield

 

24 Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 342-4113

Link: Web site (Emerald Valley Intergroup) & meeting list

 

District 21

Albany, Corvallis, Lebanon, Willamette Valley

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 967-4252

Link: Web site & meeting list

 

District 22

McMinnville, Newberg

24-Hour Hotlines:
Tel: (503) 472-1172 (McMinnville)
Tel: (888) 472-1172 (Newberg)

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 23

Tualatin

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 24

Eastside Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 25

Estacada, Gresham

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 26

North Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

District 27

Southeast Portland

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (503) 223-8569

Link: Website & meeting list (on Portland Intergroup web site)

 

Districts 28 (and 4)

Salem, Dallas

 

Hotline:

Tel: (503) 399-0599

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 29

Baker, Union & Wallowa Counties

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 624-5117

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 30

Oregon South Coast – Bandon, Brookings, Coquille, Gold Beach, Langlois, Myrtle Point, Port Oxford

 

24-Hour Hotlines:

Tel: (541) 347-1720  Bandon

Tel: (541) 469-2440  Brookings

Link: Website & meeting list

 

District 31

Hillsboro

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: 503-684-0415

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

District 32

Canyon City, John Day, Mount Vernon

 

24-Hour Hotline:

Tel: (541) 548-0440

Link: Website & meeting list (Central Oregon Intergroup)

 

Districts 34 & 35

Spanish Language districts for the entire state.

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

District 36

Southwest Portland and parts of Lake Oswego

 

Link: Website and meeting list

 

District 37

Wilsonville, Sherwood, and West Linn

 

Link: Website (Westside Central Office) & meeting list

 

Download District maps of Portland and Oregon in higher resolution formats:

 

Portland Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 670.00 KB

 

Portland Districts Map 36×42

1 file(s) 1.06 MB

 

Oregon Districts Map 11×17

1 file(s) 755.71 KB

 

~~~

 

Meetings en Español

 

Directorio de Grupos Hispaños:

 

Directory of Spanish-speaking Groups

1 file(s) 105.75 KB

 

~~~

 

Distrito 28, 34 & 35

Oficina Intergrupal Hispaña De Salem Oregon
2495 Lancaster Dr. NE | Salem, OR 97303
(503) 899-2652

 

Distrito 28

Salem

 

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting schedule

 

Distrito 34

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

Distrito 35

Para ayuda llame las 24 Horas al

Tel: (971) 327-5523

Link: Website

Link: Meeting list (en Español)

 

~~~

 

Meetings for the Hearing Impaired

 

AA Meeting Schedule for the Hearing Impaired

Hotline Phone Numbers by City

Albany/Corvallis:                 541-967-4252
Astoria-Gearhart:                 971-601-9220
Baker City:                         541-624-5117
Bandon, Coquille:                541-347-1720
Boardman                          800-410-5953
Clatskanie, Rainier,              503-366-0667
  Scappoose, St Helens,

  Vernonia

Coos Bay, North Bend,          (541) 469-2440
  Lakeside, Reedsport,

  Florence, Gardiner,

  Mapleton

Bend:                                541-548-0440
Brookings:                          541-469-2440
Burns:                               541-548-0440
Cannon Beach:                    503-861-5526
Condon                              800-410-5953
The Dalles/Hood River:         800-999-9210
Echo                                  800-410-5953
Enterprise                          541-624-5117
Eugene:                             541-342-4113
Grants Pass:                       541-474-0782
Heppner                             800-410-5953
Hermiston:                         800-410-5953
Klamath:                            541-883-4970
La Grande:                         541-624-5117
Lincoln City:                       541-265-1953
Medford (District):               541-773-4848
McMinnville:                        503-472-1172
Newberg:                           888-472-1172
Newport:                            541-265-1953
Ontario (includes Boise):       208-344-6611
Pendleton:                          800-410-5953
Pilot Rock                           800-410-5953
Portland:                            503-223-8569
Westside Central Office:        503-684-0415
Roseburg:                          541-673-7552
Salem:                               503-399-0599
Seaside:                             971-601-9220
Siletz:                                541-265-1953
Umatilla                             800-410-5953
Yachats, Waldport, Toledo:    541-265-1953

 

 

AA Meeting Finder Applications

Meeting Guide App For Android

Meeting Guide App For iPhone

 

 

 

 

 

AM – All Month – OMH – Office of Minority Health US Department of Health and Human Services – Resource’s and Publications
Mar 20 all-day

 

 

NATIONAL MINORITY MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH

OMH – Office of Minority Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

Resource’s and Publications

LGBTQIA+

Mental Health Disorders and Treatment

Substance Use

Trauma and Violence

COVID-19

BRMA – Brown Mamas – The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms
Mar 20 all-day

 

The Ultimate List of Support Groups for Black Moms

Brown Mamas – Pittsburgh & U.S.  – Brown Mamas, Inc. has been around for seven years in the Pittsburgh region.  Brown Mamas began in the living room of Muffy Mendoza.  What started as 5 moms has grown to over 4000  Our mamas love our Pittsburgh chapter so much that we are expanding.  If you are mom who is ready to not just find her tribe, but to inspire other mothers and be the change she wants to see in her community, click here to learn more about starting your own Brown Mamas chapter.

Black Moms Connect – Canada & U.S.

Mommin’ Society – North Carolina & Online

Moms of Black Boys United – Atlanta & Online

Moms Make It Work – NYC

Mocha Moms, Inc. – U.S. (seriously, everywhere)

Whine & Cheese – 27 Chapters in U.S. (including D.C., PA, South Carolina, New York, etc.)

Black Women Do Breastfeed

Motherwork by Mater Mea – NYC

Beautiful Brown Girls Brunch Club – New Jersey

District Motherhued’s DMV MomTribe – D.C. Metro Area

Soul Food for Your Baby – Hawthorne, Calif.

Black Moms Blog Events – Atlanta, GA

Birthing Beautiful Communities – Cleveland, OH

Tessera Collective – Online, Self-Care Support

Melanin Mommies – Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh Black Breastfeeding Circle –

Not-So Melinated Support Groups for Black Moms

Moms Club

La Leche League

Circle of Moms

Meetup.com

Facebook Support Groups for Black Moms

Black Stay-At-Home Mom Village

Black Moms Connection

Black Moms in Charge

Single Black Mothers

Moms of Black Daughters

Moms of Black Sons

Black Moms in College & Beyond

Breast Milk Donation for Black Moms

Sisterhood for Young Black Moms

CGAA – Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous – Support Meetings, Support Chat for Family and Friends, Resources – Weekdays and Weekends @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 20 all-day

 

Who We Are

Computer Gaming Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of people who support each other in recovering from the problems resulting from excessive game playing. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop video gaming, which is completely up to you. CGAA has no dues or fees. Our groups share their collective experience and the principles that helped them, but CGAA has no experts, hierarchy, or required beliefs. We have etiquette and traditions, but no strict rules.
If you are struggling with compulsive gaming, leave your contact info at 970-364-3497 and a CGAA member will call you back
Or email us at helpline@cgaa.info
For other issues, contact us at support@cgaa.info

 

ZOOM MEETINGS

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 
ZOOM MEETING

All family and friends of compulsive gamers welcome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83671786251

Meeting ID: 836 7178 6251

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,83671786251# US (Washington DC)
+13126266799,,83671786251# US (Chicago)

Dial by your location
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
        +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 826 013 5782
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/k0jt3FGFs

 

Gamers Find A Local Support Group

Use the link below to get more information about local groups and a notification when a local meeting is started. Due to the COVID pandemic, most meetings are currently held in an outdoor setting or online.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LOCAL GROUP FINDER TOOL

 

CONTACT GROUPS IN OREGON BY LOCATION

 

 

SUPPORT FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS

What Can I Do?

Video gaming is a common pastime. To many people, it is surprising that it can become a serious addiction, that is, an activity that is engaged in compulsively, without control or concern for consequences.

Video gaming addiction is a very serious problem that is harmful to everyone it touches. Since everyone involved suffers from it, everyone involved needs some help. Here are some important things to know.

First, no one is responsible for someone else’s compulsive gaming. As the Al-Anon slogan goes, “I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it.”

You didn’t cause it.

Some people partly blame themselves for the dysfunctional behavior of their family members, particularly with addicts who are very quick to shift responsibility off themselves and blame others. Perhaps you played games with your loved one, purchased games, or encouraged it, thinking it was a harmless leisure activity. Maybe you’ve been involved in some conflict and wonder if that has driven him or her to hide away in gaming. But no one is responsible for another person’s behavior or mental disorders.

You can’t control it.

You may have already tried to talk to your friend or family member. Perhaps you have bargained with them, or given ultimatums. You have tried to help them see what damage they are doing to themselves and others. And none of it has worked. This is baffling to you. Why don’t they seem to understand or care? Why can’t they see what is obvious to you? This is actually a symptom of the disease of addiction, one that destines efforts for control to failure.

You can’t cure it.

We all would like to believe that we have the ability to help those we love. We often think that if we can just get the right information, figure out the right thing to say or do, perhaps change something about ourselves, we can fix the problem. People should be able to solve their own problems. Why can’t we do that with this one? There is a simple reason. There is no cure for addiction. It requires treatment. The recovery process is long and difficult. And there is only one person who can start that process, the one who is gaming compulsively. There are things you can do. Here are some suggestions that you may want to consider, that other family members and friends have found helpful.

Get information.

The literature of recovery fellowships for family and friends of addicts (such as Al-Anon) has much helpful guidance, some of which is available online as well. There are people who have been in situations very similar to yours, who have learned much from them, and who are willing to share the lessons learned, their experience, strength and hope. We hope you avail yourself of such resources.

Detach with love.

Putting energy into arguing with someone who is playing compulsively will not help either of you. Your loved one has a serious problem that you are powerless to control or cure, and that they will not get help until they want it. As much as you love someone, you cannot force this process on another person.

Stop enabling.

Paradoxically, at the same time people are arguing with, bargaining with or shaming a compulsive gamer, they are often (perhaps without realizing it) supporting the addiction in many ways. Anything that shields an addict from the consequences of his or her behavior is enabling, and can include such basic things as providing food, shelter, money, companionship, housekeeping, and covering for employment and legal difficulties. Helping a compulsive gamer keep up an appearance of normalcy is helping him or her continue in the destructive behavior. While you cannot change him or her, you can make changes for yourself. You can shift your energy away from enabling behaviors and toward meeting your own needs.

Take care of yourself.

Whether or not your loved one ever stops gaming, you deserve to have a healthy and happy life. Once you have accepted that you are powerless over their gaming behavior, you can begin to focus on what you can do for yourself, to accomplish your own goals. With the help of others who have been where you are, you can learn to set healthy boundaries and stick to them.

Join our WhatsApp Chat Site for Family and Friends!

Game-Anon

WhatsApp Group Invite

Visit whatsapp.com/dl on your mobile phone to install.

By installing WhatsApp, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

 

Chat Using A Macintosh

 

Mac OS X 10.10 and higher. WhatsApp must be installed on your phone.

By clicking the Download button, you agree to our Terms & Privacy Policy.

DOWNLOAD FOR MAC OS X

Download for Windows 8 and higher (64-bit)
Download for Windows 8 and higher (32-bit)

 

 


Things To Do Instead of Gaming

One of the things we were trying to do with our gaming was meet some basic needs. If we do not meet those needs in normal healthy ways, we will suffer much stronger urges to game again. Some basic needs to cover are social needs, self expression, creativity, a sense of challenge and accomplishment, stress relief, a sense of purpose and meaning, and a sense of safety through control and predictability.

Here are some ideas for activities that will help meet these needs, reduce cravings, help with recovery from addiction, and fill some of the hours freed from compulsive gaming.

Please don’t let the length of this list overwhelm you. The idea is not to start ten new things and try to change everything all at once. We seek small bits of progress, not perfection. A good place to start is to put first things first. What need is currently most important? What’s right in front of me? What opportunity has come my way recently? If we take steps of small improvement with one or two areas each day, we are moving in the right direction.

 

Stress Relief

  • Talking with a sponsor or recovery buddy, CGAA meetings, or step work
  • Getting outside for fresh air and sunlight by taking a walk or doing some outdoor work
  • Meditation, coloring, craft work, journaling, or reading
 

Sense of safety through freedom, control, and predictability

  • Goal setting
  • Counseling or psychotherapy
  • Home organization, renovation, or spring cleaning
 

Sense of purpose, meaning, and self-respect

  • Supporting and growing the larger CGAA fellowship through service work like helping run a meeting, starting a local meeting, doing outreach to professionals, or attending CGAA business meetings
  • Attending a spiritual group like meditation, yoga, spiritual retreat, or religious gathering
  • Doing volunteer work like teaching, helping others, animal care, or building community places
  • Caring for a pet, house plants, or garden
 

Social needs

  • Attending CGAA meetings, connecting outside of meetings, reaching out to newcomers, or calling someone
  • Joining a hobby group like theater, a hiking group, art workshop, book club, public speaking, board games or card game group
  • Hosting a fun event like board games night or karaoke
  • Playing team sports, taking up martial arts, or playing one-on-one sports
  • Going to fun events like concerts, dances, or events on meetup.com
  • Calling up, video conferencing, or visiting with friends, family, neighbors, or other communities
 

Self expression and creativity

  • Journaling, opening up to a CGAA sponsor, or sharing openly in a meeting
  • Art work like drawing, photography, sculpting, or creative writing
  • Performance art like theater, singing, playing music, or writing music
 

Sense of challenge and accomplishment

  • Working the steps with a sponsor
  • Crafts like woodworking, origami, knitting
  • Outdoor activities like gardening, geocaching, bird watching, star gazing, tracking, plant identification, survival skills, or boating
  • Learning something like a foreign language, dancing, magic tricks, mechanical repair, cooking, a musical instrument, or computer programming
  • Career goals like getting a new job, starting a business, enrolling in school, or taking classes
 

Reconnection to one’s body and whole self

  • Meditating on breath, sounds, or bodily sensations
  • Exercise like walking, hiking, swimming, cycling, yoga, jogging, going to a gym, or playing a sport

If you are in your first week or two off of games, it’s likely that few of these ideas will appeal to you. That’s normal. Until our minds and bodies have some time to heal, we have low interest, energy, and motivation. This list will probably not give you something that you can plug in place of video games and immediately throw yourself into with the same zeal. This list is meant to help us explore new ways of spending our time, meeting our needs, and connecting with people. Find a few that hold some appeal and try taking some small steps in their direction. If you can’t seem to think of anything fun to do except game, you can come back to this list, find the most appealing thing, and just take a couple of little steps in its direction.

Consider setting reminders for yourself or keeping a schedule of your time and new activities. It is important to appreciate the small victories of exercising willpower, regaining motivation, and socializing. It helps to discuss our progress and the challenges we experience with a CGAA sponsor, recovery buddy, personal counselor, or therapist.

Rediscovering What is Fun

It is normal to think that nothing but gaming sounds fun. For most of us, our years of compulsive gaming warped and narrowed our idea of fun. As small children, it meant almost anything new or interesting or social or even mildly rewarding. Years of pulling the dopamine lever with video games changed our concept of fun to require instant gratification, frequent rewards, clear and constant progress, excitement, intense visuals, control, and/or predictability.

Part of recovery is letting our concept of fun expand back outward to a wide world of possible new challenges and experiences, many of which are calm and subtle compared to video games. It takes time to overcome withdrawals and heal from the damage, but the change does happen if we abstain from all gaming long term and focus on new pursuits and improving our lives. This list has many activities that do not meet the old, narrow, warped idea of “fun,” but those of us who persist at exploring them do find many to be gratifying and enjoyable.

Take, for example, a hike up a mountain. To a group of hikers excited to venture into the wilderness with friends and see wildlife and panoramic views from on high, all while getting a great workout, it’s a ton of fun. To someone who is uninterested in hiking, out of shape, and focused on every little unpleasant aspect of it, it’s a torturous death march. It is exactly the same hike in either case. The difference is in the attitude and conditioning.

The same is true with every item of these lists. Whether or not an activity sounds fun or torturous depends entirely upon attitude and conditioning. Every one of them has the potential to be gratifying and enjoyable if we adopt a positive attitude, try to have fun, and persist at it, especially when we involve friends and like-minded people.

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource number (1-800-698-2411) & Veteran Resource Listings
Mar 20 all-day

 

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

ODVA – Oregon Dept of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Resource Number (1-800-698-2411) & Veterans Resource Listings
Mar 20 all-day

 

VA now allows veterans in suicidal crisis to go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for free emergency healthcare

Veterans in acute suicidal crisis can now go to any VA or non-VA healthcare facility for emergency health care at no cost — including inpatient or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days.

Veterans do not need to be enrolled in VA health care to use this benefit. This expansion will increase access to acute suicide care for up to 9 million veterans who are not currently enrolled in the VA system.

The final policy, which took effect on Jan. 17, allows the VA to:

  • Provide, pay for, or reimburse for treatment of eligible individuals’ emergency suicide care, transportation costs, and follow-up care at a VA or non-VA facility for up to 30 days of inpatient care and 90 days of outpatient care.
  • Make appropriate referrals for care following the period of emergency suicide care.
  • Determine eligibility for other VA services and benefits.
  • Refer eligible individuals for appropriate VA programs and benefits following the period of emergency suicide care.

Eligible individuals, regardless of VA enrollment status, are:

  • Veterans who were discharged or released from active duty after more than 24 months of active service under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces, including reserve service members, who served more than 100 days under a combat exclusion or in support of a contingency operation either directly or by operating an unmanned aerial vehicle from another location who were discharged under conditions other than dishonorable.
  • Former members of the armed forces who were the victim of a physical assault of a sexual nature, a battery of a sexual nature, or sexual harassment while serving in the armed forces.

If you or someone you know is struggling: Don’t wait. Reach out. Visit www.va.gov/REACH for resources and information, or call 988 (then press 1) to quickly connect with caring, qualified crisis support 24/7.

Veteran Resource Navigator

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ODVA) has a comprehensive online resource guide (VETERAN RESOURCE NAVIGATOR) available to assist veterans in finding the benefits that are most useful to their unique circumstances at this time.

 

Use the link below for the Veteran Resource Navigator

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx)

 

USE THIS LINK TO OPEN THE VA WELCOME KIT

Print out your VA Welcome Kit

Whether you’re just getting out of the service or you’ve been a civilian for years now, the VA Welcome Kit can help guide you to the benefits and services you’ve earned.

Based on where you are in life, your VA benefits and services can support you in different ways. Keep your welcome kit handy, so you can turn to it throughout your life—like when it’s time to go to school, get a job, buy a house, get health care, retire, or make plans for your care as you age.

Download your VA Welcome Kit

You are welcome to share this guide with friends or family members who need help with their benefits too. You can print out copies for yourself and others:

Download our guides to VA benefits and services

For Veterans

For family members

Other Resources Available to Veterans and Military Service Members

DD214 & Military Records Request:

https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records

Veteran Resource Navigator site by ODVA:

https://www.oregon.gov/odva/COVID/Pages/default.aspx

(Oregon)Military Help Line:  

Call 888-457-4838

VA Crisis Line 1-800-273-8255:

Press 1.VA Confidential crisis chat at net or text to 838255 

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

Defining Discharge Status:

https://militarybenefits.info/character-of-discharge/#:~:text=There%20are%206%20types%20of,DD%20214%20must%20have%20a

How to apply for a discharge status upgrade:

https://www.va.gov/discharge-upgrade-instructions/

Oregon Supportive Services for Vets & Families (Housing):

https://caporegon.org/what-we-do/ssvf/

Clackamas County VSO’s (Veteran Service Officers):

https://www.clackamas.us/socialservices/veterans.html

Portland VA Clinic that can help with homelessness & medical care:

https://www.portland.va.gov/locations/crrc.asp

Portland VA Mental Health Clinic:

https://www.portland.va.gov/services/mentalhealth.asp

Veterans Crisis Line/ Suicide Prevention:

https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/

 

If you are a veteran or family member with specific questions not addressed here, or if you need other direct assistance,

please contact an ODVA Resource Navigator by calling (503) 373-2085 or toll-free at 1-800-692-9666.

 

Contact ODVA Headquarters

Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs
700 Summer St NE
Salem, OR 97301

Web: https://www.oregon.gov/odva/Pages/default.aspx

Phone: (800) 692-9666 or (503) 373-2085

Fax: (503) 373-2392

Email:orvetsbenefits@odva.state.or.us

RR – REFUGE RECOVERY – Addiction Support Group Meetings – Daily @ Online Via ZOOM
Mar 20 all-day

 

Refuge Recovery is a practice, a process, a set of tools, a treatment, and a path to healing addiction and the suffering caused by addiction. The main inspiration and guiding philosophy for the Refuge Recovery program are the teachings of Siddhartha (Sid) Gautama, a man who lived in India twenty-five hundred years ago. Sid was a radical psychologist and a spiritual revolutionary. Through his own efforts and practices he came to understand why human beings experience and cause so much suffering. He referred to the root cause of suffering as “uncontrollable thirst or repetitive craving.” This “thirst” tends to arise in relation to pleasure, but it may also arise as a craving for unpleasant experiences to go away, or as an addiction to people, places, things, or experiences. This is the same thirst of the alcoholic, the same craving as the addict, and the same attachment as the codependent.

Eventually, Sid came to understand and experience a way of living that ended all forms of suffering. He did this through a practice and process that includes meditation, wise actions, and compassion. After freeing himself from the suffering caused by craving, he spent the rest of his life teaching others how to live a life of well-being and freedom, a life free from suffering.

Sid became known as the Buddha, and his teachings became known as Buddhism. The Refuge Recovery program has adapted the core teachings of the Buddha as a treatment of addiction.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT REFUGE RECOVERY

List of Recovery Meetings Available 7 days a week

Online Via ZOOM Select the Meeting link for ZOOM Address and Passwords

Time Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-The Magnificent 7! at 7am PST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery -Rise and Shine – 07:30am Eastern – 06:30am Central – 04:30am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Moonday Warrior-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-It’s Noon Somewhere!-Online-English-11 am Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Rainbow Refuge Meeting – Online – Mondays 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery Aloha Mondays – Hawaii – 4pm HST – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-Buddha Eye Monday-Eugene-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery-In Terminus-Atlanta GA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Monday Refuge Recovery ‘Refuge Renegados’ – Mondays – 8pm PST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It’s Tuesday in Tokyo- 7am EST-6am CST-4am PST-US-English-TO JOIN FROM US Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Women’s Meeting – Tuesdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery The Rock Tumbler – Online -7:30 am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery Three Gems – Online – 10:30am PST – 1:30pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Just Breathe (formerly Chicago meeting) – Online – 8 pm Eastern -7 pm Central – 5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery – Trillium Group Book Study – Tuesdays – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery True North – Codependency / Relationship / Friends & Family – Online – Tuesdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery and Meditation – Newport, OR – Tuesdays – 5:15pm-Hybrid Meeting Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-It Takes Two-Olympia, WA-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Los Angeles Venice-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30pm Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -Прибежище-Moscow-Russian Language-6PM-Moscow Standard Time Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Phoenix Rising-Online-English-1130 PM Eastern-1030 PM Central-830 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery -It’s Tuesday in Tokyo-9pm Japan Standard Time-English-TO JOIN FROM JAPAN Online Meeting
Tuesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-10:30pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Eastern Early Bird – Online – Wednesdays – 6:30am EST – 3:30am PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Lucky 7- Online-English-7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Awaken and Recover- Amsterdam-Online-English-7:30am Middle European Standard Time Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Rising Sun Awareness Sangha-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Safe Harbor’ – 4pm PST | 7pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery ‘Sober Over The Rainbow’ – Wednesdays – 5pm PST – 7pm CST -8pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Men’s Meeting– 5:30pm PST – 8:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Bond Street Tattoo – St. Catharines, ON – Wednesdays – Online – 6pm EST – 3pm PST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery- Triangle- Garner 7:00 PM Eastern 6:00 PM Central 5:00 PM Mountain 4:00 PM Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery-Eugene Wednesday Evening-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery – Recovery Is Possible – Online – Wednesdays – 7:30pm PST – 10:30pm EST Online Meeting
Wednesday Refuge Recovery Indianapolis – Beginner’s Mind RR Book Study Group – 8:00pm Eastern – 7:00pm Central – 5:00 Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Seven Samurai’ – Thursdays – 7am PST – 10am EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery East Coast Morning – 7:30am EST – 4:30am PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Dr. Strangeloving Kindness Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept Impermanence-Online-English-10:30 am Eastern-9:30 am Central-7:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Focus On Food – All Are Welcome’ – Thursdays – 10am PST – 1pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Vancouver Sangha – Thursdays – 1pm PST – 4pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-4 Noble Truths-Online-English-9 pm Eastern-8 pm Central-6 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘The Big Dig-Inventory Meeting’ – Online – 6:30pm PST – 9:30pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Madison, WI-Online-English-7:30 pm Eastern-6:30 pm Central-4:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Getting Free – HYBRID MEETING – Boston InPerson + Online – 7pm EST- 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery ‘Strong Hearts, Fearless Minds’ – Thursday – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery LFK Lotus Mtg – Online – Thursdays – 7pm CST – 8pm EST – 5pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery Thursday Night Meeting – Online – 7pm PST – 10pm EST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery- Redding CT – Thursday – 7pm EST – 4pm PST Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Sandy, UT-Online – 7:30 PM Central Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-Belmar, NJ-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Thursday Refuge Recovery-San Francisco-Online-English-11 pm Eastern-10 pm Central-8 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-60 minutes – 7am PST/9am CST/10am EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery- ‘No Matter Where You Go, There You Are’ – Los Angeles, CA – Online -10:30 am EST | 7:30am PST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Asheville Friday Morning Metta 8:00 AM Eastern 7:00 AM Central 5:00 AM Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Gimme Shelter-Online-English-3 pm Eastern-2 pm Central-12 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Women’s Meeting – ‘Divine Energy’ – Online – Fridays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Greensboro, NC-Online-English-5 pm Eastern-4 pm Eastern-2 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Houston – Online – 3:45pm PST – 5:45pm CST – 6:45pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery Buddha Eye Friday – Online – 7pm PST – 10:00pm EST Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Taking Refuge-Tom’s River, NJ-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Dharma Rain-Portland, OR-Online-English-10:30 pm Eastern-9:30 pm Central-7:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Friday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Raleigh, NC-Online-English-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery ‘And on Ananda’ BOOK STUDY- Online – Saturdays – 7:30am PST – 10:30am EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Saturday Morning Live New York – 8am EST – 5am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Saturday Samadhi – 12:30pm EST | 9:30am PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery Ottawa Ontario Canada – Online – Saturdays – 4pm EST – 1pm PST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Yurt-Eugene OR-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – The Saturday Night Speaker Meeting – Saturdays – 5pm PST – 8pm EST Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery – Wise Effort – San Francisco Online Meeting
Saturday Refuge Recovery-Dragon Spirit-Indianapolis-Online-English-7pm Central-8 pm Eastern-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-East Coast Harmony-Sundays: 08:00am Eastern – 07:00am Central – 05:00am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Morning Spiritual-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Mindful on the Mountain-Online-English-1:30 pm Eastern-12:30 pm Central-10:30 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Food for Thought: Exploring Addictive Patterns in Our Relationship to Food’ – Online – Sundays – 11am PST – 2pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Triangle, Sylva, NC-Online-English-12 pm Eastern-11 am Central-9 am Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sacramento Buddha Brunch- 2pm PST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Bainbridge Island, WA-Online-English-7 pm Eastern-6 pm Central-4 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Medford, OR-Online-English-8:30 pm -Eastern-7:30 pm Central-5:30 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Florida Awakening-Online-English-6 pm Eastern-5 pm Central-3 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Monkey Mindz-Ventura-Online-English-10 pm Eastern-9 pm Central-7 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Sunday Funday-8 pm Eastern-7 pm Central-5 pm Pacific Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery ‘Kootenay Rockies Refuge’ – Online – Sundays – 8pm PST – 9pm MST – 11pm EST Online Meeting
Sunday Refuge Recovery-Virtually Recovered-Online-English-12 am Eastern-11 pm Central-9 pm Pacific Online Meeting

 

SEARCHABLE LIST OF REFUGE RECOVERY MEETINGS

Mar
21
Thu
2024
0 – Bundled Event – Inspire – Drug Abuse Communities and More – Online Via Website or IOS APP – 24/7 – Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website
Mar 21 all-day
0 - Bundled Event - Inspire - Drug Abuse Communities and More - Online Via Website or IOS APP - 24/7 - Weekdays & Weekends @ Online via website

Inspire Support Communities

A place that’s safe for sharing and always free for members

We’ve carefully designed an environment where it’s okay to open up about personal experiences and share sensitive health information. Joining Inspire is — and always will be — free for members.

To Open an Inspire Account, Use this link:https://www.inspire.com/

Inspire: The Vital Health Community

Inspire is the vital community of more than two million patients and caregivers —a carefully designed environment where everyone feels comfortable and safe to open up about personal health experiences and share sensitive health information. These genuine connections instill hope and drive greater understanding. Patients and caregivers from around the world discover advice and information they can’t find elsewhere, and by understanding patients’ rich and varied health journeys on Inspire, researchers and health practitioners around the world are advancing treatments and making breakthrough discoveries.

 

FIND A COMMUNITY OF SUPPORT

Click Here To See Our Support Communities

 

About the Inspire Community Platform

Create A personal Journal

Your journal belongs to you; you may choose to have your journal entries show up in some, all, or none of your communities. Journal entries are generally longer and can be on any topic.

Join Community Discussions

Discussions belong to the community and are generally shorter than journal entries and are meant to encourage conversations between members. For example, if you wanted to ask for other members’ experiences with a particular treatment, you would post a discussion in the appropriate community. If you wanted to talk about your day, something more personal or off-topic, you would post a journal entry.

Create and Manage A Friends List

Friends are other members whom you may grow to trust and want to share more information with, or with whom you want to exchange private messages. You will be able to post journal entries that only your “friends” can read, and you will be able to send messages to your friends through our site without giving out your email address.

Use Inspire A.I. for quick answers

Inspire AI is a new feature on inspire that uses artificial intelligence to provide quick responses to member questions. The responses are automatically generated. The tool leverages a large language model (LLM), similar to what is used for popular tools such as ChatGPT. When you post on Inspire, you can choose whether you want to receive a response from InspireAI in addition to receiving replies from Inspire members. InspireAI is currently available in select cancer communities.

0 – Bundled Event – MHA – Mental Health America – Inspire Support Groups and Discussion Community – 24/7 Weekends & Weekends @ Online via Inspire plus Apps
Mar 21 all-day

INSPIRE online community forum

About this Online Tool

Our Inspire communities provide a place for people with similar interests to support and encourage each other 24/7 online. Inspire is the largest provider of health-specific communities. MHA (Mental Health America) staff moderate the online support groups and communities.

Link to INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/

 

Link to Mental Health America groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/mental-health-america/

 

Browse All Groups on INSPIRE.com:

https://www.inspire.com/groups/

Apps are available to download as well.

 

About Mental Health America

Mental Health America (MHA) – founded in 1909 – is the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and to promoting the overall mental health of all Americans. Our work is driven by our commitment to promote mental health as a critical part of overall wellness, including prevention services for all; early identification and intervention for those at risk; integrated care, services, and supports for those who need it; with recovery as the goal.

https://screening.mhanational.org/content/mental-health-america-inspire

 

0 – Bundled Events – HeyPeers – PeerGalaxy Peer Support Groups and More @ Online Via Zoom
Mar 21 all-day

 

 

 

 

HeyPeers Is a Peer Support Community that. That offers peer support groups, one-to-one coaching, and private chat rooms where you can find meetings and conversations that can help you on your journey.

HeyPeers hosts hundreds of support groups meetings, including offerings from PeerGalaxy:

If you’re new to HeyPeers, you can sign-up / onboard with PeerGalaxy and access MyJourneyTracker for FREE while available:https://heypeers.com/members/sign_up?org=PeerGalaxy
If you’re an existing HeyPeers member, you can check out PeerGalaxy offerings:
02 – Urgent Info – Services and Resources for Families and Children in Response to the Recent Tragic Events Across the Country
Mar 21 all-day

 

Some Resources for Families and Communities:

Due to recent tragic events across the country

 

Agency Logo

Racial Stress and Self-care:

Parent Tip Tool

How race-related stress affects you and your relationship with your child

What effect does racism have on your health and well-being?

Not only does racism impact you as a parent, it can also impact how you interact with your children. Experiences of racism build on each other and can chip away at your emotional, physical and spiritual resources as a parent, contributing to race-related stress. Race-related stress can make it hard to have the space needed to take care of yourself as a parent, which reduces the emotional space you need to adequately take care of your children.

Racism can impact parents emotionally, physically and spiritually

Physical effects

Physical Effects

Physical Effects can include increased hypertension, illness and risky behaviors such as substance use.

Emotional effects

Emotional Effects

Emotional effects can include depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and aggression.

Spiritual effects

Spiritual Effects

Spiritual effects can include a decreased sense of purpose, lack of connection with the larger community, isolation from larger social groups and reduced involvement in communal activities that you enjoy.

Potential reactions to racial stress or trauma

Insecure feelings

Insecure Feelings

Feelings of shame and lack of confidence due to feeling that a situation cannot be changed.

Lack of trust

Lack of Trust

Feeling detached or a lack of trust for others due to experiencing multiple losses or letdowns. This can make it very difficult to seek out help and to identify potential safe sources of support.

Triggers

Triggers

Reminders of the event, such as particular people or situations, can also trigger strong emotional or physical responses (e.g., crying or rapid heartbeat).

Emotions

Difficulty Controlling Emotions

Difficulty controlling emotional responses (going from “zero to one hundred”) can occur as the body helps you adapt to potentially unsafe situations, making you feel constantly on “alert.”

The body’s response to the experience of racism can make accessing resources to cope with the situation difficult. Race-related stress is unique in that it threatens psychological resources that are needed to cope and fulfill basic needs such as financial support, housing, access to jobs, etc.

When your body is in stress mode, it is geared up to help you and your child survive, which sometimes leads to impulsive decisions. If you live in a chronic state of stress related to racism, you can start to engage in survival coping. Survival coping can help you to deal with very hard or potentially life-threatening situations. However, if you continue to exist in this mode long-term, it can make it difficult to enjoy being in the moment with your child and can reduce your ability to feel safe and in control.

What impact can racial stress have on your parenting?

Experiencing race-related stress can also impact the quality of parenting relationships in the following ways:

Impostor syndrome

When you are exposed to racism repeatedly, you often start doubting yourself and can feel like you are an imposter in dominant culture settings or in settings where you feel as though you do not belong. Your inner thoughts might sound something like: “Am I being judged?” “Am I worthy?” “I got lucky.” “I only got this because I am Black.”

Being overly alert (hypervigilance)

Experiencing racial stress can make you more aware of potential dangers and negative experiences that can occur. This, in turn, can make the experience of parenting even more stressful. When you interact with your children, you can sometimes be reminded of negative race-related experiences that you had when you were a child. This reminder can amp up emotional responses, or hyperarousal, making it hard for you to “keep your cool” and be open to flexible problem solving.

“Helicopter parenting” (monitoring in fear)

These experiences of racism and unwarranted blame or lack of acceptance can make you want to protect your children so much, that you don’t allow them to explore in the way that they need to. You may shelter them from failures, which everyone needs to experience in order to learn how to manage everyday life. You may tend to be overly cautious or suspicious. Examples can include not allowing your children to have sleepovers or go to the park, even with your supervision.

Difficulty regulating emotions

  • When your past influences your emotional state, it can affect your emotional responses to both big and minor stressors with children, such as when they misbehave. This, in turn, can lead to being overprotective or overuse of physical discipline, as a means of survival.
  • For children, having parents who can keep perspective (stay cool) when children are upset, or misbehaving is very important. Likewise, it is important to stay calm when disciplining a child, otherwise discipline may go overboard. Both of these things can be hard if you are having difficulty controlling your emotions.

Avoidance

  • Avoiding situations that are related to racism can be a needed strategy to survive; such as instances that may involve violence or threat to yourself or your family. Sometimes you may avoid reminders of past experiences due to the pain or discomfort they cause.
  • If you find yourself avoiding strong feelings or situations with your child that bring up painful memories, it may make it hard to show affection and support for your child. It may even make it difficult to know how to provide emotional support for your child during times of stress. For instance, if your child brings up their own experience of oppression or an event in their life reminds you of something from your own childhood.

Mistrusting others

  • Racism can lead to distrust or mistrust of other communities. Internalized racism is when you begin to accept negative messages about your own abilities and inherent worth by the dominant group in society.
  • When you use society’s norms to judge yourself, you can feel depressed, unworthy and just not good enough. You are taught in many ways to take these feelings and paint them onto another group.
  • Intra and interracial violence, contention among disenfranchised communities or color, and the way the media conveys information about people of color, contribute to this.
  • This kind of coping can make you more vulnerable to racism, because on some level you may believe in racial hierarchy and difference when you belittle other groups. And when you show your children that it is right to discriminate against certain other groups, you make them more vulnerable to discrimination that they face.

Minimizing racism

  • Racism is overwhelming, as is the history of violence. You are sometimes taught that accepting this and minimizing racism is the only thing you can do. But when you ignore racism, and accept powerlessness, you encourage your kids to internalize racism. This can lead to increased levels of depression, anxiety and externalizing behaviors (e.g., engaging in risky behaviors, such as alcohol or substance use).
  • When you believe that you should be able to handle and manage it all without a break or without asking for help, you are at increased risk for health problems and can miss important cues about your well-being and safety.

Self-blame

Experiencing chronically unfair and dangerous discriminatory practices due to race can lead to feelings of low worth. For parents, this can also lead to a questioning of your parenting choices and abilities.

Unbalanced Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES)

Unbalanced messaging or communication about race and ethnicity occurs when you only promote messages of mistrust, preparation for bias, or only give racial pride messages to your children.

So, what can you do to mitigate racial stress?

As parents, it is important to develop positive identities and share your cultural identities with your children. Positive cultural identity and advocacy are protective factors against racism, which can help to reduce and prevent racial stress.

There are many other ways to cope with stress and everyone has different preferences. Reducing stress can also allow you to model healthy coping strategies for your child. Here are some suggestions with links you can try.

Agency Logo
Talking with Children About Tragic Events

What do we tell our children? How do we reassure them of their own safety?

At The Dougy Center in Portland, Oregon, we’ve provided grief support groups for children, teens, young adults and their parents or adult caregivers since 1982.

Based on our experience, here are some things for adults to keep in mind as you struggle with how to talk with children following tragic events, such as natural disasters, plane crashes, or school shootings.

1. Don’t project your fears onto your children. They take their cues from the adults around them.
You can’t hear the news about children being murdered or communities devastated by natural disasters without thinking about how you’d feel if it happened to your family, friends, or hometown. The outpouring of care and empathy for the families who lost loved ones will be powerful, and…we all know it could have been our friends, our child, our family and community members who died or were injured.

Identifying with the senselessness and randomness makes us all feel more vulnerable. But we should remember that children don’t always see things the same way that adults do, and it won’t be helpful to them for us to fall apart. They need to see that we care, that we feel terrible about this tragedy, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. They will take their cues from our behavior.

It’s okay to show emotion. We can model for children that feeling sad, scared, and upset is normal after tragedies. But we don’t want to overwhelm them with our emotions, or put them in the position of having to ‘parent,’ or take care of, the adults around them. Make sure you also model taking care of yourself, by sharing with trusted and supportive adult friends, eating (and drinking) healthfully.

2. Try to limit their access to the recurring news and exposure to the tragedy over and over.
Over-exposure to the graphic and emotional news can be overwhelming for children and can cause unnecessary anxiety and fear. Some children who repeatedly watched the footage of planes crashing into the towers on 9/11 thought it was happening again and again. Some children (and some adults) may have difficulty getting graphic scenes and images out of their minds. Too much exposure can fuel their fear, so don’t let them sit and watch the news over and over. Better yet, set the example of not doing so yourself as well.

3. Understand that you can’t completely shield them from what happened.
It would be next to impossible to hide these events from children, as much as we wish we could. You might be able to shield your own child in your home, for example, by not turning on (or owning) a television, but you can’t protect your children from hearing about it from other kids. The fact is, they will hear about it, so although they don’t “need” to know about it, pretending we can shield them is magical thinking.

That said, you don’t need to give them more information than they can handle, or more than they’re asking for. A simple, “Did they talk about what happened in _____ today at school?” would be a good starter. They need to know that you’re not trying to hide the truth from them, that you’re open to talking about it, but that you’re also not forcing them to do so.

4. Model truth-telling and build trust with your children by letting them hear things, even hard things, from you directly.
Eight days after the 9/11 attacks, I was meeting in small groups with pre-school workers in New York City, talking about how to respond to the young children in their care about the events. A man asked to speak to me privately after one of the trainings, and asked for my advice around his 7-year-old daughter. For the last week, since September 12th, she had been having stomach aches and difficulty sleeping. He said it was not tied to the events of 9/11 because, “We don’t have a television.” As his story unfolded it was evident that he did not want to have to explain to his child why people would do such horrible things, a normal dilemma that we face as parents and adults. This child was experiencing physical reactions, as it turned out, not primarily because of her reaction to the events of 9/11, but because she was unable to share her fears and concerns and questions in her own home, faced with her parents’ denial.

Here are some principles to keep in mind as you talk with children:

1. There is no one typical reaction one can or should expect from children.
Their responses will vary all over the ‘emotional’ map, from seeming disinterest to nightmares, eating issues, and anxiety. How any specific child will respond will depend on their age, previous experience with death and loss, and their personality style. Fearful children will tend to worry; quiet children may keep their feelings to themselves; those who want to appear unfazed may exhibit a sense of bravado or lack of caring. Of course, children directly affected – those who had a family member die; those who witnessed the tragedy; those who had friends die – will tend to have longer-term reactions and needs. Watch for changes in behavior, or concerning trends. While it would be normal to have heightened anxiety and sleeplessness, any concerning behavior or troubling symptoms should be taken seriously, and if warranted, professional help sought.

2. Many children will have an increased sense of fear about their safety.
Understandably. So will many adults. After a shooting at an Oregon mall in December 2012, the news outlets were filled with people who said they’d never take their children there again. Others said they’d return as soon as it opened in order to support the stores and employees who had experienced the traumatic events, and whose livelihoods were going to suffer as a result of the several day closure. Some runners in the Boston Marathon vowed to return; others said they would never do so again.

While we can’t guarantee to our children that nothing bad will ever happen to them, we can provide assurance that these events are relatively rare, and that we will do everything we can to keep them safe. Children may have many questions about the events, particularly about natural disasters. Answer their questions with language that fits their developmental stage. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer to a question. If it’s a question that might have an answer, offer to look up more information. You can also ask children what they think the answer is as they often have thoughts and ideas they want to share with you. In the case of natural disasters, if your child is fearful of something like that happening in your community, talk with them about the safety plan that you have in place for your family and home. You can also look into what community safety measures are in place and whatever elements are relevant with your children. Many children will be reassured knowing that there are specific, tangible things they and your family can do if something occurs. Some examples include, picking a meeting place, keeping flashlights in every bedroom, talking about where you will keep emergency water and food.

3. Children want, need, and deserve the truth.
In over 30 years of providing grief support to thousands of children and teens at The Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families, we have never heard a child say, “I’m glad I was lied to.” Many, however, struggle with anger and lack of trust toward parents or other adults who lied to them. When we don’t tell the truth, they learn that we cannot be trusted. As difficult as it can be at times, and as horrendous as the truth may be, children want, need, and deserve the truth. Being able to talk openly and honestly with your children about tragic events and other losses, creates a foundation of trust, enabling them to come to you in the future with their questions, fears, and concerns.

 

 

Daniel Tiger

Helping Children with Tragic Events in the News

In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.

Some Scary, Confusing Images

The way that news is presented on television can be quite confusing for a young child. The same video segment may be shown over and over again through the day, as if each showing was a different event. Someone who has died turns up alive and then dies again and again. Children often become very anxious since they don’t understand much about videotape replays, closeups, and camera angles. Any televised danger seems close to home to them because the tragic scenes are taking place on the TV set in their own living room. Children can’t tell the difference between what’s close and what’s far away, what’s real and what’s pretend, or what’s new and what’s re-run.

The younger the children are, the more likely they are to be interested in scenes of close-up faces, particularly if the people are expressing some strong feelings. When there’s tragic news, the images on TV are most often much too graphic and disturbing for young children.

“Who will take care of me?”

In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grown-ups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.

Helping Children Feel More Secure

Play is one of the important ways young children have of dealing with their concerns. Of course, playing about violent news can be scary and sometimes unsafe, so adults need to be nearby to help redirect that kind of play into nurturing themes, such as a hospital for the wounded or a pretend meal for emergency workers.

When children are scared and anxious, they might become more dependent, clingy, and afraid to go to bed at night. Whining, aggressive behavior, or toilet “accidents” may be their way of asking for more comfort from the important adults in their lives. Little by little, as the adults around them become more confident, hopeful and secure, our children probably will, too.

Turn Off the TV

When there’s something tragic in the news, many parents get concerned about what and how to tell their children. It’s even harder than usual if we’re struggling with our own powerful feelings about what has happened. Adults are sometimes surprised that their own reactions to a televised crisis are so strong, but great loss and devastation in the news often reawaken our own earlier losses and fears – even some we think we might have “forgotten”

It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.

Talking and Listening

Even if we wanted to, it would be impossible to give our children all the reasons for such things as war, terrorists, abuse, murders, major fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If they ask questions, our best answer may be to ask them, “What do you think happened?” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then the simplest reply might be something like, “I’m sad about the news, and I’m worried. But I love you, and I’m here to care for you.”

If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.

Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”

Helpful Hints

  • Do your best to keep the television off, or at least limit how much your child sees of any news event.
  • Try to keep yourself calm. Your presence can help your child feel more secure.
  • Give your child extra comfort and physical affection, like hugs or snuggling up together with a favorite book. Physical comfort goes a long way towards providing inner security. That closeness can nourish you, too.
  • Try to keep regular routines as normal as possible. Children and adults count on their familiar pattern of everyday life.
  • Plan something that you and your child enjoy doing together, like taking a walk, going on a picnic, having some quiet time, or doing something silly. It can help to know there are simple things in life that can help us feel better, in good times and in bad.
  • Even if children don’t mention what they’ve seen or heard in the news, it can help to ask what they think has happened. If parents don’t bring up the subject, children can be left with their misinterpretations. You may be really surprised at how much your child has heard from others.
  • Focus attention on the helpers, like the police, firemen, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and volunteers. It’s reassuring to know there are many caring people who are doing all they can to help others in this world.
  • Let your child know if you’re making a donation, going to a town meeting, writing a letter or e-mail of support, or taking some other action. It can help children to know that adults take many different active roles and that we don’t give in to helplessness in times of worldwide crisis.

 

03 – Job / Career Fairs, Events, Openings and Internships – Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness
Mar 21 all-day

 

 

 

 

 

JOB / CAREER FAIRS, EVENTS, OPENINGS, AND INTERNSHIPS 2024

Peer Support, Recovery & Wellness

NOTE: Information here is provided solely as a courtesy without any guarantees or warranties or liability of any kind whatsoever.  Use at your own risk and expense.

If you learn of any opportunities not listed here, please share via social media or email: webmail@peergalaxy.com.

NW Instituto Latino

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

¡Estamos contratando! ¡Estamos buscando un Personal de Apoyo Bilingüe para El Centro de Recuperación en el condado de Washington! Envíe una carta de presentación y un currículum a dmichael@nwilpdx.com

We are hiring! We are seeking Bilingual Recovery Center Support Staff in Washington County! Please send a cover letter & resume to dmichael@nwilpdx.com

Position Description Recovery Center Support Staff

Position Description Mentor Job Description

MHAAO – Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon is recruiting for several positions.  For more details visit the link below:

* MHAAO Careers

Oregon Peer Warmline / CCS – Community Counseling Solutions

* CCS Job Openings Page

Folktime

FOLKTIME Career Page

Multnomah County Crisis Assessment & Treatment Center (CATC)

* Telecare CATC Overview

Telecare CATC Careers

Lines for Life:

Lines for Life – Jobs Page

JOB BOARDS

MHACCBO – Mental Health and Addictions Certification Credentialing Board of Oregon

MHACCBO Job Board

State of Oregon

* State of Oregon – Jobs Page

Partners in Diversity

Jobs Board

Indeed.com

Job Board for Peer Support Specialist positions

Job Board for Certified Recovery Mentor positions

MAC’S LIST features many nonprofit opportunities

MAC’S List