A few days before he delivered the weekly Friday sermon, the imam received a call from a distressed young woman.

Mufti Asif Umar, imam of Daar-Ul-Islam mosque in Manchester, Missouri, listened while the woman described how her emotional pain felt worse than any physical pain, even when she pinched herself as hard as she could.

“That really worried me,” Umar said. He counseled her and urged her to seek additional support.

The conversation made him think about others facing intense pressure and hurt, and the young people who had died by suicide in the past few years. Their funeral notices and obituaries never listed the cause of death due to the stigma in most religious communities.

Umar had never spoken directly about suicide to our congregation before.

That day, he knew he had to say something.

“I want to get a conversation started,” he said. “This is real, and this is happening.”

He wondered how he would get across multiple messages -- the sanctity of life, the compassion for those suffering and bereaved, the hope for anyone struggling -- within his 25-minute time slot.

I was in the mosque when he delivered that sermon earlier this month. It was the first time I’d ever heard any imam speak openly about mental health issues and urge Muslims who are struggling to seek therapy. Umar reminded us that we had a religious duty to check on one another and reach out if we noticed that something may be wrong.

The majority of religious traditions describe suicide as a major or grave sin. This can make it more difficult for individuals or families to seek help, fearing judgment or condemnation. However, modern religious teachings emphasize compassion and God’s mercy, while recognizing the realities of mental illness and trauma.

Tight-knit religious communities can also offer protection against suicide risk if they focus on providing social support, reducing loneliness and creating networks of care that reach people before they hit a crisis point. Faith can give a person a sense of purpose, belonging, hope and resiliency.

Recently, I’ve noticed the topic of suicide repeatedly come up in a variety of groups. Joan Lipkin, a playwright, director and educator, recently posted on her Facebook page about the difficulty of honestly sharing one’s vulnerabilities in the creative community. Creative people, and others who are deeply sensitive, can feel pain so intensely.

“I really do think that creatives can be afraid to share their vulnerability because they are concerned that it may affect their ability to be cast or hired or get grants,” she said.

In another local group for mothers, a woman posted anonymously seeking help for incessant suicidal thoughts. I’ve seen posts from those struggling but unable to afford treatment, or to even find a place that will take them. Others fear losing their children in a custody battle.

Despite all the barriers that may prevent a person from asking for help -- fear of social judgment, professional consequences, legal ramifications, lack of insurance or money, long waiting lists for treatment -- the openness of people willing to talk about this is a positive change. And it doesn’t take much to tell someone that they aren’t alone, remind them that someone cares and that things will get better.

Umar said that he would like the leaders at our mosque and Islamic school to get training on the warning signs of suicide and how to best respond to those who may be at risk. He said his sermon was meant to serve as a wake-up call.

“We could all be a part of a solution to this,” he said.

It will take people from all walks of life, from religious shepherds to arts leaders to compassionate neighbors, to lead the way.

The rest of us should follow.

If you are feeling hopeless or struggling, or know someone who is, please call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Just when I thought we had become numb to state-directed cruelty and injustice -- that our outrage was spent, that we needed to look away from the burning embers of American democracy to preserve our own sanity -- a video so horrific emerged that it reignited the full anguish and anger this moment deserves.

We watched ICE agent Jonathan Ross repeatedly shoot Renee Good, killing the 37-year-old Minneapolis mother who had just dropped her 6-year-old daughter off at school.

A brown puppy stuffed animal spilled out of the glove compartment of her blood-splattered car.

A video released by the Department of Homeland Security captured Good's last words to Ross: “That’s fine, I’m not mad at you.” The same video captures what an ICE agent (potentially Ross) uttered at her after she was shot three times: “Fucking bitch.”

The video shows Ross holding a gun in one hand and a cellphone, to keep filming, in the other. As one does when they are terrified for their life.

Before any investigation even began, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the agent acted in self-defense and called Good a “domestic terrorist.” But multiple journalistic outlets and legal analysts examined video footage frame-by-frame from various angles. The footage at least suggests that Good's SUV was moving away and not attempting to strike the agent when shots were fired.

The FBI is investigating the shooting, but state and local authorities have been blocked from viewing its findings. Six federal prosecutors have resigned over the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation.

Polling conducted shortly after the killing shows that 35% of respondents believe Ross’ shooting of Good was justified.

The government narrative that citizens must “comply or die” drives home the reality of the past year: We are living under a far-right government that embraces authoritarian tactics.

People in many parts of the world have been experiencing rising authoritarianism and a global decline in democratic norms. Global democracy scores have dropped to historic lows.

What this looks like in practice is tighter control of the media and civil society, challenges to judicial independence, manipulating or weakening the electoral process, suppressing dissent and protest, and consolidating power.

As one of the world’s oldest continuous constitutional democracies, it’s shocking to see America’s backslide and realize how few safeguards we had against this. In recent elections, far-right parties in Europe have won around 25% of the vote. The strongest showing has been in France, where the far-right captured about 31% -- a record high -- in the European Parliament election in 2024.

The 35% who said they support ICE’s killing of Good likely share the worldview and beliefs of those voters. What they fail to realize is that no citizen is safe under an authoritarian government. Not a single one. Even if you never attend a single protest or speak a word of politics, you still need fair courts, stable laws that apply equally, guaranteed rights, and truthful and accurate information from authorities.

Every citizen loses legal, economic and social protections under the far right.

When people can no longer trust the government or media to tell them the truth, it’s harder to make daily decisions about your health, safety and financial choices. Authoritarians weaken the social safety net and labor protections and undermine independent economic institutions. (Jerome Powell, the Fed chair facing investigation, can attest to this.) Far-right groups shift the definition of who counts as fully deserving citizens worthy of protection -- excluding those who challenge them in any regard.

When the law is less predictable, there is less protection against the abuse of power and less recourse for those harmed by the state or those it favors.

If armed federal agents approached you, which mindset would you want them to have?

You could “comply or die,” as insisted by those who support ICE’s actions. You may have seconds to “comply” with conflicting instructions shouted by armed, masked agents in a chaotic situation.

But there’s another way of walking in this world. One that invokes the name of a woman we cannot forget: Be Good.

My attention span suffered a significant self-inflicted wound last year.

I’ve been using social media for nearly 20 years, so I’m well aware of the ongoing technological assault on my ability to focus. Companies compete aggressively for our attention -- a precious commodity in this economy. The entire media ecosystem is structured to fragment our attention, and the dopamine hits are difficult to resist.

Research has documented the effect of this digital distraction that has become a part of our daily lives, and studies show correlations between social media usage and shorter attention spans -- no big surprise.

I’ve known all this and figured the damage had already been done.

I didn’t realize that one small change in my habits would make my ability to focus that much harder.

As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to words on the internet. I’ve spent many years reading short-form text, like tweets and posts, along with long-form prose, like news stories, personal essays and magazine features. I subscribe to multiple news sources, including several Substack accounts, all of which send alerts directly to my inbox.

In 2025, receiving these alerts of terrible things happening here and around the world every time I opened my inbox or looked at my phone felt like an electric shock.

Rather than read the stories that provoked anxiety, I started clicking more on the short bits of video showing up prominently on my Facebook and Instagram feeds. I largely ignored the short-form video craze heightened by TikTok during the pandemic, but last year, Meta reeled me in.

I began watching the superficial and ridiculous content -- snippets of the show “Say Yes to the Dress,” viral video memes, even bits of interviews with loathsome reality TV celebrities whose shows I had never watched.

Once you start scrolling short-form videos, the algorithms have got you. They keep feeding more and more of this content, automatically showing one video after another. I knew I was using this mindless scrolling as escapism from the current events that felt frightening and out of my control. What I didn’t realize is how short-form video rewires our brain, degrading our attention and memory in a way distinct from other types of media.

It felt so easy to scroll for an hour before falling asleep instead of picking up one of the many books stacked on my nightstand. Somehow, the books felt more daunting.

I read fewer books last year than I have in my entire life.

To understand how and why this happened, I turned to Dr. Gloria Mark, author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity,” as well as a Substack newsletter called "The Future of Attention." She explained the cognitive drain caused by the constant “context switching” inherent in short-form video scrolling.

Depth of processing is a psychological concept that describes when people are actively engaged and working hard to understand something.

“That takes time, and you retain material better,” she said. With short-form video, “Our minds are whiplashed from one idea to another.”

We each have limited cognitive resources, and having to reorient every 30 seconds or minute is draining. Eventually, she said, it causes stress.

That’s the very thing I was trying to alleviate. I was relying on these high-dopamine rewards to deal with the constant exposure to stressful news, and instead I was compounding my problem. Beyond productivity, these digital dopamine addictions erode our discipline and motivation. They affect our ability to think deeply and to form and sustain meaningful relationships.

Short-form video provides a different type of gratification, Mark explained. We get a hit of dopamine when we anticipate a reward, and short-form videos always trigger that anticipation, Mark said.

Furthermore, we can develop a habit of seeking this type of media very quickly. One report from TikTok’s internal documents suggests it can take as little as 35 minutes of using the app, which equates to about 260 videos, to form an addictive habit. I watched thousands of Reels and Stories last year, to the detriment of my focus, memory and attention.

Mark reminded me of how the process of reading a book gives our brain time to make connections, to reflect, to develop cognitive patience as characters and plots unfold. She suggested setting a timer when I catch myself watching these short-form videos. I could schedule my reading time as a non-negotiable again.

A former colleague suggested removing the social media apps I still use, like Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky, from my phone entirely and only accessing them via my laptop. Another friend advised setting up a separate folder into which news alerts are automatically directed. That way it won’t feel like a deluge of alarming alerts all day long, disregulating my thoughts and nervous system.

More importantly, I finally recognized and understood how short-form videos had become an unwanted and self-destructive habit.

This year, I’m reclaiming my attention.