By Russell Toll, InsideSources.com
For years, I’ve wanted to start a nonprofit to make the best neuroscience treatments for depression and PTSD more accessible — especially for my fellow veterans and Gold Star Families.
But that takes major investment and accepting high risks.
Risks high enough to jeopardize my ability to take care of my kids. The dream had to wait, even as the need for this nonprofit became more pronounced each day. Until last year, something changed.
The enhanced child tax credit established early last year has provided a needed backstop for thousands of individuals to pursue new opportunities and businesses. As a parent receiving these monthly CTC payments, I can attest to the confidence it provided when deciding to start my own.
Confidence not that my venture would succeed — but that my children wouldn’t suffer if it failed.
While the enhanced CTC has spurred new business creation, that policy expired at the end of January, leaving the fate of many of these new businesses in limbo. For many parents, these payments allowed us to take risks or afford child care to participate in the workforce. This investment must be extended or we will forfeit the significant returns it has already yielded.
In 2009, I returned from a 15-month combat tour in Iraq. My next assignment was serving as a casualty officer, often spending time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. My experiences throughout that hospital motivated me to develop better treatments and tools for my severely wounded sisters and brothers-in-arms.
I earned my Ph.D. in bioengineering at Stanford, applying neuroimaging and neuromodulation to better understand PTSD.
My wife Heidi was laid off early in the pandemic, and as we struggled to navigate finances with our three young kids, the prospect of forming a successful nonprofit seemed nearly impossible. But it was something I had to do, as I took to heart Einstein’s famous words: “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.”
In my case, I had the privilege to know.
Electroencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation are among the most powerful and successful tools to treat people suffering from these disorders. But they’re expensive and hard to access.
Unsurprisingly, those with the least have suffered the most, including many veterans, single moms and front-line workers. Though they may greatly benefit from this treatment, it’s out of their reach. They deserve better; I had the duty to act.
Compassion is defined as a deep awareness of another’s suffering and a desire to alleviate it. My nonprofit, Compassion Neuroscience, strives to do just that. It only exists because of the child tax credit — I was finally able to focus my mind on it, knowing my kids’ well-being was not subject to risks I’d take in starting a nonprofit.
Some critics of the CTC have argued that parents receiving these benefits would misuse the money or reduce their work commitments. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In the case of my family, most of our CTC money has gone toward enrolling our youngest in preschool.
This has allowed Heidi, the hardest working person I know, to return to a full-time job. The cushion provided by the CTC didn’t make us lazy; it empowered us to thrive in the long term.
These economics aren’t unique to my household, and I am far from the only one to leverage the CTC to start a new business. Indeed, a study by the Social Policy Institute at Washington University found the expanded CTC has increased self-employment and small business formation by over 300,000 low-income households, representing growth of over 20 percent.
Beyond that, nearly a quarter of small business owners have received the CTC themselves, and a majority have seen increased revenues and more stable employment since the monthly disbursement of the CTC began last July.
The CTC isn’t about handouts, it’s about opportunity. It’s a direct investment in America’s most valuable resource: Our families, their businesses, and their future. Without the enhanced CTC, thousands of small businesses established in 2021 would have never been created.
If it’s not renewed soon, many of those may end up shuttering their doors in 2022.
Editor’s note: Russell Toll is a U.S. Army veteran, a Ph.D. recipient from Stanford University, the founder of Compassion Neuroscience, a father, and a recipient of the Child tax credit. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
