Language Guide for Reporting on Mental Health
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Poor access to mental health care leaves Georgia children who need a psychiatrist in the lurch
Georgia Public Broadcasting by Ellen Eldridge, January 22, 2024: When Layken Edenfield was little, her moods would switch quickly, her mother, Teresa Edenfield remembers. “One minute she’d be happy and laughing, and the next minute she’d be crying her eyes out,” Edenfield said. “She was really hypersensitive about certain things…
AHCCCS alerted to ‘predictable’ homelessness surge before fraud crackdown
Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR) by Hannah Bassett, December 28, 2023: The state agency at the center of Arizona’s ongoing behavioral health crisis knew its proposed billing reforms could trigger a surge in homelessness nearly a year before implementing the changes, yet still failed to adequately prepare for the fallout—or…
Being ‘my own role model’: Normalizing mental health care in the AANHPI community
Cronkite News by Deanna Pistono, December 22, 2023: For Jessika Malic, communications director of Asian Pacific Community for Action, a Phoenix-based nonprofit focused on providing access to health care, her search for the right mental health provider for herself involved some added effort. “I thought it would be great to…
How the Texas vision for seamless mental health care fell apart over 60 years
The Texas Tribune by Stephen Simpson, December 22, 2023: A lack of private providers, a swamped community mental health system, and low insurance reimbursement have cut off many in Texas from basic mental health services It was in early 2020, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, that the world…
More options, less stigma: How Georgians in recovery are breaking barriers to addiction care
Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) by Sofi Gratas, December 19, 2023: For Jocelyn Wallace, a former paramedic from Douglas County, her opioid addiction started like many others — with a prescription to treat her pain after a car accident. She was 16 years old at the time. Her addiction would endure…
Suffering in silence: Male college students less likely to seek counseling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Vanessa McCray, December 16, 2023: When Vernon Allwood helped open Morehouse College’s counseling center 35 years ago, he had to convince students to talk about their problems. “Morehouse men didn’t need counseling,” he said wryly during a fall lecture at the historically Black men’s college in…
These Oklahomans Needed Mental Health Care. Instead, They Died in Jail.
Oklahoma Watch by Whitney Bryen, December 15, 2023: Lena Corona was sitting on the porch of her Seminole home, blood dripping from her hand, when police arrived at 2:45 a.m. Her dad stood behind her, pressing a T-shirt over the wound on his chest where Corona had plunged a shard…
The mental health of migrants simmers below the surface as the next looming crisis
WBEZ by Kristen Schorsch, December 14, 2023: Support groups are trying to address the obstacles to care, including language barriers and a persistent shortage of mental health workers. Jorge Rubiano is a haunted man. For months, he has tried to find work. For months, he has slept in a shelter,…
GOP-led push to fund police over counselors leaves some schools ‘in the lurch’
Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR) by Maria Polletta, December 14, 2023: Brian Miller is a fixture at Charles W. Harris School in Phoenix, a familiar face kids and parents encounter four days a week. Mornings and afternoons, the school resource officer is in the parking lot directing traffic —…