She called the number on her syllabus offering counseling. No one picked up.

©Lisa Kurian Philip/WBEZ: Isabelle Dizon contacted her campus counseling center when she hit a low point during her sophomore year of college, but never heard back. Now a junior at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she hopes the school hires someone at the center to, at the very least, pick up the phone.

High need, low accessibility: Oglethorpe County residents face barriers to mental health care, even as teens and schools are willing to have the conversation

©Navya Shukla/The Oglethorpe Echo: Katie Edwards, a counselor at Oglethorpe County Elementary School, helps third-grader Londyn Wilson with a work- sheet during a guidance lesson last month. The lessons are regularly held to guide students' empathy, emotion regulation, perseverance and more.

For many Black sickle cell patients, care must reach deeper

©Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian: Sickle cell patient Alexis Tappan, right, is checked out by Rana Cooper on at the Methodist Hospital Cancer Institute and Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center. Memphis is home to one of the nation’s largest populations of adults living with sickle cell disease.

CARE Court Aims To Help People Living With Serious Mental Illnesses. Would It Bring New Solutions Or More Problems?

©Alborz Kamalizad/LAist
©Alborz Kamalizad/LAist

KPCC, July 20, 2022, by Robert Garrova: There’s a bill making its way through the state legislature that aims to create new avenues for people living with a serious mental illness to get life-saving treatment.

The plan, first introduced by Governor Gavin Newsom in the spring, is called the Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Act — or CARE Court for short.

But the proposal, which has seen broad support so far from California lawmakers, remains very controversial, even as it clears major milestones in Sacramento.

The bill cleared the Senate unanimously in May and easily advanced out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. The measure is expected to hit the governor’s desk this fall.

Here are the basics of the bill as it stands now: People living with a serious, untreated mental illness could be referred for a court-ordered care plan that would, after psychiatric screenings, last up to two years. The court intervention could be initiated by a family member, county behavioral health workers or even first responders. If the care plan fails, the person could be hospitalized or referred to a conservatorship. That might mean forced treatment and a stripping of individual rights.

Read more from KPCC here.

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