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©Joshua Bickel/Center for Public Integrity: Hannah Norris, 13, and her mother, Lisa Norris, pose for a portrait at their home, Dec. 10, 2022, in Hilliard, Ohio.

Families take drastic steps to help children in mental health crises

The Center for Public Integrity, by Christine Herman, March 16, 2023: An insufficient mental health care system pushes some families to give up custody of their children for care. States look for better solutions. When Lisa Norris adopted her daughter Hannah out of foster care as a toddler in 2010,…

©Anna Vignet/KQED

Proven Schizophrenia Treatments Keep People in School, at Work and off the Street. Why Won’t Insurance Companies Cover Them?

KQED, by April Dembosky, March 1, 2023: What if, instead of telling patients with schizophrenia to prepare for a lifetime of disability, we asked them what they want and worked with them toward full recovery? When Yvonne was walking across campus and heard someone calling her name, she stopped and…

©WITF: Martha Stringer, at left, talks with her daughter Kimberly Stringer, at right. The Stringers have filed a lawsuit against Bucks County Correctional Facility employees after Kimberly was pepper-sprayed and restrained while detained there while suffering from a mental health condition.

Jails fail to accommodate people with mental illness. In some cases, it’s a civil rights violation.

WITF, by Brett Sholtis, November 14, 2022: As a note of disclosure, WITF and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press are challenging in court Bucks County’s refusal to release a video of an incident involving Kimberly Stringer while she was in Bucks County Correctional Facility. Months before her…

Wayne Wilson, standing in a hogan at the Native American Baha’i Institute in Houck, holds eagle feathers he uses in traditional healing ceremonies. © Laura Bargfeld/Cronkite News

Healing Through Culture: Increasing access to Native American practices to treat mental health

Cronkite News, story and video by Laura Bargfeld, audio story by Natalie Skowlund, November 4, 2022: HOUCK – In a remote hogan near the southern edge of the Navajo Nation, Wayne Wilson lights a fire, lays out eagle feathers and remembers his grandfather’s teachings. “He would talk to me and…

Donald Winston adjusts the blinds moments after moving into his new apartment — the first-ever home of his own. ©Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times

California is trying to house the homeless through a health insurance program. It worked for this man.

Los Angeles Times, by Lila Seidman, October 19, 2022: On a blistering hot Friday in August, Donald Winston, 56, lugged black trash bags stuffed with belongings up four flights of stairs to what had just become his first-ever home of his own. Winston sweated profusely as the plastic bags began…

©Sipa USA/Joshua Guerra/Sipa USA via Reuters.: Twenty one chairs, flags and crosses are displayed in front of local businesses on May 30, 2022, in Uvalde. They each honor the 19 students and two teachers killed in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Uvalde prompted Texas to start taking mental health funding for schools seriously. Is it enough?

Texas Public Radio, by Bonnie Petrie, September 27, 2022:  [Petrie Dish Podcast] On a sweet, sunny spring Tuesday, children across the state were preparing for summer break, feeling that giddy rush that comes to kids in those last, loose days of the school year when unstructured hours of summer fun…

©Annie Mulligan/The Texas Tribune: Devin Mathieu and his partner, Claudia Dambra, discuss someone who might need a package containing life-saving harm reduction supplies in their apartment on Sept. 16.

Texas bans many proven tools for helping drug users. Advocates are handing them out anyway.

The Texas Tribune, by Sneha Dey, October 11, 2022: HOUSTON — Thirty minutes before a punk show this summer, Claudia Dambra set up a table and taped to it a tablecloth she had hand-painted with broad, white brushstrokes. The banner read, “PUNK NOT DEATH.” As people flooded into the Houston…

©Kylie Cooper/The Texas Tribune: Dana Jones pauses for a moment on Aug. 1, 2022, as she retells her experiences with past floods in Houston. Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Tropical Storm Imelda in 2019 and Winter Storm Uri in 2021 damaged her home.

“It’s destroying me”: Storm after storm, climate change increases strain on Texans’ mental health

The Texas Tribune, September 8, 2022, by Erin Douglas: HOUSTON — The first thing Dana Jones, 61, tells you to do when you enter her gray-blue house in Melrose Park is walk along the off-white tile, up and down, through her dining room, while she watches carefully for your reaction….

©Dan Carino

There’s Free Mental Health Help For Crime Victims, But Providers Say Bureaucracy Gets In The Way

SCPR/KPCC, Sep 9, 2022, by Robert Garrova: About three years ago, a Southern California resident we’ll call Jane —we’re not using her real name because of a pending trial and security concerns— and her husband found out their child had been assaulted. “Your world is rocked. We couldn’t sleep for…

©Brandon Quester/AZCIR: Students pass through open walkways in this file photo of a high school in Tempe, Arizona on Aug. 27, 2021

Youth access to mental health care improved under Jake’s Law, but persistent barriers hamper its reach

Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR), September 1, 2022, by Shaena Montanari and Maria Polletta:  In March 2020, Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law a sweeping set of measures designed to help curb rising rates of suicide and expand access to mental health treatment for Arizona residents with and without…