From Our Newsroom Partners
Colorado alcohol deaths surged 60% in 4 years, but there’s been no public outcry or push to save lives
From The Denver Post
Fatal drug overdoses had been slowly rising for a decade, but when the number of Coloradans killed by fentanyl soared during the first two years of the pandemic, state leaders, law enforcement officials, public health managers — even ordinary people — called for drastic action.
Colorado’s quiet killer: Alcohol ends more lives than overdoses, but there’s been no intervention
From The Denver Post
Colorado consistently has one of the worst rates of drinking-related death in the country, but alcohol hasn’t gotten nearly the attention devoted to other drugs. In this four-part series, The Denver Post investigated why so many Coloradans are dying from drinking, and what the state could do in an effort to reduce the number of people lost.
AHCCCS alerted to ‘predictable’ homelessness surge before fraud crackdown
From the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR)
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 adjust its response to the crisis that emerged as a result.
Being ‘my own role model’: Normalizing mental health care in the AANHPI community
From the Cronkite News
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.
How the Texas vision for seamless mental health care fell apart over 60 years
From The Texas Tribune
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
More options, less stigma: How Georgians in recovery are breaking barriers to addiction care
From Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB)
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.
Suffering in silence: Male college students less likely to seek counseling
From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Vernon Allwood helped open Morehouse College’s counseling center 35 years ago, he had to convince students to talk about their problems.
These Oklahomans Needed Mental Health Care. Instead, They Died in Jail.
From Oklahoma Watch
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 of glass.
The mental health of migrants simmers below the surface as the next looming crisis
From WBEZ
Jorge Rubiano is a haunted man.
For months, he has tried to find work. For months, he has slept in a shelter, worrying about his wife and mother he left behind in Colombia. Are they safe? Did I make the right decision?
GOP-led push to fund police over counselors leaves some schools ‘in the lurch’
From the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR)
Brian Miller is a fixture at Charles W. Harris School in Phoenix, a familiar face kids and parents encounter four days a week.
Can architecture help students’ mental health? This Fort Worth designer says yes
From the Fort Worth Report
Students should hear birds chirping in their schools.
Not the literal sound. But school designer Kerri Brady wants campuses to evoke that natural sense of peace and safety, so students can be present, better regulate their emotions and learn.
Here are the ways Fort Worth schools provide mental health care to students
From the Fort Worth Report
Carly Kandel ensures Briscoe Elementary is a good place for her students.
Nearly all of the Fort Worth ISD school’s students come from low-income homes, and their basic needs aren’t always being met, said Kandel, a program manager for Communities In Schools of Greater Tarrant County.
Fort Worth charter school focuses on trauma-informed curriculum. What does that mean?
From the Fort Worth Report
Superintendent Stephanie Love’s eyes were glued on her students eating in the cafeteria.
The sixth graders chatted with cafeteria staff while grabbing their lunches. Those who already had food talked or played games with each other on their laptops. Some asked for personal space.
From long wait lists to high costs, finding a therapist in Colorado is harder than it should be
From KUNC
In communities across Northern Colorado, people are struggling with their mental health while also struggling to get the care they need.
Law Could Increase Demand for Often-Elusive Addiction Treatment
From the Voice of San Diego
A state law set to take effect in January aims to make it easier to force Californians with severe substance use disorders into treatment that is now often not immediately available to San Diegans who want it.
Road to Recovery
From the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
Courtney Altaha and James Cody Jr. piled their belongings into a small white trailer baking under the Phoenix sun. Their boxes—filled with clothes, books, paperwork, a child’s booster seat—dwarfed the single duffle bag they’d carried when they left the Fort Apache Indian Reservation two years earlier. They came to the city in search of treatment for addictions that had robbed them of their health, house and custody of their five children.
One answer to the youth mental health crisis? Asking Colorado students how they’re feeling
From KUNC
Rates of anxiety and depression among young people are the highest they’ve been since 2013, when Colorado first began collecting this data. Driven by the urgent state of youth mental health, an effort is underway in Colorado to identify kids who need behavioral health help before they are in crisis.
Getting Drug Treatment Beds Is So Hard for Poor It’s Like Winning the Lottery
From the Voice of San Diego
On a recent day earlier this month, Jerry Shirey’s team at San Diego Freedom Ranch had a list of more than 30 people seeking a detox bed to start the agonizing process of withdrawing from drugs or alcohol. Freedom Ranch had one bed left to offer.
Patients, advocates describe ‘pure chaos’ in state response to AHCCCS fraud
From the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting (AZCIR)
On May 16, as cameras flashed and tribal leaders looked on, Arizona’s governor and attorney general announced a statewide crackdown on behavioral health providers suspected of defrauding the state’s Medicaid program out of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Overwhelmed with mental health calls, six rural sheriffs make their own plan for better response
Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) by Sofi Gratas, September 13, 2023: Eurie Martin, 58, was walking alone on a rural two lane road in Washington County in 2017, when three deputies from the county sheriff’s office encountered him, responding to a suspicious person call. They didn’t know Martin had a history…