From Our Newsroom Partners
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
From Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB)
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 of mental illness and were not trained to handle people in crisis.
Cover-up Alleged in Pottawatomie County Jail Deaths
From Oklahoma Watch
Pottawatomie County jail officials apparently defied state laws and a judge’s order when they concealed information on the unexplained deaths of seven vulnerable detainees.
Improving college student mental health: Research on promising campus interventions
From The Journalist’s Resource
If you’re a journalist covering higher education in the U.S., you’ll likely be reporting this fall on what many healthcare professionals and researchers are calling a college student mental health crisis.
This Harris County program serves the most vulnerable. But it won’t bail them out of jail.
From Houston Landing
When a Houston police officer arrived at Richelle Morris’ group home in a quiet Greater Greenspoint cul-de-sac in October, she demanded to be taken to a mental hospital – or jail.
People with mental illness are more likely to die in jail. A new Oklahoma County program puts them in treatment instead
From The Frontier
After her arrest for a small amount of methamphetamine in 2017, U.S. Army veteran Krysten Gonzalez signed an Oklahoma County Mental Health Court contract agreeing to behavioral health treatment in exchange for the chance to stay out of prison.
How San Diego Is Rolling Out CARE Court
From the Voice of San Diego
San Diego County officials have until October to stand up a new system to compel people with certain serious mental illnesses into treatment.
LGBTQ+ kids in Colorado are struggling. Finding the right therapist is yet another hurdle.
From KUNC
Colorado’s LGBTQ+ youth are living with high rates of depression, stress and thoughts of self-harm, but finding treatment in Northern Colorado can be a challenge.
Mental Health Care Is Critical for Survivors of Violence. Access Is Another Story.
From California Health Report
Lisbet wondered if the victim advocate had made a mistake. Lisbet was at the Family Justice Center in San Diego, a social services agency for domestic violence survivors, trying to get help with basic needs like shelter and food after leaving her abusive husband. And she was being offered counseling.
Mental health disparities in older LGBTQ+ populations: A research roundup
From The Journalist’s Resource
In 2017, researchers estimated that 2.4% of the U.S. population 50 years and older identified as LGBTQ+, accounting for 2.7 million people. By 2060, they say, that number is expected to double to 5 million.
Families take drastic steps to help children in mental health crises
From The Center for Public Integrity
When Lisa Norris adopted her daughter Hannah out of foster care as a toddler in 2010, she never dreamed that a decade later she’d give up custody of the girl as a last-ditch effort to save her life.
Proven Schizophrenia Treatments Keep People in School, at Work and off the Street. Why Won’t Insurance Companies Cover Them?
From KQED
When Yvonne was walking across campus and heard someone calling her name, she stopped and looked around, but the other students flowed around her, oblivious. She continued on, then heard it again.
Jails fail to accommodate people with mental illness. In some cases, it’s a civil rights violation.
From WITF
Months before her arrest in April 2020, Kimberly Stringer had stopped showing up to get her regular injection of an antipsychotic drug. An artistic person, Stringer once planned to go to design school before a mental illness hijacked her life. For the past year, her medication had staved off the paranoia and disordered thinking that were symptoms of her illness. As the drug left her system, those fears and preoccupations returned.
Healing Through Culture: Increasing access to Native American practices to treat mental health
From Cronkite News
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.
California is trying to house the homeless through a health insurance program. It worked for this man.
From the Los Angeles Times,
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.
Uvalde prompted Texas to start taking mental health funding for schools seriously. Is it enough?
From Texas Public Radio
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 spool out before them.
Texas bans many proven tools for helping drug users. Advocates are handing them out anyway.
From The Texas Tribune
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.”
Can telehealth solve America’s mental health crisis in schools?
From Texas Public Radio
The kids are not alright. A CDC analysis released earlier this year found that in 2021— the second year of the pandemic — more than 37 percent of high school students reported experiencing poor mental health, and 44 percent reported they felt persistently sad or hopeless throughout the year.
Youth mental health services expand in San Antonio and statewide
From Texas Public Radio
In a unanimous decision earlier this month, the San Antonio City Council voted to create a framework to increase mental health care access across the city. The city will utilize $23 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. How will the funds be disbursed? What age groups will the city focus its efforts on?