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‘Not knowing where to go’: Montana’s sparse landscape for alcohol detox

December 20, 2024
An emergency department sign in Missoula, Montana on Thursday, December 12, 2024. With very few treatment options available in Montana, hospital emergency departments are often the only place people can go when they are experiencing alcohol withdrawal. However, patients often end up leaving without the medication they need to manage withdrawal symptoms and they typically aren’t referred to inpatient or outpatient treatment programs. Credit: John Stember

Gaps in mental health training, rural access to care compound Arizona’s maternal mortality crisis

December 20, 2024
Araceli Aquino-Valdez, shown at her Yuma home on Dec. 17, 2024, struggled to find mental health care after experiencing postpartum depression following the birth of her first child. Photo by Izabella Mullady | AZCIR

Black farmers face specific, outsized challenges in rural mental health crisis

October 1, 2024
Two road signs in Tatums, Oklahoma. One reads "TATUMS: The friendly people make the difference," and the other "Tatums, Okla: Home of T-Okie."

Law enforcement enlists mental health experts to help save lives — ‘a paradigm shift in policing’

©Riley Bunch/GPB: News Officers from law enforcement departments that have already implemented co-responder units gather at the Georgia Capitol on May 9 to watch Gov. Brian Kemp sign Senate Bill 403.
©Riley Bunch/GPB: News Officers from law enforcement departments that have already implemented co-responder units gather at the Georgia Capitol on May 9 to watch Gov. Brian Kemp sign Senate Bill 403.

Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), June 8, 2022, by Riley Bunch: SAVANNAH, Georgia — Sometimes when Savannah Police Department officers are called to a scene of a crisis, those who respond may not look like police at all.

Officers arrive in an unmarked Ford Explorer, donning a simple blue polo and gray khaki pants.

Their SUVs offer more comfort than the usual police police vehicle, with only a thin partition separating the front and back passengers. The seats are soft, not hard molded plastic.

No flashing lights line the top of the vehicles, and the department’s logo isn’t emblazoned on the side.

It’s part of an effort started in 2020 in the coastal city to respond to the growing mental health crisis — a way of de-escalating a tense situation without anyone getting hurt or the person being sent to jail, as was common in the past.

“We have a very subdued look because in Savannah, a lot of people don’t want other people to see them with the police,” said officer Julie Cavanaugh. “So the person doesn’t feel like that they’re going to jail or that they’re encountering a police officer that’s in a full uniform.”

Read more at GPB here.