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Decades-long systemic shortcomings have left suicide among children ages 5 to 11 poorly tracked and addressed. Now, as rates appear to be rising, advocates are strengthening efforts to screen for problems and prevent deaths in younger children.
In Orange County, California, officials are threading a delicate needle. They want to persuade people with psychosis to accept treatment without coercion as the state’s new CARE Courts roll out in October.
The California Legislature greenlighted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest plan to build more housing and increase addiction treatment as part of his response to the state’s homelessness and drug crises.
Residential addiction treatment programs that allow parents to bring their children along have been recognized for their success. But a mix of logistical challenges and low reimbursement rates mean they struggle to stay afloat.
Health department officials are asking legislators to change criminal commitment laws amid a bottleneck at the Montana State Hospital.
For rural Americans, who live in areas often short of mental health services and die by suicide at a far higher rate than urbanites, the federally mandated crisis phone line is one of the few options to connect with a crisis counselor.
An estimated 32% of adults in Logan County, West Virginia, have been diagnosed with depression, the highest rate in the United States, according to a recent CDC report.
As chatter and images about guns and violence slip into the social media feeds of more teens, viral messages fueled by “likes” can lead to real-world conflict and loss.
Teens share photos or videos of themselves with guns and stacks of cash, sometimes calling out rivals, on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok. When posts go viral, fueled by “likes” and comments, the danger is hard to contain.
Mental health is being talked about more openly than ever, but the word “suicide” has remained largely taboo when describing how someone died. See why that’s slowly changing, what it means for people who grieve those deaths, and how candor can help prevent additional suicides.
The day-to-day struggles that parents of kids with mental health conditions must navigate have led to their own crisis: The stress can take a physical toll that disrupts parents’ ability to provide care, say psychologists, researchers, and advocates for families.
Facilities that offer medically managed substance use treatment for patients under 18 are few and far between in the United States. A Denver hospital is trying to help fill the gap.
President Joe Biden is kicking off his reelection campaign in part by trying to finish a decades-long effort to establish parity in insurance benefits between mental and physical health. Meanwhile, House Republicans are working to add abortion and other contentious amendments to must-pass spending bills. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News’ Céline Gounder about her podcast “Epidemic.” The new season focuses on the successful public health effort to eradicate smallpox.
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, a national hotline, reached its first-year milestone this month.
Efforts to improve addiction care in jails and prisons are underway across the country. But a rural Alabama county with one of the nation’s highest overdose rates shows how change is slow, while law enforcement officials continue to treat addiction as a crime rather than a medical condition.
As three years of pandemic stress accelerated an ongoing nationwide mental health crisis, peer respite programs diverted patients from overburdened emergency rooms, psychiatric institutions, and behavioral therapists. Now, more “respites” are opening.
Black patients and other minorities tend to be diagnosed at later stages of the disease, which would exclude them from use of Leqembi. Few Black people were included in the main trial of the drug.
Many state legislatures have passed or are considering restrictions on gender-affirming care for trans minors. Yet much of the discussion is based on misconceptions about what that care entails.
Though most California counties are experimenting with dispatching health professionals rather than law enforcement to respond to people experiencing mental health crises, powerful police unions fear defunding.
As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don't have to worry about being locked out of medical care.
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