Blog

As the United States faces a worsening opioid drug crisis, health experts offered an overview of the epidemic, explored the rise in toxic drug combinations, and suggested new ways of approaching the story in a webinar hosted by the Center for Health Journalism this week. “We are in the midst of a severe epidemic that’s fueling record high levels of opioid overdose deaths,” said Dr. Andrew Kolodny , the co-director of Opioid Policy Research at the Heller School for Social Policy and...

The Five Year Mental Health Youth Report presented findings from the past five Mission Australia youth surveys, during which thousands of adolescents answered questions on several topics, including mental health. The report found that there are more people in the 15-to-19 age category in psychological distress than there were five years ago. It also found girls were "twice as likely as boys to meet the criteria for having a probable serious mental illness", and almost a third of Aboriginal...

Kate was labelled as ‘mentally ill’ since she was a kid. She despised this label. It meant that something was wrong with her. At the age of 17, she was finally diagnosed with ‘Schizophrenia’ when her condition was getting worse. Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental condition. It can hamper people’s interaction with reality itself. But with Kate’s natural propensity towards art, it only amplified the way she drew and painted things. And like any natural artist, she took the mental condition...

There’s a lot of debate about which form of therapy is the most psychologically effective, the most cost-effective, the quickest working and the longest lasting. They all have their benefits and drawbacks, depending on the individual and the kind of mental health problem he or she is dealing with. A new study reports that an eight-week course of group mindfulness training has a similar efficacy to usual care—in the this case, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), which in recent years has been...

On a cloudy afternoon in the Bayview district, Shaquille, 21, was riding in his sister’s 1991 Acura when another car ran a stop sign, narrowly missing them. Both cars screeched to a halt, and Shaquille and the other driver got out. “I just wanted to talk,” he recalls. But the talk became an argument, and the argument ended when Shaquille sent the other driver to the pavement with a left hook. Later that day, he was arrested and charged with felony assault. He already had a misdemeanor...

The first in a series of 6 webinars will be held on Monday, April 24, 3-4 ET on "Safety: Common Ground" in a series: “ Trauma-Informed Innovations in Crisis Services.” The announcement from SAMHSA follows ( URL: https://nasmhpd.adobeconnect.com/crisisvln/ . Telephone: 1-888-727-2247, Conference ID: 9452092#): The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Center for Trauma-Informed Care and Alternatives to Seclusion and Restraint (NCTIC) is pleased to...

What does it mean to be in the present moment? How do we even know if we are present? How do we shift from other states into the present moment? And why does it even matter? It's all here!

As a student assistance counselor, I regularly receive flashy emails from various organizations promoting materials for drug-free schools. Secretly I roll my eyes and strike the trash icon. “Drug free schools - ha, right?!” It may sound cynical or jaded that I don’t believe in drug-free high schools. It’s not that. The truth is I don’t believe a drug-free high school exists. This isn’t from a lack of effort or concern. As a product of the “Just Say No” era, schools have worked for decades to...

Britain's Prince Harry's two-decade struggle to deal with the death of his mother, Princess Diana, is sadly all too common for children who suddenly face the loss of a parent, mental health experts say. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph this week, Prince Harry admitted that his inability to process his mother's death in childhood led to two years of "total chaos" in his late 20s. The prince sought professional counseling at 28 at the urging of his older brother, Prince William, after...

The director of the Annie E. Casey Foundation 's* Juvenile Justice Strategy Group sounded an alarm Monday about a slowing of progress and an increase in the length of time youth are being incarcerated in some of the 300 sites of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative . Nate Balis spoke at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Foundation-sponsored Initiative (JDAI), with some 900 registrants attending the three-day event. The JDAI has been instrumental in cutting the juvenile...

In 2015, the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative strategically held five screenings of the movie Paper Tigers—James Redford’s documentary about the dramatic reboot of a local alternative school after its principal became an advocate of trauma-informed care. Each screening was standing-room only.

The sight of a police officer interacting with a member of the public causes a significant if unknown number of Americans to reach for their cell phones and start recording, just in case. It isn’t that they believe all cops to be abusive or dishonest––just enough to warrant vigilance. “Take your phone out, take your phone out!” a Georgia resident told a companion as they watched Sergeant Michael Bongiovanni of Gwinnett County Police Department. He was standing by a sedan during a traffic...