Tompkins: Juvenile jails taking on mentally ill youth
Al Tompkins, the reliable story-spotter at the Poynter Institute, jumped at the potential to localize a New York Times story on how cash-strapped mental health systems are allowing young offenders with psychiatric disorders to be handled by the juvenile justice system instead of by mental health specialists.
According to The New York Times, which refers to the current situation as a “crisis,” two-thirds of the nation’s approximately 92,000 juvenile inmates suffer from at least one mental illness while at least 32 states are slashing the budgets of their mental health programs.
DoD campaigns against stigma of depression, PTSD
The Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury’s new Real Warriors campaign is designed to aid soldiers with what they seem to see as the three r’s of military mental health: resilience, recovery and re-integration.
The RealWarriors.net site not only directs soldiers to additional resources, but also shares anecdotes from their peers and provides them with guidelines for good mental health, both in combat and out of it.
The effort, launched in May, even has a Twitter account.
(Hat tip to Arline Kaplan of the Psychiatric Times)
Related:
Bay Area panel on veterans’ health highlights untold stories
Disabled student abuse goes unpunished in Nev.
Darcy Spears, a reporter at KTNV-Las Vegas, has discovered a number of disturbing stories of teachers abusing special needs students in area schools; in some cases the districts worked to keep the details of the abuse from parents and punished offending teachers lightly, if at all. According to KTNV, there are dozens such violations reported every year.
In Part 1, Spears follows a then-5-year-old autistic boy who, when he wouldn’t eat his lunch, was violently force-fed until he vomited. Police were called, but the boy’s family still weren’t able to get an incident report until they involved legal counsel.
Despite specific Nevada laws prohibiting such actions and requiring disclosure, the incident only came to light because aides to the offending teacher reported it to school administration and local police.
Nevada law says physical restraint may not be used on a pupil with a disability unless there’s an immediate threat of physical injury to students or staff, or to protect against severe property damage.
All instances must be documented and reported to the school district and the parents.
In Part 2, Spears looks at the story of a 7-year-old autistic boy whose mother says he was abused and that the school has swept the case under the rug and a whistle-blowing special education assistant who details the abuse he’s seen take place in Nevada classrooms.
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Bernstein, Silberner awarded Carter Fellowships
AHCJ members Elizabeth Bernstein and Joanne Silberner have been awarded Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism for 2009-10.
Bernstein, of The Wall Street Journal, will examine the impact of the economic recession on people with mental illnesses while Silberner, of National Public Radio, will produce radio stories about the treatment of mental illnesses in developing countries.
In its press release, the Carter Center says it received a record number of applicants for the fellowships this year. The fellowships allow journalists to pursuing topic - from their own newsroom - that may not otherwise be brought to the public’s attention. Fellows in the United States receive a stipend of $10,000 to study and report on a particular issue within the field for one year and receives training on covering mental health issues from leading experts.
Projects that past fellows have done have been recognized by Mental Health America, the American Psychological Association, Amnesty International and AHCJ, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer Prize nominations.
A painful picture of rare childhood mental illness
The Los Angeles Times’ Shari Roan tells the story of a 6-year-old girl suffering from a rare – perhaps even unique – case of early childhood schizophrenia. For months, even the most powerful medications her young body can handle don’t seem to phase her imaginary animal friends and almost-constant hallucinations. The mental illness is a serious threat to her health and that of those around her. In January she had to be moved from home to UCLA’s pysch ward. Roan uses the story, told with intense, wrenching detail and ending with a note of hope for the future, to illuminate the plight of America’s tiny population of mentally ill children.
About 1% of adults have schizophrenia; most become ill in their late teens or 20s. Approximately one in 10 will commit suicide.
Doctors and other mental health experts don’t fully understand the disease, which has no cure. Jani’s extreme early onset has left them almost helpless. The rate of onset in children 13 and under is about one in 30,000 to 50,000. In a national study of 110 children, only one was diagnosed as young as age 6.
“Child-onset schizophrenia is 20 to 30 times more severe than adult-onset schizophrenia,” says Dr. Nitin Gogtay, a neurologist at the National Institute of Mental Health who helps direct the children’s study, the largest such study in the world on the illness.
Advocacy group releases mental health media guide
The second edition of a media guide for reporting on suicide and mental illness, prepared by Wisconsin United for Mental Health, is now available. The guide, “Open Minds Open Doors: A guide for Media,” provides statistics, facts and background data as well as suggested terminology and guidelines for avoiding the stigma of suicide and mental illness. The guide recently won a Mental Health America 2009 Media Award in the advocacy category.
According to Wisconsin United for Mental Health’s Web site, its mission is to “educate and increase awareness about mental illnesses, to eliminate stigma and discrimination, and promote recovery.”
Map shows hotspots of mental distress
Ker Than reports in National Geographic News on an intriguing map showing the percentage of folks in each American county who reported “frequent mental distress.” Kentucky, Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley are home to the highest percentage of distressed folks, while Hawaiians and Upper Midwesterners rank as the nation’s least distressed populations.
Than found that the patterns could be caused by income disparity, differences in the services available in each area, disparities in the willingness of residents to report their emotional distress and myriad other factors.
“There may be different influences in different communities,” (Matthew) Zack (medical epidemiologist with the CDC) said. “Once we find out what the most important ones are, we may be able to develop programs to reduce the levels of mental distress.”
Mental health: Reporting beyond the labels (#ahcj09)
If you live with mental illness, tell the truth about it. If you report on mental illness, watch what you say about it.
This was the core advice from panelists on “Mental health: Reporting beyond the labels” on April 17 at Health Journalism 2009 in Seattle.
“People with mental illness are more likely to be victims than perpetrators,” said Jennifer Stuber, assistant professor of social welfare at the University of Washington. But despite the research, many media depictions of these people continue to promote stereotypes of their being dangerous to themselves and others.
Journalist Hilary Abramson writes about the panel.
Column: Lopez helps erase stigma of mental illness
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Those of you who were at last fall’s Urban Health Journalism Workshop - and those of you who weren’t - might find Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean Arlene Notoro Morgan’s recent column about Steve Lopez on MIWatch.org interesting.
Steve Lopez
At the Urban Health Journalism Workshop, Lopez told the story of meeting homeless musician Nathaniel Ayers, who has schizophrenia, and the lessons he learned from that experience. (Listen to an MP3 version of Lopez’ speech here.) Lopez’ book about the experience, “The Soloist,” will be released as a motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx on April 24.
Morgan, who worked with Lopez at The Philadelphia Inquirer, shares memories of the columnist, of her own family’s struggle with mental illness and the effect Lopez’ and Ayers’ story has had on the fight against the stigma of mental illness. Morgan also talks about her longtime advocacy for the mentally ill and balancing that with her career as a journalist.
MIWatch.com, a news site about mental illness, is a project of the Incubator Program of the Fund for the City of New York. It’s a nonprofit that says it does not accept advertising or support from pharmaceutical companies.
Texas system fails the chronically homeless
In the first of a series of articles, Kim Horner of The Dallas Morning News looks at the struggle of helping the chronically homeless. The series will look at the costs of inadequate treatment for mental illness and addiction, as well as possible solutions. The project received support from The Carter Center.
Though chronic homelessness is a nationwide problem, Texas falls behind most states in providing care at psychiatric hospitals and mental health clinics. That lack of commitment results in overflowing facilities and poor follow-up care that can set up the most vulnerable patients for failure.
Horner reports that the system of psychiatric hospitals, drug and alcohol treatment centers, mental health clinics and housing programs isn’t working for most of the chronically homeless. “That failure not only perpetuates homelessness but ends up costing taxpayers millions for law enforcement, emergency care and other expenses that could be avoided.”
Chronically homeless people often do not follow through with their care and cannot properly care for themselves, leading them to return to treatment repeatedly. A hospital superintendent says failure to take medications is the top reason people are readmitted to his hospital.
The article does look at proposed solutions to the problem of homelessness. One answer - supported by experts nationwide - is to establish special apartments coupled with intensive mental health services to keep people stable.
Related
Urban Workshop keynoter Steve Lopez puts focus on mental health [Listen to Lopez' speech]
Jill Maddox, psychiatrist at the Center for Urban Community Services and the Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless, speaks about mental health issues in urban areas at the 2007 Urban Health Journalism Workshop.
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