In 2015, LA County created a program to reduce the number of mentally ill people trapped in jail. Instead, the number has increased significantly.
A former mill city of roughly 43,000 people in Rhode Island is a testing ground for a new treatment program designed to bend the rising curve of opioid overdose deaths.
“They often refer to us as a restorative justice court, where we focus on assisting repeat offenders and connecting them to services so that those repetitive offenses stop,” said the court's administrator.
By not expanding Medicaid, Mississippi is hurting uninsured people with mental illness, many of whom often end up in jail or psychiatric wards, and putting medical providers at risk, some say. Others say expansion would only pump money into a broken mental health system.
Some children have been sexually assaulted. There are documented cases of child abuse. There have even been riots.
In one incident, a girl with a mental health diagnosis was pepper-sprayed in the groin, then left to use toilet water to relieve her pain.
Mississippi's convoluted mental health care system is hurting people with mental illness and those who care for them.
Last Tuesday, nearly 100 people gathered in Jackson to connect with their neighbors around a troubling statistic: Amador County has the third-highest suicide rate in California.
Joshua’s House in Sacramento, California is slated to become the first homeless hospice center in the West Coast and one of only a handful in the country.
