Mental Health

New research from RAND finds LA's program to get people off the street and into permanent, supportive housing led to fewer heath visits and a net savings for the county.

This story was produced as part of a project for the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a program of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.

Read related stories in this series here.

Juana, an immigrant mother from Guatemala, endured a terrible series of health and family crises. Yet despite her suffering and agony, her church urged her not seek out mental health help.

Those who work for Gang Victim Services are on call to detectives 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They often are the first to tell parents their son or daughter is dead.

For Florida patients with no insurance or ability to pay, there are few options for mental health treatment, unless they are a danger to themselves and institutionalized.

A psychiatrist who has studied migrant and refugee children around the world points to one powerful protective factor against tremendous adversity — social connections.

Last spring, survivors began experiencing denials, delays and limits for surgeries, physical therapy, counseling, equipment and prescriptions — including painkillers, antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication.

"After scouring several large surveys of teens for clues," researcher Jean Twenge writes, "I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone."

This story is part of a four-part series on Dec. 2, 2015, terrorist attack survivors’ recovery and California’s workers’ compensation system. The project was undertaken for the USC Center for Health Journalism’s California Fellowship.

For a reporter who found signs of hopelessness in one Kern County community after another, childhood trauma turned out to be the unifying theme, handed down from one generation to the next.