Journalist Lottie Joiner recently set out to explore what happens to young African American men who don't have a father present in their lives. Here she reflects on some of the lessons she learned along the way.
Mental Health
In Asian American families, where the subject of sex is particularly taboo and parents may lack sex education themselves, discussions about sex are less likely to happen. Reporter Thy Vo set out to document the consequences for young Asian Americans.
“He just gets mad. He gets really, really angry,” says Kecia Brighthaupt, referring to her 15-year-old son Jamari. “It would be a big difference in his behavior and certain things he does if his dad was more involved and hands on.”
"It’s around 10 p.m. when I call a crisis worker for victims of domestic violence in remote Northern California," writes reporter Emily Cureton. "I’m panicking, 150 miles away in Oregon. I’m really afraid someone is going to get hurt tonight."
California’s jails were built to hold inmates for relatively short sentences — usually just a few months. But now local law enforcement is grappling with how to hold offenders for long periods of time, which is having an impact on mentally ill inmates.
Why is mental health so walled off from the rest of the health care system, even when statistics show that 18 percent of all adults have some kind of mental illness? And weren't federal parity requirements supposed to fix this?
How tightly does childhood adversity correlate with later-in-life measures of well-being? A new study looks at public school kids who grew up in some of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods and finds some disheartening patterns.
Just because a medical board takes action, it doesn’t mean that the action is adequate. Consider the case of Dr. Reinaldo de los Heros, a Maine psychiatrist who columnist William Heisel first wrote about back in 2010.
Studies show that children who live with grandparents or other relatives typically fare better than children in foster care, but at what cost? Many say they are ill equipped and burnt out trying to be social workers, nurses and therapists for their vulnerable charges.
Community engagement has been a big buzzword in recent years. Cole Goins of the Center for Investigative Reporting recently shared tips with California reporters on how to think creatively about "journalism as a community change agent."