Mental Health & Trauma

An updated look at youth suicides recently found that suicide rates in rural U.S. counties are double those of urban areas. Figuring out the causes behind the widening disparity is more difficult, but lack of access to mental health services is a big part of the problem in rural areas.

Homelessness has long been a serious problem in Anchorage, Alaska. The challenge for two reporters at Alaska Dispatch News was to find new ways to cut through old perceptions and debates to tell stories that showed their subjects’ enduring humanity. Here's how they did it.

At the Native American Health Center in East Oakland, health reform has pushed clinic staff to experiment with new ways of delivering care. But changes in the way care is reimbursed and increased competition for patients still leaves clinic leaders nervous about longterm survival.

With temperatures regularly plummeting below zero during the winter months, Anchorage may be the worst place in the United States to be homeless. KTUU set out to find out how the homeless cope.

In 1965, the deinstitutionalization of mental health treatment charted a path toward overcrowded prisons and a shortage of mental health treatment facilities. Today, Imperial County in California is dealing with both of those consequences.

Beaches, sunshine, natural beauty, high-priced homes. In so many ways, Ventura County embodies the affluent, laid-back lifestyle of California’s coastal regions....

This three part series will be looking into mental health care among black communities within the U.S. Focusing on access, stigmas and cultural views toward mental health.

With high rates of many mental illnesses and not much money to treat them, are the rural counties of far-northern California destined for meager mental health services? What's lacking in these systems, and - perhaps more importantly - how did ones in similar areas overcome the same problems?

The seeds for the Welcome Home Project were sown while I was interviewing Dan Simmons, a program analyst for an anti-violence program in Oakland. Formerly incarcerated himself, Simmons knows what it takes to stay out of prison. “We put most of our resources towards the 65% of former inmates that re

Daniel Sopcak and Betty Sanchez are married, homeless and struggling with alcohol and other ailments in Anchorage. Their days are a window into a rough, often invisible world.