Juvenile lockups and correctional programs have became warehouses for children like Keishan Ross with developmental disabilities and mental illness.
Mental Health & Trauma
The solution lies not in building more psychiatric facilities, but in providing effective treatment and supports in the least restrictive setting, says Dr. Fred Osher.
Massachusetts started sending email warning alerts to drug prescribers in 2013. But while some measures of drug abuse dropped in the following years, it’s hard to give credit to the alerts.
Can the styles of humor used by middle schoolers provide a window into their mental well-being? The research provides some intriguing early clues.
Banks tend to be very good at alerting you to potential credit card fraud. Can drug tracking programs do as good a job at flagging risky prescription scenarios?
When Erin Borrego was 15, she and her classmates started experimenting with opioid painkillers. It started with pills called Percocet and Lortab, but she quickly moved on to injecting heroin.
If there’s any police department that understands what an opioid epidemic means for a community, it’s New Mexico's Española Police Department. Even the chief of police has had addiction struggles within his own family.
KUNM’s Ed Williams has been investigating the impacts of heroin addiction on children and families in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. The area has had one of the country’s highest overdose rates for decades. Here he takes a deep look at the issue in an hour-long radio documentary.
When kids are at high risk for addiction, a good public school system can be one of the most effective ways to prevent drug use. In Española public schools, teacher turnover and administrative problems have instead created instability for students.
Research shows early childhood education is one of the most effective ways to prevent drug use later in life. That’s especially important in New Mexico's Rio Arriba County, where an opioid epidemic has been raging for decades.