When someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, often the only alternatives are jail or an emergency room. Neither of those alternatives is particularly helpful, and sometimes they can make a person’s condition worse. Nationwide, cities and counties are searching for cheaper and more therapeutic options.
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Say a person in psychological distress wants to die. So, he threatens the police, often by waving a knife or gun. (As with more generic forms of suicide, most cases involve men.) Then the officers are “forced” to kill him — to protect themselves and others. The scenario is often said to be suicide by cop. It’s generally agreed that some fatal police shootings are suicide by cop. The question is, which ones?
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For a long time, the address 1800 Chicago in Minneapolis has been synonymous with detox. As in, end-of-the-road, hit-rock-bottom detox. Now Hennepin County is turning the facility into a one-stop shop for services ranging from detox to mental health care to help signing up for low-income housing. It’s designed to keep people with mental health and substance use problems out of jail and hospitals.
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The Humankind program is called “Whole Teachers — Whole Students.” You’ll hear from educators and students at a middle school in San Francisco, and a college in Virginia.
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MPR medical commentator Dr. Jon Hallberg hosted Hippocrates Cafe at the MPR State Fair booth, as part of Minnesota Public Radio’s “Call to Mind” initiative to promote good mental health. It features music and the spoken word.
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This survey finds widespread support among American adults for “red flag” laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), which allow a family member or the police to seek a court order to temporarily take away guns if they feel a gun owner may harm themselves or others. More than three-fourths of American adults support family-initiated ERPOs, the majority of whom say they “strongly” support such measures. Similarly, 70 percent support police-initiated ERPOs.
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As more and more people in prison need mental health care, more and more prison systems are turning to telepsychiatry. It’s basically a video psychiatry appointment, a doctor’s visit via Skype or FaceTime.
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Every year, between 300 and 400 doctors kill themselves — about one a day. That's about twice the rate of the general population and the highest of any profession. Doctors also have high rates of burnout, depression and substance use.
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Today we're learning why we all get angry and what to do with that emotion. We'll get in touch with our inner Super You Person and learn what physical reactions anger can trigger in our bodies.
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UnitedHealth Group is rejecting some demands of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of being too stingy in its coverage of mental health care.
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On a frigid January Saturday in 2017, friends Mary Beth Thesing and Susan Kimball joined hundreds of others at Lourdes High School auditorium in Rochester, ready to lift their voices for Bring the Sing, the traveling community choral events Classical MPR takes around the region.
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People in jails and prisons are much more likely than the general public to have a mental illness, and the prevalence among incarcerated women is especially high. Minnesota's corrections commissioner, Paul Schnell, has said dealing with mental illness in the system is a priority for the new administration.
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This is the second episode in our four-part series on feelings! In this episode, we're covering the small and big parts of sadness.
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In this first episode, we're getting happy! We'll get a play-by-play of the chemicals in our brain that trigger joyful feelings, and use the zoom ray to see what good vibes do for our bodies. We'll also hear about how each of us have different emotional thermostats and why thinking about our feelings can help us figure out what to do with them.
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The people who run the residency program at the hospital know that the numbers are lopsided and alarming: In Minnesota, more than a million people are under the age of 18, but there are only 140 child psychiatrists practicing in the state. And there's clearly a need. There's a 1 in 5 chance that kids will develop depression sometime between middle and high school and a 1 in 6 chance they'll develop serious anxiety.
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Angela Davis leads a group discussion in MPR's UBS Forum about why we feel lonely, what we can do about it and whether technology makes it better or worse. She was joined by Cheryl Bemel, a licensed psychologist with Allina Health.
Read MoreCall to Mind, MPR's mental health initiative, presents a conversation with singer, rapper and author Dessa and journalist Michael Pollan to discuss his latest book, "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence."
Read MoreNeuroscientists and gerontologists see evidence that people aging normally can become more vulnerable to financial exploitation. Con artists, fraudsters and, in many cases, family, friends and caregivers take money from seniors through the abuse of trust.
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Restaurateur David McMillan, of Joe Beef in Montreal, talks candidly about his challenge with sobriety in the restaurant world and how it changed the way his restaurants function. Playwright and screenwriter Stephanie Covington Armstrong, author of Not All Black Girls Know How to Eat, tells us her powerful story about eating disorders and the dissonance it has as a black woman. And, body image activist Virgie Tovar talks about the mental health implications of fatphobia, fat discrimination, and the diet culture; her latest book is You Have the Right to Remain Fat.
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MPR's mental health reporter Alisa Roth gives the keynote address at a Hamline University conference on the "Criminalization of Mental Illness."
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