Mental Health

Even by rural hospital standards, Keokuk County Hospital and Clinics in southeastern Iowa is small. The 14-bed hospital, in Sigourney, doesn’t do surgeries or deliver babies. The small 24-hour emergency room is overseen by two full-time doctors. CEO Matt Ives wants to hire a third doctor, but he said finding physicians for a rural area […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California has halted a court-ordered medical parole program, opting instead to send its most incapacitated prisoners back to state lockups or release them early. The unilateral termination is drawing protests from attorneys representing prisoners and the author of the state’s medical parole legislation, who say it unnecessarily puts this vulnerable population at

POLSON, Mont. — When someone accused of a crime in this small northwestern Montana town needs mental health care, chances are they’ll be locked in a basement jail cell the size of a walk-in closet. Prisoners, some held in this isolation cell for months, have scratched initials and the phrase “love hurts” into the metal

Kristen Schorsch, WBEZ Chicago He’s 17 and lives in the Chicago suburbs. He loves theater and recently helped direct a play at his high school. He takes competitive AP courses and is working on his Eagle Scout project. And he’s been on a journey for four years. Once a week, the transgender teen injects testosterone

Aneri Pattani When the Trump administration cut more than $11 billion in covid-era funds to states in late March, addiction recovery programs suffered swift losses. An Indiana organization that employs people in recovery to help peers with substance use disorders and mental illness was forced to lay off three workers. A Texas digital support service

Paula Span It happened more than a decade ago, but the moment remains with her. Sara Stewart was talking at the dining room table with her mother, Barbara Cole, 86 at the time, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Stewart, then 59, a lawyer, was making one of her extended visits from out of state. Two or

Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attracted notice — and in some quarters, outrage — for remarks about autism, a topic he’s clashed with scientists about for years. Kennedy held an April 16 press conference pegged to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that found the prevalence of autism rising to 1 in 31