Overwhelmed by Overdoses, Clinic Offers a Room for Highs, Boston Globe
The number one cause of death among Boston’s homeless? Opioid use. Overdoses are such a common occurrence that they disrupt workers’ daily tasks at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. In response, the organization is making a drastic, controversial move: opening a room where addicts can come down from their highs while under medical supervision. Some claim that it’s a plan that will simply enable users; others, including the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine, believe it’s an effective way to get the drug pandemic under control and reduce the number of fatalities.
Free Money Lifts People out of Poverty, and That’s an Investment That Pays for Itself, Tech Insider
Despite America’s vast wealth, more than one in five children grow up in poverty in this country. While many believe that giving the less-fortunate money increases laziness, North Carolina discovered that Cherokee tribe members receiving up to $6,000 a year from casino revenue gave parents the ability to save money and pay bills on time — all the while continuing to work the same amount as they previously did. Not only that, their children experienced a reduction in mental health problems, fewer behavioral problems and improved performance in school.
Crowdsourcing the Future of a Social Movement, Stanford Social Innovation Review
You’ve probably heard the popular saying, There’s no “I” in team. While running a major crowdsourcing campaign, funders and nonprofit leaders in the LGBTQ community learned just how powerful collaboration is at maintaining social progress. More than 14,000 ideas were collected from residents of all 50 states, creating a vast data set about LGBTQ issues — something that’s cost prohibitive for one organization to source, but that will help guide the entire movement for years to come.
Tag: Mental Health
This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Health Care Nationwide
What would you do if your teenage son or daughter began expressing paranoid thoughts? Jumbling their sentences? Exhibiting bizarre behavior? Few parents know the warning signs of psychosis, but one joint effort in Connecticut is aiming to change that.
The state’s Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services and Yale University are pioneering MindMap, an outreach program designed to catch the early signs of a young person experiencing a psychotic episode, lessening the chance of self-harm or endangerment to others.
Mindmap’s creation is the result of university psychiatrists discovering that patients who received early treatment at community clinics reduced their risks of future psychotic breaks. Their findings also show that those who get help early on remain employed or in school 92 percent of time, compared to just 67 percent when receiving standard treatment. Even better? Three out of four avoided hospitalizations in the first year (as opposed to half), saving taxpayer dollars.
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Patients receiving treatment at Yale’s Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) clinic are set up with a team of caseworkers, which coordinates medication, counseling and social skills training for the patient and education for their family, whose guilt or frustration at the disease can often exacerbate symptoms. (The lack of vital long-term care has been identified as the reason why our mental health system has largely failed after state-run institutions shuttered in the 1960s.)
“Traditionally, people show up to psychiatric care after many years of suffering and poor functioning. Maybe they got psychiatrically committed in a hospital against their will, maybe they were picked up by the police or became homeless,” says STEP clinical director Jessica Pollard. “We try to catch people as soon as they have noticeable symptoms, whether it is full-blown and diagnosable psychosis or signs of something to come.”
Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech or excessive motor activity can be caused by, say, stress or substance abuse, but they can also be symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. And while diagnoses have improved, mental health centers still struggle with the stigmas associated with psychosis.
“People don’t tend to show up on their own for care,” Pollard says. “They’re really embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know.”
As many as one in every 29 people will experience some form of psychosis — generally defined as losing contact with reality — within their lifetime, according to one study. Psychiatrists know that most people have their first psychotic episode in their late teens or early twenties and reaching people at this early age is key, Yale’s psychiatrists say. It’s when the risk of relapse into psychotic episodes is highest and when two-thirds of suicides triggered by the disease occur.
“The model is a pragmatic, effective and economically feasible,” Vinod Srihari, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, says in a statement. “The message is simple,” he adds. “The earlier, the better.”
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Alternative Courts Can Transform Offenders, Not Just Punish Them
After being pulled over for running a stop sign, Heather Bateman was rummaging around looking for her driver’s license when something else popped out of her purse — her crystal meth pipe.
The policeman at her car window spotted the drug paraphernalia, and Bateman soon found herself in handcuffs.
In a strange twist of events, getting arrested was actually the answer to her prayers.
For months, Bateman had been asking God for some kind of help, as her life spiraled out of control. She was using meth every day. She’d lost her nursing license. She and her 7-year-old daughter were homeless. “It was the lowest part of my life,” she says.
Later, at the courthouse, Bateman was asked if she’d like to take part in an alternative court program — a drug court. “I said, ‘Absolutely. I want to get help.’”
Instead of receiving probation or a prison sentence, Bateman underwent three years of supervised treatment in the St. Paul, Minn., drug court. Her urine was tested randomly to see if she was still using, and she was required to attend treatment and counseling groups. Batemen regularly attended court, where the judge didn’t just issue orders, but asked her what was going on in her life, in the same way a social worker might do.
It wasn’t a straight road, but Bateman found her way to sobriety, regained her nursing license, got married, bought a house and rebuilt her life. But none of this would’ve happened, she says, if she’d simply been sent to jail for drug possession.
Since the first drug court was created 25 years ago in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, the concept has proliferated. Today, there are more than 2,800 specialized courts nationwide that work with juveniles, veterans, the mentally ill, drunk drivers and prostitutes to change their lives after being arrested for minor offenses.
These so-called “problem-solving” courts are born from a recognition that traditional methods of criminal punishment are ineffective. Judges who are frustrated with the existing system and tired of seeing the same defendants appear before them again and again often lead alternative courts, which are designed to address the root causes of the arrest-imprisonment-and-re-arrest cycle.
Alternative courts are growing because they work. Studies have shown that drug courts can reduce recidivism rates by an average of 8 to 13 percent. Additionally, drug court graduates have fewer relapses than offenders who are simply given probation or prison time, according to a 2012 national study financed by the National Institute of Justice.
Most important, the turn toward problem-solving courts may be part of a larger change in the American criminal justice system: leaning toward treatment rather than retribution.
FINDING A BETTER WAY
“The traditional response of sending people to prison or placing them on probation was clearly proving ineffective, if the goal is causing people to change their behavior,” says Associate Circuit Judge Alan Blankenship, reflecting on the beginnings of the drug court he presides over in Stone County, Mo. Blankenship helped start the court 10 years ago, during a methamphetamine epidemic there.
“We realized that imprisoning people is extraordinarily expensive and the environment is not conducive to recovery,” he explains. Prison sentences for drug-addicted defendants “caused more harm and worsened public safety,” he says. “People got worse instead of better.”
Drug courts often employ a multiphase approach to treatment. Initially, defendants are closely monitored, required to undergo frequent drug testing and may have to attend an intensive treatment program, counseling or group therapy. Offenders are assigned a team that might include a probation officer, a social worker and a drug counselor. The group addresses not only treatment needs, but also issues like housing, employment and family reunification.
“The team is going to work with you every step of the way so that you’re not just clean, but stable,” says Chris Deutsch, director of communications for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
As defendants accumulate sober time and meet their obligations, drug tests become less frequent and court monitoring loosens. When offenders have shown themselves to be stable and clean, they graduate from the program.
Throughout the process, offenders are required to come to court regularly for conversations with the judge — interactions that look very different from traditional courtroom exchanges. Alternative court judges ask offenders personal questions about family, work and stresses in their life. And they offer praise and encouragement, even applause.
Judge Blankenship says he often says things you might not often hear in a courtroom: “You’re doing great. I appreciate what you’re doing. I’m proud of you.”
“They have this dialogue back and forth and it’s an amazing departure from the way criminal justice interactions normally go,” says Deutsch.
Just a slight shift in approach can have a dramatic impact. Blankenship recalls one defendant who told him, “ ‘I’ve been in many courts in many parts of the country and you are the first judge to look me in the eye and call me by my name. You don’t know how powerful that is.’ ”
However, if offenders are not meeting their obligations, if they are missing meetings or testing positive for drug use, they can be subject to sanctions like community service, extra group counseling sessions or even a few days in jail.
EFFECTIVE & EFFICIENT
When people complete the program, which can take anywhere from a year to several years, they don’t often end up back in court, Blankenship says. The latest data from Stone County indicates that, five years after finishing the program, 13 percent of drug court offenders were re-arrested and only 6 percent were convicted and sent to prison. That’s a significant decrease, when compared with statewide data showing that 60 percent of people with addiction who were sent to prison return there in five years. “No other criminal justice response we’re aware of even comes close to achieving these kind of results with this really high-risk population of offenders,” Blankenship says.
As drug courts have taken root, other alternative court models have appeared.
Savannah, Ga., for example, now has a felony drug court, a mental health court, a veterans’ court, a DUI court and two juvenile courts. Each offers a different twist on the basic drug court model — intensive supervision and treatment tailored to the needs of different populations.
Jean Cottier, coordinator of the Savannah-Chatham County Drug Court, offers impressive statistics about the city’s mental health court. Forty of its graduates, who together had racked up 564 arrests and 1,074 criminal charges prior to participating in the alternative court, only had four arrests and five criminal charges in the two years after completing the program.
Alternative courts also save money, Cottier says. Participants in the felony drug court cost taxpayers only about $19 per day, but “it costs $58 a day to house a prisoner in our local jail,” she explains.
Alternative courts also reduce city spending because they target those who use courts and other public systems the most. People who end up in mental health court, in particular, “are high consumers of services in the community,” Cottier says. A successful mental-illness court can cut ER visits drastically, for instance, saving taxpayer money.
A SEA CHANGE
It’s easy to caricature drug courts, which often offer cakes and hug-filled graduation ceremonies for offenders who complete programs, as part of a soft-on-crime strategy that coddles criminals. Deutsch’s response to that criticism: Drug courts work. Traditional retributive justice doesn’t.
“The people in our community, even some of the most conservative, realize that it’s better to treat people and enable them to transform their lives and become contributing members of our community,” says Judge Blankenship.
While drug courts are becoming more common, they’re still not necessarily reducing the overall prison population. “In many drug courts, criteria for admission can be pretty restrictive,” says Marc Mauer, head of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. “Many of the people going to prison never had an opportunity to go to drug court.”
One of the best critiques of drug courts, then, might be that there just aren’t enough of them, and they aren’t helping enough people. But their rise may be a signal that the American criminal justice system is beginning to move away from an exclusive focus on punishment.
Drug courts “are a response, a reaction to more than a generation of policy making in this country where we’ve essentially tiled the axis of the justice system in the direction of punitive policy making,” says Greg Berman, director of the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.
Twenty-five years ago, Berman says, the criminal justice conversation was about “how to make punishment swift and certain.” Now, within policy circles, “people say, yes, we can change the behavior of offenders.”
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This is What Community Oriented Policing Looks Like
The Houston Police Department’s mental health division works out of the second floor of the city’s first Center for Sobriety, which provides assistance and monitoring for people under the influence of alcohol. It’s a fitting location for the unique department, which was formed in 2007 and has centered itself around partnerships with community organizations and mental health case workers to develop a more sensitive, multi-pronged approach for dealing with people with mental illnesses.
Sgt. Steve Wick heads up a small unit inside this department called the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT for short), which is made up of four officers, one sergeant and three mental health case workers. In addition to responding to complaints associated with homelessness, like public intoxication or loitering, this police unit works proactively to get those people off the streets of downtown Houston — preventing complaints from happening in the first place.
This approach to homelessness is not unique to Houston. Departments in Cambridge, Mass. and Colorado Springs, Colo. amongst others, have started units with similar strategies. Sgt. Wick spent a week with the Colorado Springs department learning about their program before starting HOT in Houston.
It’s hard to tell if this approach has lead to a significant decrease in complaints associated with the homeless, but the impact on the street population is evident. According to Wick, HOT has helped place more than 400 people in temporary or permanent housing since 2011.
Eat Lunch, Help the Mentally Ill
If you’re ever in Tucson, Ariz., you can dine on American comfort food with a side of social change at Café 54.
Since 2004, the downtown nonprofit bistro has won accolades from the local press for its cuisine, while also assisting more than 250 adults with behavioral health issues.
Founded by executive director Mindy Bernstein, whose previous work also focused on vocational rehabilitation, Café 54 trainees are paid for their work as they gain valuable vocational skills in food preparation, cooking, retail and service. Some of the common challenges among employees are depression, anxiety and the often-intertwined affliction of substance abuse. Trainees graduate from the program after as little as three or as many as nine months.
Of course, work is never served without stress and having a restaurant largely run by individuals recovering from behavioral health issues comes with challenges. Despite this, Café 54’s program manager, Orlando Montes, says that for most of the trainees, symptoms decrease as they acclimate to their positions.
“Jobs are stressful,” says Montes. “Jobs are demanding, jobs require us to get up in the morning and show up. And people are resilient, and they need that sense of purpose.”
Not everyone finishes the program, however. Some relapse with drugs or alcohol, others have complications with medications and symptoms, while some simply aren’t ready for a work environment. Of the 60 percent who see their vocational training through, about half obtain subsequent work in the private market. In the run-up to graduation, Café 54 job coaches assist them with job placement, should they want to continue working.
Café 54’s primary financial support comes from the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona. It also subsists on private donations and revenue generated by its lunchtime operation. This later source of funding has steadily grown, making expansion possible. Just this year, the first Café 54 food truck hit the streets of Tucson.
It’s not just patrons that reap the benefits of the eatery, as it improves society as a whole, as people with mental illnesses who are functional and stable are far less likely to incur medical expenses or put themselves and others in dangerous situations.
So on your travels in the Great Southwest, consider dining at Café 54. Your stomach — and your heart — will thank you.
This App Hopes to Reduce Mass Shootings By Addressing Mental Illness
In the wake of tragedy, particularly the string of mass shootings across the country as of late, we often seek out answers as to why it happened.
More recently, the national conversation has focused on recognizing mental illness. While there is not a direct correlation between mass shootings and mental illness, educating the public on the subject is one step Americans are beginning to take to prevent tragedy from striking again.
The Center of Health Care Services is joining the movement with the release of Mental Health & You (MHU), a mobile app and crisis intervention tool providing resources on mental illness, according to Emergency Management.
“We know that one in four people will be diagnosed with a mental illness in this country, but most go untreated,” says Leon Evans, executive director of the center. “We know that people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crime, rather than perpetrators of it.”
The app provides information on signs and symptoms of mental disorders including anxiety, depression, attention-deficit disorder, post-traumatic-stress-syndrome (PTSD) and schizophrenia. Users can also find direct links to local and national advocacy groups like the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the San Antonio Coalition for Veterans and Families, according to Allison Greer, vice president of external relations for the center.
More interestingly, Mental Health & You also includes a section devoted to debunking myths and “stigma-busters,” correcting misinformation that often is associated with the subject. It also mentions famous people who grapple with mental illness including Abraham Lincoln and actress Catherine Zeta Jones. To further dispel the taboo of mental illness, the app lists movies that illustrate the issue such as “Silver Linings Playbook.”
But most importantly, the app is a tool for individuals who may be concerned about a friend or loved one and for law enforcement looking for crisis training on how to respond to a situation with a person struggling with mental illness.
“For example, they know not to use their ‘command voice,’” Greer says.
The app features a “get help now” button that immediately connects a user with a local hotline, where trained staff available to provide advice or call in a mobile crisis intervention outreach team to help the situation. The app also has a button that can connect users with 911 as well.
MORE: After Newtown Shooting, This Critical Program Helps Police Deal with Mental Health Emergencies
Big Bets: Helping Schools Become Healthier Places to Learn
After 9/11, Dr. Pamela Cantor was asked to assist in a study on the psychological effects of the attack on New York City’s elementary school students. According to Dr. Cantor, who had spent nearly two decades working as a child psychologist, the study had profound implications. The results, she says, suggested that growing up in poverty had a greater impact on a child’s psyche than the events of 9/11 had. Dr. Cantor felt compelled to look more closely at the relationship between poverty and a child’s psychology, and her research ultimately inspired her to found Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit that works within schools to make them a healthier learning environment for their impoverished students.
Since the original publication of this story, Dr. Pamela Cantor has become a NationSwell Council member.
MORE: Can This Hospital Stop Teens From Killing Each Other —- and Themselves?
This California Development Will Serve as a Refuge for Military Women
As Americans push for better treatment of women in the military, more organizations are also realizing the importance of helping females after they leave the service.
Female veterans have become the fastest-growing sector of the American homeless population, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Health. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that last year, an estimated 8 percent of the 58,000 homeless veterans were women.
Which is why Volunteers of America sought to develop a complex focused on female vets and their children. Soon, one of the nation’s first housing projects dedicated to our women warriors will open its doors.
MORE: Grace After Fire: Helping Female Vets Go From Soldier to Civilian
The Blue Butterfly Village, appropriately named since it sits perched atop a hill overlooking a butterfly preserve in San Pedro, California, will feature mental health services and after-school activities for children, according to Vincent Kane, director of the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans. (Male vets with children will be considered if they are responsible for household income.)
“These women are not damaged, they’re not ill,” said Robert Pratt, president of Volunteers of America Greater Los Angeles. “They’ve just had traumatic experiences. They need a place of their own.”
Those traumatic experiences can range from sexual assault to post-traumatic stress disorder. One in five female vets report sexual trauma — including rape — compared with the one in 100 men, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. And a 2012 Veteran Affairs report found that more than half of homeless female vets experienced sexual assault during service. And while the country is grappling with ways to prevent female sexual harassment within the military, many women don’t speak up out of fear of causing trouble. Adding to that stress and trauma is witnessing the brutality of war and how it affects young children and families.
MORE: Fighting for the Women Who Fought for Their Country
Volunteers of America has doled out $15 million to build the Blue Butterfly housing project on land that the U.S. Navy vacated in 1997. The Navy deeded nine acres to the nonprofit as a part of its base reuse project following the shuttering of the Long Beach shipyards. The 74 town homes in the village take up about a third of the land, while the remaining acres were awarded to Marymount California University and Rolling Hills Preparatory School, according to Pratt.
While more emergency shelters and temporary housing assistance for female vets are cropping up, the majority of long-term housing aid is still directed at male veterans, according to Pratt. However, the San Pedro complex is aiming to change that by becoming a model for future female-centric housing projects across the country.
After Newtown Shooting, This Critical Program Helps Police Deal with Mental Health Emergencies
In the wake of school shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary, understanding mental health issues has become a major concern in the national dialogue. For authorities, part of that is having the skills to identify red flags, and in a criminal situation, to know when someone is in need of help.
Recognizing mental health has become a priority for the state of Connecticut. To educate workers, authorities have created the Crisis Intervention Team, which trains police officers in understanding how to recognize and respond to the spectrum of behavioral and mental health issues, according to NPR. The program, which is one of about 2,7000 across the country, teaches policemen everything ranging from assessing suicidal people to implementing de-escalation techniques. On Wednesday, Connecticut lawmakers even passed a bill that requires police officials across the state receive similar training.
Lance Newkircher, a patrol officer in Fairfield, Connecticut, said that it’s not difficult to interview “the person who just stole four tires from BJ’s” and get that person to admit what’s going on. But “it’s incredibly difficult to get someone who believes they have an assignment from the FBI to really admit that they don’t, and [that] they do need help, and it’s time to go and talk to somebody at the hospital. So that’s the skill set.”
Newkirchen is one of 18 that are part of Fairfield’s Crisis Intervention Team, which was launched about three years ago. (In total, there are 107 officers on the town’s force.) Members attend statewide workshops and seminars, which encourage police officers to foster relationships not just with their communities but with mental health providers as well.
MORE: For Refugees, American Dream Starts With Better Mental-Health Screenings
Newkirchen points out that having this type of training gives officers a better understanding of a situation before they enter it. For example, if a policeman receives an emergency call from a house he has already visited responding to a suicide attempt, he has the details he needs to assess what happened before he gets there.
For Fairfield, that training is important. Newkirchen estimates he gets two to three calls per eight-hour shift regarding mental health.
“I would say 50 percent of the time, [the calls we get] are calls like this — where we are making, I think, a huge difference,” he told NPR. “We won’t be back, and that family has a very different sense of what we do as police officers.”
That’s a critical step in fostering a relationship between authorities and their community. As we grapple with national tragedies like Newtown, it’s vital that authorities understand the role that mental health can play in any situation.
“You know, protocol for a police officer is always, ‘Protect yourself,’ ” said third-year John McGrath. “To be able to learn what they’re thinking and what’s going on in their mind, kind of gives you a better perspective of what’s going on and what you’re able to do to further protect yourself and to protect them.”
ManTherapy: Confronting Suicide With a Little Manly Humor
The poster on the door to the office of Colorado’s suicide prevention chief reads, “Give your mind the same attention you give your penis.”
For most men, that’s a lot of attention.
For Jarrod Hindman, it could be the answer to a serious problem that has for years nagged Colorado and many western states, where mental health services are scarce: What’s the best way to help suicidal men get the mental health care they need? Hindman is hoping the key lies in something almost never associated with suicide — jokes
Hindman took over the state’s suicide prevention office in 2006. He noticed that it wasn’t spending much time, money or marketing on the problem of men and suicide. And yet the statistics were troubling: Men are nearly four times as likely to commit suicide as women. In 2009, men made up 79 percent of the nearly 40,000 people who died by suicide in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
MORE: Improving American Health Begins with These Three Numbers
In Colorado especially — along with the rest of the so-called “Suicide Belt” of the American West — the problem of suicide is dire. In 2012, the rate reached an all-time high of 19.7 suicides per 100,000 people in Colorado, a nearly 16 percent increase over the year before, according to the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment. Compare that with the rate for the U.S. overall: 12.4 suicides per 100,000 people. Among men in Colorado, the rate was higher still, at 30.62 suicides per 100,000 people.
Hindman was struck by another jarring statistic: Compared with women, men have far lower rates of depression, a major risk factor for suicide.
But that fact, he realized, didn’t mean fewer men than women were depressed. Data has repeatedly suggested that men are just as vulnerable as women to depression. So because fewer men were being diagnosed as depressed, it likely meant that they were not going to mental health professionals to get the diagnosis.
A few years later, Hindman met the founder of a marketing firm at a symposium. They arranged a meeting and hatched the idea for what would become “ManTherapy” — a website that brings therapy to men who wouldn’t seek it otherwise, and in the process, makes jokes about testicles.
MORE: Why House Calls Are Health Care’s Future, Not Just Its Past
Go to the ManTherapy.org homepage and a video of a thickly mustached Dr. Rich Mahogany, man therapist (“not a real therapist”), greets you with one of a few random greetings. “Did you know that men have feelings too?” he might say. “No, not just the hippies.”
Dr. Mahogany addresses visitors from a wood-paneled office befitting Ron Swanson, complete with a moosehead on the wall and a sign for a music group called Richard and the Balls. On the site, there’s a primer on depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, titled Gentlemental Health 101: Kryptonite for the Manliest of Male Minds, plus lots of resources to connect men with therapy (“Because contrary to popular belief, men can’t fix everything themselves”), support groups (“You don’t need to go it alone, cowboy”) and the like.
ManTherapy.org ran into some opposition at first. For obvious reasons, suicide is a sensitive subject, and it’s not easy to joke about it. Some of the mental health professionals partnering with the state bristled, worried that the site would steer men away from their services. If even more depressed men went without treatment, it could lead to more suicide, they said, and increase the rate of other depression-related problems like weakened relationships, poor job performance, alcoholism, insomnia, heart disease and dementia.
The skeptics found that their fears were mostly unfounded. Since July 2012, when the website launched, 300,000 people have visited it. And some of the men who have been helped by the site have let the state know; hundreds of anonymous users have emailed positive comments, which Hindman shared with NationSwell. One visitor to ManTherapy wrote that “it was a safe place to me.” Another said that it “helps me see I’m not the only one going through my problems and I’m not less of a man for getting help and lets me know there is a life after this.”
Dr. Alan Berman, the director of the American Association of Suicidology in Washington, D.C., says men are “socialized” to be strong rather than emotional, and not to seek help or admit they have a problem. “It’s a tremendous barrier to overcome,” he says.
MORE: Laughter Goes a Long Way in Fighting for Fresher Water
There won’t be a way to determine the true impact of ManTherapy on suicide rates until this year’s statistics are released in Colorado. But in a hopeful sign, other states are signing on. Wisconsin is working on a licensing agreement with Colorado’s suicide prevention office to bring the droll Dr. Mahogany to its state with specific resources added to the website for those residents. Talks are also ongoing with North and South Carolina, and a handful of western states like Arizona, New Mexico and California. Even Australia started its own national version of the site.
The western U.S. states carry a particularly heavy burden of suicide; their rates are far higher than that of the rest of the country. The reasons are complex and difficult to tease out precisely. But it doesn’t help that: a) mental health resources in rural areas are harder to come by; b) Western Americans have more of a frontier mentality about dealing with their own troubles; and c) there’s a deep-rooted gun culture in the region, increasing the potential for self-harm.
These were the factors that prompted Hindman to start ManTherapy — to bring mental health help right to the computer screen of John Wayne. Since the days when Hindman first began, things have changed quite a bit. Last year ManTherapy.org, which is funded in part by the nonprofit Carson J Spencer Foundation, was honored with a public health award for its innovation. And last July, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper sent Hindman a note to congratulate him. Underneath the typed text, the governor scribbled: “WAY TO GO and keep up the GREAT work!”
Hindman is pleased, but knows he has work to do. One of his intermediate goals is, counterintuitively, to see reported rates of male depression rise, particularly in the 25-to-54 age group targeted by ManTherapy. “That means that men are getting off their ass and going to see a professional,” he says.
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