A growing number of “peer respites,” nonclinical settings for psychiatric recovery, can help people in distress who mainly need to talk to people who understand their problems.
What’s a 67-year-old to do when COVID-19 shuts down the volunteering gigs that were his personal fountain of youth?
Daniel Prude’s family knew he needed psychiatric care and tried to get it for him. Instead, his encounter with police hours after he was released from Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, proved fatal.
In areas hit hard by the coronavirus, such as Detroit, behavioral health care workers have been overburdened and forced to scale back services at the same time people battling mental health disorders became more stressed and anxious.
Relaxed regulations in response to the pandemic means more access to addiction treatment medications. But recovery programs are accepting fewer people, and the danger of overdose remains high.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked lawmakers to pare down their legislative wish lists and focus on the state’s coronavirus response. But state Sen. Jim Beall plans to forge ahead with his mental health care proposals, including a measure to create a state mental health parity requirement.
People in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction have to weather a new storm of depression, anxiety and isolation during the pandemic, just as the social supports of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs move online.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom dedicated nearly all of his State of the State address Wednesday to homelessness. To fix that problem, he said, the state must address another one: mental health care.
Nearly a decade ago, Dr. Jeffrey Brenner and his Camden Coalition appeared to have an answer to remake American health care: Treat the sickest and most expensive patients. But a rigorous study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the approach doesn’t save money. “We built a brilliant intervention to navigate people to nowhere,” Brenner tells the “Tradeoffs” podcast.
“Street medicine” programs seek out people living in back alleys and under highways. It’s a public health approach designed to build trust and eventually connect homeless patients to other services.