When criminal suspects are deemed too mentally ill to go through the court process and their charges are dropped, they can be left without stabilizing treatment — and sometimes end up being charged with additional crimes.
Consumers who have trouble getting in to see a therapist are turning to online behavioral health providers that offer quick access. But there’s limited research on their effectiveness.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
The company awarded the state’s Medi-Cal Rx contract was taken over by another company, Centene. That left the state with a contractor it didn’t pick — one that has been accused of overbilling nine other state Medicaid programs and is now under investigation by California.
A backlog at Montana’s psychiatric hospital for those facing criminal charges has left people with serious mental illness behind bars for months without adequate treatment. In some cases, judges have freed defendants over due-process violations.
Without a federal law governing private, for-profit residential programs for children with behavioral problems, regulation has been left to the states. But even in states that have sought to increase oversight, deaths and controversial tactics such as seclusion still happen.
The federal government is putting up $7.2 million for a study into the correlation between war trauma and dementia in Vietnamese immigrants. Oahn Meyer, an associate professor at the University of California-Davis who is leading the study, wonders whether her mother’s dementia is linked to trauma she suffered during the Vietnam War.
In California, health insurers blame long waits for therapy appointments on workforce shortages, but state lawmakers say that’s an excuse. A new law requires insurers to reduce wait times for mental health appointments to no more than 10 business days.
How a sexual assault survivor is questioned by police can greatly influence the ability to access memories of the traumatic incident. Better interview techniques might help solve more cases.
Two intractable failings of the U.S. health care system — addiction treatment and medical costs — come to a head in the ER, where patients desperate for addiction treatment arrive, only to find the facility may not be equipped to deal with substance use or, if they are, treatment is prohibitively expensive.