mental health

After the state of California fined her employer $4 million in 2013 for violating the legal rights of mental health patients, Oakland psychologist Melinda Ginne expected her job — and her patients’ lives — to get better.

Instead, she said, things got worse.

In many African American communities, mental health issues have a history of being undertreated and underdiagnosed. According to the federal government’s Office of Minority Health, African Americans are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population, but less likely to seek treatment.

In many African-American communities, mental health issues have a history of being undertreated and underdiagnosed. According to the federal government’s Office of Minority Health, African-Americans are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population, but less likely to seek treatment.

This is part one of a three-part series addressing mental health care within black communities.

Violinist Danielle Taylor is tall, in her late 20s, with a shaved head and a beanie cap propped to the side. She smiles a lot and upon meeting her for the first time, my instinct is to give her a hug instead of a handshake. When she picks up her violin for an impromptu song, she shifts into a deep calm.

This summer, many East Bay residents are drawing attention to the dangers of living next door to the oil industry. Borrowing from a Native American tradition of healing walks, they are walking to all five refineries along the northeastern shores of the San Francisco Bay.

Standing on the bridge over the Carquinez Straits connecting the San Pablo and Suisun Bays, two Native American women -- Penny Opal Plant and Alison Ehara-Brown -- sing a song of healing.

This past summer thousands of women and young people flooded over the border -- seeking to escape terrible violence in South and Central America. Many who came brought little with them, but they carry emotional baggage. And that’s where mental health counselors step in -- to help the recently arrived deal with the trauma they’ve faced, and even to help convince American courts to let them stay. But there are a lot of barriers to good mental health care for immigrants.

On the June 23rd edition of Your Call, we’ll have a conversation about cell phones and our health. 

In the farming town of Shafter, in Kern County, kids are playing outside Sequoia elementary school. On the other side of the playground is an organic community garden where some people are picking vegetables.

“We are just cutting little zucchinis because the season is coming to pick them,” says Shafter resident Rodrigo Romo.

Anabel Marquez adds, “It is time to take them out. We are using them to make food, to cook.”

Dr. O’Neil Dillon served as the lead psychiatrist at Solano and San Quentin state prisons from 1994 to 2000. Before working in the California state prison system, Dr. Dillon practiced general psychiatry in Berkeley at Herrick Memorial Hospital and Alta Bates Hospital. He also serves as President of the Northern California Psychiatric Society.

Producer: Lisa Denenmark

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has long been a Bible for mental health treatment.

Some clinicians say call the latest edition of the DSM a deeply flawed manual, but with a necessary common language for researchers and mental health professionals.

Some are outright rejecting it, saying that the new edition -- the DSM V -- is just a tool for the psychiatric drug industry to create more patients and prescribe more drugs.

Is it time for the DSM to go?  

If someone you loved was suffering from a serious mental illness, or seemed like they were on the verge of a psychotic breakdown, you might think you could turn to a psychiatric hospital for help. But in California, that might not do you much good. Institutions have the right to turn a person away unless they’ve been taken into custody. More than ninety percent of patients in California psych hospitals have dealt with police first.

Last year, KALW began a series on Asian American mental health. We introduced you to the Lieu family, who described their challenges as immigrants finding care for their schizophrenic daughter.

Aaron Glantz is a reporter with the Center for Investigative Reporting and author of the book, The War Comes Home. He talked with KALW about what makes the transition to civilian life so hard.

San Francisco General is the city’s main public hospital, and also the main provider for the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. On an average day, about 20 people suffering from mental illness walk through its doors asking for psychiatric help. It’s often a last resort for people without a support system or anywhere else to turn. But ongoing state and city budget cuts have forced San Francisco General, like many other public hospitals in the state, to make tough decisions. The psychiatric emergency rooms have been hit the hardest.

This article has been formatted for the web. Listen to the audio above to hear the full Q&A and story.

It’s difficult to deal with any kind of illness when it hits. But when it affects your emotional and psychological health, it’s often impossible to even describe.

It’s a rare sensitivity to normal, everyday sounds, like typing, or footsteps, or even breathing. And it’s being increasingly diagnosed. Researchers believe Misophonia begins in adolescence, but it can carry into adulthood. It can cause the people who believe they’re suffering from it to feel enraged, panicked, and inescapably overwhelmed.

KALW’s Leila Day spoke with a teenager who believes she’s suffering from Misophonia in this story of a family’s struggle with sound.  A note for our readers: we’re only using the girls’ first name to protect her identity.

Prescription drug use is rising. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by the year 2008, half of all Americans were taking one or more prescription drugs, and 37 percent of older Americans took five or more.