It was early September and Vincent Flewellen had just wrapped up his day teaching at Ladue Middle School, in an affluent suburb about 13 miles south of where protests erupted in Ferguson. Flewellen was in a good mood, but he knew he could be in...
Toney Jennings was illiterate when he was arrested at age 16. In the six months he spent at the Lowndes County Jail in eastern Mississippi, he says he played basketball, watched TV and “basically just stayed to myself.” A special...
We all bring our own unique perspectives to the work we do. I grew up in a community where we took for granted that there was a role for a public sector in universal health care, quality education, public transit, social planning. There is one simple...
Like Cody Beck, thousands of special education students in Mississippi lose valuable time in school through suspensions, expulsions and arrests each year. According to federal data, more than 8,000 special education students in Mississippi...
"Social host" laws, which hold adults accountable for any underage drinking that takes place on their property, may help curb teenage drinking, according to the preliminary findings of a new study. Researchers found that the number of teens who...
Sleep difficulties, particularly problems falling asleep, are common among toddlers and preschoolers with mental health issues, according to a new study. "Sleep problems in young children frequently co-occur with other behavioral problems, with...
With the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse well under way, the issue of child sexual abuse now turns its attention towards the Anglican Church in Newcastle. The recent announcement of a police...
Case Western Reserve University mental health researcher Joseph Galanek spent a cumulative nine months in an Oregon maximum-security prison to learn first-hand how the prison manages inmates with mental illness. What he found, through 430 hours...
California voters appear ready to further scale back the state’s extensive prison system 20 years after they passed the controversial three strikes law, which sentences third-time felons to 25 years to life. Proposition 47, also known as...
I write about health and health care, but even I'm not immune to the "young and invincible" mentality. My annual dental checkup is more than six months overdue. A provision of the Affordable Care Act that took effect in 2010 aimed to make it...
Everyone knows what it’s like to be afraid. A snake slithers unexpectedly across the path ahead, and your body automatically responds. You spring backward should it strike. Your heart pounds, muscles tense, breath quickens. You begin to...
New York City is using a $400,000 federal grant to review suicides and acts of self-harm in city jails with an approach commonly applied when things go wrong in the medical and aviation industries, officials said Tuesday. The review — dubbed the...
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, around 1 in 4 adults in the US experience some form of mental illness in any given year. Approximately 1 in 17 adults live with a severe mental illness, such as major depression,...
Young sexual minority women, including those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT), were found to have higher elevated odds of adverse health conditions than heterosexual young women and lower odds of receiving a physical or...
When construction started on Heritage Park Senior Village here in mid-October, it marked the end of 55 years of effort by the federal government to make sure low-income elders can live out their years in decent housing. The development getting...