Mind Site News website screenshot
MindSiteNews.org is the nation’s only news organization exclusively covering mental health.
Launched in September 2021, it’s an outgrowth of a smaller, state-focused website at California’s Steinberg Institute that veteran health and mental health journalist and AHCJ award-winner Rob Waters was running at the time.
Kathryn Bocanegra, assistant professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, listening to panelist Arturo Carrillo, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., director of health and violence prevention at Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. (Photo by Erica Tricarico)
Law enforcement officials frequently mischaracterize perpetrators and victims of gun violence, resulting in news headlines and soundbites that sometimes obscure the toll it takes on very young people.
That was the broad message from experts on the “What exposure to chronic violence — especially among children — does to human health” panel at Reporting on Violence as a Public Health Issue: An AHCJ Summit in Chicago.
Photo by Pixabay
Several years ago, I recall talking to a New York friend about how awestruck I was that my hometown library had put out a welcome mat, if you will, to homeless people.
‘As long as you’re not a disruption, the librarians are cool with you being there. That would never happen in New York.’ I’d said that of the Central Arkansas Public Library’s main branch, one of my favorite haunts (especially now that I spend more time in my southern home than my northern one).
Photo by cottonbro via pexels.
Journalists covering alcoholism may already know that it is the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind tobacco smoking, which ranks No. 1, and the combination of poor diet and too little exercise, which rank No. 2. But a new study has revealed that psilocybin, a hallucinogen, in combination with psychotherapy, may someday be a viable treatment for alcohol use disorder. (Check out these dos and don’ts when reporting on alcohol.)
Aneri Pattani
When covering suicide, words, and framing matter, a lesson Raleigh, N.C.-based Kaiser Health News reporter Aneri Pattani learned firsthand when suicide researchers blasted her about how she had written a suicide story.
“I got called out on the wording: ‘committed suicide’ versus ‘died by suicide,’” said Pattani, a Northeastern University journalism graduate whose Hopkins’ Master of Public Health Studies focuses on children and adolescents.