Batsh*t Crazy: The Creator of Wakefield Draws On Her Own Experience For Psych Ward Drama
Wakefield was never going to be an easy sell. An intense drama unfolding in a mental institution would be tough for anyone to market, but for Australian screenwriter Kristen Dunphy, it was especially fraught. Dunphy had spent decades struggling with severe depression and a panic disorder, leading to several long-term stays at psychiatric facilities. Despite her first-hand experience – and an award-winning career writing scripts for popular Aussie dramas — producers were reluctant to green-light a series set in a psych ward. Dunphy learned early on that to gain traction for the show, she needed to use what she calls…
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The Kids Are Not Alright
A group of masked fourth graders at Fall-Hamilton elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee sits in a circle on colorful yoga mats. Hands stretched across bellies, eyes closed, they are breathing deeply in quiet calm when teacher Kara Kennard breaks the silence. “Time for Mountain Pose!” she says. The children leap to life in their socked feet, stretching their hands down by their sides. “I am confident. I am proud!” they chant together. After yoga, students pass around the “breathing ball.” When the students catch it, they take a breath, exhale and give a name to how they’re feeling. When she…
Keep readingWelcome to MindSite News
A new, editorially independent, digital publication focused on mental health, resilience and recovery The U.S. and much of the world is in the midst of a deepening and poorly understood mental health crisis – a crisis that was festering long before the COVID-19 pandemic. The enormous increase in mental and psychological suffering during the pandemic…
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Beltway Update: Mental Health Funding at Stake in Democrats’ Budget Battle
As everyone paying attention knows, Congress is locked in an epic battle over the scale and shape of the so-called “human infrastructure” bill that contains the bulk of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda. You probably also know that in the meantime, House progressives have forced a delay in voting on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework…
Can Income Reduce Mental Illness?
In 2019, Stockton, California Mayor Michael Tubbs started a guaranteed income experiment, giving $500 a month to randomly selected residents. The stipend improved participants’ job prospects and financial stability — and reduced their depression and anxiety. For 18 months, from February 2019 through most of the pandemic’s first year, Tomás Vargas was part of an…
A Short-Term Home Where People in Crisis Can Avoid the Hospital
Nothing about the brown clapboard house a few blocks off Main Street in Cartersville, Georgia, suggests it’s anything out of the ordinary. There’s no sign, or bustle of people – just an…
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The 9-8-8 Crisis Hotline is Coming. Will States Answer the Call?
Advocates see a chance to transform mental health crisis services. But with deadlines looming, so is a fight with the telecom industry. It’s 12 pm EST, and almost 300 people are gathered…
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Trieste’s World-Famous Community Mental Health Program Under Attack
When Pierfranco Trincas took up his job as the director of the Barcola mental health center in Trieste, Italy, he took center stage in a battle over the future of a mental…
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Full of Mad Black Pride, She Tells Her Story and Helps Others Tell Theirs
Kelechi Ubozoh spent her childhood straddling two different worlds. She spent summers with her Nigerian father in New York, where she was born, and the rest of the year in suburban Atlanta,…
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The Old Asylum Is Gone: Today A Mental Health System Serves All (For Now)
This story was originally published in the February 2020 issue of Health Affairs. In Trieste, Italy, local leaders have transformed how mental health care is provided. Other cities have taken note. Spend a week in Trieste, Italy, and the first thing you may notice is what’s missing. There are no tents on the sides of…
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Essays & Interviews
Michael Pollan on the Ebbing Drug War and the Fast-Growing Era of Psychedelic Research
For three decades, in eight books and untold articles, Michael Pollan has been writing and teaching us about the food we eat and the ways people and plants intersect in the natural (and unnatural) world. In the process, he helped create a new field of journalism centered on the food system and its impact on…
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Peer Hub
A Vietnamese Therapist, Himself a Refugee, Draws on his Experience to Assist Afghan Newcomers
As Paul Hoang watched the televised scenes of panic and chaos unfold at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan in August, memories flooded back to him. He remembered the stories of beatings endured by his father, who fought with the defeated South Vietnamese Army, his family’s perilous escape by boat in 1987 when he was 7,…
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Policy Tracker
The 9-8-8 Crisis Hotline is Coming. Will States Answer the Call?
Advocates see a chance to transform mental health crisis services. But with deadlines looming, so is a fight with the telecom industry. It’s 12 pm EST, and almost 300 people are gathered for a weekly Wednesday video call. The number “988” is displayed prominently on the screen. Unlike most weekly meetings, there’s an intensity to…
Keep readingArts & Culture
Batsh*t Crazy: The Creator of Wakefield Draws On Her Own Experience For Psych Ward Drama
Wakefield was never going to be an easy sell. An intense drama unfolding in a mental institution would be tough for anyone to market, but for Australian screenwriter Kristen Dunphy, it was especially fraught. Dunphy had spent decades struggling with severe depression and a panic disorder, leading to several long-term stays at psychiatric facilities. Despite…
Keep readingInvestigations
The Lockdown Inside the Lockdown
COVID-19 and severe isolation have created a mental health crisis for incarcerated youth Pandemic precautions have touched off an invisible mental health crisis inside the juvenile detention facilities that house about 44,000 young people nationwide. With family visits canceled, rehabilitation programming curtailed and juveniles locked in their rooms for days, young people and their advocates describe an…
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