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Mental Health and Illness

Childhood Trauma
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After School Shootings, Children and Communities Struggle to Heal
Ariella Iancu, Lisa H. Jaycox, Joie D. Acosta, Frank G. Straub, Samantha Iovan, Christopher Nelson, Mahshid Abir
Jul 19, 2019
Health Affairs Blog
School shootings leave wounds that affect students, school staff, families, and communities for years. Building community resilience, implementing evidence-based mental health support early, and providing access for survivors and the community immediately and in the long term could help promote healing and prevent more tragedy.
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Childhood Trauma
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Childhood Trauma Is More Common Than You Think. This School-Based Intervention Can Help
Apr 23, 2019
A program developed at RAND helps children exposed to trauma confront and subdue their stress and anxiety. The program grew out of the 1990s street violence of South Los Angeles and has since helped kids from Newtown to Fukushima. Researchers are tailoring this intervention for children in Puerto Rico whose lives were upended by hurricanes.
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Suicide
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Preventing Suicide: Treat Mass Shooting Trauma Beyond Initial Tragedy
Joie D. Acosta, Lisa H. Jaycox
Apr 4, 2019
United Press International
The need for mental health support and suicide-prevention efforts targeting survivors of mass shootings, and the friends and families of victims, is great. Putting such programs in place could go a long way toward helping them heal, and preventing more tragedy.
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Mental Health Treatment
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How a New Tool Could Help Mental Health Providers Deliver More Effective Care
Kimberly A. Hepner @KimberlyHepner, Terri Tanielian @TerriTanielian, David M. Adamson
Mar 1, 2019
The RAND Blog
The mental health workforce needs the proper tools to meet the needs of the communities it serves. A key element of this is high-quality training in how to deliver evidence-based treatments. RAND developed a new tool designed to assess how well a specific training aligns with the most critical features of effective training.
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Mental Health and Illness
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Is Los Angeles County Successfully Creating a Youth Movement Around Mental Health Issues?
Rebecca L. Collins
Dec 6, 2018
Thrive Global
A new community engagement campaign called WhyWeRise seeks to increase awareness of mental health access as a civil rights issue and increase civic engagement. The campaign reached its target audience—people aged 14 to 24—and showed signs of changing attitudes toward mental illness.
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Bipolar Disorder
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What Mariah Carey's Bipolar Revelation Could Mean for Public Health
Sarah MacCarthy
Apr 30, 2018
KevinMD.com
Five-time Grammy winner Mariah Carey is being widely applauded for recently revealing she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2001. By openly talking about her mental health struggles, she is helping lift mental illness out of the shadows and bringing attention to how common mental illness can be.
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Suicide
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Comparing Suicide Rates: Making an Apples to Apples Comparison
Rajeev Ramchand
Apr 2, 2018
The Injury Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention
As the national suicide rate continues to rise, an increasing number of stakeholders are looking within their own communities and asking: “Do we have a suicide problem?” It's a difficult question to answer.
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Media Influences on Health
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Does Social Media Depression in Young People Really Exist?
Lucy Hocking
Feb 6, 2018
Medical Xpress
What are the mental health risks to adolescents and young adults from the use of social media? And how can young people and social media companies manage these risks?
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Homelessness
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Housing for Health: Los Angeles County's Department of Health Tackles Homelessness with an Innovative Housing Program That Saves Money
Sarah B. Hunter
Jan 18, 2018
USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism
Los Angeles County's Housing for Health program addresses an important public health issue by providing housing and supportive services to some of the most vulnerable people in our community. The program also saves taxpayers money.
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Mental Health and Illness
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Building Understanding of the Mental Health Challenges in the Construction Industry
Michael Whitmore, Joscelyne Shaw
Jan 11, 2018
Building Magazine
Employers looking to address mental health problems among staff must recognize the causes and understand mental health challenges within the organization. Construction workers could face greater risk than workers in other sectors, but awareness of support and help remains low.
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Caregivers
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Military Caregivers Share the Costs of War
Oct 30, 2017
Millions of veterans and service members receive care from family and friends who need support as well. Military caregivers sacrifice their time, their jobs, and even their health to provide a service worth billions of dollars to the United States.
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Suicide
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Checklist of Best Practices Developed to Guide Development of Suicide Prevention Campaigns
Rajeev Ramchand, Joie D. Acosta
Oct 25, 2017
Lifeline Network
Is your crisis line’s suicide-prevention communications effort working well enough? What should you be doing differently? Some help is available through a checklist published earlier this year.
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Public Health
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Anticipating Harvey's Toll on Health and Health Care
Mahshid Abir, Richard Serino
Sep 5, 2017
U.S. News & World Report
After Hurricane Harvey, challenges to the health of affected communities and the health care systems that serve them are expected to grow. Among the problems are closures of hospitals, pharmacies, and dialysis centers. Lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy could help relief efforts.
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Mental Health and Illness
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Why the Mental Ill Health of Academic Researchers Remains a Hidden Problem
Susan Guthrie, Catherine A. Lichten
Aug 28, 2017
Times Higher Education
The mental health and well-being of higher education staff is a significant challenge, probably even more so than the evidence indicates.
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Mental Health and Illness
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Why the IPS Success Story Needs to Be Unpicked
Joanna Hofman @JoannaBHofman
Aug 15, 2017
The RAND Blog
The Individual Placement and Support model, which helps people with severe mental illness gain employment, has been a major statistical success. Why does it work and how it might be applied to other vulnerable populations?
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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
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Raising Awareness of the Need for Collaborative Care to Treat PTSD
Lisa S. Meredith
Jun 23, 2017
The RAND Blog
Post-traumatic stress disorder affects nearly 8 percent of American adults from all walks of life. Research suggests that more work is needed to improve and adapt models of care for PTSD.
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