Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • What happens after the police stop? People of color with disabilities face higher risks

    Crisis intervention training for Kansas City police officers does not reach the majority of the department and can fail to address a critical reason that police might use excessive force on people with disabilities. Although the 40-hour training includes a segment on dealing with people with autism and developmental disabilities, the combination of racial bias and some people's eccentric behavior can cause officers' "compliance culture" to kick in and make them overreact to perceived threats. Training without culture change, advocates say, is doomed to have short-lived effects.

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  • Veteran homelessness in Chittenden County has dropped significantly. Here's what it took.

    Canal Street Veterans Housing was instrumental in ending veteran homelessness in Chittenden County, Vermont. The program provided two years of transitional housing for veterans and their families, job training services, and mental health care. An emphasis was put on providing mental and physical health screenings to help those dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

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  • Domestic violence survivor creates app to help others in crisis

    A free mobile app, Safe House, gives victims of domestic abuse a simple and quick way to call for help and find needed resources in four states. Putting local crisis helplines, shelters, and other local resources in one place saves time when an abuse victim is racing to get to safety. The app, downloaded more than 3,000 times since its launch less than two years ago, currently covers resources in Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. Its developer plans to expand to more states.

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  • Biden embraces drug courts, but do they actually work?

    Drug courts can help some people with serious drug problems who face serious criminal charges, if such court programs are run carefully, based on evidence-based approaches. But, too often, such courts – which push criminal defendants into treatment as an alternative to incarceration – can do more harm than good. The proof of drug courts' effectiveness is mixed, and fairly thin. Thousands of such courts exist, based on widespread political support for an approach seen as less punitive. But many critics say the courts' track record overall is weak and their approach can be just another form of punishment.

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  • Africa turns to telemedicine to close mental health gap

    Even before the coronavirus pandemic limited access to health care facilities, health specialists across Africa were already beginning to turn to technology-based mental health services to offer care with fewer barriers for patients. Despite its growth in use during the pandemic, some doctors caution that it does not necessarily replace in-person consultations, but is still very useful.

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  • Minority US contact tracers build trust in diverse cities

    A contact tracing program jointly launched by San Diego State University and San Diego County is helping to combat misinformation and dispel fears for immigrants, refugees, and minorities in San Diego by employing ethnically and racially diverse community members. The contact tracers help those who need to quarantine devise a plan to do so safely, while also acting as community health care workers to help those families get the necessities they need.

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  • Joe Biden Should Stop Bragging About the Violence Against Women Act

    The Violence Against Women Act was billed as a way to make a patriarchal society, and policing profession in particular, take domestic violence more seriously. It encouraged policies making arrest of alleged abusers mandatory, even to the point of punishing victims who refused to cooperate in prosecutions. This has backfired on many victims, especially women of color who distrust police and their punitive approaches to solving family problems. The law also prioritizes punitive approaches in its awarding of federal grants, thus denying victim aid to women who do not wish to cooperate with arrests.

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  • Philly police rebuffed offers from crisis response center to work together, director says

    Since early 2019, a mental-health crisis response center, the West Philadelphia Consortium, has worked to get the police to call in the consortium's mobile crisis team to de-escalate crises and get people into treatment. In more than 1,200 cases in 2019, police made only six arrests and no one died. After police shot and killed Walter Wallace, Jr., during a mental-health crisis, the consortium revealed that it had worked with Wallace but wasn't called for help when police were summoned to his home. The consortium seeks to formalize its relationship with the police department to prevent more violence.

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  • Hanging on: Covid gave Louisiana's addiction patients life-saving drug treatment by phone

    When the coronavirus pandemic caused organizations and businesses to shut their doors, some medical practices, such as facilities that treat addiction, found relief by moving to telehealth services. In Lousiana, "emergency changes to federal and state telehealth regulations" allowed patients to seek therapy and other services via telephone and video, which helped them avoid exposure to the virus, yet still access the care they needed.

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  • This Addiction Treatment Works. Why Is It So Underused?

    A substance abuse program known as contingency management offers incentives to those who to stay in treatment and remain abstinent from the use of drugs. Although not all agree with the merits of the program and question the underlying morals of the concept, anecdotal accounts from participants and studies have shown that it can be "highly effective" in helping to treat substance abuse.

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