Mental Health
Suicide-Prevention Specialists Urge Parents To Safely Store Guns, Ammo
The teen was beautiful and fun-loving, a cheerleader, a peacemaker, and a girl who kept everyone in stitches. Her personality didn’t change even after face-altering surgery prompted jeering at school. Life turned darker when a female friend was shot and killed. The week after the funeral, 13-year-old Ashley Craddock, took her own life. She used…
How Should Police Officers Combat Stress?
Clinical psychotherapist Pat Hinkle was a police officer for 30 years before starting his counseling practice to help other officers work through stress and trauma. During his time as an officer, Hinkle recognized that there was a disconnect between police departments’ understanding of mental health and counselors’ understanding of officers’ experience of stress. “I had…
Sex, pregnancy and foster care
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teen pregnancy costs taxpayers more than $9 billion a year in health care and other costs. Ironically enough, those other costs include foster care. The irony lies with the fact that foster kids themselves are often the ones responsible for teen pregnancies. According to a…
Treatment, Grief — and Insurance
Lizzy Huffman was 5 years old when she first began to consider herself overweight. It would take nearly a decade before practitioners officially diagnosed her with a multifaceted eating disorder that combines elements of bulimia and anorexia. That was two years ago, and the Lenexa woman is now 18 years old. But for Lizzy and…
Drop-In Centers In Rural Kansas Aim To Address Dangers Of Isolation
The social and health effects of isolation on some rural Kansas residents spurred three Catholic nuns to convert a storefront in Concordia into a drop-in center where women can find support and resources. Seven years after the center opened, two dozen women on average come through each day in the town of about 5,000 to…