News

On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, youth homelessness begins at the age of 14 on average, according to a new study. The study showed that over half of homeless youth interviewed had a parent with substance abuse problems or a parent who had been incarcerated.

More, about 13 percent of respondents said they had engaged in “survival sex,” exchanging sexual favors in return for shelter, food, drugs, or money, and a shocking 84 percent the study’s respondents reported being unsheltered in the past year. The Street Youth Study, which obtained data through interviews with 151 individuals aged 12 to 24 on Oahu. The research was conducted by the University of Hawaii, Waikiki Health, and youth homeless advocate Hale Kipa.

“We knew it was young, but to actually get the data to affirm it, was ‘Wow, this is a real issue,'” Kent Anderson, chief high-risk services officer at Waikiki Health, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about the 14-year-old average. Hawaii is the worst state for per capita homelessness in the country, and ties with California for the second-highest percentage of unsheltered homeless youths, according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 51 of every 10,000 Hawaiians are homeless.

Oahu is the third largest Hawaiian island that houses about 70 percent of the state’s population, according to 2010 census data.

The study comes on the heels of a January announcement from Hawaiian state lawmakers to make housing and homelessness a priority in their agenda and spending in 2018. Lawmakers said they would focus on incentivizing affordable housing developers to build more units, expanding rent subsidies for low-income residents, and creating more transitional centers to start the housing process for homeless individuals, the Associated Press reported.

Hawaii’s homeless population declined in 2017 just two years after Governor David Ige declared a state of emergency in Hawaii to deal with the homelessness issue. The state’s 2017 point-in-time count, which gathered data about homeless persons living in Hawaii on a single night in January 2017, showed an overall drop in the state’s homeless population from 7,921 to 7,220 individuals.

Across the country, homelessness showed a slight increase from 2016 to 2017, according to a December report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that utilized the same single-night numbers. About one in thirty youths aged 13 to 17 nationwide reported experiencing some form of homelessness in the past 12 months, according to a November 2017 report from researchers at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall.

Read more on Newsweek.com.

Over 77,000 grants awarded to more than 11,000 recipients—a total exceeding $480 billion in FY 2017 by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—is significant. As Andrea Brandon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of HHS’ Office of Grants and Acquisition Policy and Accountability (OGAPA), explained at the conference, this makes HHS the largest grant-making agency in the U.S. and globally.

While OGAPA hosted hundreds of attendees—both federal grantors and some applicants—there were many who could not make it to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Natcher Conference Center.

Grants.gov looks back on two key themes from the conference. Over the coming weeks, they will share other updates and information about grants management and the federal grant lifecycle from the conference on their blog.

Key Themes from the HHS Grants Management Conference

Each main session of the conference, along with the 11 breakout sessions, covered a different area of federal grants. These sessions provided unique insight and information on how to better manage grants. Two themes in particular surfaced again and again:

1. Increase focus on outcomes and “return on investment.” That is, are the federal funds awarded to applicants actually accomplishing their purpose to serve and benefit the public? How efficiently are the specific grant program goals being accomplished? As explained during the conference, these are questions for both federal grant managers and the applicant organizations to address.
2. Innovate and improve both programmatically and systematically. “Because we’ve always done it that way” will not carry weight. HHS is searching for ways to reimagine and improve its federal grant programs and systems. Simpler systems and more strategic programs will better support both (1) the purpose of a grant and (2) the people doing the hard work of implementing a grant in a local community.

Yes, these are BIG questions and ideas. Everyone in the federal grants community need to take time to consider them carefully and answer them regularly.

Read more on Grants.gov.

A new study, published in Psychiatric Services, examines how law enforcement officers in Colorado, trained via a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) program, respond to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. The study is led by Ross Baldessarini, Director of the International Consortium for Bipolar & Psychotic Disorders Research at McLean Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The researchers considered the results to demonstrate that CIT officers infrequently use physical force, involve SWAT, or cause injury to people in crisis. Officers are also more likely to transfer individuals experiencing a mental health crisis to treatment facilities than arrest them. The authors write:

“This study of Colorado’s CIT implementation showed encouraging results for diversion to treatment by trained officers handling mental health–related crisis calls, even in the presence of lethal weapons, and showed promise for the nonviolent resolution of crisis calls.”

When people diagnosed with mental disorders interact with the police, they are more likely to experience police force and get injured. Therefore, many police training programs emphasize “de-escalation and mental health literacy to increase diversion to psychiatric treatment” rather than jail, write the authors. The present study focus on a CIT program in Colorado:

“In 2002, the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice established a standardized statewide CIT program with the goals of increasing diversion to treatment and reducing unnecessary arrests, injuries, use of force, and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) callouts by increasing officers’ knowledge of mental illness, developing verbal crisis de-escalation skills, and improving awareness of local mental health resources.”

The Colorado CIT program includes a 40-hour training delivered by mental health professionals, procedures for crisis calls, and instructions aimed at streamlining transfers to hospitals. An essential component of the CIT program is partnerships with stakeholders to develop community mental health centers, post-crisis case management, and community re-entry and case management.

The researchers designed this study to test “whether CIT-trained officers would be more likely to transfer a person experiencing a mental illness crisis to jail or to a psychiatric facility for treatment if that person shows violence potential, such as wielding a lethal weapon.”

The researchers analyzed data from 6,353 CIT Data Collection Forms, which officers are encouraged to fill out after every call that appears to involve a person experiencing a mental health crisis. The study only reviewed data for CIT calls and therefore did not provide information on whether or not the CIT program improves services received by people with diagnosed with a mental disorder.

The majority of calls (57%) involved suicide risk, with 16% of calls involving a threat of violence to others. About half of calls (51%) resulted in a person being transported to a treatment facility. Police used force in 5% of the calls and called in SWAT in less than 1% of calls. Less than 5% of calls resulted in an arrest, and less than 1% resulted in an injury caused by police.

Individuals were more than twice as likely to be transferred to a treatment facility (rather than not be transferred at all) if they had a psychiatric diagnosis or were at risk of suicide. People who threatened violence were more than three times as likely to be transported to jail (versus no transport). Individuals at risk of suicide were significantly less likely to be transported to prison.

The criminalization of mental health issues is a serious issue. An individual diagnosed with ‘serious mental illness’ is three times more likely to be in jail than a hospital. Also, police victimization has been linked to psychotic experiences. Because of this, many people try to avoid police involvement in mental health crises. Blogger Katie Tastrom, for instance, recently wrote about ways to manage a mental health crisis without calling emergency services.

Individuals experiencing mental health crises who are interacting with police deserve quality and compassionate services that do not cause harm. Therefore, more efforts to reduce stigma and fear around mental health crises and to educate emergency responders are essential.

Read more on MadInAmerica.com.

Kyung Hee Choi had worked on Wall Street for more than two decades when she decided to take an early retirement in 2002, right after the 9/11 attacks. An immigrant from South Korea, Choi believed she was living the American Dream and wanted to do something altruistic after being shaken by tragedy. “I said, ‘I’ve gotten so much help from American people, American community, and I have to give back,'” Choi said.

While volunteering, she recognized that the approaches some health care providers took — “just sitting there, just waiting for patients to arrive” — contrasted with the ones she had learned about developing customer service.

Working with what she knew best, Choi created a business model for a “Korean Medical Program,” now housed at Holy Name Medical Center in New Jersey.

The initiative hired Korean-speaking staff members, introduced Korean cuisine to the hospital’s menu, and participating doctors developed medical screening programs for diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Now in its 10th year, the program has been a success, serving upwards of 45,000, according to hospital. It has also been adapted to serve Chinese, Filipino, Indian and Japanese communities as Asian Health Services.

“With community hospitals like Holy Name Medical Center, our mission is to serve our community,” Choi said. “Our community has changed a lot. It’s inevitable that our priority has to be focusing on the fastest growing, and the largest pockets of our population.”

Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center, going from 11.9 million to 20.4 million people between 2000 and 2015.

But as the community grows, it has had to deal with health needs. Research presented in 2016 by the Center for Asian Health at Temple University found that Asian Americans experience health disparities in cancer, chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, mental health, and among the elderly. Asian Americans had the highest mortality rate for liver and stomach cancer, the most preventable cancers, according to researchers.

The Asian Health Program’s efforts to address those issues don’t only include language. The program has helped register approximately 24,000 individuals for Medicaid, according to Holy Name, and when the program’s doctors found that illnesses like diabetes and breast cancer were more prevalent among patients, they began screening and treatment programs for those diseases.

Ultimately, Choi’s goal is to see her program emulated in places where there is a need for culturally sensitive healthcare. “To me, I see the need, and I see the methodology working. We want to package this so we can spread our knowledge much wider,” Choi said.

Several hospitals across the U.S. have contacted Holy Name to look at implementing similar programs.

The University of Chicago’s James Bae created one with Choi’s input that works with ethnic communities in the city. Bae used existing resources the university hospital had for its international patients and went into community spaces to inform them of the services available.

“We deal with the most complicated care, and without speaking good English, you could not navigate the system,” he said.

Ming-der Chang, who works at New York-Presbyterian Queens said that when she came to that hospital four years ago, they had some of the same services as Holy Name, but the community didn’t know they existed. “I went to get guidance and experience from Mrs. Choi about how she had been so successful in the program, and how can we use her experience to help us set up the program here,” Chang said.

Dr. Yanghee Woo, the current president of the Korean American Graduate Medical Association and a surgeon scientist doctor at City of Hope, described Choi as a beacon in the field of culturally sensitive care. “She was able to come up with a plan that is not just service, but also financially stable,” she said. But, Woo added, it’s important to note that the Asian Health Services program is not directly translatable to every state and hospital, because each area has their own needs.

Holy Name Medical Center president and CEO Michael Maron said he hopes people see their program is more than just a marketing campaign and that it’s ingrained in the culture of the hospital. “You can’t just hire a few Asians and put them in an office and say ‘I have an Asian health program.’ The entire organization, everybody has to embrace it, and support it, and understand what’s going on,” Maron said.

Since starting the initiative, Holy Name has also added Hispanic and Jewish-serving programs. Eventually, Choi and the Holy Name Medical Center team want to build a robust understanding of what culturally sensitive care looks like for its full staff.

To do so, they have developed a pilot training program that would teach every employee — from ER doctors to the parking attendants — how to provide culturally sensitive care.

The training consists of educating the staff about knowledge like red being a symbol of death in Korean culture, so one should not use red pen on their medical charts, or that a large number of immigrants from Asian countries may not be accustomed to paying for health care services that had been free in their home countries.

“Everybody has a culture,” Choi said, “the subgroups will continue, but we’re also focused on a broader program.”

Read more on NBCNews.com

The Counseling and Mental Health Center offers a number of services for the more than 50,000 students at University of Texas (UT). For those feeling lost or struggling with self-identity, the Voices Diversity Discussion Groups allow them to connect with others with similar identities in a way that is different than traditional therapy.

Black Voices, Queer Voices, Asian American Voices, Latinx Voices, Women of Color, and International Students are the six discussions focusing on identity and intended to support students and give them a safe space to talk. Kimberly Burdine, CMHC psychologist and diversity coordinator, facilitates Black Voices.

“It’s a place where they can come together with folks who share a similar identity and be able to talk about that,” Burdine said. “Some of my hopes for Black Voices is that people feel more (firm) in our identity because for me I think some of the way you undo the stress and trauma is to create affirmation.”

Voices is partnered with the Multicultural Engagement Center and Gender and Sexuality Center. The program started two and a half years ago, and Burdine said it has attracted more students since then. Each group facilitator shares the identity of that group.

The discussions are not held in CMHC but on another floor of the Student Services Building. Burdine said this eliminates the stigma surrounding therapy. Voices is unique because it provides an environment focused on discussion, Burdine said. “We want to promote them in a way that is affirming and that won’t cause more trauma or more stress,” Burdine said. “It’s a support group where you get a feel for what therapy might be like, because there are therapists in the room, but it’s not necessarily therapy.”

Nursing senior Richa Patel goes to one-on-one care counseling at the CHMC and said she has heard how Voices gives students a sense of belonging. “I think a lot of us keep things inside all the time, so going to a place where other people share what they are going through helps reassure students,” Patel said. “It’s important to always feel included and to know there are other people who are going through the same thing as you.”

Patel said she is thankful CMHC cares about students and their unique experiences enough to have the Voices program. “There are things that some people will go through that not everyone has, but when you find people with similar experience, things aren’t as scary,” Patel said.

Chemistry junior Aizelle Gaddi said the Asian American Voices group interests her as she thinks it’s important for students to have an outlet. “I think it’s very important, especially because UT is a really big school and having those discussion groups make the school smaller and give students a voice and a home,” Gaddi said.

Burdine said the groups not only help her students but also herself. “There’s nothing better for me to see than someone to come into their own space and thrive,” Burdine said. “Especially as a first generation college student and a student of color, it means something to me because I see myself in these students.”

Read more on the DailyTexanOnline.com

As part of Black History Month, the following blog post comes from Minaa B. with Respect Your Struggle, a Mental Health America (MHA) partner.

For more than twenty years of my life I struggled with major depression and suicide ideation. Thought after thought, I was consumed with the idea of death and sadness and how to eliminate myself from the rest of the world. I grew tired of carrying my burdens, and when my back could no longer stand up straight from the weight of my pain that I carried in silence – I attempted suicide.

The cuts on my wrists were indicators that this brown girl was not okay. I hid myself. Learning how to be bold and brave about my struggles was a behavior that I was never taught. Instead, I was constantly reminded through television, music, the church and conversations, that weak-minded people don’t get far in life. The stigmas of society told me that black women didn’t complain – they pushed through. Black women didn’t get tired – they worked hard. And black people don’t struggle with depression – we pray. Then carry on.

What a detrimental and debilitating pressure to put on folks who are subjected not only to environmental trauma such as racism, discrimination, oppression and marginalization – but also to the everyday effects of simply being human.

Since when is it not okay for black people to find healing? Since when is having a mental illness a reason why I wouldn’t make it to heaven? Since when is struggling a form of weakness, when no person in this world is void of mishap and misfortunes? Since when is being imperfect a deficit, when perfection doesn’t even exist?

This tired rhetoric that people within the African-American community are weak, fragile or touched by the devil if they have a mental illness is man-made propaganda that has been used to keep people of color stuck in their debilitating circumstances, with fewer chances on thriving alongside the rest of the world. The supposition that our ancestors made through slavery – therefore we can make it through anything – is crass and insensitive, not only to the needs of people living in modern times, but also to our ancestors who fought hard for people of color to have access to fair treatment and equality – including health care.

We must remember folks like Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller who was a pioneering African-American psychiatrist w9ho made significant contributions to the study of Alzheimer’s disease. Or people like Dr. Paul Cornely whose professional work focused on the development of public health initiatives aimed at reducing healthcare disparities among the chronically underserved.

Mamie Phipps Clark was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate degree in psychology from Columbia University. Her groundbreaking research on the impact of race on child development helped end segregation, and was influential in desegregation efforts including the Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.

These people, plus many more, have paved the way for people of color to receive adequate physical and emotional health care. But the lessons they also taught us is that hurt does exists, and people should never be ashamed to talk about it or address it. Even when you think you are isolated in your problems and worries – you are never alone. Your life matters and you deserve to give yourself your best chance – despite what others say.

If you are worried that you or a loved one may be struggling with a mental health condition, there is hope. To start, consider taking a free mental health screening to assess your symptoms and find out how to seek help.

Understand that though hurt can make you feel as if you are alone – you never are. MHA began the campaign  #mentalillnessfeelslike as a way to show individuals struggling through pain and confusing symptoms that they are not alone. MHA encourages you to participate too – share your story – tell what #mentalillnessfeelslike to you.  Because there is power in sharing. And there is power in knowing that you are not alone.

Read more on MentalHealthAmerica.net