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Alabama ranks 50th in access to mental health care, according to a 2022 Mental Health America study. Despite the stigmas surrounding mental health, Birmingham-based counselors and advocates are working to ensure underserved communities are receiving quality care. Black women mental health professionals in Birmingham hope to make positive changes by providing culturally competent care and resources.

Nadia Richardson, founder and CEO of the Black Women’s Mental Health Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to building support for Black women’s mental health and wellbeing, said she wants to move the needle for Alabama’s mental health.

The institute provides free counseling for all Alabamians, clinician training and community awareness for mental health equity, specifically for Black women, who, Richardson said, are too often overlooked and underserved in wellness spaces.

Read more at AL.com.

Mississippians who need mental health treatment before they can stand trial have to wait in jail longer than people in any other state but Texas, according to a new national study by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center.

But the Department of Mental Health says a new 83-bed forensic facility scheduled to open later this year will drastically reduce wait times. It’s asking for $9.5 million from the Legislature to fully staff the facility and will open as many beds as it can with whatever funding it receives.

Forensic beds are reserved for people with a mental illness who have been charged with a crime and require treatment before they can stand trial, and for people who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Treatment Advocacy Center report also found that the number of state hospital beds in the state dropped by 31% from 2016 to last year. That decline was in part a response to a 2016 lawsuit by the Department of Justice alleging that Mississippi discriminated against people with mental illness by failing to provide services at the community level and instead forcing them into state hospitals.

Read more at MississippiToday.org.

When Layken Edenfield was little, her moods would switch quickly, her mother, Teresa Edenfield remembers.

“One minute she’d be happy and laughing, and the next minute she’d be crying her eyes out,” Edenfield said. “She was really hypersensitive about certain things around, or really terrified.”

A decade ago, 3-year-old Layken and her two younger, maternal siblings joined Teresa, her husband, and their four biological children in rural Darien, about 20 miles from Savannah. The childrens’ birth mother struggled with mental illness and substance use disorder, which Edenfield thinks puts Layken, now 13, and her siblings at a higher risk for developing the mental health condition she now has.

As mental health conditions rise among children, public schools like Layken’s are sometimes the first and best option for early intervention — especially in Georgia, where health care shortages are worsening and broadband access is not widespread.

Read more at GPB.org.

As healthcare stakeholders attempt to stem the youth mental health crisis in America, many have turned to digital health technology. The latest to do so is the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), which has launched a statewide endeavor to get behavioral health applications in the hands of youth who need them the most.

Mental healthcare issues among American youth are on the rise. The proportion of high school students experiencing persistent sadness or hopelessness has grown from 28 percent in 2011 to 42 percent in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Further, the percentage of high school students seriously contemplating suicide jumped from 16 percent to 22 percent between 2011 and 2021.

While federal plans to improve mental health outcomes among American children and adolescents are critical, actions at the state level are equally important. In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom launched the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) as part of his Master Plan for Kids’ Mental Health. The initiative, a five-year, $4.6 billion effort, aims to create an integrated system to address behavioral health issues and substance use disorders among youth in California.

To expand and ease access to behavioral healthcare, California DHCS launched two mHealth apps targeting different age groups.

The Soluna app, powered by Kooth Digital Health, connects people aged 13 to 25 with resources to support various mental health conditions, including stress, anxiety, loneliness, and bullying.

The app offers self-guided therapeutic content and tools, including journaling prompts, podcasts, self-assessments, and videos; peer support spaces moderated by trained mental health professionals; and professional support through synchronous messaging, drop-in chats, and ongoing coaching. Coaches can communicate in 19 languages, including Spanish.

Read more at mHealthIntelligence.com.

The Texas A&M University Health Science Center (Texas A&M Health) is stepping up its support for rural health care in Texas by launching the Rural Engagement Program. This new initiative combines efforts from the Texas A&M schools of medicine and nursing and the Rural and Community Health Institute to expand the health care workforce and bolster the viability of health care organizations to better serve rural Texans.

Texas boasts the nation’s largest rural population, with more than 4 million residents. However, the state also has the most rural hospitals at risk of closure, according to the Center for Quality and Payment Reform, and only 10 percent of Texas physicians practice in rural areas. Counties without a hospital and those that have been impacted by hospital closures rely heavily on clinics to fill care needs, but those clinics often lack sufficient funding or staffing resources. Declining access has become a crisis for many rural communities.

Through the Rural Engagement Program, the School of Medicine collaborates closely with local communities to design tailored experiences that allow medical students to fully integrate into the fabric of rural life. This includes opportunities to learn from local practitioners, actively participate in community initiatives, and collaborate with school districts on health education programs. The immersive experiences aim to provide a holistic understanding of rural health care challenges and opportunities, fostering a sense of connection between students and the communities they serve.

In coordination with the Texas A&M Health Telehealth Institute, the Rural Engagement Program is also working on expanding health care organizations’ telehealth capabilities. The Telehealth Institute will enhance the availability of behavioral health care by extending access to patients’ homes, local clinics and hospitals over the next two years, and will lay the groundwork for other tele-specialty services in our rural communities. The institute will also foster innovations with the School of Nursing in expanded clinical care and telehealth training.

Read more at Today.TAMU.edu.

Media and anti-stigma activities could help combat mental health stigma and discrimination, but only with lived experience involvement, according to research led by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London in collaboration with the Global Mental Health Peer Network.

Researchers found that insensitive language and misinformation continue to reinforce harmful stereotypes about mental health conditions around the world. Tokenistic involvement of people with lived experience resulted in weak anti-stigma campaigns with little positive impact.

The findings emphasized that people with lived experience play a key role in efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination.

Although anti-stigma activities such as awareness-raising campaigns and education initiatives were thought to be helpful, participants felt that lived experience involvement was sometimes tokenistic, resulting in reduced effectiveness.

Read more at MedicalXpress.com.