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

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  • ‘Peer Respites' Provide an Alternative to Psychiatric Wards During Pandemic

    As the coronavirus pandemic forces people into isolation and social distancing, places known as "peer respites" are providing a space for those "experiencing or nearing a mental health crisis" to seek help. While the peer respites don't offer clinical care by licensed mental healthcare professionals, they are free for those who stay and "offer people in distress short-term (usually up to two weeks), round-the-clock emotional support from peers."

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  • Small size, big impact: Baltimore nonprofit Next One Up wraps teen boys in supports and watches them fly

    In Baltimore, a non-profit known as the Next One Up program is helping young men who are struggling in school by supporting and advancing their academic, athletic, and social development through small group activities. Although small, the highly-individualized program – which "focuses on students who have attendance issues, have experienced trauma, or need food, clothing, or parental support" – meets every Sunday for class and homework help, followed by a sport of their choice. All who have participated so far have graduated high school on time.

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  • Hard-Knocks Restaurant Workers Are Embracing Mental Wellness

    An initiative being piloted in the Sacramento hospitality industry aims to decrease the stigma restaurant workers face when talking about mental health concerns with their peers. This peer-to-peer mental health support program encourages workers to disclose how they are feeling to a fellow team member who has been trained in mental health counseling. Restaurant owners have reported that this program has positively changed the culture and 22 percent of those who work at a restaurant where the initiative has been piloted have reported that they have utilized the service.

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  • Could a Simple Intervention Fight a Suicide Crisis?

    In the 1960s, a psychologist and a team of researchers in San Francisco began sending “caring letters" as a means of suicide intervention, but the practice didn't continue outside of the research study, despite showing positive results. Today though, a clinical psychologist has begun to reintroduce the intervention, via text messages and emails, as a practice to specifically help U.S. service members and veterans.

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  • The Courage to Listen

    Following a series of public controversies over sexual assault, Jackson's Community Safety Network convened a series of training seminars to foster a response that no amount of legislation or criminal prosecutions could offer: to cultivate culture change based on greater understanding and empathy about what survivors go through. The seminars capitalized on a surge in public interest, and misunderstandings, surrounding sexual assault allegations against a public official and other public officials' behavior. One survivor who was encouraged to go public praised the community effort.

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  • We Hear You

    Early in the pandemic, APIENC, a community organization led by trans, non-binary, and queer Asian and Pacific Islanders in San Francisco, started a phone tree to offer help to people: getting groceries or meals, providing emotional support, or whatever else was needed in a community experiencing racial and other forms of bias on top of pandemic stresses. Only one person took the help – until the group held workshops on how to ask for help. Dozens of requests for help could then be met. This is the middle segment in the third in a series on anti-Asian racism during the pandemic.

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  • San Francisco Doula Program Tackles Birth Equity and Economic Justice in One Fell Swoop

    A doula program in San Francisco is helping to create jobs and build equity in maternal health, especially for Black mothers. Training is free for the client as well as for the doulas, with trainees also receiving mentorship and full benefits. To date, the organization has raised nearly $1 million for operational expenses from a variety of channels including "foundations, a city-managed health plan, and revenue from a local sugary drinks tax."

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  • How Do You Get Gun Owners To Give Up Their Guns During A Crisis? Ask. Audio icon

    "Voluntary storage" of guns is a growing movement that seeks to reduce gun suicides while avoiding political clashes with gun-rights advocates by instead promoting safety without government coercion. The Means Matter Campaign, Gun Shop Project, and a number of other private programs take what has long happened informally – friends disarming friends to prevent tragedy during a crisis – and promotes such practices as a public-health response. While research quantifying its effects is scant, anecdotes abound of people at risk being talked into surrendering their guns temporarily.

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  • Changing their minds, and their lives: A way out of poverty in Philadelphia

    The MindSet program adopts 30 people per year for a five-year "mobility mentoring" program, coaching people living in poverty to set clear goals and helping them save toward economic independence. Run by the nonprofit Episcopal Community Services and modeled on Boston's EMPath (Economic Mobility Pathways), MindSet rejects traditional case management and approaches that merely maintain people's lifestyle, focusing instead on plotting a path to a better future. More testing is needed on its effectiveness, but EMPath participants increased their annual income from $16,000 to $47,000.

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  • From life in prison to out on parole: One group easing the transition

    California, home to an unprecedented number of prison "lifers" who served decades since their teens and then were released under revised parole policies, created the Peer Reentry Navigation Network (PRNN) to have fellow former lifers coach and hold accountable the newly released. Now in 28 communities, PRNN has formed a community of peer mentors helping the formerly incarcerated remake their lives on the outside after lives of violence and trauma. The mentors' 24/7 help covers behavioral advice, job leads, and rebuilding family relationships. Despite some missteps, most mentees have stayed out of trouble.

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