Bob CollinsIt was the height of the morning rush hour on I-94 below when a man perched himself on the Earl St. bridge on Wednesday. He was saved by a man who gives a rip and a six-pack of Coors Light. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Mental health
Maclean’s, the magazine in Canada, series — Before You Go — collects letters from people to friends and family members, ‘because we shouldn’t have to wait until it’s too late to tell our loved ones how we really feel,’ the magazine says.
A few friends of Daphnee Levesque, a British Columbia college student, have tried to take their own lives, so in the most recent installment, she writes them letters. Read more →
If you’re looking for mental health care, and you pay Blue Cross Blue Shield for your health insurance, you’re probably not going to get it. Read more →
Former NHL player Nick Boynton — an ‘enforcer’ in his days in hockey — penned what initially sounded very much like a suicide note today on The Players Tribune. Read more →
Beasley Baker, Russ Galvan, Randy Kohl, Jesse Harrison and Ben Brooks were honored by the Coast Guard on Tuesday because they saw the man floating in the river, fired up a tow boat, and threw him a lifeline, which he’d initially rejected. Read more →
People are and have been asking for help. And too often the answer — closing a crisis hotline, rejecting a mental health clinic in your town because you’re afraid of the impact on your children, or turning a wellness check into a SWAT shootout — is ‘no.’ Read more →
The suicide of a well-known person has opened the window on a national dialogue on mental health and depression, a traditionally short period during which we are afforded the opportunity to learn something about the health scourge from which we typically turn away. Read more →
It’s the latest community where someone is trying to do something about access to mental health care, something that everyone gets behind elsewhere until — we’re looking at you, Forest Lake — people object. Read more →
Another person was ready to jump from the Robert Street bridge in St. Paul today and, as we’ve said in this space too many times, it’s impossible to stay focused on the systemic failures that can lead to suicide when we never know the story and likely never will know. Read more →
Caelan Johnson, 21, of Baxter, Minn., wants people who might be thinking of taking their own life to think about her and the rest of her family, who say they have nothing but questions after Tom Johnson, her father, shot himself to death in January. Read more →
Norm Ornstein, a Minnesota native, writes in the New York Times today about his son, ill served by a mental health system that does not serve those who are too ill to know that they need help. Read more →
A panic attack during a November game changed the way the ex-Timberwolves player thinks about mental health. Read more →
For sure, it’s become easier for people to talk about providing access to mental health care, too often talk is all it is. Politicians are failing Minnesotans on this issue and failing big. It’s a testament to the resiliency of people that some of them can navigate the roadblocks and fear that exists and get the help they need.
So Brian Murphy’s story should at least provide inspiration that it’s possible. Read more →
Research confirms that mental health and mass shootings are not well linked, but who’s going to check when the wagons are circled and the weaponry of blaming mental illness is drawn? Read more →
The research, in the PLOS One journal, said suicides spiked by 10% in the five months after Williams’ 2014 death, the BBC says. Read more →