Bob Collins
Dejuan Quashon Montgomery is probably heading back to prison soon because he stole a 9-year-old girl’s cellphone. You might see it as a crime story. I see it as a health story. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Mental illness
Seldom have we seen the sort of must-read series (and a spectacular online component) that the Star Tribune is providing this week, starting yesterday. The paper is looking at one of the least-covered scandals in Minnesota and the rest of the country: the lack of knowledge on the part of police when it comes to answering calls involving the mentally ill.
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There’s still a chance, albeit somewhat slim, that the Minnesota Legislature will pass legislation to require an estimated 10,000 police officers in Minnesota to get four hours of training on how to respond to mental health calls. Read more →
She won an Oscar for her role as Helen Keller in ‘The Miracle Worker,’ but her legacy should be that she was also one of the first people to talk openly about her depression, which she did after she was diagnosed bipolar and tried to kill herself in the early ’80s. Read more →
I’ve written in this space before about the Facebook page of Kenyon police chief Lee Sjolander, whose writing reveals him as a philosopher, a healer, and counselor as well as being a cop. Read more →
In our growing collection, we’ve read plenty of powerful essays on the nature of mental health, depression, and suicide, but we’re hard pressed to recall one as powerful as that for Aletha Pinnow, who took her own life in Duluth last month.
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In the waning days of Black History Month, Debi Thomas should get a little attention for proving, as she did at the 1988 Olympics, that an African American can succeed at figure skating while acing college exams. Read more →
We don’t know exactly what happened inside a Roseville apartment overnight where a man having a mental health crisis was shot to death after stabbing a police dog.
But based on the information provided so far, it’s worth discussing whether there’s a more effective way to respond to these situations. Read more →
Since late January, a man in Superior, Wis., has been protesting the local school’s “de-escalation room”, a room where some of the school’s special needs students can go when things get tense for them. Read more →
Today would be a good day to tell politicians that it’s OK to listen to what people are telling them. Read more →
Experts on suicide have generally succeeded in tamping down public talk about suicide by the nation’s school children. But Dan and Wanda Lienemann of Waukee, Iowa think there’s a better way to prevent the kind of thing that happened to their 18-year-old son. Read more →
While reading the obituary today of Lucas David Ronnei of Victoria, Minn., we realized where the young man got the courage in his struggle against depression and addiction. It was in his DNA, inherited from a family that wrote one of the most powerful obituaries we’ve ever read.
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I don’t know if you can see the video of what happened around Keller Park last night, Facebook settings being what they are and all, but it was a pretty astounding statement that a man who took his own life last fall mattered, and his loss is a loss for us all. Read more →
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank learned what thousands — maybe millions — of other Americans have already learned recently: Getting help for mental illness is an impossible task. Read more →
The Kennedy clan is circling the wagons after Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Edward Kennedy, released his book detailing his struggles with substance abuse and bipolar disorder.
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