Mental Health

The program aims to give law enforcement officers tools to support their colleagues with stressors they face on the job and in their personal lives.

LISTEN: We touch base with the State Emergency Mental Task Force’s clinical director to get a sense of the work in the early days of recovery from Idalia.

A federal audit found lax oversight and multiple cases of child welfare workers failing to follow state regulations on psychotropic or opioid medication.

Decades-long systemic shortcomings have left suicide among children ages 5 to 11 poorly tracked and addressed. Now, as rates appear to be rising, advocates are strengthening efforts to screen for problems and prevent deaths in younger children.

Kai Koerber was a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a gunman murdered 14 students and three staff members on Valentine’s Day in 2018. Seeing his peers — and himself — struggle with returning to normal, he says he wanted to do something to help people manage their emotions, on their own terms. The result was Joy, an app built on AI that helps people struggling with sadness, grief or anger to find help in short, bite-sized prompts and tools.

For rural Americans, who live in areas often short of mental health services and die by suicide at a far higher rate than urbanites, the federally mandated crisis phone line is one of the few options to connect with a crisis counselor.

The Tampa Bay Thrives survey found mental health challenges are affecting residents' productivity and attendance at work. But stigma about mental health appears to be decreasing.

This week marks 50 years since a failed bank robbery that gave rise to Stockholm syndrome, a term used to describe the bond that victims of kidnappings or hostage situations sometimes develop with their captors.

“No one ever forgets 911. No one ever forgets 411. And now, no one will ever forget 988,” says one mental heath expert.

Experts caution that suicide is complicated, but a main driver is availability of guns. "I know it's complicated, I really do. But we have to be able to do something," says a Pasco mom whose son shot himself.

In the year since the 10-digit line changed to 988, one South Florida nonprofit has seen a 50% increase in calls. Lack of affordable housing and the pandemic are among the drivers.

It's clear the suicide hotline, a network of more than 200 state and local call centers, faces challenges, including public mistrust and confusion. It’s also clear it needs federal and state funding to be sustainable.