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Legal, illegal immigrants face slew of mental health issues

The desperation that makes some leave their native countries, the dangerous journeys they take and the culture shock they experience upon arrival make for high rates of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression among immigrants. Full story

Day 3: National and International

Czech's mentally ill still facing stigmas

A recent study by the Czech Institute of Health Statistics showed a 30 percent increase in the number of Czechs who sought psychiatric help from 2000 to 2006. This is a trend that started even earlier, according to Jirí Raboch, a professor at the psychiatric department of Charles University in Prague.

Wellstone Act helps mentally ill with insurance-related problems

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Six years after Paul Wellstone’s fatal plane crash in 2002, the former Minnesota senator posthumously got what he’d always wanted: legislation to end discrimination in insurance coverage for people with mental health problems.

Day 2: Around the U.S.

Milwaukee's United House, Grand Avenue Club make strides for mentally ill

Poverty, social stigmas and a lack of proper care are some of the issues people like schizophrenic Jack Kuczynzki live with every day. But while conditions for Milwaukee’s mentally ill have drastically improved over the last several years, many feel still more can be done to better the quality of life.

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Privatizing Georgia’s mental health care not best for patients

Lisa Majersky had it good in Pennsylvania. She regularly met with doctors, therapists and support groups. In nearly two decades of receiving treatment for what she terms “bipolar disorder with a little bit of (obsessive compulsive disorder),” she never had one problem with the state-run mental health system.

Over-worked doctors, caseworkers let mentally ill fall by wayside

Georgia Rawlings lived in a group home where the landlord served her and the other tenants moldy bread and rotten milk. The city inspectors never reported the unlivable, illegal group home. Instead, caseworkers, who are supposed to be responsible for keeping their clients safe, would sometimes recommend the homes to the mentally ill.

First responders suffer mental fatigue, isolation

LOS ANGELES — Some workers pull a muscle or get carpal tunnel syndrome from their jobs. Cheryl Valentino’s work induced a tumor. Valentino is one of the millions of first responders in the U.S.: people serving on the front lines in the military or as police officers, paramedics, fire fighters and social workers.

Children’s mental health care untested, unknown

Sixty years ago, jamming an ice pick through the eye socket and striking it against the brain was a popular treatment for mental illness. However, frontal lobotomies, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy fell out of favor in the 1950s with the advent of psychiatric medications. Now, half a century later, health care professionals are still fine tuning their methods.

Day 1: Nebraska

Nebraska re-routed funds for psychiatric health care; Now state evaluating decision

Change followed trend of de-institutionalization

In 2004, following a national de-institutionalization trend, Nebraska fundamentally changed the way it delivered state-sponsored behavioral health care through the law LB1083. Today, mental health care experts and state administrators are evaluating the effectiveness of LB1083 and the subsequent changes.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder a risk for students, soldiers

If it bleeds, it leads. A common stereotype of major news coverage is that violent events often headline newspapers and broadcasts on a day-to-day basis, but for those involved in such happenings, life may never be the same.

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Two sides of LB1083: community care vs. psychiatric hospitals

There is no talking to patients at the Lincoln Regional Center; no one is here by choice. At the Goodwill Industries complex for education, training and treatment in Grand Island, fewer than two hours away, clients go from class to seminar to support group, too busy to speak.

Study: Stress hits graduate students particularly hard

Survey finds many feel hopeless, consider suicide

A recent study revealed that 67 percent of graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley had “felt hopeless at least one in the last year,” while 54 percent felt “so depressed they had a hard time functioning” and 10 percent had considered suicide. For students in general, the numbers for UNL closely corresponded to UC-Berkeley’s, according to a psychological health official at the university.

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Bill in Unicameral aims to train, retain psychiatrists in state

As practicing psychiatrists age and potential physicians gravitate toward cities, needy populations suffer as they wait weeks for appointments and are juggled between temporary providers. Or worse, they wind up in emergency rooms and prisons, according to the Nebraska Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. Senators are hoping to thwart these exact problems.