PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/tag/mental-health/)
Heather Bradley is the executive director of Pittsburgh Bereavement Doulas. From the Source Host Jourdan Hicks speaks with Heather about her 20-plus-year career as a doula, how the prevalence of poor prenatal experiences for women make her work essential, and the need to reduce the stigma around death and grief.
Before the pandemic, society was already experiencing a mental health crisis. Now, it’s even worse. A surge in demand, combined with too few providers and high treatment costs, can make accessing services challenging. Where traditional health systems are lagging, community groups are stepping in.
Finding a therapist who accepts Medicaid is difficult. Yet Pittsburgh-area therapists said they applied to accept Medicaid and were turned away.
One year into the pandemic, some faith communities in the Pittsburgh area aren’t returning to normal. They’re redefining it.
The absence of counseling and reliance on medication is a common occurrence in facilities like ACJ, where many incarcerated people would benefit from therapy, but problems like high population turnover, understaffing and lack of funding make delivering care complicated.
Compared to the other five largest PA counties, ACJ was far less transparent in providing its mental health policies. PublicSource appealed ACJ’s decision to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, but the appeal was denied.
Some members of the Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board are insisting on increased transparency and access to jail records. The issue, which was discussed at the board’s monthly meeting on Thursday, was prompted in part by PublicSource’s ongoing reporting on conditions at the jail.
Update (3/6/2021): At the March 4 Jail Oversight Board meeting, Warden Orlando Harper reported to the board about restraint chair use. It was a deviation from what he typically shares at these meetings in response to the board asking for more information on how the jail uses the device following the original PublicSource report below. He said the jail used the restraint chair 18 times in February. He promised that, at the April board meeting, he would provide the March count and include the number of times a person with a mental health condition is placed in the chair. Harper also agreed to show board members the restraint chair forms that are completed each time the chair is used. Jail leadership also provided the board the healthcare queues the board requested following a PublicSource investigation about medical treatment at the facility.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family, she had always felt like an outsider. The feeling reached a crisis level when, at the end of her freshman year, she was sexually assaulted. “I took all of this unprocessed trauma and completely pushed it down,” said Foley Martinez, who now helps others leave far-right hate groups. “I felt so worthless.
Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board members are learning about key issues at the jail through the media, according to comments from two members at their monthly meeting Thursday.
