Time to Get Serious About Mental Health in Florida
Florida ranks near dead last nationally in the level of expenditures for front-end community-based mental health services. Let’s not be penny wise and pound foolish when so many precious lives are at...
View ArticleBlaming the Gun-Violence Epidemic On Mental Illness Doesn’t Begin to Resolve It
With a startling personal revelation of her own, Milissa Holland argues in her latest column that if mental illness is to be a focus of gun control, it must be much better defined--and far more...
View ArticleDeadly Force Averted as Deputies Confront Another Troubled, Knife-Wielding Man
Flagler County Sheriff's deputies drew their guns, then their Tasers, but ended up firing neither as Erik Flores, a 32-year-old resident of Lindsay Drive in Palm Coast, was wrestled to the ground and...
View ArticleFor Children’s Advocates, Scott’s “Florida Families First” Budget Blurs...
Backers of early childhood education and an expansion of Medicaid were disappointed, educators were guardedly happy about raises, and others applauded more money for prevention services to keep youths...
View Article“Mental Retardation” and “Retarded” Will Be Excised from All Florida Laws
Florida lawmakers are moving toward erasing the terms "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" from myriad state laws, as the word "retarded" has become widely viewed as offensive to people with...
View ArticleFlorida’s Surplus Adds Dollars to Services From Mental Health to Rape Crisis...
People with disabilities, domestic and sexual violence programs, mental health and substance abuse programs, juvenile justice and children's services all got bigger budgets for the first time since the...
View ArticleIn a Surprising Shift, County Commission Finds Money for 2 Jail-Diversion...
Flagler County commissioners Thursday evening agreed to take on a $100,000 mental-health jail diversion program previously paid for by the state, and a $60,000 pre-trial release program they had...
View Article5 Years After 7-year-old Gabriel Myers’s Suicide, Psychotropic Drugs Still...
At the time, about 5 percent of all U.S. children were treated with psychotropic medications, but in Florida’s foster care system, 15.2 percent of children received at least one such medication. Of...
View ArticleMatanzas and Flagler Palm Coast High Learn Of Suicide of Senior Alexandria...
On Tuesday, the grandfather of Alexandria Rodriguez, an 18-year-old senior who’d attended Matanzas High School last year and Flagler Palm Coast High School until Thanksgiving, came to FPC to retrieve...
View ArticleBaker Acts, Age and Social Responsibility: Sheriff Manfre’s Alert to Emerging...
In a broad-ranging discussion before the Palm Coast City Council, Flagler Sheriff Jim Manfre described a deteriorating mental health landscape affected by age and other stresses, but also pointed to...
View ArticleA 7-Year-Old Girl Is Baker Acted at Belle Terre Elementary; It’s Not...
The Baker Acting of a 7-year-old girl at Belle Terre Elementary last week, following a report of her allegedly lacerating the dean of students with thumb tacks, is one of three or four Baker Acts of...
View ArticleFour Palm Coast Baker Acts in 24 Hours: A Day in the Life of Flagler...
In barely a 24-hour period between late Monday afternoon and the early evening of Tuesday (March 3 and 4), deputies were involved in four commitments under the Baker Act, each one is illustrative of...
View ArticleRaising Hope: Indian Trails Guardian Angels Lift Awareness of Teen Suicide...
The Guardian Angels, one of two Indian Trails Middle School Service Learning groups doing projects in conjunction with Palm Coast’s annual Arbor Day celebration on May 3, are raising money to dedicate...
View ArticleWhen Guns and Mental Health Intersect: Cops Seize Arsenals on Two Occasions...
For the second time in five days Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies have seized, with consent, two unrelated individuals’ weapons for safekeeping after incidents involving excessive grief or...
View ArticleFlagler Sheriff’s Deputy Tasers 80-Year-Old Man With Dementia: He Was...
A Flagler County Sheriff's deputy on Thursday used his Taser stun gun against an 80-year-old man suffering from dementia as the man refused to put down a butcher knife as he sat in his back porch. The...
View ArticleRegrettable Holiday Ritual: Spike in Calls to Alzheimer’s Hotline as Families...
Visiting with relatives over the holidays may raise questions about the physical and cognitive health of family members. Although some change in cognitive ability can occur with age, serious memory...
View ArticleFiring a “Sponge Grenade,” Flagler Deputies Defuse a Would-Be Suicide-By-Gun...
Flagler deputies after hours of negotiations near the Palm Harbor overpass in Palm Coast Wednesday morning stopped a man from killing himself with a .38 by firing so-called "less-lethal" munition.
View Article“We Live Without My Son”: A Mother’s Story of Her Teen’s Suicide Frames Town...
Barbara Coxwell, who lost her 15-year-old son to suicide in 2013, and School Board Chairman Colleen Conklin, led the virtual town hall as a first step in a countywide effort to broaden attention to...
View ArticleSurvey Puts Homeless Total in Flagler-Palm Coast at 104, But Undercount Likely
The 2016 census of the homeless population in Flagler-Palm Coast was a dramatic decline from 2015, but also very likely an under-count. The majority of homeless people who have no shelter at all are in...
View ArticleSuicide, Now 2nd-Leading Cause of Death for Young Floridians, Seen as Public...
While suicide is increasing for nearly every age group, it's now the second-leading cause of death for Floridians aged 25 to 34, according to the state Department of Health Vital Statistics, and the...
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