Category: Co-Occurring Disorders

We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is corrosive to children’s mental health and well-being, with consequences ranging from trouble sleeping and skipping school to psychiatric problems, such as depression or psychosis, self-harm, and suicide.

Roughly 1 in 3 students in the United States are bullied at school (figures on cyberbullying are less certain, because it is newer than other forms of bullying and the technology kids use to carry it out is constantly in flux). This abuse can span exclusion, rumors, name-calling, or physical harm. Some victims are isolated loners while others are bedeviled by their own friends or social rivals.

What is clear is that while some adults have overcome the bullying they endured as kids, others continue to suffer. The research on what forms this suffering takes is still preliminary.  Learn more here

“People who use controlled substances are members of our community,” wrote Bella Robinson, a sex worker activist and executive director of the local sex worker rights group, COYOTE RI. “We don’t want to see them to be arrested, and we don’t want them to die from an overdose”

The prospect of safe consumption sites (SCS) for mitigating the United States’ historic overdose death toll has long been delayed by the federal obstruction of a Philadelphia-based organization’s bid to open the first sanctioned site. Now, hope may be found a few states over: Rhode Island, where residents are witnessing an exacerbated fatal overdose crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A bill to authorize the creation of SCS, or what the lawmakers are calling “Harm Reduction Centers,” has returned to the state’s General Assembly after first being introduced in 2019. This time, “there’s really been strong support,” Haley McKee, co-chair of the Substance Use Policy, Education, & Recovery PAC and a lobbyist in support of the newly reintroduced H 5245 and S 0016, told Filter. “I’ve seen a lot more involvement of people with lived or professional expertise.”

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