The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "mental health record" ...
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Failure to Aid
Over the last year, I spent a lot of time researching and reporting on stories pertaining to the mental health treatment of people in prison. More specifically, I have successfully fought to gain access to public records in order to tell the story of Tony Lester. Tony was a young man who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He committed an assault and was sentenced to serve time at the Arizona State Prison in Tucson. Tragically, Tony committed suicide while in prison. Staff in the prison failed to render aid when they discovered him in his cell bleeding. My investigation not only revealed that he was improperly placed in with the general population against a judge's order and a court-ordered psychiatrist order...but he was also mistakenly given razors as part of a hygiene kit.
Tags: prison; paranoid schizophrenia; suicide; mental health
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Patients in Peril
The investigation exposed violations of state law, negligence and countless cover-ups at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. Findings include evidence of sexual activity between patients, doctors remaining on staff with records of sexual abuse and a starvation death of a patient.
Tags: doctor abuse; mental health; negligence; sexual abuse; cover-up
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Domestic Abuse Inside the U.S. Military
Domestic violence acts in the Army have been “steadily rising over the last decade, despite Army reports to the contrary”. Many Army spouses’ slain as a result of the domestic violence and many involving soldiers who saw action in Iraq. Also, a level of violence was soaring around some of the largest Army installations “through examination of police records and court filings”.
Tags: Congressional; Pentagon; weapons; FOIA; Fort Hood; Army Rangers; families; abuse; bureaucracy; advocates; mental health
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Compromised Care
Illinois is an outlier among states in its reliance on nursing homes to house younger adults with mental illness, including thousands of felons whose disabilities qualify them for Medicaid-funded nursing care. The reporters documented numerous recent cases in which elderly and disabled residents were assaulted, raped and even murdered in the facilities.
Tags: nursing home; mental illness; Medicaid; criminals; Illinois; police records; health department inspection data; complaint investigations; criminal records;
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Von Maur Shootings
In December 2007, a young man killed eight people then himself with an assault rifle at the Von Maur department store in Omaha. It was the largest mass murder in state history, a story that made national news. But when other media moved onto other stories, a team of World-Herald reporters spent much of 2008 digging into the issues surrounding such an astonishing act of violence. Some of their findings include: emergency responders were delayed getting to victims due to miscommunications by 911 dispatchers, a troubling suicide spike, and the depth of the gunman's psychological problems.
Tags: Von Maur murders; teen suicide; massacre; gunman; suicide rate; mental health problems; psychiatric records; treatment centers; shooter
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Mental Disorder: The Failure of Reform
Until the News and Observer published "Mental Disorder," most North Carolinians had no idea that their state mental health system was a disaster. The five-part series examined each major failure of an 8-year reform effort. Major findings included that the sate had wasted at least $400 million on services that were ineffective or unneeded and various cases of money mismanagement. They also found that at least 82 patients in state mental health hospitals and homes for the developmentally disabled had died of homicide, suicide, accidents or medical errors. In dozens of cases, hospital officials had covered up the true circumstances of the deaths by falsifying records and telling family members the patients had died of natural causes.
Tags: mental health; developmentally disabled citizens; North Carolina; mental health reform; mental health hospitals; patient rights; patient abuse; patient neglect
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Careless Detention
Four-part series on the medical treatment of immigrant detainees in the United States. Goldstein and Priest exposed the shoddy, unethical and, at times, fatal treatment of immigrants during their detentions and as they were being deported to their native countries. Their stories led readers deep inside America's network of immigration prisons--a world that had grown exponentially in the years since 9/11, yet remained largely unknown and hidden from view. Their stories documented the deaths of 83 detainees. And in one of the most stunning revelation, Goldstein and Priest disclosed the previously unreported scope of a practice of forcible sedation of immigrants with dangerous psychotropic drugs during deportation to their native countries; they found more than 250 instances in which the drugs were used on people with no history of psychiatric problems. Their stories also revealed that the most prevalent cause of death among the immigrant detainees is suicide, including the hangings of detainees known to be in such fragile mental health that they had been assigned suicide watchers. They profiled the slipshod treatment of an ailing Korean immigrant, a legal U.S. resident for three decades detained in a rail in the Arizona desert, with a history of recurrent cancer. And they documented the flawed medical practices, bureaucratic ineptitude, sloppy record-keeping and staff shortages that cause detainees who are sick to suffer and sometimes to die.
Tags: detained immigrants; September 11th; 9/11; medical treatment of prisoners; immigration prison; HIPAA
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Missouri’s Mental Health System
KCUR's investigation found that "Missouri's mental health system is in crisis." Group homes had violations, medication errors were made and more. "The state also fined at least five facilities, between 2004 and 2007, for abuse or neglect that led to resident deaths."
Tags: mental health; state; Missouri; medication; funds; health code violations; neglect; abuse; justice system
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Head Games
Alan Pendergast, staffwriter for Denver's Westword reports that in 2004, 20% of Colorado's jail population was diagnosed with severe mental illness, and "the true number may be much higher, since some inmates' illnesses are never properly diagnosed." The story compares cost of psychiatric lock-up versus community mental health care. Pendergast advises other journalists doing similar stories should "insist that someone in the accontable chain of command review and comment on the records, even if the actual treatment providers are refusing to be interviewed."
Tags: prison mental illness; correctional systems; lockdown; supermax prison; ADHD; Department of Corrections; forensic psychiatry; head cases; administrative segregation; HIPPA; San Carlos Correctional Facility; Offenders WIth Serious Mental Illness; OSMI; National Institute on Drug Abuse; Mental Health Occupations Grievance Board
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Mentally Unfit, Forced to Fight
The series investigated mental health screening and treatment for service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Based on Defense Department records data and interviews with more than 100 mental health experts, service members, and the relatives and friends of troops who committed suicide in the war zone, we reported that the military was increasingly sending, keeping and recycling mentally troubles troops into combat, in violation of the military's own regulations, and with tragic consequences."
Tags: psychology; psychotropic; medication; post-traumatic stress; battlefield; Army Surgeon General