Mental Health

What Exactly Is Going On at Parkland's Troubled Psych Wing?

Parkland's psychiatric services division has been getting a hell of a lot of bad press lately, and it continues today, with reports that an elderly woman in Parkland's psych wing ended up with broken bones after she claims she was forced out of her wheelchair. Earlier this week, the Center for Medic ... More >>

How Texas Prisons Should Treat Mental Illness to Keep Former Inmates from Coming Back

In Texas, we already knew there was plenty of work to be done to alleviate the tired and overburdened public mental health care system. In Dallas, we know that we have the same stretched resources that are reported statewide, but in addition we have also not received the majority of recent state fun ... More >>

Texas Increased Mental Health Funding, but Dallas Isn't Getting the Money -- and It Hurts

Alex Smith is the Executive Director of the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority, the agency that oversees the North Texas public mental-healthcare system. He's made his living deciphering the ins and outs of the very messy system here, and is well versed in what it takes to properly care for ind ... More >>

It Really Sucks to Be Mentally Ill in Texas

Related: It Really Sucks to Be Old in Texas Texas' notoriously porous mental-health system is in the news even more than usual this week. At Parkland, the psychiatric ER is yet again facing allegations of patient abuse. Last weekend, Dallas Police shot and killed Jason Harrison, a 38-year-old sever ... More >>

Dallas Rape Crisis Center Would Prefer That Judge Not Send Rapist to Volunteer There

Sir Young may have hated to say that he was a rapist, but he couldn't deny it, either. "That's rape," he said in a recorded interview with a Dallas police detective, describing his encounter with a 14-year-old girl. Young was 18 at the time. They were both students at Booker T. Washington High Schoo ... More >>

Meet the Dallas Doctors Using Music for Therapy

Music can be incredibly therapeutic. Whether it's keeping us from road rage during rush hour traffic, helping us fall asleep, or uniting us with others as we sing along at a concert, music has a certain unique healing power. Locally, the Windsor Senior Living facility in Dallas uses music to help ... More >>

CutForBieber Was a 4chan Prank, but in 2013 Pranks and Trends are Basically the Same Thing

Pranks are never more effective than when a prankster finds the precise border between reality and absurdity and just barely steps over it. This week's #CutForBieber trending topic--in which Justin Bieber fans were supposed to be cutting themselves in an attempt to force their ur-boyfriend off marij ... More >>

Betty Ford Clinic to Open Temporary Dallas Center. For 7-Year-Olds.

If former first lady Betty Ford didn't make it cool to go to rehab, she certainly helped erase some of the stigma associated with admitting to drug and alcohol abuse. She struggled publicly with alcoholism and painkiller addiction and, as a result, established the Betty Ford Center in California. T ... More >>

Pot Addiction Study Tracks the Brains of People Who Really Enjoy Weed, Maybe Too Much

If you're high right now, you may want to tune in. Try not to giggle. A University Texas at Dallas professor was awarded nearly $2 million dollars to study marijuana addiction for the next five years. We're talking pot, the addiction suffered in silence -- or in inappropriate laughter at anything th ... More >>

Preview: Darrin Kobetich at Doc’s Records & Vintage

Combat veterans fall prey to gambling addictions at an alarming rate — where's the military when the chips are down?

As Dallas Boarding Homes Struggle, City Hall Sits on its Hands

Texas lawmakers gave cities the power to regulate homes for the mentally ill -- but so far, Dallas hasn't used it.

Competence on Trial: The Strange Odyssey of Serial Dallas Lawsuit Filer Lester Ruston

Every decent-sized courthouse in the country has its own serial pain in the ass, the guy who thinks nothing of suing the kids who threw a ball over his fence or the cat who pooped in his yard. But there's a special subset of filing addicts: the inmates who while away their time in the pokey filing k ... More >>

Calling All Saints

A hallucinogen called ibogaine has helped addicts kick heroin, meth and everything in between. Is it the trip that does the trick?

Running on "bubble gum and duct tape," a new court aims to keep damaged vets out of jail.

Can an over-analytical control freak find inner peace— or at least get up in the morning—with help from an Indian life coach?

Soldier Suicides

Two Texas brothers fall in the war on terror—one in combat, one by his own hand

Fighting Fire With Fire

Does an unproven treatment that combats drug addiction with drugs promise more than it can deliver?

Boogdish

Power Play

The DCT brings important fare to the table

Eleven More Women Join Suit Against Presbyterian's Eating Disorder Program

Back in May we mentioned that five women who were treated at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas for anorexia and bulimia were suing the hospital and doctors who treated them. The women, who had participated in Presby's Eating Disorder Program, claimed "the hospital and doctors there took part in a frau ... More >>

Doll Parts

Bourbon takes on celebrity culture

Cleaning Up the Truck Stops, One Abused Woman At a Time

Office Terry Peters, better known as the Dallas Police Department's "whore cop," has gotten to know, and tried to help, prostitutes populating local truck stops such as this one. This morning I got a call from my favorite cop regarding my favorite crackhead, a former truck driver named Country who I ... More >>

Play Time at Dallas Children's Theater

Education and art mix for DCT's growing audience

Go Away

Rainy days and Coldplay always get us down

Decorations of Disorder

PDNB's premier installation is Joy and pain

Fudge Factor

People Magazine Finds a "Hero Among Us"

These are some of the people served by Joel Pulis' ministry for the severely mentally ill in Oak Cliff. It's pretty much the last place I expected to find a story about the Well Community, an Oak Cliff church that ministers to the severely mental ill living on little income in the southern sector. B ... More >>

The Forbes 35 (Drunkest)

Now that Dallas-Fort Worth temperatures are plummeting, sleet and ice are thickening and the need for nips is extremely urgent, its time to revisit this story we missed last August in Forbes ranking the nation's 35 drunkest cities. Yeah, Dallas-Fort Worth squeezed its way in. But we pull in a highly ... More >>

Now Where Did I Put My Happy Pills?

For the past six years, A. John Rush of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has been leading a federal study on depression; it's been released in bits and pieces over the past few months, with some findings being published as recently as March. But Rush, who's the vice chairman of cl ... More >>

The Mind's Eye

The Worst Mothers Ever

Andrea Yates is back on trial for killing her kids, one year after her 2002 conviction was thrown out. The retrial of Andrea Yates is underway down in Houston, riveting both the public and defense attorneys who have followed the case for five years. Accused of drowning her five children on June 20, ... More >>

Toke This

If news happens, but no one is there to issue a press release, is it still news? There's a koan for all you tree-hugging hippie stoner types to mull over while we offer up some rather old news to the less easily distracted: The League of Women Voters of Texas has come out in favor of decriminalizing ... More >>

Cell Disease

Being sick in Dallas County's troubled jail can be a death sentence

An Irritating Woman

Susan Diamond learned that it doesn't pay to annoy your kids' psychiatrists, even if you're a doctor

Psycho Mom

Lisa Diaz had to save her "precious babies" from an evil world. She drowned them.

Cowboy Junkies

Sunday, August 8

Resistance is Futile

Despite new state and federal regulations, mentally ill Texans are still dying while being restrained by the very people they turn to for help

Out of Mind, Out of Sight

For a growing number of Texas kids with mental illnesses, the only place to get help is behind bars.

Best Massage Therapist

Rose Ernst

A Jolt to the System

This small electrical device may be the last hope for the chronically depressed

Quick Fix

After years of financial neglect, the state is hoping a shot of privatization will cure Dallas County's addicted and mentally ill population

Cult of Madness

Seeking help for depression, Martha Hurt turned to therapists. That's when her insanity truly began.

Cruel and Unusual

Mentally ill Texans used to go to hospitals. Now, increasing numbers of them go to prison instead.

Bad trip

As anguished Plano watched heroin pick off its children one by one, a cry went up for police to do anything to stop the deadly plague. Months later, some parents say they went too far.

The Fugitive

Child psychiatrist Robert Gross claims malicious federal prosecutors unfairly charged him with fraud and forced him to flee to England. Is it the doctor or the judicial system that is out of touch with reality?

The war over Gulf War Syndrome

Dallas doctors believe they've solved the mystery of sick veterans, but find themselves in "a bloody scientific war" where they are branded charlatans

What makes Sammy run?

Huge and helpless, schizophrenic and hypertensive, Sammy Allen has fallen between the administrative cracks of a local mental health system that can't seem to get its ACT together

Ad nauseam

There are no technicolor yawns in the slick bulimia thriller 301 302