‘Beyond the Stigma’ series will explore addiction, behavioral health crises

Exploring solutions to the state’s behavioral health and addiction crises will be the focus of a year-long series in the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News beginning in May.

The series, “Beyond the Stigma”, will refocus coverage past the immediate problems in an effort to raise public awareness and prompt conversation about potential solutions. The series will detail the relationship between mental health and addiction while uncovering examples of behavioral health treatment and prevention models that are actually working.

The effort will be led by Shawne K. Wickham, a veteran Union Leader/Sunday News reporter who has been covering the stories of New Hampshire for 30 years, including the Challenger explosion, the National Guard’s deployment to Kuwait, presidential primaries and stories from every corner of the state.

The numbers are staggering. Nearly 500 New Hampshire residents died of drug overdoses last year. Despite millions of dollars being spent, not much has moved the needle to curb the addiction crisis. Meanwhile, every day, dozens of people are waiting for mental health treatment, sometimes warehoused in hospital emergency rooms.

Read the full announcement of the series from the April 14, 2018 edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader.

“Beyond The Stigma” is a year-long series sponsored by the New Hampshire Solutions Journalism Lab at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications and funded by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and private individuals.