The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships For Mental Health Journalism
2009-2010

Rachel Aviv
Freelance Journalist
Brooklyn, N.Y.
http://www.rachelaviv.com/

TOPIC: Report on the mental health needs of children in rural areas and focus on the stories of families that have relinquished custody of their children in order to have mental health care provided to them.

Listening to Braile
At 4 o'clock each morning, Laura J. Sloate begins her daily reading. She calls a phone service that reads newspapers aloud in a synthetic voice, and she listens to The Wall Street Journal at 300 words a minute, which is nearly twice the average pace of speech.

The Intelligencer
Ronald Hoeflin talks about IQ tests the way some people talk about cars. With perfect recall, he reels off stats and special features, the advantages of one model over another. He speaks softly and rapidly, pointing out the "beautiful, elegant" shape of a bell curve.

No Problem
This week in the magazine, Rachel Aviv chronicles the story of Linda Bishop, a mentally ill woman who would not admit she was sick.

God Knows Where I Am; What Should Happen When Patients Reject Their Diagnosis?
October 3, 2007, Linda Bishop was released from New Hampshire Hospital, in Concord. She had been admitted to the hospital in late October, 2006, after having been found incompetent to stand trial for a series of offenses.

A Cruel and Unusual Sentence for a Fourteen-Year-Old Murderer
In 2010, Dakotah Eliason was sentenced to life without parole for a crime he committed when he was fourteen. As I reported for the magazine last winter, he had stayed up until three in the morning trying to decide whether to commit suicide or homicide.