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Rob Waters
Freelance Journalist
Berkeley, Calif., USA

TOPIC: Write a series of articles on the mental health needs and problems of children in foster care and the creative efforts that leaders around the country are making to address them.

Hell and High Water; Healing from Disasters of Nature and Man
For the people of New Orleans, an for thousands of other residents of Louisiana and Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina was the opening blow in a series of overwhelming events that, for many, have yet to end: a tragically perfect storm of destruction born of nature, incompetence, and official indifference toward the poor.

Children in Crisis? Concerns about the Growing Popularity of the Bipolar Diagnosis
Ten years ago, bipolar disorder was considered a disabling adult mental illness that was almost never described in children. Today child psychiatrists are diagnosing it in a growing number of children and adolescents, fueling a surge in the use of antipsychotic medications among the young.

In late 2009, as the unemployment rate in San Joaquin County, California, reached 18 percent and one in twele homes were being foreclosed, two high school students in the tow of Ripon, population 15,000, committed suicide within two months of each other.

Anyone who's ever tried to get reimbursed by a health insurance compnay after seeing a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, or taking a child or teenager to one, has no doubt noticed the incomprehensible numbers that appear on the clinician's statement, perhaps precedeing some slightly less imponderable phrase.