Seeley Swan Pathfinder -

Over his 29 years working in Glacier National Park, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research ecologist Dan Fagre has seen a lot of changes. Even as the pressures of climate change encroach upon...

For many Montanans who are experiencing feelings of self-harm, their friends, family members, coworkers, neighbors, favorite baristas or even the stranger they just met on the street corner may be...

Last week: Part 1 discussed the closure of Western Montana Mental Health Center in Libby, how the behavior health network was built and how mental health crises were averted. Assessing the early...

When someone suffering a mental health crisis arrived in the emergency room at Cabinet Peaks Medical Center in Libby, staff there often called Western Montana Mental Health Center, which would send a...

Retired Browning educator Larry Woolf spent 11 years as a teacher and 15 as a guidance counselor in public schools on the Blackfeet Reservation. He has seen, again and again, the devastating pain of...

Two months ago, the boys played like children do, clambering around a ruined building just down the lush green hillside from their home. Now their mom, Moslene, cooks only for her husband, a...

The Partners In Health, known in Haitian Creole as Zanmi Lasante(ZL/PIH), headquarters resides in a huge state-of-the-art hospital in Mirebalais, about a half-hour drive southwest of Cange. On what...

As a child, Presandieu Charles suffered severe headaches and stomach pains. One day he beat his mother on the foot and thigh with a stick and later cried when he saw what he had done. In October 2017,...

There's a problem and we all have the solution. According to The Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, "When adults have opportunities to build the core skills that are needed to be...

After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1986, Bill Thomas started working as the medical director of a small nursing home in central New York. It was a run-of-the-mill institution,...

By now, it's a story Ralph Demicco has told a thousand times: Over a period of six days in 2009, three people bought firearms from his gun shop in New Hampshire and shot and killed themselves in a...

Fran Sadowski has seen firsthand the dangers of limited options. During a study on services for "dually diagnosed" individuals with both developmental disabilities and mental illness, the CEO of Misso...

When Mary Hutton first moved from Kansas to Eastern Montana over 10 years ago, she was at a loss. Living in Baker, a town of 2,000 about 12 miles from the North Dakota border, she had almost no...

ARLEE – Lane Johnson, 17, dribbled a basketball down a concrete court in his hometown with the skill of a state champion and easily dropped the ball through the hoop. His skill developed after...

There's some hope around a folding table here, inside this smallish Main Street storefront in Ronan, the Never Alone Recovery Center. Outside, it's a sunny Tuesday evening in this 2,000-person,...

Previously: In Part 1, the story of a mentally ill Livingston woman, "Sarah," underscored the challenges Montana's mental health system faces as community-level providers are rocked by political battl...

SEELEY LAKE - When Seppa Francis was six years old, her father suffered a traumatic brain injury from a motorcycle accident. Francis and her younger brother blamed themselves for years and Francis's...

Previously: The story of a mentally ill Livingston woman, "Sarah," underscored the challenges Montana's mental health system faces as community-level providers are rocked by political battles over pub...

In late 2017, Montana legislators voted to substantially cut funding for mental health care, in response to a budget shortfall. Some of the effects on the state's mental health system were immediate:...

Sarah sat in her Livingston home with the front door locked and her eyes closed, picturing the path to Gallatin Mental Health Center in Bozeman for day treatment. It's 26 miles, across a pass, with...

SEELEY LAKE - Strings, anchors, balloons, the colors of the rainbow: To hear students and teachers talk about the Kaleidoscope Connect program's lessons sounds like listening to attendees of a New...

MISSOULA - For Lee Bridges, a 35-year homeowner in East Missoula, and board member on the East Missoula Community Council, a big part of the path toward economic sustainability is for her community...

CHOTEAU – "I'm really into formulas," says Choteau Area Port Authority board member Blair Patton. "People who are successful know the formula. You do not have a successful small community...

Shelby Schools Superintendent Elliott Crump knows first-hand about the teacher shortage in Montana. The Montana Office of Public Instruction reported 638 full-time openings in the state's "difficult...

For much of rural Montana, brain drain has been a fact of life for decades. Come high school graduation, the pattern goes, small towns see their most ambitious sons and daughters pack their bags,...