Circle 2: Mental Health Care Access

The Mississippi Free Press convened a virtual Solutions Circle on June 17, 2025, with about 40 attendees discussing health access and disparity challenges and brainstorming solutions. with our staff and this summer’s Mississippi Youth Media Project students to discuss their experiences. Our reporters and students listened in on these conversations, and kept notes about the issues and potential solutions participants came up with. Our YMP students will be using this experience as part of their summer projects. 

Then on Thursday, June 26, the YMP students and full MFP staff did an in-newsroom Solutions Circle to brainstorm and log specific story ideas either team can follow up separately or in collaboration.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this circle! If you’d like to hear about more circles, sign up here: http://mfp.ms/circlesinterest. Our next virtual circle is Tuesday, July 1, at 5:30 p.m. to identify types of freedom challenges and potential solution to inform our coverage. Please join if can.

Issues:

  • Youth Stress & Lack of Support:
    • Students discussed dealing with stresses in school without support  
    • Lack of resources from society or at-home parental support, especially for low-income and minority communities.
    • Stigma creates resistance to seeking therapy when it’s available
  • Educator Burnout: 
    • Lack of teacher support due to stresses teachers themselves face.
    • Shortages within disadvantaged districts compared to county districts in more affluent areas.

Potential Solutions:

  • Promoting Therapy & De-stigmatization:
    • Encourage more support for seeking therapy (“Everyone needs it whether they realize or not”). 
  • Systemic Support for Educators & Students:
    • Pressure officials to offer more support for teachers and administrators.
    • Support to trickle down to students that need it most, especially in disadvantaged communities/schools.

The mission of the Mississippi Free Press, a new nonprofit journalism website and multimedia network that launched in March 2020, is to publish deep public-interest reporting into causes of and solutions to the social, political and structural challenges facing all Mississippians and their communities. Mississippians need to know each other across regions and share our challenges and solutions despite geographic and other differences. We are introducing Mississippians to each other through our deep accountability reporting and compelling people-focused storytelling, and by convening online and physical “solutions circles,” using our statewide networks to ensure inclusivity and representation.