Think Out Loud

For the past five years, Oregon’s Lines for Life has been running a youth program called Safe Social Spaces. Now an OHSU study published in the journal Psychiatric Services suggests the program may have prevented more than 160 suicide attempts since it began. The program uses social media to find youth struggling with suicidal ideation and provide support through the social media’s direct messaging systems. We hear more from Angie Nielsen, the nonprofit’s YouthLine assistant director of clinical operations who co-authored the study, and gen castle, a social media crisis intervention specialist. 

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can call or text 9-8-8 to reach the suicide and crisis lifeline or contact the YouthLine.  Help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It’s been just over a year since Oregon’s first regulated service centers began providing therapeutic psilocybin trips to clients. There are now 29 licensed service centers across the state, as well as 12 manufacturers, two testing labs and more than 300 facilitators who supervise clients during sessions.

Angie Allbee is the manager of the Psilocybin Services Section at the Oregon Health Authority. She joins us with an update on how the first-in-the-nation program is going and its goals for the next year.

Chain stores like Dollar General and Family Dollar have been popping up in eastern Oregon. An opposition group known as No Dollar General has formed to stop the spread of such stores. While Dollar General successfully opened a store in the city of Wallowa recently, the opposition group is still fighting to keep the chain from expanding in the region.

Last month, the Joseph City Council passed an ordinance banning “formula” businesses from operating within city limits. The policy targets stores that have “prescribed standards and features,” such as dollar stores, while allowing for some exemptions. Antonio Sierra, OPB’s rural communities reporter, shares his reporting on this issue.

The Bike Index was started in 2013 and allows people to register bicycles for free and report them when they have been stolen. The nonprofit has helped recover more than 14,000 bikes. Most recently, the group has been tracking an elaborate bike-theft pipeline that leads back to Mexico. It estimates from 2020 to 2024, the theft ring has sold an estimated 654 bikes worth more than $1 million. Bryan Hance is a Portlander and co-founder of the group. He joins us to share more about the Bike Index and what it's uncovered about these thefts.

Oregon is known as the “Grass Seed Capital of the World.” With nearly 1,500 farms in the state, Oregon is a major world producer. But pollen -- including from grass -- in the Willamette Valley leads to Oregonians suffering from allergies through the summer. We dig into the details of this year’s allergy season with Shyam Joshi, an assistant professor of medicine and head of allergy and clinical immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine. 

The downtown district in Dallas, Oregon was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places. Dallas has also worked with Oregon Main Street, a program that helps cities across the state with revitalization efforts in their communities. We learn more about the work Dallas and other cities have been doing from Brian Dalton, a former Dallas mayor and Sheri Stuart, Oregon Main Street coordinator.

With the Olympic trials wrapping up and the Paris competition on the horizon, sports are top of mind for many people this summer. The pressures of athletic performance will once again be on full display for the world, sparking conversations about athletes’ physical – and mental – prowess. The conversation around athletes and mental well-being has only grown over the past few years as high-profile athletes like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have taken breaks to focus on their mental health.

Oregon therapists Tiffany Brown and Katie Steele focus specifically on this issue. Their podcast “Sports Shrinks” digs into the different ways competition can impact athletes’ mental health. They also recently co-authored their first book, “The Price She Pays: Confronting the Hidden Mental Health Crisis in Women’s Sports — from the Schoolyard to the Stadium.”

Brown and Steele join us to talk more about their projects and the importance of mental health care at all levels of sport, from youth programs to professional athletics.

Necroarchivos de las Americas: An Unrelenting Search for Justice is a group exhibition on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The exhibition features art that examines political violence. We learn more about the exhibit and the artists behind the work from Adriana Miramontes Olivas, curator of academic programs and Latin American and Caribbean art at the museum. 

Author Nicole Chung was born to Korean immigrants in Seattle and later adopted by a white couple in Southern Oregon. The 2018 memoir “All You Can Ever Know” follows Chung’s exploration of her identity as a transracial adoptee as she searches for her birth family. Her second memoir, released earlier this month, covers the untimely deaths of her adoptive parents — first her father from kidney disease, then her mother from cancer in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. “A Living Remedy” chronicles Chung’s grief and rage as she reckons with ways financial instability and inadequate health care access contributed to her parents’ deaths. 

The Cedar Grove apartments in Beaverton were created by Community Partners for Affordable Housing, or CPAH. The nonprofit has been working to create homes that Oregonians can actually afford to live in for 30 years now. This is part of a series of conversations we’re having this year about some of the biggest problems Oregon is facing, along with possible solutions.

More than half of renters in Oregon don’t have enough money after they pay rent to be able to afford basics like food, child care or transportation. Meanwhile, Oregon is among the states with the lowest supply of rentals that are affordable to people who are at or below poverty levels. As a state economist put it, “We have the worst affordability” in the nation.

We were joined by CPAH staff: Executive Director Rachael Duke; Housing Director Jilian Saurage Felton; and Resident Services Coordinator Renee Sheets Johnson. We also heard from neighbors and residents of Cedar Grove and other residents of CPAH properties, including Talaur Alvarado, Patrick Kirlin, Virginia Bruce, Paula Morrison, Mary Barbee and Jeffrey Worthington.