1. Have you contacted your local newspaper about Silent Treatment? 2. It’s a multi-media world on ST website 3. Send us your mailing lists for outreach material 4. Silent Treatment reporters in the spotlight
1. Have you contacted your local newspaper about Silent Treatment? June and July are target months for contacting your local newspaper to encourage them to run the Silent Treatment series, as well as create local coverage for Recovery Month events and beyond. A mass mailing goes out this week to editors of every daily newspaper in the U.S., and Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service will be sending out online and wire advisories alerting editors. The series can open the door to future coverage of your issues, and form an invaluable relationship with local media. (Visit the recruiting newspapers section of our media guide for specific tips.) If you haven’t already done so, consider partnering with others who promote recovery and address prevention and treatment needs in your community to approach your local newspaper. If you secure a commitment for the series or local coverage of your Recovery Month event, please send us an email.
2. It’s a multi-media world on ST website
The Silent Treatment
website
puts the spotlight on compelling and
informative multi-media features, including
videos and
webcasts from groups across the
country that address a variety of alcohol and drug addiction issues.
Check out an excerpt from
C.A.S.T. – Clean and Sober Theater
– a company of 13- to 23-year-old actors who share their experiences
with addiction through theater as part of an alcohol and drug prevention
program based in Tucson, Ariz. And click on the
Photo Gallery to see imaginative artwork created by teens in
treatment and recovery in the therapeutic ART-C program in St. Charles,
Mo. If you have a video, audio or other multi-media feature you’d like
to share or link to from the ST site, just send us an
email.
The Silent Treatment team is available to fulfill mailing requests to up to 250 individuals and organizations of your choice to spread the word about the project. Included in the mailings are the Breaking the Silence action guide, a promotional brochure and a cover letter from your organization. If you’d like to spread the word, please send us an email.
4. Silent Treatment reporters in the spotlight This month’s featured reporter for the Silent Treatment newspaper series is Richard Scheinin, who examines the impact of alcohol and drug abuse on youth in our third-day story. Rich writes for the San Jose Mercury News. For 11 years, he was an award-winning religion and ethics writer there; he also was a national cover story writer for USA Today. He is the author of "Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America's National Pastime'' (W.W. Norton) and has published freelance articles in GQ and the Washington Post. A former journalism instructor at the University of California in Santa Cruz's Extension Division, he holds a Master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Here’s a summary of what our story on youth will cover: Of the 1.6 million young people between the ages of 12 and 18 with serious alcohol and drug problems, fewer than one in 10 receive treatment. Of the estimated 175,000 who do, only about 25 percent stay in treatment for three months, as recommended by the National Institute on Drug Abuse; less than 50 percent stay for even six weeks, according to the Office of Applied Statistics in 2005. And there is virtually no continuing care for teenagers who struggle to stay straight once back in the larger community. Is it any surprise, then, that a 2002 study in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment found almost 80 percent of teenagers relapse within a year of treatment? There is an explanation for this public health embarrassment: The epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse among young people was until recently an invisible problem, either unrecognized, ignored or wishfully dismissed as too awful to be true. Until 1997, there were only 14 studies published in the field of adolescent drug treatment, and those were widely regarded as being of questionable quality. Today, the field is moving to a state-of-the-art discipline, with dozens of new federal grants, hundreds of published studies, promising new interventions and — finally — evaluated program outcomes.
New Messaging from Faces & Voices of Recovery: Talking About Recovery What is recovery? During the past two years, Faces & Voices of Recovery has been asking that question to find a way to define and talk about a life outside of alcohol and drug addiction, conducting in-depth public opinion research with members of the recovery community and the general public. Now FAVOR offers language that you can use to talk with the public and policymakers. For a PDF of the new messaging, click here. For information about attending one of FAVOR’s upcoming media trainings this summer in either Kentucky or California, click here.
New Grants to Help Community Organizations Build Capacity
We want to post your event on our national calendar! Once the newspaper series launches August 2 the Silent Treatment website will be visited by readers from across your state. Make sure your events are there for them – send us an email with event details.
Please forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues who may be interested in addiction treatment and recovery issues. Send details on coming events, successful projects, new findings or useful ideas to share to sroff@pajournalism.com. If you missed past issues, visit the archive section at http://www.silenttreatment.info/enewsletters.htm.
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