In recent years, WBEZ has explored in-depth the challenges and obstacles facing youth having a hard time 'making it'. As their award-winning series Fifty-Fifty and Inside and Out found, some troubled kids end up dropping out of school; others end up in trouble with the law. In both cases, mental illness is often the reason many young people fail to succeed. The new series, Out of the Shadows, explores the fractures in mental health care for children in Illinois - and how it affects our youth.

For this series I reported a piece about the tricky time period when youth with mental health conditions are transitioning to adulthood. Hear the piece here.

Interviews I conducted for this story also became subjects of other short pieces, including these:
How Mental Illness Affects Intimacy

Out of the Shadows: Ana's Story

Out of the Shadows: A young girl's struggle with the stigma associated with mental illness