Bridge reporters Eli Newman discuss their youth mental health investigation on WJR’s ‘All Talk with Kevin Dietz’
MIchigan’s capacity to care for youth in mental health crisis, children sent out-of-state for care were all discussed on the show
The WJR collaboration is part of Bridge Listens. We are asking readers to nominate their top 2026 election issues in this form
Bridge Michigan reporters Eli Newman and Jordyn Hermani sat down with WJR-760 this week to discuss how and why Michigan is increasingly sending young people out-of-state for mental health treatment.
The pair joined “All Talk with Kevin Dietz” on Tuesday as part of an ongoing election-year collaboration between Bridge and WJR.
You can watch WJR-760 All Talk here.
“The impetus of this investigation started with seeing this kind of snowballing effect,” Hermani said. “We were watching these facilities close … parents left in the lurch looking for mental health care that was hundreds of miles away — either at another place in Michigan or even thousands of miles away out of state — where they couldn’t be able to see their child, who could be in the midst of a severe mental health crisis.”
The collaboration — known as “Election 2026 Coverage that Matters to Michigan” — is part of Bridge Listens, a yearlong effort to help identify and discuss the top election issues in Michigan before the 2026 election.
So far, about 6% of respondents have told us mental health is one of the top issues facing the state in 2026. A growing number of gubernatorial candidates have also begun discussing the topic as well, including former Republican House Speaker Tom Leonard — who highlighted Hermani and Newman’s story on social media earlier this week — and current Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, R-Porter Township.
“What we found is that people that are interfacing with the government — we’re talking about juvenile justice, people who’ve had to call 911 — these are kids that are increasingly going out of state to get that long-term mental health care that they desperately need,” Newman told WJR.
The two will also appear on Michigan Public’s “Stateside” this week to share further insights into how the state ended up with fewer available mental health placements for Michigan children, and what parents say can and must be done. That’s tentatively scheduled to air Friday.
Newman and Hermani have previously written a number of stories about mental health care, including the state quietly killing an effort to restructure its mental health care systems, a recent push to add more mental health beds in underserved areas of Michigan and the closing of Vista Maria, once the state’s largest treatment program for troubled young girls.
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