Side Effects

Dr. Darla Hinshaw walks up to the podium in the Indiana Senate chamber. She's there to tell lawmakers about the children she treats as a psychiatrist and the issue standing between kids and effective treatment.  

Communities across the Midwest have been devastated by the opioid epidemic. But there's still a lot of misunderstanding about how opioids affect our bodies. A new and unusual museum exhibit is tackling this issue. 

Dr. Darla Hinshaw walks up to the podium in the Indiana Senate chamber. She's there to tell lawmakers about the children she treats as a psychiatrist and the issue standing between kids and effective treatment. 

She tells a story of a foster care teenager who was admitted into a facility on a Friday.

"He continued to be aggressive," Hinshaw says. "He punched walls, easily irritated into aggression." 

When his Department of Child Services caseworker was reached on Sunday, the teen started a new medication. 

Alzheimer's disease affects more than five million Americans, but the disease is still a mystery to scientists and doctors. There’s no cure. But some patients and caregivers hope to change that by joining clinical trials for new drugs. 

At the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Dr. Tom Ala is part of a clinical trial for a drug that holds promise in slowing Alzheimer’s. It's a nationwide trial involving hundreds of patients.