Recent tragedies highlight rural mental health, addiction crisis

Signs of trouble should have been obvious long before Robert Bracken shot his son Justin, his older brother Richard, his employer Doug Dulmage, and finally, himself, with a .357 revolver on Aug. 29, 2022.

With an unthinkable scene of four dead bodies in a blue-skied North Dakota grain field, it appeared an act fueled by towering instability had taken place. A formal investigation into the incid...