In the News

SYDNEY, Australia — As public conversation about mental health has grown louder and busier in recent years, mental illness has become more than a category of disease with social and psychological dimensions. Especially in the case of depression and anxiety, mental illness has come to be seen as a proxy for what is wrong with the modern Western world.

By some accounts, nearly half of America's incarcerated population is mentally ill — and journalist Alisa Roth argues that most aren't getting the treatment they need.

Roth has visited jails in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta and a rural women's prison in Oklahoma to assess the condition of mentally ill prisoners. She says correctional officers are on the "front lines" of mental health treatment — despite the fact that they lack clinical training.

Dr. Nick Nelson walks through busy Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif., to a sixth-floor exam room, where he sees patients from around the world who say they have fled torture and violence.

Nelson, who practices internal medicine, is the medical director of the Highland Human Rights Clinic, part of the Alameda Health System. A few times each week, he and his team conduct medical evaluations of people who are seeking asylum in the United States.

AUSTIN, Texas — The Harris County sheriff's office doesn't want its jail to be the largest mental health facility in Texas anymore — but first it needs to find somewhere else to accommodate patients before they get swept up in the criminal justice system.

Does your doctor's mental health and well-being affect the care you receive? A new study says yes -- burnout, fatigue and depression may affect major medical errors.

Medical errors contribute to an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 deaths per year, according to the Institute of Medicine. Burnout -- defined as emotional exhaustion or depersonalization -- occurs in more than half of doctors, according to the study.

This column is a plea to all current and future college students and their families to deal openly and constructively with emotional, social and academic turmoil that can sometimes have heartbreaking — and usually preventable — consequences.

Twenty-two psychiatrists and psychologists, including some of the field's most prominent thinkers, are calling on the American Psychiatric Association on Thursday to substantially revise its controversial Goldwater rule, which bars APA members from offering their views of a public figure's apparent psychological traits or mental status.

Mental-health problems among college students have been climbing since the 1990s, according to the American Psychological Association. And with services increasingly stretched at campus health centers, students have been taking action themselves through peer-run mental-health clubs and organizations. The approach appears to be paying off, a new study finds.