In the News
Dr. Yamanda Edwards, the daughter of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mom, grew up just a few miles from Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center, at the time an iconic yet troubled hospital in South Los Angeles.
As a child in the 1990s, she knew little of its history — how it rose from the ashes of the Watts riots. And she knew no one in the medical profession.
Still, she wanted to become a doctor. "I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I wanted to get there," she said. "I was determined."
At the turn of the 20th century, prominent physicians who were trying to understand where mental illness comes from seized on a new theory: autointoxication. Intestinal microbes, these doctors suggested, are actually dangerous to their human hosts. They have a way of inducing "fatigue, melancholia, and the neuroses," as a historical article in the journal Gut Pathogensrecounts.
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey describes two kinds of patients in the psychiatric hospital where the story is set: Acutes ("because the doctors figure them still sick enough to be fixed") and Chronics (who are "in for good, the staff concedes").
When Kristopher Rodriguez, a 31-year-old man from Florida, first went into the US criminal justice system in 2008, it seemed like he would have been classified as an Acute; now nearly a decade later, he would almost certainly qualify as a Chronic.
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, is using his lofty perch and personal experience to call on the U.S. Olympic Committee to help athletes who are struggling with depression.
Ted Matthews drove past acres of fields, racing to meet with a farmer who called threatening to kill himself.
That's when he got a call from another farmer in a different part of the state who was also threatening suicide. Since he couldn't be in two places at once, he frantically got on his phone to try to find someone else who could help the second farmer.
Netflix has added a warning video that will play before its series "13 Reasons Why" and will promote resources to help young viewers and their parents address the show's themes, the streaming service announced Wednesday.
After being criticized for how the series' first season depicted suicide, which had already led the network to add warning messages to the show, Netflix commissioned a study by the Northwestern University Center on Media and Human Development to gauge its impact on viewers. The show's second season will be released this year.
Even people with common and often treatable mental health problems like depression and anxiety may have a harder time than patients without these diagnoses getting admitted to a high-quality nursing home, a U.S. study suggests.
JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — Adam Fuller credits a simple, one-word command — and a black Lab mix named J.D. — with helping to save his life.
"Cover," he tells J.D., who is sitting to his left in a grassy field next to a park playground. The dog calmly walks to Fuller's right, then sits facing backward. Were someone coming up from behind, he'd wag his tail. The signal quells the sense of threat that plagued Fuller after serving in Afghanistan, that at one point had him futilely popping medications and veering toward suicide.
Personal health should be a private matter. But when you need to take time off work due to a mental health condition, often it isn't possible to maintain that privacy. As a board member at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and a former managing director at two global banks (UBS and Deutsche Bank), I've been approached by hundreds of colleagues and clients over the past 30 years seeking advice for themselves or a colleague, friend, or family member on how best to manage professional life while dealing with a mental health condition themselves or caring for a loved one who is.
Counties across California are under increasing scrutiny for how they use — or don't use — state funds earmarked for mental health services.
A recent state audit found that California counties were collectively sitting on an unused stash of $2.5 billion in funds from the Mental Health Services Act. The issue has taken front stage in Orange County, where officials are scrambling to provide housing and services to homeless people, some with mental illness, as part of a federal court settlement.