In the News

Fanny Ortiz, a mother of five who lives just east of downtown Los Angeles, spent nearly a decade married to a man who controlled her and frequently threatened her. Then, she said, his abuse escalated. "He would physically hit me in the face, throw me on the wall," she recalled.

Andrey Ostrovsky's family did not discuss what killed his uncle. He was young, not quite two weeks past his 45th birthday, when he died, and he had lost touch with loved ones in his final months. Ostrovsky speculated he had committed suicide.

Almost two years later, Ostrovsky was Medicaid's chief medical officer, grappling with an opioid crisis that kills about 115 Americans each day, when he learned the truth: His uncle died of a drug overdose.

This semester, every Tuesday and Thursday at 1 p.m., about a quarter of Yale's student population flocks to Woolsey Hall—the university's concert hall and only space on campus big enough to accommodate a course roster of 1,182 students—to learn how to be happy.

The spectacle of more than 150 young women telling their stories of sexual abuse before a court, the world, and the perpetrator himself seemed straight from the movies, a cathartic ending to a dark, years long drama that had been all too real.

It is rare, perhaps unprecedented, for so many victims to stand in court and, with the encouragement of a judge, to describe aloud for days the abuse they endured. Therapists said that the chance to testify at the sentencing hearing of Dr. Lawrence B. Nassar was worth taking for those who felt ready to do so.

Scientists have found specialized brain cells in mice that appear to control anxiety levels.

The finding, reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to better treatments for anxiety disorders, which affect nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.

"The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks," says Mazen Kheirbek, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an author of the study. "This is another target that we can try to move the field forward for finding new therapies."

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion Tuesday that asks California lawmakers to change the way the state defines "grave disability" in order to give officials more power to forcibly treat mentally ill homeless people.

The motion comes amid concern about the growing number of deaths of the homeless in L.A. County. According to data from the Los Angeles County coroner's office, 831 homeless people died in 2017, compared with 458 in 2013.

About half of U.S. veterans who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don't get the mental health care they need, according to a new report that recommends changes to improve the care delivered by the Veterans Affairs health system.

Hip hop artist Jay-Z addressed the issue of mental health Saturday, telling CNN's Van Jones that he was open about seeing a therapist himself, and that the stigma attached to mental health issues was "ridiculous."

"Mental health, PTSD and trauma is so rampant in our community," Jones remarked to Jay-Z on the premiere of "The Van Jones Show," before joking that "as scared as black folks are of the cops, we're even more scared of therapists."