In the News

With heightened awareness of college students' psychological stress, worried state officials and campus leaders in California are providing more money and expanding programs to promote mental health.

The first drug for women suffering postpartum depression received federal approval on Tuesday, a move likely to pave the way for a wave of treatments to address a debilitating condition that is the most common complication of pregnancy.

In the wake of high-profile school shootings, many schools over the past decade have invested scarce educational funds into putting more police in schools. School districts have shown a near obsession with "hardening" schools despite federal data revealing that the real crisis of schools isn't violence, but a broad failure to hire enough support staff to serve students' mental health needs.

Of the 16 million American adults who live with depression, as many as one-quarter gain little or no benefit from available treatments, whether drugs or talk therapy. They represent perhaps the greatest unmet need in psychiatry. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a prescription treatment intended to help them, a fast-acting drug derived from an old and widely used anesthetic, ketamine.

In a scathing decision released Tuesday, a federal judge in Northern California ruled that a unit of UnitedHealth Group, the giant health insurer, had created internal policies aimed at effectively discriminating against patients with mental health and substance abuse disorders to save money.

More firefighters took their own lives than died on the job over that span, though line-of-duty deaths often eclipse suicides in the media and public consciousness.

A small but dedicated group of people in California and across the country is working to change that.

In the last few years these advocates have sought to increase awareness about firefighters' mental health, pushed departments to offer more firefighter-appropriate help and stepped in as counselors themselves.

In particular, ACS-CAN and the other patient advocacy groups are concerned about changes to Medicare's "protected classes," which include drugs that treat AIDS, cancer, some mental illnesses, and seizure disorders like epilepsy. They also include drugs for patients who received transplants.

Under current rules, Medicare Part D plans must cover nearly every drug for these conditions, with some exceptions. That's different than the rules for other diseases, where Medicare plans only need to cover two drugs per condition.

The Board of Supervisors approved a motion by Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Janice Hahn to create a countywide plan for the provision of school-based mental health services through the Department of Mental Health.