In his opening statement to Wednesday's Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hearings on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), well-informed Dr. Tim Murphy (R-PA) noted

The Center for Mental Health Services, housed at SAMHSA, has a budget of approximately $1 billion per year. It...

There's a battle brewing over the future of mental illness. In one corner is the American Psychiatric Association (APA) defending their new release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as the best way to define who has a mental illness and who doesn't. In the other...

Laura's Law helps the most seriously mentally ill Californians: people who are so ill, they don't know they are ill and therefore won't accept voluntary treatment. It allows courts to order a small group of people who have serious mental illness and a history of dangerousness to stay...

The mental health plan just proposed by the Obama administration includes spending $130 million to "train teachers and other adults to help recognize early signs of mental illness," $50 million to train mental-health specialists who work in schools, and $25 million "to address the trauma experienced by children."...

As a lifelong Democrat, it pains me to say the best advocate for people with serious mental illness appears to be Representative Tim Murphy, the Republican Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

For most leaders, once there is a "Mentally Ill Killer on Rampage" (sic)...

Bills Clarify MHSA Funds Can Be Used For Laura's Law and Make Other Improvements

California has two major laws that were specifically enacted to help persons with the most serious mental illnesses: Laura's Law and the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). Neither has worked as promised and on...

In the 1980s, when Ed Koch was mayor, the streets of New York were full of homeless psychotic mentally individuals who had been abandoned by the mental health system. This was before Mayor Rudy Giuliani decided to implement his "three strikes and you're out" laws to incarcerate the mentally ill...

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported psychiatrists and psychologists are opposing a requirement inserted in New York State gun control legislation that requires them to tell county mental health directors when a mentally ill patient is likely to become dangerous. They fear this...

(Note: To illustrate this article, the links are to examples of the types of imagery no longer shown in mass media. If that offends you, please do not click on links. Thank you.)

The NRA and some mental health advocates claim it is violence in video games and movies that...

Americans are united around the reasonable and limited proposition, that people with serious mental illnesses should not own guns. But one group takes umbrage: mental health advocates. In the wake of incidents such as the one at Newtown, the advocates immediately issue press releases claiming...

President Obama said the federal government has to do something meaningful to prevent future shootings like the one in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26 people. Though mental illness is as yet unconfirmed in the Newtown killer's case, here is what the federal government can do to prevent violence related to...

Try this test. Google "mental health" and Google "mental illness" and see how many articles you turn up.

The media almost always focuses on mental health and rarely on mental illness. That is why Jeneen Interlandi's "When My Crazy Father Actually Lost His...

Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs certified Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) as an Effective Crime Prevention Program. This comes on top of previous recognition by the DOJ Office of Community Oriented Policing Initiatives.

AOT allows courts to order mental...

The recently announced proposed closure of Kingsboro Psychiatric Hospital in Brooklyn, is the latest step by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) to get out of the business of providing treatment to people with serious mental illness and spurred a massive demonstration in...

The chair of the California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) wrote an op-ed in Capital Weekly criticizing families of people with severe mental illness who criticize how Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) funds are spent. He claims the program is working well. But...

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency's most recent and widely-quoted report on the prevalence of 'any' mental illness and 'serious' mental illness in America failed to count the 300,000 individuals with serious mental illness in jails and prisons, the 200,00 who are homeless and the

The anniversary of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords by an allegedly mentally ill Jared Loughner should engender sympathy for Ms. Giffords, sympathy for Jared Loughner, and consternation with Congress.

The shooting was not an isolated incident. Congress itself was the target of another man allegedly with untreated mental illness...

Eric Clark, an allegdly severely mentally ill man convicted in 2003 of murdering Flagstaff, Ariz. police officer Jeffrey Moritz in 2000, was just ordered freed or retried because evidence of his mental illness was withheld from his initial trial, reports the Treatment Advocacy Center.

According to U.S. District...

A new nationwide survey of 2,406 senior law enforcement officials (75% of whom were officers longer than 20 years) documents police and sheriffs are being tremendously overburdened with the "unintended consequences of a policy change that in effect "removed the daily care of our nation's severely mentally ill population from...

A little noted Laura's Law Progress Report quietly filed by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health earlier this year shows Laura's Law has reduced the incarceration and hospitalization of people with severe mental illness and saved taxpayers money which can be used for other purposes.