From ABC News (with video):

Actress Glenn Close and her sister, Jessie Close, are appearing in a national ad campaign aimed at countering stima and providing support to people with mental illness. Jessie Close has bipolar disorder.

In the ad for the nonprofit BringChange2Mind, Jessie Close wears a t-shirt that says “bipolar;” Glenn Close’s shirt says “sister.”

… “Mental illness is just part of the human condition,” the actress said on “Good Morning America,” adding that her family hopes that the sisters’ campaign will help foster a dialogue about a condition that we should “talk about as openly as cancer or diabetes.”

See also:

Mental Illness: The stigma of silence, by Glenn Close in the Huffington Post

An excerpt:

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well. Our society ought to understand that many people with mental illness, given the right treatment, can be full participants in our society.

(Photo from ABC News video)

The Lexington [KY] Herald-Leader reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a civil rights investigation into Kentucky’s Medicaid program after a family complained about a reduction in home care services for a man with multiple disabilities.

Creasa Reed, who is herself disabled, filed the complaint after Medicaid cut her son’s budget for in-home care by 40 hours each week. The cuts left Reed and her husband responsible for providing 88 hours of care each week to their 31-year-old son, James, who is described as autistic, bipolar and mentally handicapped.

The Reeds say their son is in danger of being sent to an institution if home care services are not restored.

According to a June 12 letter that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights sent the Reeds, the office will be investigating whether state Medicaid officials acted appropriately when they cut James Reed’s services without considering that Creasa Reed has a disability and might not be able to provide 88 hours of care.

See also: Report from WKYT-TV

By Shelly Slater on WFAA-TV Dallas/Fort Worth:

In an incident that went unreported for months, a Dallas school district camera captured on videotape footage of an enraged bus driver choking a student who had been misbehaving.

Correspondent Shelly Slater said the child’s family did not learn of the incident until the station obtained the videotape and showed it to them. The student was described as having intellectual disabilities and bipolar disorder.

The video (available on the station’s website) shows the student moving around, shouting obscenities and throwing a can in the direction of the driver.  The driver, identified as Janet Pitts, got up and choked the boy, yelling, “You want me to beat you [expletive]? You don’t do that no more. You hear me? Don’t do that no more. Sit down, do you understand?”

On the day in question, Pitts was driving without the monitor who ordinarily helped keep order on the bus.

Dale Kiser, with the National Education Association, says it isn’t the driver’s fault. Instead, he blames the system.

“It’s been stated, documented [and] everything else that there should always be a monitor on this particular student on that bus,” he said.

Pitts has since been terminated, reinstated, and has resigned.

From Disability Now:

Stephen Fry, a prominent UK writer, actor and television personality, says people with mental health problems should develop a sense of pride to help banish public stigma. Fry, who has bipolar disorder, draws parallels to the civil rights and gay rights movements.

“Once that pride is there, once we all stand up and account for ourselves and not be ashamed of ourselves, then it makes the rest of the population realize two things,” he said in an interview. “One, that we are just them but with something extra. And two, how close we are.”

… “It’s actually necessary for our gene pool to have some people in it who are just not normal. It is an immense privilege to belong to a group of people who are not normal.”

From CBS News:
Emmy-winning actor and ABC “General Hospital” soap star Maurice Benard uses his bipolar condition to add depth to his character on-screen and to promote mental health advocacy. The producers embraced his condition when he told them and incorporated it into the script with his permission. Benard is also a spokesperson for the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)

“I didn’t want to talk about it because I was afraid that producers would think that I’d lose it on the set. … It was important for me to come out about it.” Benard said. “But, for me it’s been absolutely incredible. This is why I continue to do what I do.”

(ABC photo)

From Variety:

HBO has announced that is developing a one-hour drama based on the bestselling Terri Cheney book “Manic, A Memoir,” about a successful female attorney with bipolar disorder.

In the running for the week’s least-PC wording are Variety’s headline and lead sentence:

• HBO crazy about ‘Manic’
• HBO is hyper for ‘Manic’…

From The Boston Globe:

In the past few weeks, parents and advocates in Massachusetts report that at least a dozen children and teens with mental illness – threatening violence to themselves or others – have waited up to a week in hospital emergency rooms or medical wards waiting for psychiatric beds. Other children have been turned away from treatment.

Among factors contributing to the problem are: the impact of increasing economic stress on children, lack of coordination in the mental health system, and insurance constraints on hospitalization.

Gail Rowell of Reading said that her 18-year-old daughter, Kelly, waited a full week in Merrimack Valley Hospital’s emergency room in March. Kelly has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and developmental disabilities and has been hospitalized 18 times since she was 9 years old. But this wait “was at least double or triple what we’d seen before,” Rowell said.

Children with difficult or multiple diagnoses are often especially hard to place. But “when you’ve got a kid in the emergency room for a week, that’s just wrong,” Rowell said. “It’s outrageous.”