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)

An editorial in the New York Times hails the Obama Justice Department for enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. Justice Department lawyers are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit involving people with mental illness who are being held in “adult homes” that are “more like jails than houses.” An excerpt:

… in the letter announcing its intent to intervene, the Justice Department said this matter was “a great concern” to the federal government. It said it wanted a role in the process because the remedy designed in New York might serve as a national model for dealing with this problem. The onus is now on the state to come up with that remedy.

From the New York Times:

Families express mixed emotions over a recent court decision that is pushing New York State to move people with mental illness from institutional homes to less restrictive settings. A federal judge ruled last month that New York was illegally discriminating against 4,300 people with mental illness by holding them in privately run institutions.

In interviews, relatives expressed both happiness and fear over the verdict. While they didn’t defend the adult homes, many worried that their vulnerable relatives could be physically in danger if they aren’t adequately supervised, or helped with their medications.

Earlier posts here and here.

From the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USC press release:

Elyn Saks, a USC law professor whose struggle with schizophrenia has informed her advocacy on behalf of those with mental illness, is among the 24 winners of this year’s “genius” grants from the MacArthur Foundation. Honorees receive $500,000 to be used at their discretion.

Saks, 53, kept her schizophrenia hidden while excelling academically, earning a philosophy degree from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale University. In addition to her work at the USC law school, Saks is also an adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, where she does research about society’s rejection of the mentally ill and how high-functioning schizophrenics cope.

Saks came out of the mental health closet with her 2007 memoir, “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.” The book described the night terrors she had suffered throughout her life, her earlier beliefs that she had mentally caused the deaths of thousands of people, and the often-inhumane treatment she had received at mental health facilities.

Saks said in an interview that she would use at least some of the prize money to extend her memoir by interviewing other people with schizophrenia who are doing well.

“When I’m traveling, people always say, ‘You’re unique.’ Well, I’m really not,” she said. “I would just like to tell other people’s stories as well to further give people hope and understanding.”

From the National Law Journal:

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has filed a federal lawsuit against a North Carolina employer for alleged workplace discrimination against an employee with mental illness.

The EEOC argues that the Smith International Truck Center relied on “myths, fears and stereotypes about mental impairments” when it unlawfully terminated Stephen Kerns, an employee who returned to work after taking a leave for a mental health issue.

Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel to the EEOC, said discrimination against employees with mental illnesses has been an ongoing problem since the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990.

“There’s just a lot of stigma about mental illness,” she said, adding that the North Carolina case highlights the difficulties that individuals with mental illness face in landing a job and keeping one. “‘Getting employers to slow down and not jump to these negative conclusions is not easy.”

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey writes in the New York Post that a federal court ruling issued earlier this month which calls for releasing people with mental illness from group homes into more integrated settings will “mean disaster for New Yorkers.”

Torrey says many group homes are snake pits, but says at a minimum they do provide assurance that patients receive their medication. He says Judge Nicholas Garaufis should have ordered an overhaul of the state’s group homes, complete with a program of unannounced inspections by an independent state agency. Instead, he says, the judge “threw residents out on the streets.” An excerpt:

… So what is likely to happen from Judge Garaufis’ ruling? The state will close down the worst of the group homes and place the residents in situations where they will no longer receive medications. Many will then relapse, be rehospitalized, become homeless, and/or end up in jail.

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va., and author of “The Insanity Offense.”

From the New York Times:

Advocates say Xiu Ping Jiang’s case demonstrates the need for protections for people with mental disabilities in the nation’s immigration courts.

Jiang has a history of mental illness and was forcibly sterilized in China before immigrating to the United States. She was held in a Florida immigration detention center for a year and a half without legal representation or medical treatment, and fell into a suicidal depression. After the New York Times wrote about her, an immigration judge reopened her case. Jiang is now out on bail, living with family in New York.

If immigration courts were required to offer the same basic protections for the mentally disabled as any other court, advocates say, Ms. Jiang’s prolonged detention – which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and put her life at risk – could have been avoided.

Hers is one of several cases cited in a 15-page letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that asks for such protections, including the appointment of counsel to anyone with a mental disability in deportation proceedings, and the appointment of guardians ad litem to speak on behalf of those found mentally incompetent.

(New York Times photo)