The liberal-leaning The American Prospect has an in-depth look at the politics of mental illness in a stand-alone supplement in the summer double issue of the magazine.

And it’s a doozy.

“When you go to the hospital with a physical illness, people send flowers,” writes Elyn Saks. “When you go to a mental hospital with a mental illness, they don’t.” Saks, a legal scholar and professor at the University of Southern California, documented her own lifelong struggle with mental illness in a powerful memoir, The Center Cannot Hold (2007).

She is one of eleven authors from a range of academic, journalistic, medical, and advocacy backgrounds who tackle issues extending from the bioethical questions raised by cutting-edge technologies that can ‘read’ abnormalities in our brains to a new and controversial treatment regimen—backed by federal agencies—now being tested on Iraq War veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other stories profile model treatment programs for the seriously mentally ill; diversion programs to keep people with mental illness from crowding our federal prisons, where they most surely don’t belong; and innovative ways in which states are securing dedicated funding for mental-health services in the absence of adequate federal support.

Authors featured include New York Times columnist Richard A. Friedman, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan, award-winning author Pete Earley, and Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI).

All ten articles are available online now and are worth your time. We’ll dig into them further over the next few days here in the blog to discuss some of the highlights, but regular readers will see familiar themes we’ve discussed often here — how the current mental health system in the U.S. suffers from long-standing flaws, annual funding shortfalls, lack of parity, and continued stigmatization, while veterans wait for mental health treatment and prisoners die from a lack of it.

Read the Special Report: The Politics of Mental Illness

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 23 Jun 2008
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