For nine and a half months, Lydia Thornton was locked into her cell nearly 24 hours a day. All of her meals were slid through a slot in the cell’s steel door. She was allowed outside to shower three times each week. Through cinderblock walls, she could hear women in adjoining cells screaming for hours […]

It has been argued convincingly that the public’s primary source of information about mental illness is the media: news, entertainment, and the echo chamber of social media. These depictions cue, frame, and otherwise guide our interpretive frameworks in both obvious and subtle ways. Visual media may be especially compelling and impactful in guiding social awareness, […]

Based on the increase in the U.S. population, there are now some one million people with serious mental illness living among the general population who, 60 years ago, would have been treated in state mental hospitals. Multiple studies have reported that, at any given time, between 40% and 50% of them are receiving no treatment […]

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the country talks about mental health. Many politicians are quick to point to the shooters’ disturbed minds. News reporters probe for “loner” tendencies or signs of instability. “Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger. Not the gun,” said President Trump on Monday, after two mass shootings in less than 24 hours. So […]

Recently a federal lawsuit was brought against the Florida Department of Corrections over its excessive reliance on solitary confinement despite an abundance of information about its damaging effects. Some critics warn that solitary confinement might be increasingly used as a management tool by understaffed correctional officers in many overcrowded state prisons. It has been documented […]