In 2010 and for the second year in a row, more soldiers died by suicide than in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second stunner is that a high percentage of those suicides are among soldiers who have not yet been deployed.  What is going on?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed to cover annual screening for depression for Medicare beneficiaries in primary care settings.  We enthusiastically support this effort, but also feel that it is important to screen for both major depression and bipolar disorder at the same time so that proper diagnosis and treatment can be provided.

(En español) I grew up in a traditional Mexican family where talking about your feelings was just out of the question. When I started working as a social worker in a middle school, I was thrilled that I would be able to help kids talk about their feelings and help parents understand that depression and other mental illnesses are nothing to be ashamed of.

Two well-known and accomplished athletes, Hideki Irabu and Jeret "Speedy" Peterson made headline news this past week, when both men tragically took their own lives.  The circumstances surrounding both of their deaths have highlighted the struggles of people with depression, and show that nobody, not even world-class athletes, are immune to depressive disorders.

Amy Winehouse, 27-year-old singer of the 2008 hit, “Rehab,” was found dead Saturday, July 23^rd.  Initial autopsy reports were inconclusive, but many have begun to speculate that her heavy drug and alcohol abuse, alleged self-medication for untreated bipolar disorder, played a role.

In my family, we were taught that emotions were messy and dirty and unnecessary. After all, if you were a “strong black woman,” you could handle anything, including a mother with paranoid schizophrenia.

The Detroit Press recently published an article on how the Detroit East Community Mental Health Center is reducing stigma around mental illness by holding a fair called "Summer Blast" that occurred on July 9th. Their main challenge was to get minorities to seek treatment for mental illness and take away the scariness of doing so. In fact, they even got referrals as a result of the fair.

The Surgeon General’s 2001 report on mental health and race/ethnicity showed that minorities are less likely to be diagnosed and treated for mental health issues.  Minorities are also more likely to encounter problems accessing care when they are diagnosed.  We at Families for Depression Awareness are fighting to bring light to these issues.

The New York Times recently released an article about how "Some with Histories of Mental Illness Petition to Get Their Gun Rights Back" by Michael Luo. While reading the article, quite a few points stuck out to me. First, although Mr. Luo makes a correlation between violence and mental illness without trying to restigmatize the idea, there was no mention of how ongoing treatment affects the probability of violence in those who have an illness.