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Mental-health service workers and recipients rallied across Alabama on Monday, asking lawmakers not to cut millions in funding for the Alabama Department of Mental Health. The department is at risk of losing $35.2 million in state funds and another $64 million in matching federal funds, which some say will have a severe impact on the thousands who depend on funding. (Swant, 5/11)

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley on Monday again hinted that he might try to expand the state's Medicaid program under a controversial provision of Obamacare. Bentley was touring BayPointe Hospital in Mobile ... when AltaPointe CEO Tuerk Schlesinger mentioned a pilot program that paid for Alabama to provide mental health services to adult Medicaid recipients. The problem, Schlesinger told the governor, is that states in the pilot program that expanded their Medicaid programs saw a spike in recipients, which caused them to draw down the federal money faster than Alabama and the states that did not expand Medicaid. ... Bentley responded by suggesting that the state may seek an expansion under an "Alabama plan," that would expand eligibility but give the state more flexibility in spending it. (Kirby, 5/11)

Cook County’s top four criminal justice leaders agreed Wednesday that big changes should be made to the criminal justice system to stop violent crimes and to also reduce recidivism by providing mental health and support services. As Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle criticized the jail’s population of low-level offenders, citing an inmate who had stolen six bars of soap, Chief Judge Timothy Evans pointed out those offenders don’t always have a nonviolent criminal history. He has the job of protecting the public from those people, he told a packed crowd at the City Club of Chicago luncheon. (Sfondeles, 5/7)

As another academic year winds down, many colleges are reviewing how they raise awareness of mental health issues on campus, and what additional steps they can take to try to prevent suicide among students. More than 1,000 college students die by suicide every year. Suicide is listed as the nation’s second-leading cause of death for people of college age, though people not enrolled in school take their own lives at a higher rate than those attending college. And research has found about 7 percent of undergraduate and graduate students seriously consider suicide. (Becker and Jolicoeur, 5/11)

The University of Minnesota has apologized to a former research participant for failing to follow several safety procedures while he was in a 2007 university drug trial. In a May 6 letter, Debra Dykhuis, executive director of the university's human research protection program, told Robert Huber that researchers did not adequately prepare him for the drug trial involving bifeprunox, an antipsychotic drug developed to treat schizophrenia. (Friedrich, 5/11)

In jails and prisons throughout the United States, correctional staff have sprayed mentally disabled prisoners with painful chemicals, shocked them with electric stun weapons, and strapped them for days in restraining chairs and beds, according to a report that will be released Tuesday. In its 127-page investigation of mostly state and local prisons, Human Rights Watch details incidents in which prison workers have used unnecessary and excessive force against prisoners with mental disabilities. (Horwitz, 5/12)