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Mental Health America just released its annual assessment of Americans with mental illness, the treatment they receive and the resources available to them — and the conclusions are sobering: Twenty percent of adults (43.7 million people) have a mental health condition, and more than half of them do not receive treatment. Among youth, the rates of depression are rising, but 80 percent of children and adolescents get either insufficient treatment or none at all. (Nutt, 10/19)

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Meenakshi Suman says she recognizes the stigma of mental health fading away as she continues in her fourth year at Sheppard Pratt Health System in Howard and Baltimore counties. While some Howard County families are open to getting their children help for illnesses like depression, mood disorders, stress and anxiety, Suman believes furthering mental illness education through collaboration with the county and public schools can alleviate false beliefs that there are quick fixes to these rising, long-term struggles. (Michaels, 10/20)

Deborah Danner’s essay recounted her long, aching struggle with schizophrenia, a battle that had begun some 30 years earlier.Filed away last year by a lawyer who had been helping Ms. Danner, the neatly typed, six-page composition depicted a disturbing roll of memories, like the early morning spent roaming the streets of New York City with a knife, searching for a place to end her own life. (Rosenberg and Southall, 10/19)

A Haviland, Kan., man who was undergoing treatment for mental illness has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the beating death of another patient last year. Brandon Brown entered the guilty plea Tuesday in Kiowa County District Court. He awaits sentencing.Brown was charged with second-degree murder after a May 2015 altercation with 61-year-old Jerry Martinez at the Haviland Care Center, a residential care facility west of Wichita. (Helling, 10/19)