By Bobby Magill
For Susan Barnes, having her son slip away from her for eight long years was like watching a slow death.

“I knew it was coming,” she said. “As if it was somebody who had Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, it was coming, and I saw it.”

Susan’s son, Alex Barnes, first showed signs of schizophrenia when he was 16. On March 12, after receiving periodic treatment for years, he parked his bike on the shoulder of Mason Street, knelt down beside a slow-moving freight train and ended his life beneath a box car. He was 24.  » More

By William H. Freivogel
More college students are arriving on campus reporting serious mental health problems and more students are threatening suicide than in the past. But some college counseling services, such as those at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, are so understaffed that many students have to wait weeks before getting help.

That is one of the findings of a five-month investigation of colleges and universities in four Midwestern states.

Last year, about 40 students at SIUC threatened to commit suicide, counseling officials say. Counselors use a triage system to try to identify those with such urgent mental problems when the students first walk in the door. Those without urgent problems have to wait about three weeks to see a counselor.  » More

By Sarah C.P. Williams
The number of emergency room visits due to mental health problems of children and young adults is on the rise, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed data from 279 million visits kids made to emergency rooms around the country spanning 1999 through 2007. Over the eight-year period, the percentage of those visits attributable to psychiatric complaints rose from 2.4 percent to 3 percent.  » More

By Amanda Chan, The Huffington Post
Nearly 20 percent of Americans -- 44.5 million adults -- experienced some sort of mental illness over the last year, according to a new report from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Agency (SAMHSA).

The report details state by state the percent of the population who has suffered a mental illness.  » More

By Steven Reinberg, HealthDay
About half of Americans will experience some form of mental health problem at some point in their life, a new government report warns, and more must be done to help them. Mental health issues run the gamut from depression to post-traumatic stress disorder to suicide, and many of those suffering presently do not get help, experts say.

The new report, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tallied the national burden of mental illness based on country-wide surveys.  » More