Mentally Illness

All things considered, the past six months have been good to Crenshaw Scott and Carlos Contreras. In January, the two men, 37 and 39 respectively, moved from uncertain, unstable worlds into a new universe that revolves around Hillview Village, an apartment complex for 50 formerly homeless adults in Pacoima. Once homeless and in and out of mental institutions, Scott and Contreras now live in apartments of their own.

It's hard for me to even think about the horrific way in which Kelly Thomas died. I know too many people like him - lost, sick, disoriented souls who, through no fault of their own, have been hit with a disease that puts them in peril. Not guilty, came the verdict last week. The two Fullerton police officers caught on camera viciously beating Thomas in 2011 were acquitted of criminal wrongdoing in his death. Whether you agree or disagree with the jury, there's plenty of guilt to go around.

A housing project that allows homeless adults who are mentally ill or recovering from drug or alcohol abuse to share apartments is the first of its kind in Orange County, housing officials said. Henderson House, actually a pair of apartment buildings, is unusual because of its blend of residents and the fact that it will be self-supporting rather than subsidized once all eight units are rented.

A Los Angeles County judge accused of shoving and injuring a woman during a dispute about her dog's waste wants the case dismissed because of what his lawyer says is her history of mental illness. City prosecutors say the altercation occurred July 18 when L os Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Richman saw Connie Romero place a plastic bag of animal waste on the curb next to a street. Romero, 51, accuses Richman of knocking her down from behind, leading to a cut over her left eye, a scrape on her left shoulder and swelling on her wrist.

Nearly half of all cigarettes purchased in the United States are smoked by people who suffer from mental illnesses, according to Harvard Medical School research. Mentally ill people are roughly twice as likely to smoke cigarettes as those without mental illnesses, according to the research, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Assn.

A Santa Ana board-and-care home was closed Thursday as police and state regulators launched separate investigations into the death of an infant born there to a mentally disabled resident who later arrived at a hospital with the baby's body in a plastic bag, authorities said. Staff at the facility where the woman lives discovered the nearly full-term baby when they went to change the diaper of the woman, who has the mental capacity of a 2-year-old, police said.

Re "A Positive Link of Mind and Body" by Rosalynn Carter, Commentary, May 7: It is essential that the public be informed of the necessity of providing mental-health care access to everyone. All too often there is stigma attached to psychotherapy or hospitalization for mental illness. As Carter so aptly stated, there are so many benefits to good mental-health care, including a decrease in worker absenteeism and a decrease in visits to physicians. MARCIA BERNSTEIN California Society for Clinical Social Work Sacramento

Re "Have you seen my brother standing in the shadows?," Opinion, Jan. 5 Sarah Dusseault's story about her brother' struggle with mental illness and homelessness was heartbreakingly familiar. My sister with schizophrenia has been repeatedly homeless, jailed and hospitalized. We were fortunate, though, to have guardianship and conservatorship awarded in New Mexico. There is no guarantee of stability, but we have some leverage to help her. Simply from a state expense view, keeping our mentally ill out of jails and hospitals saves money.

My brother John called me last summer to tell me that he had finally figured out our family secret. I was his mother, he said. I am not, of course. My brother is 38 years old, but I will always think of him as he was in his early 20s, when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His good looks landed him work as a model, and he was a math whiz. Today, he is still attractive and wickedly smart at times, but his skin is weathered from years of homelessness and he is missing half of a finger on his right hand from one of his "stays" in a county jail.

The federal government on Friday announced it had drafted new rules aimed at keeping people who have been involuntarily committed to psychiatric treatment from buying guns. The Department of Health and Human Services said one proposed rule would "remove unnecessary legal barriers" to states reporting the names of patients involuntary admitted to psychiatric care. Those names would enter the National Instant Criminal Background Check Systems -- NICS -- that would be used by most gun dealers as a condition of sale.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Friday unveiled two measures to bring more mental health records into the federal background check system for gun purchases, the first new proposals on firearms violence since a spate of gun control bills died in Congress last spring. The proposed changes, which don't require congressional action, fall far short of the ambitious agenda the administration launched early in 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut. Many gun sales are not covered by background checks, and Congress seems unlikely to revisit that issue any time soon.

A 17-year-old high school student remained in critical but stable condition Sunday as Colorado officials tried to understand why a fellow student shot her and tried to shoot his debate coach before committing suicide last week. Two days after the shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, the wounded student, Claire Davis, was in a coma at Littleton Adventist Hospital, her family said in a statement released through the hospital's Facebook page Sunday evening. "The first responders got Claire to the right place, at the right time, and the doctors and hospital staff are doing a wonderful job taking care of her," said the statement, which requested privacy.

He was a handsome lad, with dark eyes and olive skin. In family photo albums, his smile was luminous, and he often had an arm around his little brother. When he was just 11, he took the initiative to raise thousands of dollars for the distraught family of a slain police officer. There was no indication that things would go so horribly wrong for him at age 23, when his brief life ended in an 8-by-11 cell at Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. On Sept. 30, he became the ninth of 10 people to die by suicide so far this year while in the custody of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

SACRAMENTO - Federal judges have extended until April 18 the deadline for Gov. Jerry Brown's administration to ease prison crowding, after asking the state to limit the time some mentally ill prisoners spend in solitary confinement. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton announced that he had accepted the state's offer of a 30-day isolation maximum for severely mentally ill inmates who have committed no rule violations. He then joined two other jurists in pushing back the overcrowding deadline and also in extending negotiations between the state and prisoners' lawyers until Jan. 10. In September, the judges ordered the state and the inmates' attorneys to negotiate long-term solutions to the crowding problem, including the early release of frail or elderly prisoners.

This post has been updated and corrected. See the notes below for details. SACRAMENTO -- A federal judge has ordered California to come up with a plan to provide intensive, long-term psychiatric care to mentally ill prisoners on death row. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton's order, issued Tuesday afternoon, says California made progress three years ago when it created a special program for the most seriously mentally ill prisoners on...