A New Justice System For the Mentally Ill
The standard judicial process doesn't always accommodate the mentally ill, so some counties are avoiding it entirely, using a new system focused on treatment rather than punishment. Here is a closer look at the pros and cons of the nation's growing number of mental health courts.

Breaking the Tragic Cycle
Once released from prison, mentally ill ex-offenders are faced with the challenges of reintegrating into their communities. Those who do not make a successful transition relapse and return to prison. But across the country, community groups and prison and mental health officials are working together to break this cycle.

Deinstitutionalization: A Psychiatric "Titanic"
In Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis, renowned psychiatrist and activist E. Fuller Torrey explains deinstitutionalization, the policy that largely emptied and closed America's mental hospitals and reveals its consequences -- untreated mental illness, rising homelessness and unemployment, street violence, and overcrowded jails coping with a flood of mentally ill inmates. In this excerpt, Torrey lays out the history of deinstitutionalization: from its roots in the early 1800s, to its official enactment in the late 20th century, to the unintended results.