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There’s a paradox that sits at the center of our mental health conversation in America. On the one hand, our treatments for mental illness have gotten better and better in recent decades. Psychopharmaceuticals have improved considerably; new, more effective methods of psychotherapy have been developed; and we’ve reached a better understanding of what kinds of social support are most helpful for those experiencing mental health crises. (7/22)

California achieved a first in the nation this month: implementing a statewide law setting limits on the earliest school start times for adolescents. California’s law is a real victory, considering that sleep deprivation is the norm for far too many teens — a situation with worrying implications across the board, but especially for the growing crisis of youth mental health. (Lisa L. Lewis, 7/22)

On Thursday, almost 400 people in the Dallas County jail were waiting for a bed in a psychiatric hospital. That’s because courts had deemed those inmates incompetent, meaning they weren’t well enough to participate in their defense because of mental illness. Although some have the means to seek treatment at a private facility, most of them have no choice but to go to a state hospital to recover. (7/22)

Let’s not mince words: The monkeypox outbreak is a crisis. And the Biden administration’s response to that crisis has been a chaotic, anemic and bumbling mess. (Gregg Gonsalves, 7/21)

In the pantheon of pandemic heroes, surely nurses rank near the top. They have ministered to untold numbers of dying patients, worked grueling hours under war-zone conditions, and endured verbal abuse and even physical assault by the very patients they cared for. (7/22)

The term “rare disease” is both an apt descriptor and a misnomer. Individually, each rare disease affects a relatively small number of people. But taken together, more than 30 million Americans, and 400 million people worldwide, are affected by one of the 10,000-plus rare diseases — 95% of which have no approved treatment. (Craig Martin, 7/22)

Many Americans are accustomed to shopping around for the best deal. We can access reams of information that help us make smarter decisions — except when it comes to health care services. (Seema Verma and Aneesh Chopra, 7/22)