Twice-weekly rural newspaper doing series on mental illness, which affects one in five adults

The Morehead News, a twice-a-week newspaper in northeastern Kentucky, is publishing an eight-part series on mental illness, written by Noelle Hunter.

With Part 1 largely an introduction to the project, running on Tuesdays, Part 2 gets into the facts and figures of the disorders that fall under the mental-illness umbrella. Part 3 profiles a woman living with bipolar disorder; Part 4 will report on the views of clinicians and therapists; Part 5 will profile a man living with bipolar disorder; Part 6 will profile a person living with schizophrenia; Part 7 will focus on the effects on families; and Part 8 will look at treatment options and recovery.

Mental illness is a worthy topic for any news outlet. According to the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, 45.9 million American adults — one in five — experienced some mental illness in the past year. In Kentucky, 180,000 people live with a serious mental illness, which includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Though there have been advancements in treatments these disorders, most in the way of medication and therapy, there is still much that is unknown, Hunter reports.

That comes with larger cultural ramifications. In 2008, about 5,100 adults who have a mental illness were incarcerated in Kentucky prisons and almost 700 adults committed suicide, "almost always a result of untreated mental illness," Hunter reports. Follow the series on the website of the newspaper, part of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., here.