State officials on Thursday reached an interim settlement with plaintiffs in a decades-old court case over the adequacy of Arizona's community-based services for the seriously mentally ill.

A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleged that Arizona prisons don't meet the basic requirements for providing adequate medical and mental health care to inmates and that prisoners face dangerous delays and outright denials in receiving treatment.

A state commission says it will use a nearly $600,000 federal grant to improve records that Arizona submits to a national criminal databank so that they include mental health matters that affect a person's ability to legally buy guns.

Mental health providers in Maricopa County are trying to figure out how to cope with a new round of rate cuts that are ultimately being passed down to them from the cash-strapped state, which is asking them to continue providing the same level of service for less money.

For some Tucsonans touched by the tragedy of Jan. 8, sorrow was tinged with a sense of dread.

A bipartisan group led by two Tucson lawmakers wants to make government entities and institutions of higher education report instances of violent behavior by employees or students.

Too often, we forget that people with mental illnesses are all around us, trying their best to work hard and lead productive lives. That’s why it was a privilege last month to celebrate Mental Illness Awareness Week, a perfect time for Arizonans to remember our friends and neighbors who are suffering from behavioral health issues.

Gov. Jan Brewer says her mentally ill son was concerned about his privacy when he asked a court to block public inspection of records from his 2-decade-old criminal case a�� records that a judge has now ordered be released.

When the economy took a nosedive, budgets for mental health care were slashed and the number of individuals feeling stressed rose, fostering the need to fill a gap in services between crisis care and out-patient services.

A combination of fear and the state’s dire financial straits has pushed long-battling parties in a Maricopa County lawsuit into a tenuous agreement allowing the state to drastically reduce funding for mental health services and eliminate the office that ensures the lawsuit provisions are met.