Making good on a promise to trim the state budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated a $55-million program Friday that advocates say has helped thousands of mentally ill homeless people break the costly cycle of hospitalization, jails and street life.

Schwarzenegger apparently doesn't see the connection between lack of funds for rehabilitation and the fact that the California prisons are so overcrowded, he is considering sending inmates out of state to other prisons. Brilliant.

A free public online database launched recently may help speed efforts to identify genes associated with an increased risk of bipolar disorder, a mood disorder commonly marked by alternating bouts of depression and manic behavior.

The Bipolar Disorder Phenome Database -- a joint project of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and Johns Hopkins Psychiatry -- offers detailed descriptions and symptoms and course of disease in more than 5,000 people with bipolar disorder.

DNA samples are also available from this group of patients, which will enable researchers to match specific bipolar symptoms with sequences of genetic material.

When I first read the headline that the FDA had approved the first anti-psychotic for use in children, I was, shall we say, apprehensive. When I read further into the story, I didn't feel any better.

I am not anti-medication when it comes to psychiatric ills, even in children. But neither am I a huge fan of the FDA. Their approval of a drug makes it seem completely safe in the eyes of most consumers. Over the past few years, however, we've found that that sense of security that consumers have in the FDA's approval of a drug may be misplaced (Vioxx, anyone?).

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African Americans with type 1 diabetes who are depressed are more likely to have poor control over their blood sugar levels and, over time, experience a more rapid progression of diabetic retinopathy, a new study shows.

In previous research with the same group of patients, Dr. Monique S. Roy of UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School in Newark and her colleagues found that poor control over blood sugar (glucose), high blood pressure and kidney disease were primary medical risk factors for diabetic retinopathy, damage to the blood vessels around the retina. However, these factors only explain 37 percent of the variation in retinopathy severity in these patients.

Depression is known to increase inflammation and it has also been tied to hormonal changes and blood clotting abnormalities, all of which might play a role in progression of diabetic retinopathy, Roy told Reuters Health. "It's a complex problem, and we're trying to untangle that," she said in an interview.