Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults

This report was prepared to assist federal, state, and local policy makers and program leaders, as well as employers, nonprofit organizations, and other community partners, in developing and enhancing policies and programs to improve young adults' health, safety, and well-being. The report also suggests priorities for research to inform policy and programs for young adults.Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large

Mental Illness, Severe Emotional Distress, and the Death Penalty: Reflections on the Tragic Case of Joe Giarratano

Joe Giarratano was on death row for twelve years, and remains incarcerated today, because mental illness and severe emotional distress wholly undermined reliable adjudication in his case. Using Giarratano’s remarkable story as a case study, I illustrate some of the ways in which mental illness and acute emotional distress can lead to unreliable findings and judgments and—even worse—can actually propel the criminal justice system toward a death sentence. I cover the unreliability of his confession, his impaired ability to assist counsel, his impaired capacity to make a rational decision regarding whether to initiate or continue post-conviction proceedings, his diminished mental responsibility at the time of the alleged offenses if he actually committed them, and an issue that fortunately never arose—his competence to be executed

Severe Mental Illness and the Death Penalty: A Menu of Legislative Options

In 2003, the American Bar Association established a Task Force on Mental Disability and the Death Penalty to further specify and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling banning execution of persons with intellectual disability and to consider an analogous ban against imposing the death penalty on defendants with severe mental disorders. The Task Force established formal links with the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the final report was approved by the ABA and the participating organizations in 2005 and 2006. This brief article focuses primarily on diminished responsibility at the time of the offense, summarizing the reasons why an exclusion for severe mental illness is needed and reviewing the key drafting issues that can be expected to arise in defining the clinical criteria for exclusion. A key question is whether state trial judges and judges appointed to state appellate courts embrace their constitutionally grounded duties to assure sparing and humane administration of the death penalty. Assiduous efforts to prevent execution of prisoners with severe mental illness is a necessary element of that judicial assignment