A strategy for stopping widespread depression in developing countries should be as obvious as one for combatting epidemics. A new strategy aims to downshift jobs to local workers to act as peer therapists.

Twelve million people are blind in India, and are robbed of their livelihoods as a result. A hugely successful chain of cataract hospitals in India helped its business by treating half its patients for free.

There is a mental-health capacity crisis gripping Washington state. The area’s response approach, crafted over two decades, centers on a set of intensive outpatient and early-intervention programs aimed at preventing hospitalizations.

Crisis Text Line provides counseling services via text, a medium with which teens are sometimes more comfortable. The approach complements the work of counselors and collects data for research purposes.

There is a shortage of medical practitioners in thinly-populated rural states like Nebraska. But new laws now allow nurses with advanced degrees to practice without requiring a doctor's oversight.

Different programs in various nations are training ordinary people and creating community groups to effectively satisfy the mental health needs of their communities. In many of these regions, "treatment gaps" – where there are little to no mental health treatment plans or resources – exist, but this new informal infrastructure helps to fill that.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related mortality. Naxolone, a drug used to revive overdose victims, is only available by prescription. However, private organizations have distributed Naxolone kits nationally, showing that the drug can save lives when it is more readily accessible.

Latin American women in San Francisco have suffered from post-partum depression, social isolation, and chronic stress at the time of their pregnancies. Run by midwives, the Centering Pregnancy program at the San Francisco General Hospital provides patient-centered care, an environment to speak in Spanish, and a nurturing community for women’s group appointments. The results boast fewer c-sections and pre-term births, and an improvement in emotional support and overall prenatal health.

With pressures of depression, anxiety, and suicide on the rise, teenagers in the United States are challenged to find the comfortable outlet and accessibility for emotional support. The Crisis Text Line offers a counseling service through mobile texting, which reduces the shame that can occur when approaching an in-person counselor, and expands access to professional mental health counseling nationwide.

The health problems of millions of Americans are directly related to patients' failure to follow doctors’ orders. Community health workers are increasingly successful in New York and other American cities – not to substitute for doctors, but to help patients stick to their treatment plans.