And speaking of the PRISM Awards, the 2010 awards ceremony won’t air until September 18, 2010, on the FX Network, but you can catch a glimpse of some behind-the-scenes interviews via Behind the Scene with Britt Hysen: 2010 PRISM Awards.

You might be familiar with that name and face: Britt Hysen plays Mary, one of the many secretaries at Sterling Cooper Agency, the advertising agency that may as well be a character all its own in the AMC drama Mad Men (the season premier of which, by the way, airs tonight).

Every year the Entertainment Industries Council, Inc. (EIC) – with help from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), FX Network, and News Corporation – presents the PRISM Awards to recognize accomplishments in the accurate portrayal of mental health issues in movies, television, comic books, and other entertainment venues.

Now, thanks to the RETHiNK Theatre Challenge, you too can flex your own scriptwriting fingers to bust stigma as well as “challenge preconceptions of mental illness.”

Not too long ago I wrote Are Psychiatrists Better Off Behind the Scenes?, a post about Dr. H. Steven Moffic’s recent Psychiatric Times article, Why Aren’t There Any Celebrity Psychiatrists? (which is a response to another article, The Los Angeles Times’ The Cult of Celebrity Doctors), and was fortunate enough to have Cindy Mellander, LMHC, a licensed mental health counselor in Washington, respond with her thoughts on celebrity psychiatrists.

It’s always a pleasure to gain some insight from a mental health professional, and Cindy, who once worked for two years with an Intensive Outpatient Program providing “outreach, community support, medication monitoring, crisis management and overall case management” for folks with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and co-occurring and dual diagnoses, is obviously no novice to the mental health world.

After some of the more stigmatizing comments (“dangerous lunatic,” anyone?) that’ve been made regarding Mel Gibson’s recent behavior and maybe/maybe not mental illness, I thought it’d be nice to share some perspective from someone who clearly grasps the importance of sitting down and really thinking about what you’re going to say before you’re going to say it – and why you’re going to say it in the first place.

The person I’m talking about is Marie R., who is for all intents and purposes an anonymous reader and commenter who used a recent Entertainment Weekly update to share her thoughts on Mel Gibson’s behavior and our reactions:

Glenn Beck says he’s “out of his mind crazy,” and Beliefnet.com’s Rod Dreher has called him a “crazy, vicious creep” who “really is a dangerous lunatic.” (Eek. I thought things were peaceful over at Beliefnet!)

The Washington Post‘s Celebritology blogger Jen Chaney quipped that he’s had so many tapes surface lately he might be on the brink of his own franchise: “The Passion of the Crazy.”

In short, emotions (shock, outrage, and anger being the most dominant) are unsurprisingly high right now regarding Mel Gibson’s most recent scandal.

Spurting stigmatizing insults isn’t exactly the way to go about it, but it’s clear Gibson needs help. Not only is the kind of domestic abuse we’re talking about here serious and scary, but if you’ve listened to the last two tapes that’ve surfaced (one and two), I think you’ll agree it sounds like there’s a lot more going on than just anger and violence issues.

The man doesn’t sound healthy.

For someone who’d – self-reportedly – never even wore makeup before the show, American Idol runner up Crystal Bowersox seems to be getting cozy with the idea of getting all prettied up.

More than the idea of it, Momma Sox recently had a bit of cosmetic dentistry done to fix the gap I (and I’m sure a lot of other fans, despite some of the criticism she also received) thought was, well, just part of her unique character.

Lyndsey Parker of Yahoo’s Reality Rocks blog shares before and after pictures of Crystal’s smile (as well as a scanned copy of one celebrity dentist’s shameless cry for business) and, after pointing out similar makeovers of former Idols and contestants (think Carrie Underwood, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, and Kellie Pickler), poses the question: “So, does this dental makeover signify the introduction of a sparklier, more polished Crystal?”

Today marks one week since Eclipse, the movie adaptation of the third book in Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular Twilight series, hit theaters, and so I thought it’d be a good time to remind old readers and enlighten new ones about one Ms. Megan Jackson and her crazy idea…

…also known as EmsCharityKiss.

Actually, the timing couldn’t be better, as yesterday made one year since I first interviewed Megan about EmsCharityKiss, the campaign she started to increase mental health awareness, raise money for mental health research, and get her first kiss from none other than the Twilight saga’s hottest vamp, Robert Pattinson.

Since our interview, Megan’s gotten some great press, including interviews with Dolly Magazine, Say What News, and Onya Magazine. She even has a petition going to get the campaign on Ellen!

That’s one of the questions Dr. H. Steven Moffic asks in a recent Psychiatric Times article and, given Los Angeles Lakers’ Ron Artest’s public gratitude toward his psychologist (which is actually mentioned in Moffic’s article and, like Artest and me, he mistakenly refers to her as a psychiatrist), it’s a pretty timely question.

Why Aren’t There Any Celebrity Psychiatrists? is Moffic’s answer (rather, his other question) to another recent article, The Los Angeles Times’ The Cult of Celebrity Doctors.

During the article, Moffic lists the seven well-known “celebrity” doctors featured in the Times article and notes that although there is one psychologist listed – Dr. Phil – there are no psychiatrists.

This is a couple of weeks old, and I can’t believe I just now read about it, but I’d be such a bad blogger if I didn’t pass it along for those of you who might’ve missed it, too.

It seems that back during the tail-end of the NBA finals (ahh, that’s why I missed this), Ron Artest of the Los Angeles Lakers had someone interesting (unusual? surprising? I’m not sure what the right word is to use here) to thank after the Lakers won the 2010 NBA Championship: his psychiatrist.

SBNation.com shares a video of the interview during which Artest thanks “everybody in my hood” including his psychiatrist, who “really helped [him] relax a lot.”

Is it just me, or did his face really light up when he talked about her?