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The sheriff's department estimates at least 40 percent of the approximately 1,000 people in the Polk County Jail on any given day are taking medication for mental illness. A recent federal report found that 26 percent of people in American jails and 14 percent of people in prison had suffered "serious psychological distress" in the previous 30 days. That's compared to 5 percent of people in the general population.  (Leys, 5/10)

Iowa's new mental-health law could reduce the need for sheriff’s deputies to ferry patients around the state in patrol cars — but not yet.  The law Gov. Kim Reynolds signed in March allows magistrates to hold mental-health commitment hearings by video-conferencing instead of in person. Iowa sheriff’s deputies routinely drive hours to retrieve local residents from faraway hospitals, where the patients are being treated because local psychiatric units were full. The deputies pick up the patients and drive them back to their home counties for court hearings to determine if they need to be committed for continued treatment. (Leys, 5/10)

Iowa families seeking court-ordered mental health treatment for loved ones must file formal papers with their county clerk of court office. To gain such an order, two people must sign notarized statements saying the person has a mental disorder that poses immediate danger to themselves or others. A doctor can be one of the two people signing the statements seeking the order. (Leys, 5/10)

Nearly three-quarters of Iowans believe the state’s mental-health system is in crisis or is a big problem, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. The mental-health system is by far the leading area of concern for Iowans among nine possibilities tested, according to the poll. Thirty-five percent of Iowans say the lack of mental-health services is a crisis, and 38 percent believe it's a big problem. (Leys, 5/10)

The recording of Richard Lee Quintero's 911 call in late March went viral.  After all, Quintero reported he was Jesus Christ and turned himself in for breaking into a Pizza Hut, where he ate a pizza and drank a Mountain Dew. The story since then for the Greensboro, N.C., man is far from funny. Quintero, who suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, amputated his own tongue after spending three weeks in jail. That got him hospitalized for about a week until he was sent to Raleigh's maximum security Central Prison, where he was under what's known as "safekeeping" until an expected May 18 court date. (O'Donnell, 5/10)

California prison officials need to find new ways to prevent illegal opioid drugs from entering the prison system, according to the lawmaker who runs the state legislative committee that oversees the state's correctional system. State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who chairs the Senate's Public Safety Committee, says she wants the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to explain what it's doing to reduce inmate overdoses. (Goldberg, 5/10)