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resident Obama is attempting a triple play this week that eluded his predecessors over the past two decades: simultaneous progress on the most vexing and violent problems in the Middle East — Israeli-Palestinian peace, Iraq and Iran — in hopes of creating a virtuous cycle in a region prone to downward spirals.

It turned out that the reverse was true as well: When one of those efforts fell apart, so did the other two.

slash rates of premature death from mental disorders by a third by 2030.

By one analysis, which includes Western countries and developing regions like West Africa, depression, drug abuse and schizophrenia are on track to be the three leading causes of lost economic output by 2030.

Among the successes have been group therapy for rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, family and individual counseling for survivors of torture in Myanmar, and talk therapy and medication for people with depression in rural India.

But without reliable support, follow-up and medical supplies — particularly psychiatric drugs when needed — interventions can quickly lose traction, no matter how well trained and devoted the workers are.

One moment, she was dozing off during a rest period; the next, she felt the presence of strange men coming after her. She screamed at them to stop. “My shouting didn’t stop the men; they kept coming for me,” she said. “So, what did I do? I ripped off my school uniform and ran.”

The medical staff had little training in how to handle a psychotic break: the hallucinations and delusions characteristic of schizophrenia. They sent her home, where the sensation of being hunted seeped back into her thoughts.

Sometimes, she ran out onto the open savanna to escape the demons pursuing her.

Family members took turns keeping watch and exhausted traditional methods of healing. Precious animals were sacrificed to drive away the spirits disturbing her. Healers administered herbal powders, and one applied a pale dye to her face and body in an effort to purge demons.

One is known as task sharing.

The second is community self-help.

The third is raising awareness

The evidence that a combination of these services can lead to lasting improvement for people with severe mental illnesses is thin, but a foundation is being laid.

“The key thing is that it’s not simply home-based care for people with schizophrenia,” Laura Asher, who is running the study, said by email. “It also involves awareness raising and community mobilization.”

the cost of these programs is minute compared with the cost of standard psychiatry

$8 per client per month on average, according to Peter Yaro, its executive director. In the United States, it costs $200 to $700 for a single appointment with a psychiatrist, depending on the provider, the type of care and the location.

In global cost-benefit terms, economists typically rate health care programs by the amount of disability they reduce per dollar. Historically, mental health interventions have scored poorly compared with efforts that save young lives, like neonatal care or treatment of diarrhea. A new analysis of mental health strategies in Ethiopia, for instance, found that treating schizophrenia with generic medications was about as cost-effective as treating heart disease with a combination of drugs, like aspirin and a statin — and much less cost-effective than treating depression or epilepsy. The findings, though preliminary, suggest that treating psychosis is relatively costly.

the studies do not take into account the effect of chronic psychosis on an entire family. “The person with psychosis becomes a full-time job for someone else in the family, and depending on how aggressive the person is, maybe more than one person,” said Dr. Simliwa Kolou Valentin Dassa, a psychiatrist in neighboring Togo

rising gas prices that began peacefully and then turned violent.

But he did not give any deadline for a withdrawal, saying that they would stay as long as President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan “considers it necessary,” raising the possibility they could be in the country indefinitely.

2,000 troops his country had sent as “peacekeepers” would leave only once their mission was complete.

The Russian president said the unrest was indicative of foreign attempts to intervene in a region the Kremlin sees as its sphere of influence,

Those protests also helped precipitate Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that year.

color revolutions,” a term that has been used for the pro-democracy movements that swept many countries of the former Soviet Union.

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At least 5,800 people have been detained and more than 2,000 injured after several days of violence last week in Kazakhstan, according to the president’s office.

“brotherly Kazakh people” —

164 people had died in the violence, including 103 in the country’s economic center, Almaty.

killed

injured

1,300.

“The main goal was obvious: the undermining of the constitutional order, the destruction of government institutions and the seizure of power,” he said.

The rapid evolution of peaceful protests in the Kazakhstan’s west to countrywide demonstrations that quickly descended into violent chaos has led observers to speculate that the unrest was fanned by infighting within the Kazakh elite.

Until now, the oil-rich country has been regarded as a pillar of political and economic stability in an unstable region. The protests are also significant for Vladimir Putin, who views Kazakhstan as part of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Officials have instituted a state of emergency and shut off internet access.

The comments from Mr. Putin came as American and Russian diplomats gathered in Geneva in the hopes of negotiating a drawdown of the 100,000 troops the Kremlin has positioned on the border with Ukraine in recent months.

number

In a sign, perhaps, of the power imbalance between them, Mr. Putin forgot Mr. Tokayev’s name during the video meeting Monday, mangling it as “Kemal Zhomartovich,” instead of Kassym-Jomart.

Kazakh officials said on Sunday that order had been restored and that the foreign troops would “probably” be gone by the following week.

high unemployment

social spending

cuts in social spendin

protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups

their political leaders, regardless of party, had been so thoroughly captured by security concerns, ultra-Orthodox groups and other special interests

anticorruption measure

less hierarchical, more participatory

the political system has abandoned its citizens.”

That consensus, championed by scholars like Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been shaken if not broken by a seemingly endless succession of crises

continuing European and American debt crisis —

The Parkland case will be the rare instance of a mass shooter who lives to see any sort of trial, since many of them end up dying in their attacks.

the top prosecutor in Broward County at the time of the attack, Michael J. Satz, said he would pursue the death penalty

fight a battle that you might win — and that’s the sentencing battl

In Florida, judges can only sentence a defendant to death if a jury unanimously recommends the death penalty, and even then, judges can override the jury and sentence a defendant to life in prison, though they rarely do so.

Mr. Cruz had a history of mental health and behavior problems, many of them documented by the public school district

Victims’ families recently reached a $25 million settlement with Broward County Public Schools over the shooting.

Many Brazilians have expressed anger at how slowly their government acquired vaccines and a corruption scandal involving vaccine deals.

infant mortality, where the United States ranks worse than 48 other countries and territories,

America is indeed No. 1, he might declare — in locking its citizens up, with an incarceration rate far higher than that of the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China

the self-censorship it produces in politicians is bipartisan, even if it is more pronounced on the left for some issues and the right for others.

An American politician who speaks too candidly about the country’s faults, she went on to say, risks being labeled with that most devastating of epithets: un-American.

A democracy can’t be strong if its citizenship is weak. And right now American citizenship is attenuated — strong on rights, weak on responsibilities