Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Hablemos en Confianza: Soy Unica For Adults
This new SAMHSA/CSAP site, suggested by Farra Trompeter, is "a culturally appropriate bilingual public health Web site designed to encourage and strengthen dialogue between Hispanic/Latino parents and children. This new site offers advice for Hispanic/Latino parents on listening and talking with children to improve communication, to discover parenting style, and to learn about alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs."  
  

There is help...There is hope 2002-2003 (Canada)
Page of information at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health web site on "a series of regular Community Information Forums offering a greater understanding of emerging mental health and addiction issues, treatments and healthy living strategies."  
  

MEDLINE Abstracts - PTSD and September 11
A selection of journal abstracts focusing on posttraumatic stress disorder and bioterrorism. See also PTSD: The Trauma After the Trauma, from Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health. [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Psychiatry Journal Scan, August 2002
Medscape's Journal Scan "is the clinician's guide to the latest clinical research findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry, The Lancet, Archives of General Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, and Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Short summaries of feature articles include links to the article abstracts and full text, when available. [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

9/11 has important lessons for mental health workers
University of California-Davis Medical Center press release on comments by the chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UC Davis School of Medicine and director of mental health services for Sacramento county that "the massive clinical intervention mobilized to support New Yorkers can now serve as a model for ... other communities responding to major tragedies."  
  

Plan to Raise Medicare Pay for Providers
New York Times article - "Just weeks after rejecting proposals to help the elderly with prescription drug costs, the Senate is poised to increase Medicare payments to doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and health maintenance organizations. Consumer advocates are furious at the prospect that Congress will address the needs of health care providers without doing anything on prescription drugs, and their anger is putting political pressure on Congress to try again to pass at least a modest drug bill this year." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Annual Household Survey Finds Millions of Americans in Denial About Drug Abuse
SAMHSA prss release on the 2001 National Household Survey, which indicated that too many American drug users—more than 4.6 million—who meet the criteria for needing treatment do not recognize that they have a problem. The survey also included for the first time questions about mental illness. See also the index page of survey data at the SAMHSA site.  
  

Group rallies to oppose mental health cuts (New York)
Daily Gazette story on the Alliance For the Mentally Ill-Action, which is asking the Albany County Legislature to keep County Executive Michael Breslin from reducing funding for services to the mentally ill as he tries to dig the county out of a looming deficit.  
  

Mental Health: The Profession Tests Its Limits
New York Times article on dealing with the impact of September 11 in New York City, which, although it has "more psychotherapists and mental health agencies per square mile than anywhere else in the country" nevertheless found itself "struggling to conjure, on the spot, a system mobile and flexible enough to reach out to a traumatized community and adequate to the needs that were sure to appear." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].