Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Residential addiction treatment demonstrates economic benefits
Brief press release from the NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse based on research by a team of researchers from the University of Miami and the University of Washington, who found that the benefits of residential drug abuse treatment far exceed its costs.  
  

High Court to Rule In Psychiatric Case
Washington Post story - "The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will determine whether the government may force a mentally ill defendant to take medication so he will be competent to stand trial on nonviolent criminal charges. The case pits the government's interest in holding an individual accountable for alleged wrongdoing against the individual's right to decide what goes into his or her own body."  
  

Decline of mental health funding focus of Stroudsburg rally (Pennsylvania)
Pocono Record Online story on a rally by 125 mental health advocates to spotlight the fact that "most local mental health patients must wait two months to see a doctor because state funding per capita has dropped sharply in the past decade."  
  

Interim Report: President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health
The interim report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (Adobe Acrobat), which called the mental health system "an inefficient maze of private, federal, state and local government programs" and found that multiple barriers impede access to effective treatment, services and supports: "The array of programs that deliver or pay for treatments, services and supports are offered by multiple levels of government and the private sector. The varying missions, settings and financing of these health, housing, disability and employment programs create a mental health maze instead of a coordinated system. Navigating this maze is left to the people with the mental illness and their families, who are least equipped to deal with the complexities of the system. As a result, it is often impossible for families and consumers to find the care that they urgently need." See also the related press release and fact sheet. More information is available at the Commission's web site.  
  

Mental health services could be affected by rules change (Iowa)
Story in The Daily Reporter - "For people with chronic mental illness, a Department of Human Services proposal that was made earlier this year to the Iowa administrative rules committee, one for an emergency administrative rules change for the provision of case management services, could affect services provided to them."  
  

Rally protests proposed health department cuts (Montana)
Story in The Missoulian on a rally last Friday sponsored by Montana People’s Action and the Missoula Coalition for Disability Rights to protest proposed cuts to the state health department.  
  

Mental health report leaked (New Zealand)
NZoom story - "A report leaked to ONE News says Auckland's three District Health Boards should coordinate their mental health services and provide more acute and community beds immediately. The litany of failures by New Zealand's mental health services was highlighted by a report into the killing of a policeman's wife in Queenstown."  
  

'Don't ignore' mental health workforce (UK)
Story in The Guardian - "If the government wants to modernise mental health services it must stop treating the sector's workforce with contempt, the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (SCMH) will warn today." SCMH chief executive Matt Muijen says "the home secretary's contempt for professional opposition to the draft mental health bill did not sit well with the government's claims that modernisation would be led locally by frontline staff."