Friday, November 22, 2002

Falling through the cracks (Colorado)
Denver Post feature article from last weekend on Colorado's criminal justice and public and private mental health systems, which "are gingerly taking the first steps toward working together."  
  

Hospital overcharged Medicaid (Virginia)
Daily Press story - "State health officials are asking Woodside Hospital to return more than $800,000 paid out for the care of Medicaid patients at the treatment center, following a review that uncovered serious problems with how the hospital admits and treats patients." The story notes that Woodside is already under investigation for several reasons, including "a lack of required documentation to show patients need inpatient psychiatric services. The state requires that an independent team of mental health professionals review patient cases before patients are admitted, to make sure that outpatient treatment programs in the community would not work."  
  

"For some, suicide preferable to red tape" (Canada)
Canadian Press story - "The Liberal government has exempted 5,000 mentally ill people from a disability pension review now under way after a group advocating for the rights of the disabled said some people had committed suicide. The Human Resources Ministry said Thursday it will no longer require the 5,000 people to fill out a 23-page form confirming their eligibility for disability payments."  
  

Concerns voiced on Massachusetts children's mental health care
Boston Globe story - "Mentally ill children in Massachusetts often wait years for an accurate diagnosis, months for appropriate treatment, and hours for crisis care, according to a survey of their parents scheduled for release today. The parents blamed a mental health system that is fragmented and overburdened, and school systems that don't have enough professionals who understand mental illness."  
  

Cannabis and mental health
Introduction to three arricles in the British Medical Journal outlining more evidence of a "clear link between use of cannabis and psychiatric illness." The articles are Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study, Self reported cannabis use as a risk factor for schizophrenia in Swedish conscripts of 1969: historical cohort study, and Cannabis use in adolescence and risk for adult psychosis: longitudinal prospective study. Full text is available for all three in Adobe Acrobat format. See also the related news stories at The Guardian ("Studies link cannabis use with depression")and Reuters ("Schizophrenia link to cannabis").