Tuesday, February 25, 2003

Medscape Psychiatry Journal Scan, January 2003
"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].  
  

Federal budget funds health, disabled, housing and homelessness (Canada)
Item in the most recent issue of the CMHA - Ontario Division's Mental Health Notes newsletter - "The 2003 Federal budget, released on February 18, contained announcements of interest to people with mental illness. There are funding packages for health, child tax credits, disability support, housing and homelessness." See also the Department of Finance news release ‘Budget 2003 Supports Social and Economic Agenda While Maintaining Balanced Budgets.  
  

Activists gather to focus on improving New Hampshire health care
Exeter News-Letter story on the Community Meeting on Health Care, an event organized by the New Hampshire Citizens Alliance and focused on a number of health care issues, among them access to mental health, substance abuse and alcohol abuse services.  
  

Initiative Launched for Early Detection of Teen Depression
Feature at JoinTogether.org - "A groundbreaking initiative to offer voluntary screening for depression and suicide risk to every American teenager was launched here today by leaders in adolescent health and education. The national program -- Positive Action for Teen Health (PATH) -- builds on a decade of research by Columbia University that shows a simple confidential screening of teens is effective in detecting adolescents at risk for depression, suicide and other mental illnesses." See also the web site related to the program, TeenScreen.  
  

Shakeup for Hawkes Bay mental health (New Zealand)
Story at MyTown - "Hawke's Bay's struggling mental health service is in for a shakeup that might include the transfer of services for seriously-ill patients out of the region. An outside team of senior psychiatrists had started looking carefully at all mental health services in the district and considering their future shape...."  
  

Mental health agency to reduce its budget by about $1.7 million (Texas)
Amarillo Globe-News story on the Texas Panhandle Mental Health Mental Retardation, one of 42 community MHMR centers across the state that have been asked by the state to trim their budgets by 12.5 percent for each year of the next biennium.  
  

Bush Proposes Major Changes in Medicare and Medicaid
Story from Sunday's New York Times - "President Bush has begun one of the most ambitious efforts to reinvent Medicare and Medicaid since the programs were created 38 years ago. Combined with his earlier plan for Social Security, the proposals offer a fundamentally different vision of social welfare policy, many experts say." See also the related stories Governors Get Sympathy From Bush but No More Money and Governors Cautious on Medicaid Reform Plan [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. See also the statement by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law issued Monday, President Bush's Medicaid Reform Proposal: A Threat to Public Mental Health, and the related action alert.  
  

Mental health care shrinking in Montana
Editorial at Montana Forum - "If the dire needs of mentally ill Montanans – children and adults of all ages – don’t move a majority of legislators and Gov. Judy Martz to consider increasing state revenue, we don’t know what will. The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and the four regional mental health centers have proposed using intergovernmental fund transfers and health-care access block grants to leverage federal Medicaid dollars, saving much of the program that now serves about 3,000 seriously mentally ill adults who have low incomes but don’t qualify for Medicaid. But there must be money for medicine...."  
  

Mental health crisis (South Carolina)
Editorial in the Charlotte Observer - "The finger-pointing between S.C. lawmakers and officials of the state's Department of Mental Health would be comical if the issues involved weren't so serious. There's nothing funny about a mentally ill man being left handcuffed to a fence at a treatment facility or criminal defendants deemed incompetent sitting for months in county jails because no hospital beds are available. This is a crisis. S.C. leaders need to start acting as if it is...."  
  

Report targets mental health care for youths (Maine)
Bangor Daily News story - "Mental health issues are the leading cause of children's hospitalization in Maine, with illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder topping the list, according to the ninth annual Kids Count Data Book released Tuesday by the Maine Children's Alliance."  
  

California Local Governments Facing Cuts Amid State Budget Crisis
KCRA story on the impact of Gov. Gray Davis proposed shifting of several state programs, including mental health, substance abuse, child care, long-term care and court security programs, to local governments in order to save more than $8 billion in the 2003-04 state budget.