Thursday, October 23, 2003
Panel told Nevada's rural mental health services lagging Las Vegas Sun story - "A state panel was told Tuesday mental health professionals are almost nonexistent in outlying areas of Nevada and other states, leading to numerous problems - including high suicide rates - for people who can't get needed counseling. The state Mental Health Plan Implementation Commission also was told states must abide by a U.S. Supreme Court mandate and not discriminate against disabled people by providing services in institutions rather than community-based services.
Treatment for Addiction Meets Barriers in the Doctor's Office New York Times story - "While progress has been made in combating alcoholism and drug addiction in the United States, the medical establishment is still failing in large numbers to diagnose the disease in their patients, several experts said at a recent conference. 'Although doctors and nurses have the best opportunity to intervene with alcoholics and substance abusers, our research indicates they are woefully inadequate of even diagnosing someone with this disease,' said Joseph Califano Jr., the chairman and president of Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse." [Viewing
New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].
Helping Young Girls Avoid Depression Health Day News story at
Yahoo - "A new model that looks at genes and environment to identify depression and anxiety in young girls has been developed by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The method could help better identify young girls who are at high risk for depression once they enter puberty and begin early intervention. It is outlined in a special October issue of the
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry."
Psychiatric Documents Can Aid Mentally Ill in Crises Newhouse News Service story on advance directives - "People with psychiatric problems who struggle daily to maintain their footing are relying on an increasingly popular document to protect them if they falter: a page or two of written instructions that spell out their care. ... No national estimate exists on how many people have chosen the tool, and doubts persist among skeptics who see risks in giving patients a forceful voice regarding their treatment in psychiatric emergencies. ... Some of the documents are written under state laws on living wills that allow people to formalize choices for end-of-life medical care. Some states -- Ohio recently became the 19th -- have enacted laws that specifically outline procedures for establishing an advance directive for mental health care. The first large-scale study of PADs is under way with a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health..." See also the September 16 Duke University Medical Center press release,
NIMH Funds $1.98 Million Study to Examine Effectiveness of Advance Directives for Patients with Mental Illnesses, which notes that "Additional research funding for the study has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Greenwall Foundation."
Support for 72-hour delay in psychiatric reviews (New Zealand) New Zealand Herald story - "Plans to prevent compulsory psychiatric patients from immediately appealing against their detention are gaining some support, following a damning report on the killing by Paul Ellis of his father. The Health Ministry floated the idea after distribution of the report cataloguing the many flaws in Mr Ellis' treatment and the mental health service's shortages of staff and money."
Gene Found for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Reuters Health story - "U.S. and Japanese researchers said on Thursday they had found a genetic mutation that causes obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses and said some patients had a second mutation that made their conditions worse. The rare finding could make it easier to discover good treatments for the disorder, one of the top 10 leading causes of disability worldwide."
Improved Access to Treatment Urged for Children with Mental Health Problems
Pan American Health Organization press release - "In Latin America, between 15 percent and 23 percent of children and adolescents suffer from mental health problems, but most of them do not receive necessary treatment and care. This situation was analyzed today in a meeting on 'Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in Children and Adolescents' at the headquarters of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The meeting was held in the framework of World Mental Health Day, observed every October 10. This year, the campaign focused world attention on the identification, treatment, and prevention of emotional and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents. According to experts, early detection and treatment of these problems is essential to avoid future antisocial behavior and excessive costs of later therapies."
Report on mental health services cites crisis (Pennsylvania)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette story - "A new report examining delivery of mental health and mental retardation services calls it a 'building crisis' of lengthy waiting lists among clients and high turnover and care quality problems among staffs. The Keystone Research Center, a Harrisburg group backed by labor organizations, issued the report yesterday focusing on the MH-MR system in Allegheny County as well as statewide. It cited numerous problems relating to services to 40,000 Allegheny County residents with mental illness and nearly 10,000 with mental retardation. Many relate to staffing issues, a widely documented problem throughout the human services field in terms of low pay and difficulty finding suitable workers." A
discussion draft of the final report (in
Adobe Acrobat format) is available at the Keystone Research Center's web site.
Mental health funding still lags despite settlement (Alabama) Story in the University of Alabama's newspaper, the
Crimson White, on the September 2000 settlement of a lawsuit "requiring the Department of Corrections to make substantial efforts toward meeting mental health standards in prisons by September 2003."
