Thursday, January 29, 2004

Blueprint for Change: Ending Chronic Homelessness for Persons with Serious Mental Illnesses and/or Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorders
A new publication from SAMHSA - "More than a decade after the Federal Task Force on Homelessness and Severe Mental Illness called it 'unacceptable' for people with serious mental illnesses to live in unsafe and threatening conditions, more than 630,000 individuals are homeless in this country on any given night (Burt et al., 2001). About half of all adults who are homeless have substance use disorders, and many have cooccurring mental illnesses, as well. Yet, the outlook is far from bleak. Federal demonstration programs and the experience of hundreds of community-based providers offer a rich reservoir of evidence-based and promising practices." See also another new SAMHSA publication, How States Can Use SAMHSA Block Grants to Support Services for People Who Are Homeless.  
  

Health Providers Welcome Bush Attention to Health Issues, Split Over Impact
Medscape Medical News story - "Healthcare providers and advocates were generally pleased by the attention paid to the issue in U.S. President George Bush's State of the Union address, but they remained split over the merit of the proposals he offered to extend coverage to the 43.3 million Americans without health insurance and control skyrocketing costs of medical malpractice insurance for physicians." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Brain structure implicated in early onset depression
BioMed press release at EurekAlert - "Teenagers suffering from depression may have abnormal brain structure, according to new research. An article published in BMC Medicine this week shows that adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder tend to have a small hippocampus - a part of the brain associated with motivation, emotion, and memory formation..."  
  

Bottom Line for Mentally Ill (Maryland)
January 26 Washington Post story reprinted at PsycPORT on the state's plan to close Crownsville Hospital Center - " The shuttering of the hospital, which sits on a sprawling green campus in central Anne Arundel County, could begin as early as July. The proposal comes as the legislature is grappling with one of the most severe financial crises in decades and illustrates how Maryland's budget problems are affecting some of the state's most vulnerable residents. The consequences already are far-reaching. Limited funding has frozen the amount of community housing available to the mentally ill for the past three years. That means that state institutions are almost always full, with patients ... waiting to be placed in community settings. That, in turn, has forced others in need to languish in prisons, homeless shelters and hospital emergency rooms, advocates for the mentally ill said."  
  

Antidepressant Makers Withhold Data on Children
Washington Post story reprinted at PsycPORT - " Makers of popular antidepressants such as Paxil, Zoloft and Effexor have refused to disclose the details of most clinical trials involving depressed children, denying doctors and parents crucial evidence as they weigh fresh fears that such medicines may cause some children to become suicidal. The companies say the studies are trade secrets. Researchers familiar with the unpublished data said the majority of secret trials show that children taking the medicines did not get any better than children taking dummy pills. Although the drug industry's practice of suppressing data unfavorable to its products is legal, doctors and advocates say such secrecy distorts the scientific record..."  
  

Agency overhaul to be discussed (Texas)
Star Telegram story - " The public can comment Friday on what the state's sweeping reorganization of health and human services could mean to the delivery of services to the disabled, the elderly and the needy. ... The new Department of State Health Services incorporates programs now provided by the Texas Department of Health, the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse and the Health Care Information Council. It also takes in mental-health community services and state hospitals formerly operated by the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation...."  
  

Mental Health Parity on 2004 Agenda
Health Care News story reprinted at the Heartland Institute web site - "Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) are drafting compromise mental health parity legislation for consideration by the committee in early 2004. Details of the proposal were unavailable at press time. Domenici and other supporters had hoped for a vote on the Senator Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act (S 486) in 2002, but Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) decided to move the bill through 'regular order,' that is, through Gregg’s committee, rather than bring it directly to the Senate floor for debate and a vote."