Monday, March 01, 2004

Selected Posters & Abstracts: New Research and Developments in Biological Psychiatry
"The recent International Congress of Biological Psychiatry meeting, held in Sydney, Australia, offered a number of posters presenting new and interesting findings in the treatment of mood disorders, particularly in the areas of bipolar depression and long-term management, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Medscape Journal Scan - Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, January 2004
"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." "med"  
  

Many States Limiting Medicaid Coverage of Mental Health Treatments
Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report based on reporting in the Wall Street Journal (not available online) - "The Wall Street Journal on Monday examined states' inclusion of mental health medications on preferred-drug lists in an effort to lower prescription drug costs for Medicaid programs by "steering doctors to less-costly but clinically equivalent medications." While 25 states have legal provisions to exempt mental health medications from preferred drug lists, states such as Kentucky, West Virginia and Texas include such drugs in their formularies, excluding the most expensive..."  
  

Lack of Funding Slows Treatment for Mentally Ill (California)
Los Angeles Times story - "More than a year after its passage, a law intended to force severely mentally ill people into outpatient treatment has been stymied by a lack of funding and controversy over its implementation. When it passed, supporters of the hard-won measure, known as Laura's Law, promised it would help get hundreds and possibly thousands of mentally ill people at risk of harming themselves or others off the streets and into treatment programs. But under the law, counties must approve and fund the measure on their own, and many are far too short of cash to consider the idea..." [Viewing Los Angeles Times stories requires registration, which is free].  
  

Special report: Virginia's treatment of the mentally disabled
Virginian-Pilot story on oversight of Virginia's mental health care services - "...the state, which used to be the primary caregiver for the mentally disabled, has surrendered much of that role to a patchwork system of community-based programs, such as group homes. The homes, 106 of them in South Hampton Roads, operate with low-paid, minimally trained workers. They churn along with a steady stream of money from the state and federal government, but with little oversight from either. The state employs 12 inspectors to monitor 2,468 mental health, mental retardation and substance abuse service locations, including group homes. That’s an average caseload of 206 locations per inspector. A single inspector has responsibility for all of South Hampton Roads, except Portsmouth."  
  

Region to get child mental health center (Oregon)
Story in the Bend Bulletin - "Deschutes County is poised to sign a contract with a Portland-based nonprofit to provide intensive mental health services for children, a deal officials say would end the current practice of sending children to Portland or Corvallis for treatment..."  
  

Wayne Co. mental health board targeted in bills (Michigan)
Detroit Free Press story - "Fed up with political infighting and fearful that federal funding could be yanked, a lawmaker wants increased state control over Wayne County's problem-plagued mental health agency. Sen. Beverly Hammerstrom, R-Temperance, plans to introduce legislation targeting the Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health (CMH) agency. The news drew strong reaction Thursday and intensified the debate about who should control the $530-million agency. The state Senate Health Policy Committee will take up the package of bills on March 10. At the heart of the issue, Hammerstrom and other officials say, are at least 75,000 people with mental illnesses and disabilities who rely on the Detroit-Wayne County agency for help with housing, therapy, job training, transportation, medical assistance and other services. The bills would eliminate county control of the agency by making it an independent authority and would change the makeup of the 12-member board that oversees the county's mental-health services."  
  

Riley announces statewide drug prevention grant (Alabama)
Selma Times-Journal story - "Gov. Bob Riley recently announced a comprehensive statewide drug prevention program aimed at steering Alabama's youth away from drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Funded by a $9 million grant to the governor's office from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the approach of the new program will be to combine existing resources of state, regional and local agencies in developing an overall plan. Riley has appointed a 23-member committee, chaired by Maury Mitchell of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center, to coordinate the project."  
  

North Carolina lawmakers must provide leadership, resources to ensure mental health reform
Citizen-Times editorial - "Beginning Monday, Buncombe County residents formerly treated through Blue Ridge Mental Health Center will receive services from private providers. It's a change that's been coming since North Carolina enacted the mental health reform bill in 2001. Buncombe County, where more than 6,000 people without private insurance were served by Blue Ridge last year, will be a pretty fair test for how smoothly the change to a new way of delivering mental health services will go. If it goes well, little of the credit will be due to state lawmakers or state regulators who enacted reform, then essentially abandoned counties and the 40 area programs that had been providing services statewide to figure out how to make it happen. Lawmakers have also placed a woefully inadequate amount in the Mental Health Trust Fund..."  
  

Mental health agencies trim staff, services (Maryland)
Baltimore Sun story - "Faced with $25 million in cuts to the state's mental health budget, service providers statewide are laying off employees and closing or scaling back offerings. At stake are programs that they say keep low-income adults and children with the most disabling mental illnesses in schools and communities and out of hospitals, emergency rooms and jails."