Friday, May 14, 2004

Testimony of Eileen D. White, Vice-President, NAMI Consumer Council Before the Institute of Medicine Committee
Transcript of White's testimony, at the NAMI web site - "Your Committee has taken on the enormously important task of applying the "Crossing the Quality Chasm" report to mental health and addictive disorders. When it comes to the mental health system, the gap is indeed a chasm – and it looks like the Grand Canyon. For people living with mental illnesses, the mental health system is huge and daunting, and scary for those who don’t know their way through it. ... The sad reality today is that many people with serious mental illnesses don’t seek or participate in treatment because they have had negative, even traumatizing experiences with the mental health system in the past. I myself have had dehumanizing experiences while in treatment."  
  

The other prison scandal
Column by Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, at Townhall.com, on prisons in the US - "It is telling that two of the guards involved in the Iraq scandal were prison guards in the United States. Our prisons aren't run the way cellblocks 1-A and 1-B in Abu Ghraib were between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. last fall, thank goodness, but they tend to be pits of sexual violence, madness and drug abuse. They are at once too brutal and too lax. Fixing them is not something we owe the international community or anyone else -- besides ourselves. ... Suicidal despair is a common feature of prisons, since they are used to warehouse the mentally ill. Instead of deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill, we have trans-institutionalized them, effectively transferring them from mental-health hospitals into prisons. There are more mentally ill people in America's jails and prisons -- somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 -- than in all its psychiatric hospitals. They don't get proper treatment and are often punished for the consequences of their illness by being placed in solitary confinement, thus exacerbating their sickness."  
  

Wave of Mental Problems Follows GIs Home
Article in, of all places, Good Houeskeeping - "Soldiers at Fort Carson report a wave of serious mental problems among troops back from the "war on terrorism," according to interviews with soldiers, their families and a therapist working with them. The torment seems linked to troubling behavior -- including a suicide, violence and heavy drinking among a number of the 12,000 troops arriving back in Colorado Springs, nestled in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains, 60 miles south of Denver. They say the Army frequently fails to diagnose or properly help suffering soldiers. In some cases -- particularly in elite fighting units -- soldiers hide problems fearing damage to their careers, turning instead to alcohol and sometimes resulting in domestic violence..."  
  

Five telemedicine clinics will assist rural veterans
Portland Press-Herald story - " Clinics that use telemedicine techniques to diagnose and treat veterans for their health needs will open in five communities in rural Maine as part of a national effort to modernize care for men and women who served in the armed services. ... the state's five full-time clinics will be expanded to include mental health services."  
  

Mental health gains coverage parity (Missouri)
News-Leader story - "Legislators, using what little time they have left in the session, endorsed key legislation Thursday dealing with mental-health insurance, the Sunshine Law and economic development. Members of both houses gave final approval to a bill that requires health insurance plans to include the same coverage for mental health services that they do for physical health care. Rep. Roy Holand, a Springfield physician, led the charge for mental health parity, a struggle that required the public to rethink the social stigma attached to sufferers of mental illness, he said."