Monday, November 08, 2004

F.D.A. Drug Safety System Will Get Outside Review
New York Times article - "Amid intense criticism that it is slow to raise the alarm about unsafe medicines, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it would hire the nation's top scientific review body to figure out whether the drug safety system is adequate. In another step, after embarrassing disclosures that the views of its own drug safety officials had been suppressed, the F.D.A. said it would set up an internal appeals process. If someone inside the agency feels that superiors have made a mistake by approving a drug or, after approval, refusing to order its recall, that person will be able to make a case before a committee of experts, from inside and outside the agency, who were not involved in the decision. ... A stinging editorial Friday in The Lancet, a British medical journal, condemned the F.D.A.'s entire system of drug safety review and said the agency had acted out of 'ruthless, shortsighted and irresponsible self-interest' in failing to demand the removal of Vioxx earlier." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. See also Vioxx, the implosion of Merck, and aftershocks at the FDA in the Lancet, which also requires free registration.    
  

VA Says Culture Change Will Transform MH Services
Psychiatric News story - "The VA has responded to the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health with proposed action steps that promote "functional recovery" and expansion of mental health services. Federal agencies were asked to respond to the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health after submission of the commission's report to President George W. Bush in July 2003..." See VA Announces Action Plan at the same source and the related items in the October issue of the VA mental health program's "Consumer Council News" (Adobe Acrobat format).  
  

Who Seeks Emergency Psychiatric Care?
Psychiatric News story - "Data from psychiatric emergency departments could supply critical information about a growing segment of people who need mental health care, but the resource is going untapped. Schizophrenic, agitated, noncompliant with medication, possibly substance abusing—this is the picture of the typical person who comes to the psychiatric emergency department at St. Vincent's Charity Hospital in Cleveland, according to chief psychiatrist Philipp Dines, M.D. The picture is not different from that seen in emergency departments elsewhere around the country. A report in the February Academic Emergency Medicine confirmed a sharp increase in the number of mentally ill persons coming to the nation's emergency departments between 1992 and 2000." See also As Insurance Coverage Wanes, Psychiatric ERs Get Busier at the same source.  
  

Complex Factors Keep Many Blacks From MH System
Psychiatric News story - "Stigma surrounding mental illness in African-American communities is preventing many from receiving quality mental health services. Underrecognition of a range of mental health problems by clinicians, a lack of trust in the medical community, and poor access to mental health services are keeping many African Americans with mental illness from recovery. William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., who is chair of the psychiatry department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., illustrated these points at a seminar titled 'African Americans: Facing Mental Illness, Experiencing Recovery,' which was held in conjunction with the 2004 annual conference of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill."  
  

Anxiety Abounds For Mentally Ill, Advocates
Column in the Washington Post - "Amental health day walkathon was the place for me on Saturday. Billed as a 'post-election stress buster' by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the stroll through downtown Washington helped me see beyond America's red states of mind and find solace in a clear, azure blue sky. ... About 500 people participated in the walkathon, which helped mark the organization's 25th anniversary as an advocate for the mentally ill and raise money for research and education efforts." [Viewing Washington Post stories requires registration, which is free.]  
  

Clogged VA delays Iraq veteran care (Michigan)
Detroit News story - "Soldiers from Michigan who risked their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning home to a veterans' benefit system that is overwhelmed, causing delays in medical and mental health treatment. ... The problems in Michigan are part of a national logjam of 334,611 veterans from across the country who awaited approval of benefits at the end of October, according to statistics from the Department of Veterans Affairs. That is 40 percent more than the VA says it deems optimal, and far beyond what members of Congress and veterans' groups consider justified."  
  

Police train on mental illnesses (Florida)
News-Press story - "In a matter of months, some area law enforcement officers will be armed with a new tool for dealing with people who have mental illnesses. Starting in March, Fort Myers police officers who volunteer will get 40 hours of training in how to handle situations involving people suffering from mental illness. The program, called Crisis Intervention Training, consists of a week-long series of seminars during which participants learn about mental illnesses, how to recognize symptoms, medications used to treat them and how to de-escalate potentially dangerous situations with people who have mental illnesses."  
  

Efforts to prevent drug abuse funded (Maine)
Portland Press Herald story - "Treating alcoholism and drug abuse costs about $20 million a year in Maine, and that is just a fraction of the expense of untreated addiction. ... The federal government is giving Maine almost $12 million during the next five years to fund prevention efforts in local towns and cities in hopes of reducing substance abuse. The grant will almost double what the Office of Substance Abuse would otherwise be able to distribute for prevention, say officials who work with young people..."  
  

Improve housing for mentally ill, forum told (Canada)
Montreal Gazette story - "As 200 Montreal conference-goers discussed the need for better housing for psychiatric patients, the Douglas Hospital was scrambling to move three patients from one of its foster homes that it considered not up to par. ... Helping more people with a mental illness to live in the community is 'one of society's greatest challenges,' said Jacques Duval, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association's Montreal office, which organized last week's conference."  
  

Revealed: secret plan to push pills (UK)
Story in the Guardian - "Britain's largest drug company drew up a secret plan to double sales of the controversial anti-depressant Seroxat by marketing it as a cure for a raft of less serious mental conditions, The Observer can reveal today. The contents of the 250-page document have alarmed health campaigners who accuse the firm, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), of putting profit before the therapeutic needs of patients by attempting to broaden the market for the drug which has been linked to a spate of suicides. The revelation is likely to prompt further concerns about the role and influence of the pharmaceutical industry, which has come under severe scrutiny in recent months. The document is now being investigated by a parliamentary inquiry into the drugs industry. "  
  

Abysmal failure (Arizona)
Editorial in the Arizona Republic - " 'Shocking and abysmal.' More than two decades after a lawsuit challenging the state's failure to provide legislatively mandated services to the seriously mentally ill in Maricopa County, you would think such a description would be obsolete. Unnecessary. But those are the words used by Judge Pro Tem Bernard Dougherty to describe a report on the state's progress toward improving mental health services..."