Thursday, October 23, 2003
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].
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."
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."
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.
