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].  
  

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 Researchers familiar with the unpublished data said the majority of secret trials show that children taking the medicines did not get any better than children taking dummy pills.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..."  
  

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."