Bipolar Disorders and Women: Special Considerations A Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health "Expert Interview" with Adele Casals Viguera - "This disorder is equally distributed among men and women, unlike major depression, from which women are twice as likely to suffer than men. There are specific characteristics that women tend to have: more depressed states, more rapid cycling, and greater comorbidity, which complicate the management of the disorder. They're also more likely to suffer from mixed states." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
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Research benefits when families participate fully Item in Mental Health Notes from CMHA/Ontario - "Working with family members of mental health services consumers in research projects benefits everyone involved, according to a paper in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. The authors led the research team of a longitudinal study of family initiatives in community mental health in Ontario, part of the Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative (CMHEI). In the present paper, they call for innovative methodologies that consider families as full participants in all stages of research, citing the benefits to both the families and to the professional researchers. Family members collaborated on the study’s research proposal and were employed as research assistants, expert advisors and knowledge translators."  
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Explaining Outcomes Project, 1999-2005: Summary Report on Developing Instruments to Measure Critical Characteristics of Community Support Programs for People with a Severe Mental Illness (Canada) A report (in PDF format) from the Explaining Outcomes project of the Community Mental Health Evaluation Initiative. The executive summary notes that "In this report, we describe our experience in addressing the challenge of developing measures to assess critical characteristics of community mental health programs for people with a severe mental illness. "Critical characteristics" are those processes and contextual elements that define or give a "personality profile" to programs and which are predictive of consumer outcomes. The impetus for developing the project stemmed from two main premises: that the extensive shift, over recent years, to community-based care and the proliferation of community support programs and models have created a need for specialized program evaluation instruments; and, that current evaluation designs are unlikely to provide useful information to program planners and researchers about how programs effect positive consumer outcomes. " See also the page of related resources at the CMHEI site.  
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Mental Health Court Support Services Policies and Procedures Report, in PDF format, from the Mental Health Court Support Consortium, a formal network of organizations which provide mental health court support services to the five courthouses within the City of Toronto - " This manual is composed of two parts. The first describes the policies and procedures which are common to all mental health court support services operating in courthouses across the City of Toronto. The second details the procedures which operate within individual court support services within specific courthouses in the city. Though specific procedures may vary from one courthouse to another to reflect the particularities in effect at each courthouse, the court-specific procedures are congruent with and indeed are superseded by the policies and procedures identified as common across mental health court support services in the city."  
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The Fiscal Survey of States  Report from the National Association of State Budget Officers and the National Governors Association - "While the revenue shortfalls facing states in recent years have subsided and short run forecasts are sunnier, most states still face budgetary challenges driven by a backlog of expenditure demands and Medicaid, finds the newest edition of the Fiscal Survey of States. Revenues exceeded original budget projections in 42 states and three others met their target. Only five states revenue were below their budget projections. For the first time in several years, 2005 aggregate state spending aligned with the historical state spending trends with a growth at 6.6 percent. The 27-year average is 6.5 percent." See also the 2003 State Expenditure Report from NASBO, which found that "Medicaid expenditures continue to grow, crowding out other categories of state spending... The data show that in fiscal 2003, Medicaid accounted for 21.4 percent of all state spending, closing in on K-12 education spending, which was 21.7 percent."  
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Specific Regions Of Brain Implicated In Anorexia Nervosa Science Daily story - "Just why those with anorexia nervosa are driven to be excessively thin and seem unaware of the seriousness of their condition could be due to over-activity of a chemical system found in a region deep inside the brain, a University of Pittsburgh study suggests. Reporting in the journal Biological Psychiatry, researchers found an over-activity of dopamine receptors in the brain's basal ganglia, an area known to play a role in how people learn from experience and make choices."  
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New Mexico First in Nation to Consolidate Publicly Funded Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services  A Value Options press release at Join Together - "The New Mexico Interagency Behavioral Health Collaborative (Collaborative) with ValueOptions New Mexico today (July 1) highlighted the new behavioral health system of care during a news conference in Albuquerque. Beginning today public mental health and substance abuse services provided and/or funded by 15 separate state agencies will be managed through a single Statewide Entity (SE): ValueOptions New Mexico. 'We've come a long way in redesigning the behavioral health system for New Mexico and are looking forward to seeing real results in recovery and resiliency for behavioral health consumers,' said Pamela Hyde, Human Services Department Secretary and Co-chair of the Collaborative."  
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Racial and Ethnic Differences in Utilization of Mental Health Services Among High-Risk Youths  American Journal of Psychiatry article reprinted at BlackEnterprise.com, which concludes that "Significant racial/ethnic group differences in likelihood of receiving any mental health service and, specifically, formal outpatient services were found after the effects of potentially confounding variables were controlled. Race/ethnicity did not exert a significant effect on the use of informal or 24- hour-care services."  
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Evaluating Mental Health Services for Older People (UK) A review at BlackEnterprise.com of Evaluating Mental Health Services for Older People by Jenny Finch (Radcliffe Publishing) - "...The book provides a useful overview of the development of services in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia, along with an insight into the evaluation of these services, before making an international comparison. The detail reflects the author's depth of experience. The various approaches adopted in developing standards and methodologies for evaluation within the context of the former Commission for Health Improvement and with the Health Advisory Service (HAS) in the late 1990s are discussed."  
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