Monday, May 03, 2004

Mental health care improvement comes with risk (Texas)
Houston Chronicle story - "After a dismal legislative session that resulted in devastating budget cuts for people with mental illness, there is a beacon that potentially offers hope for a better day to come. A managed-care concept called disease management that the Legislature mandated in HB 2292, its reorganization of the state's health and human service agencies, could greatly improve the provision of mental health services in Texas. People with mental illness often live with a chronic disease. Symptoms and crises can be minimized through effective use of medication and treatment, and through patient and family education. In a nutshell, that's disease management. Such an approach may sound obvious, but the mental health system's resources are so limited that today it is more likely that the inadequate level of services received fail to promote recovery, and in fact may leave people with mental illness vulnerable to a perpetual cycle of crisis and inpatient care..."