Friday, April 04, 2003

Expanding Addiction Treatment Capacity to Meet All Needs
This page indexes low and high bandwidth versions of the April 2 NCADI Webcast on this topic - "In support of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Demand Reduction Goals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been at the forefront of efforts to expand the capacity of local communities to treat substance use disorders. Programs such as SAMHSA's Targeted Capacity Expansion (TCE) have been designed to address discrepancies in treatment capacity by responding to unmet specific local needs for alcohol and drug treatment services. SAMHSA has also studied both behavioral and addiction treatment financing systems in order to put forward novel approaches aimed at expanding science-based addiction treatment capacity." A related webcast is scheduled for April 16.  
  

House OKs bill to study troubled children's mental health system (Texas)
Story at the El Paso Times - "The Texas House tentatively passed legislation Thursday to study the way the state treats children who have serious mental health problems and to come to grips with a system that is unable to treat more than 70 percent of those children. An estimated 16,000 El Paso children have serious mental health problems, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression, but the state's Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation provides treatment for only 617 a month on the average...." See also Mental Health Care Meltdown: Is There Room for Hope? in the Austin Chronicle.  
  

Beverly Watts Davis Named Director Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
SAMHSA press release - "Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Administrator Charles G. Curie today announced that Beverly Watts Davis has been appointed director of SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP). The center works in partnership with federal agencies, state and local government, and public and private sector organizations to prevent the onset of illegal drug use, alcohol abuse and tobacco use by building resilience among young people and promoting protective factors in communities nationwide."