Tuesday, June 17, 2003

FDA Advisors Back Reduced Monitoring for Patients on Clozapine
Reuters story at Medscape - "A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel backed on Monday a reduced white blood cell monitoring requirement for patients on the atypical antipsychotic clozapine that could serve to ease the compliance burden on patients and their caregivers." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Supreme Court Allows Defendant's Forced Medication
Reuters story at Yahoo News - "A divided U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled on Monday that the government may force defendants to take anti-psychotic medicine to make them competent to stand trial on serious criminal charges, but only under certain limited circumstances. By a 6-3 vote, the court allowed forced medication if the treatment was medically appropriate, substantially unlikely to have side effects that may undermine the trial's fairness, necessary to further important governmental trial-related interests and less intrusive alternatives were unavailable."  
  

SAMHSA Grant Opportunity: CMHS Cooperative Agreements for National Consumer and Consumer Supporter Self-Help Technical Assistance Centers
Thanks to Kevin Fitts of the Oregon Mental Health Consumers Association for calling this SAMHSA funding announcement to our attention - "SAMHSA-CMHS is accepting applications for Fiscal Year 2003 cooperative agreements to support five National Consumer and Consumer Supporter Self-Help Technical Assistance (TA) Centers. The purpose of these technical assistance centers is to assist with the improvement of State and local level mental health service systems by providing consumers, as well as supporters, service providers, and the general public, with necessary skills to foster self-help/self-management approaches." See also the item at the SAMHSA site on Cooperative Agreements for the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services Program for Children and their Families.  
  

Hidden Costs Of The Uninsured
CBS News story - "The poor health and premature deaths of people without health insurance costs the nation between $65 billion and $130 billion annually, says a study by the Institute of Medicine. The Institute, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that 41 million Americans lack health insurance, up from the 38.7 million without coverage reported by the Census Bureau in 2000." See also an electronic version of the report at the National Academies web site, where there's an index page of recent reports, among them A Shared Destiny: Community Effects of Uninsurance (March 2003).  
  

Teen helps peers with depression
CNN story about Students Working Against Depression, a group created by an 18-year-old Missouri high school student to increase awareness of the symptoms of depression among teens and urge them to seek treatment.  
  

Mental health advocates rally (New Jersey)
Courier Post Online story - "Nearly 2,000 mental health advocates took to the State House steps Monday to highlight the need for a range of health care, housing and children's programs - some of which had been slated for a budget cut, but restored the day before."  
  

Officials To Close County Clinics, Decrease Mental Health Services (California)
Brief NBC4TV story - "Health officials plan to close eight part-time Orange County clinics, make severe cuts in mental health services and reduce staff for sexually transmitted disease testing."