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Action Alert at the NAMI web site - " This week the House and Senate began a month long summer recess, during which members of Congress will be in their states and districts across the country. One of the major issues Congress will confront upon their return to work in September is how to reduce future Medicaid expenditures by $10 billion over the next five years. These reductions to Medicaid will be considered as a part of a massive budget 'reconciliation' measure that Congress is supposed to complete sometime in the fall. This "reconciliation" legislation will include a number of programmatic changes to Medicaid that could have an enormous impact on beneficiaries (both children and adults) living with mental illness.
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August 6 New York Times article - "Stung by a series of drug safety scandals, the Food and Drug Administration has in recent months issued a blizzard of drug-safety warnings and approval times for new drugs are slower. The agency is issuing twice the number of public advisories about drug risks as it did a year ago and adding five times as many black box warnings - its most serious alert - to drug labels. And drugs approved in the first half of this year took almost twice as long to get that approval as drugs approved in the same period last year. This new conservatism, a response to fierce recent criticism from Congress that the F.D.A. has failed to...
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Psychiatric News story - "The FDA's most recent public health advisory regarding antidepressants appears to have been based on seemingly contradictory studies published earlier this year. The FDA's June 30 public health advisory concerning antidepressants was prompted, the advisory said, by 'several recent scientific publications' that suggested 'the possibility of an increased risk for suicidal behavior in adults who are being treated with antidepressant medications.' FDA spokesperson Christine Parker told Psychiatric News that the advisory was prompted by 'two papers of particular interest.' Both appeared in the February 19 BMJ..." See also abstracts of the BMJ studies.
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Psychiatric News story - "In conjunction with its release of the public health advisory regarding increased risk of suicide in adults taking antidepressants, the FDA issued a separate FDA Alert involving duloxetine (Cymbalta) and suicidality in pediatric and adult patients. The alert largely echoes the language of the advisory, noting that the FDA is 'highlighting that adults being treated with any type of antidepressant medication, particularly those being treated for depression, should be watched closely for worsening of depression and for increased suicidal thinking or behavior.' "
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Psychiatric News story - "Deep in the heart of Texas, NAMI members learn about several new initiatives on destigmatization and prevention of mental illness for those living in the state. Government officials in Texas, the state that hosted the 2005 annual conference of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), are setting an example for other states by taking steps to eliminate the stigma that surrounds mental illness. Part of their focus will be on implementing strategies for preventing mental illness in those at risk for these disorders."
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AP story at the Mercury News - "About a quarter of drug offenders diverted from prison completed their alternative treatment under a program approved by California voters nearly five years ago, with results similar to other treatment programs, according to a UCLA study released Monday. The results of the third year of independent tracking of offenders sentenced under Proposition 36 came as lawmakers debate renewing funding for the program and whether to allow judges to incarcerate offenders who refuse treatment or keep abusing drugs. Proposition 36, approved by 61 percent of voters in November 2000, requires that first-and second-time nonviolent drug offenders be sent to treatment programs instead of prison."
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Northwest Arkansas Times story - "... Donna Van Kirk, a licensed psychologist for the Behavior Therapy & Counseling Clinic in Fayetteville, said minorities are "certainly underrepresented compared to the white population" in terms of how many seek treatment from a mental health professional. The Surgeon General’s report, a supplement on mental health issued in 1999 and drawn from numerous scientific studies, said that once differences in income and background are accounted for, minorities and whites suffer equally from mental disorders but still do not seek treatment in the same percentages. There are a variety of reasons minorities are less likely to get the mental health treatment they need, said Van Kirk, who also serves as secretary for Psychologists of Northwest...
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Prime Zone press release - "Latino Behavioral Health Institute (LBHI), one of the nation's largest non-profit organizations dedicated to eliminating discrimination against Latinos in need of behavioral health services and health care, will present its eleventh annual international conference, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 20 -- 22, at the Universal Hilton Hotel in Universal City, Calif. Themed, 'Transformation: Towards Access and Quality in Latino Behavioral Health,' the event will address contemporary issues of policy, training, research, clinical practice and education related to Latino mental health, substance abuse, health and human services. Approximately 1,000 behavioral health professionals from the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico and South American countries are expected to attend."
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Medical News Today story - "Across the USA, students are preparing to start or return to college. This is an exciting time, though for some it's overwhelming and stressful. Depression, substance use and eating disorders are increasingly common mental health issues on college campuses. According to a recent survey, nearly half of all college students report feeling so depressed that they had trouble functioning, and 15 percent meet the criteria for clinical depression. Untreated depression can lead to suicide, which is the second leading cause of death of college students..."
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Story in The Tennessean - "Issuing a new order outlining what the state can and cannot do to limit TennCare benefits, a federal judge said officials now have all the information they need to decide whether about 97,000 sick people can stay in the program. State officials said last night they were encouraged by U.S. District Judge John Nixon's ruling, but remained noncommittal."
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Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Review - "The Wall Street Journal on Friday examined how pharmaceutical companies' contracts with insurers and medical organizations to sell their drugs sometimes restrict 'unflattering statements about the costs and risks of drugs when they communicate with health practitioners.' For example, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly offers health facilities a 5% discount for the antidepressant Cymbalta, but the contract states that most of the discount could be revoked if the facility engages in certain actions, including 'negative [drug utilization review] correspondence to physicians.' A drug utilization review is a type of analysis of prescription patterns often used by insurers to identify risky or inappropriate practices and to reduce expenses. Pharmaceutical industry officials have said that...
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Fergus Falls Daily Journal story - "The state is readying plans to move out of the Regional Treatment Center -- by readying plans to build a new mental health hospital in Fergus Falls. The 16-bed community behavioral health hospital will be located on about 2.5 to 3.2 acres of land at the intersection of County Roads 1 and 15, just past Alcott Avenue in Fergus Falls, according to Kent Mattson, an attorney who is coordinating the RTC reuse process. Mattson said that construction of the estimated $3.4 million facility, which has been nearly three years in the making, is anticipated to begin in late September or early October and be completed by May 1, 2006."
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Fort Worth Star-Telegram story focusing on Paradise, a Fort Worth community center - "Paradise Center is threatened by Gov. Rick Perry's veto of a bill designed to retain local control of mental health dollars. ...The bill Perry vetoed would have slowed the transfer of decision-making ability from the state's local mental health/mental retardation centers to Austin bureaucrats. Local mental health care providers fear that groups like Paradise will be less likely to get funding from Austin than they are from the local MHMR offices. They also worry that local government won't continue to fund programs because the money would first go to regional or statewide offices instead of staying at home. Some local mental health providers could close, and others...
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Red Nova story on the growing need for services in Nevada - "Both private and public juvenile service providers cannot keep up with demand. Hospitals are often on divert status as a result of too many mental health patients taking up emergency room beds, resulting from too few psychiatric facilities being available to meet their needs. One-third of emergency-room beds and one-fifth of detention beds are occupied by mental health patients. And more than one-tenth of the prison beds are also occupied by mental health patients. Sound familiar? Welcome to the criminal justice system in southern Nevada. And that system is feeling the pinch of this growth in a major way. Law enforcement, the courts, prisons and all their related...
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Item in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report - "The number of uninsured U.S. children decreased by about two million to 8.4 million between 1998 and 2003, and 70% of the uninsured qualified for public health insurance programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP but were not enrolled, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CQ HealthBeat reports. According to the report, released as part of the sixth annual RWJF Covering Kids and Families Back to School Campaign, 20% of Latino children lacked health insurance, compared with 9% of black children and 6% of white children... "
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Copyright 2005 Bill Davis
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