Saturday, December 30, 2006

Bill Mandating Equal Coverage for Mental Health Could Pass

With Democrats winning both houses of Congress, health advocates say they have high hopes that legislation requiring equal insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses will finally pass in 2007.

A 1996 law already prohibits health plans that offer mental health coverage from setting lower annual and lifetime spending limits for mental treatments than for physical ailments. Backers of the new legislation want to see that expanded to co-payments, deductibles and limits on doctor visits.

"I'm very optimistic that 2007 will finally be the year that our health care system recognizes that the brain is, in fact, a part of the body," said Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat who sponsored the bill in the last Congress. "We've had majority support for this legislation six years in a row, and now we have a chance to bring it to the floor and pass it," the Associated Press reported on Friday.

The legislation has strong support in Congress but has run into GOP roadblocks. In the last session, 231 House members -- more than half of the members -- signed on as co-sponsors. The GOP leadership, which in the past had expressed concern that the proposal would drive up health insurance premiums, wouldn't bring it up for a vote, the AP said.

Go down a couple of stories if you use the link.

Friday, December 29, 2006

State gets mental-health waiver

HELENA - A rare Medicaid waiver granted Montana will help support home-based care for some of the state's residents with disabling mental illnesses.

The waiver approved by the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services is only the second of its kind nationwide, said Joyce DeCunzo of the state Addictive and Mental Disorders Division.

Montana will be permitted to spend Medicaid money on in-home services not usually covered, services that include home-delivered meals, private-duty nursing and transportation, DeCunzo said.

I think Michigan's is the other MH waiver.

the Trouble with Spikol

Liz Spikol is managing editor of Philadelphia Weekly. She writes the award-winning column "The Trouble With Spikol," which began as a chronicle of her struggle with mental illness, and has since expanded into humorous musings on everything from graphic novels to how to use a mop. This blog is about mental illness—policy, news, personal journeys and more.

Recovery and mental illness: Analysis and personal reflections

My strong desire to enter the helping profession has been fuelled by my experiences as a consumer-survivor of the mental health system who is recovered and is symptom-free. And yet, driven by concomitant hopes of changing the system under which I found my care and the care of those around me to be flawed at best, and in order to relate to both consumers and practitioners the need for a recovery paradigm and for empowerment and hope, I found that in the academic world, I “passed.” For fear of discrimination, tokenization, and the discreditation of my ideas, I took on the role of practitioner-in-training, never disclosing my identity as a consumer-survivor, no matter how much I felt this unique perspective could contribute to a discussion. I was torn. Had I not entered this field in order to bring about change and instill hope based on my story? Feeling hypocritical, I nonetheless decided that it would be best to delay self-disclosure until I achieved professional status.

Too bad the whole article is only available to subscribers, huh?

NEW YORK CITYVOICES

A Consumer Journal for Mental Health Advocacy

The Recovery Collaborative of Oklahoma

The system that provides mental health and substance abuse services to low-income
Oklahomans is facing a time of unprecedented change and opportunity. This
circumstance is primarily due to a philosophical shift that has occurred in the practice of
mental health and substance abuse treatment services. This change in approach began
with the advent of the Consumer Movement in the early 1970s and continues today with
the ongoing development of recovery-oriented mental health and substance abuse
treatment practices. These practices provide consumers the opportunity to direct their
own recovery processes. The implementation of these treatment practices is supported
by a growing body of evidence validating that recovery-oriented treatment practices are
more effective in providing positive outcomes for mental health consumers and
substance abuse clients.

Thresholds implements recovery movement

- There is a national movement to help people with mental illness with their recovery. But only recently has this approach been utilized in Illinois. For people with mental illness, recovery is about choices and hope.

Thresholds -- Chicago's largest mental health agency -- has taken a big step to implement this movement. Members of thresholds are encouraged to share their feelings. Recovery specialist Lena Raimondo is proud to be part of the movement.

"The recovery movement has done for me is exactly what I'm doing for people today and that is getting well, trying to get our lives back," said Lena.

Ten years ago, Lena's life changed.

The National GAINS Center and The Center on Women, Violence and Trauma Expert Panel Meeting/Opening Remarks

America has been described as a nation of ideas transformed by events. Some events propel us forward. Others test our mettle. Hurricane Katrina certainly qualifies as an event of the mettle-testing variety.

Clinicians are seeing significant symptoms of traumatic stress among survivors. Calls to local suicide hotlines are up 60% post Katrina. SAMHSA estimates that up to 500,000 people may be in need of assistance...a number that is likely to grow as “Katrina-weariness” sets in, making the survivors even more vulnerable to depression and other problems. Growing anxiety over the upcoming hurricane season…heightened by skepticism over the state of readiness…is taking a heavy toll on the nation’s mental well being.

Living and Dying with Mental Illness

People living with severe and persistent mental illness are likely to come to the end of their lives with less economic resources and fewer social supports than the average American. As a result, facing terminal illness, they more likely to face great difficulties in piecing together a positive, caretaking network, less likely to have the option of dying at home, and consequently more likely to find themselves dependent on institutional care.

(Cookie Gant ran into this very problem.)

Recovery

"The introduction of recovery into our national mental health dialogue is nothing short of revolutionary."


A. Kathryn Power, M.Ed., Director, Center for Mental Health Services, SAMHSA

National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations

A new initiative (as of September 2006) - check it out.

Managed Care: Strengthening the Consumer Voice in Managed Care: VII. The Georgia Peer Specialist Program

The Surgeon General's landmark 1999 Mental Health Report gives consumers and their families a prominent place in the mental health system as advocates, participants in overseeing policy, and providers of services (1). Managed care programs, when adequately funded and wisely managed, can, should, and sometimes do promote all three objectives (2). The rationale for a more consumer-centric approach to managed care derives from a clinical prediction that services provided in this manner will lead to improved outcomes (3) and a view of democratic process that calls for robust citizen involvement beyond that provided by representative government alone (4).

Recovery Movement Gains Influence In Mental Health Programs

In October more than 500 people attended the conference "Innovations in Recovery and Rehabilitation: The Decade of the Person," which was sponsored by the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University.

The participants came from 22 countries to try to understand the concept of "recovery" from mental illness and to learn about the recovery movement.

Workshop titles suggest the exploratory nature of the conference. "The elusive concept of resilience: everyone seems to know what it is, but defines it differently," "Characteristics of recovery-oriented mental health programs: Can I recognize one if I see one?"

Operators in Adult Home Are Barred in Settlement

The former operators of one of New York’s largest and most troubled homes for the mentally ill — a place once deemed by the state to be a “new warehouse for the insane” — have been permanently barred from running facilities for people with mental disabilities, state officials announced yesterday.

Eliot Spitzer, in his role as state attorney general, had sued the operators of the home, the Seaport Manor Home for Adults, in Canarsie, Brooklyn, saying that they had consistently neglected the home’s residents and misappropriated their money.

Friday, December 15, 2006

More about the meeting

The Recovery Council is large and includes most of the active stakeholders in the Recovery movement in Michigan. We are all struggling with a path for next steps. Mike Head suggested that we look to our vision in 5-10 years and ask how the Centers of Excellence Grant can contribute to that vision.

It proved difficult to leap that far in the meeting. All of us need to internalize the time frame, break away from the tangle of immediate tasks and concerns.

I will use this blog to explore some of my ideas on the long term.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Recovery Council After Break

It is hard to frame how to support individual and group empowerment without replicating our bureaucratic past. Partly, people who have experienced oppression believe that power resides in the stuctural tools used by their oppressors. So, the way to fight organizational oppression is through similar organizations.

Thus, we recreate oppressive power relationships in the very act of trying to defeat them.
At the same time, the community that should be changed by the Recovery Movement already exists, and can't be changed from scratch.

We need to create new individual habits, social relationships, and cultural and community artifacts.

How do we do that?
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From the Field

I'm at the December 14, 2006 meeting of Michigan's Recovery Council, and i realized how important the Recovery Movement is becoming, not only in the consumer community, but as a part of our common social life.

Recovery is a cultural phenomenon, not just because it occurs in a culture, but because it has always involved the creation of cultural artifacts.

Outside this community, people think of recovery as a medical process. But the "medicalization" of illness has nothing to ddo with the Recovery Movement.

The Recovery Movement is about personal and social empowerment of people who are stigmatized. Recovery is the way people create lives for themselves that are under their control. Recovery is the way people work together to form a community that will support their achievement of their dreams and hopes.

More later.
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