BU Launches New Web Site as a Resource on Disability Research
Alternatives 2010 to Be Held in Anaheim, Calif.
Federal Court Limits Use of Tasers
Peer Support Resource Exchange Is Created
Researchers Question Whether Self-Help Groups Fear Liability
SSA Agrees to Repay More Than $500 Million in Unlawfully Withheld Benefits
Patients on Antipsychotics Not Properly Monitored
Antidepressants Increase Incidence of Stroke in Postmenopausal Women
Government Web Site Makes Bold Statement About Gender Identity
UPenn Collaborative to Hold Second International Conference on Community Inclusion
African-American Males Overdiagnosed with Schizophrenia
UIC Offers Free Materials on Self-Determination
Do You Operate, or Know of, a Warm Line?
Consumer-Driven Services Directory
ACMHA Offers Consumers Scholarships to 2010 Summit: Applications Due 2/8/10
The Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (CPR) has unveiled a brand-new Web site http://drrk.bu.edu that provides links to its review of supported housing literature (1993-2008) and its new review of supported education literature (1989-2009). Besides the reports on these reviews, the Web site also includes links to each of the supported housing studies that were reviewed, so that you can download the abstract or an extended summary. (A link to each of the articles is also provided but the ability to download an article depends on the publication in which it appeared; some require payment.) Click here http://drrk.bu.edu/research-syntheses/psychiatric-disabilities/supported-housing to access this information. The supported education literature review is also available on the Web site http://drrk.bu.edu/research-syntheses/psychiatric-disabilities/supported-education; the studies that were reviewed are listed, and links to each will be posted at a later date. Supported housing fact sheets may be downloaded by clicking on Information Products http://drrk.bu.edu/information-products at the top of the home page and then clicking on National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse http://drrk.bu.edu/information-products/mhselfhelp. Supported education materials may be accessed by clicking here
Source: http://drrk.bu.edu
Alternatives 2010, the 25th annual national mental health conference organized by and for mental health consumers and survivors, will be held Wednesday, September 29, through Sunday, October 3, 2010, at the Hyatt Anaheim in Anaheim, California. Each Alternatives conference offers in-depth technical assistance on peer-delivered services and self-help/recovery methods. Beyond the exchange of knowledge and networking, Alternatives offers a rich social, artistic, and healing environment. Said one attendee: “The conference transformed me so I can transform the system.” More information will be provided at www.power2u.org/alternatives-2010 as it becomes available.
Source: http://www.power2u.org
A potentially precedent-setting decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has legal scholars anticipating a change in the use of Taser guns by law enforcement. The decision was offered in the case against a Coronado, Calif., police officer who Tasered a 21-year-old man during a routine traffic stop; the man fell forward onto the concrete and broke four teeth. The court described the man, after the second of two traffic stops, as “agitated, standing outside his car, yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs, clad only in his boxer shorts and tennis shoes,” adding that he was 20 to 25 feet away from the officer and not attempting to flee, nor did he verbally threaten the officer. By allowing the case against the officer to move forward, the court implies that police can be held responsible when using a Taser against an unarmed person. The New York Times quotes criminal justice professor and Taser expert Geoffrey P. Alpert, who said this case “is going to impact a lot of departments that have not changed their standards.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/01taser.html
A collaborative of peers and peer supporters dedicated to promoting recovery through the ideals and act of peer support has launched the Peer Support Resource Exchange. “We will provide leadership to establish standards of excellence through the exchange of information, education and resources,” the mission statement notes. “We will work to ensure that the integrity and essence of peer support guides system transformation and the establishment of an array of opportunities for recovery.” This forum has grown out of a gathering of peers who have been focusing on the challenges involved in providing peer support. One of their goals is to perform outreach to peers and peer supporters. A message board/forum is available at http://rcox.websitetoolbox.com/. The Web site is at the source below.
Source: http://www.peersupportresource.com/
Courtesy of Jeff McLoud
The UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration is seeking information from individuals who have organized or participated in self-help/mutual support groups about whether they believe that liability issues could be a concern, either for the peer-run groups themselves or for organizations that sponsor or provide space for such meetings (e.g., NAMI, DBSA, or faith-based organizations). Although self-help/mutual support groups have been proven to be effective, some psychiatrists and other providers have expressed concerns about "potential liability if they make referrals and something harmful occurs," according to an article in the January 2010 edition of Psychiatric Services. Now, the UPenn Collaborative is seeking information about whether the groups themselves, or the organizations that sponsor or provide space for group meetings, fear that they may be held liable for anything that might happen during a meeting or arise from something that happened during a meeting. If you have opinions or pertinent information about this topic, please contact Loran Kundra at lbkundra@yahoo.com by Feb. 28, 2010. For example, has your group ever been held liable for anything unfortunate that occurred? Has an organization that sponsored or provided space for a group meeting been held liable for anything unfortunate that occurred within the group?
Source: http://www.upennrrtc.org
The settlement of a class action lawsuit (Martinez v. Astrue) has ended the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) policy of denying or suspending benefits for “fleeing to avoid prosecution,” based solely on the existence of an outstanding felony arrest warrant. In addition to abandoning the illegal policy, SSA has agreed to repay more than $500 million in benefits that were unlawfully withheld from 80,000 people whose benefits have been suspended or denied since January 1, 2007. People whose benefits were suspended or denied between 2000 and 2006 will be notified of the change in policy and given a chance to re-establish eligibility. All told, over 200,000 people will benefit from the settlement. Consumer handouts explaining the SSA’s plan to repay the unlawfully withheld benefits are now available at the source below. To obtain the consumer handouts in alternate formatting, please contact Nancy Arevalo, narevalo@nsclc.org or 510-663-1055, ext. 301.
Source: http://www.nsclc.org/areas/social-security-ssi/Martinez-Settlement
According to a report in the January 2010 Archives of General Psychiatry, Medicaid patients who take second-generation antipsychotic medications are not appropriately assessed for metabolic risks. Drugs like risperidone (trade name Risperdal) and olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa) have been proven to increase the risk for high blood glucose, increasing a likelihood of diabetes. In 2003, the American Diabetes Association and American Psychiatric Association published a joint statement with a monitoring protocol for all patients taking these drugs. Yet researchers at the University of Colorado who examined laboratory claims from Medicaid enrollees in California, Missouri and Oregon found that the protocol was not followed between 2002 and 2005. Nor did an FDA warning have any impact on increased glucose testing. The authors concluded: “More effort is needed to ensure that patients who receive second-generation antipsychotic drugs are screened for diabetes and dyslipidemia and monitored for potential adverse drug effects, beginning with baseline testing of serum glucose and lipids, so that patients can receive appropriate preventive care and treatment.”
Source: http://www.newswise.com/articles/metabolic-risks-unmonitored-in-medicaid-patients-on-antipsychotics
An article in an online version of the Archives of Internal Medicine calls a risk of stroke and death in postmenopausal women who take antidepressants small but “statistically significant.” In a study involving numerous academic institutions, researchers found that women – most of them white – had “a 0.43 percent risk of stroke annually versus a 0.3 percent annual risk of stroke for women not taking antidepressants.” What makes the results worrisome, says senior author Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, is the high number of prescriptions given to postmenopausal women. But the authors urge caution about the results, particularly because it’s unclear if depression itself may cause the increased risk of stroke. Wassertheil-Smoller urges women to weigh the benefits of the antidepressants against the small risk. Lead author Dr. Jordan Smoller adds, "While this study did find an association between antidepressants and cardiovascular events, additional research needs to be done to determine exactly what it signifies. Older women taking antidepressants, like everyone else, should also work on modifying their other risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as maintaining a healthy weight and controlling cholesterol levels and blood pressure.”
Source: http://www.physorg.com/tags/archives+of+internal+medicine/
Although President Barack Obama hasn’t offered a lengthy speech about gender as he did about race, he had made his feelings known: discrimination against transgender individuals is not acceptable. The New York Times reports that the federal jobs Web site has new language “explicitly banning employment discrimination based on gender identity” http://www.usajobs.gov/vacancy/vac_eeo.asp. The language has been quietly added by the Obama administration. It reads: “The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, disability and genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, or other non-merit factor.” Unsurprisingly, groups opposing sexual reassignment are frustrated by the new language. The conservative Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg told the Times his organization opposes “including gender identity as a category of protection.” But Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told Knowlton: “The largest employer in the country is doing what all the other large employers in the country are doing, so that’s really great news.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/06gender.html
Save the Date: The UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration will host the Second International Conference on Community Integration for Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities September 19-21, 2011, in Philadelphia. Presentations will cover state-of-the-art research focusing on community participation/inclusion of individuals with psychiatric disabilities. Sessions will also address innovative policies, programs, and practices that promote opportunities for participation/inclusion. A call for papers and/or applications for consumer scholarships will be issued in September 2010. The UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, is the rehabilitation research and training center (RRTC) devoted to promoting community integration for individuals with psychiatric disabilities.
Source: http://www.upennrrtc.org
In addition to other racial disparities that bedevil the mental health system, the University of Michigan has discovered that black men are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia five times more often than men of other groups. While this particular research is new, the results are not entirely surprising: the trend dates back to the 1960s. The results of the trend can be disastrous, as associate professor of psychiatry and women’s studies Jonathan Metzl explains in a news release: “Some patients became schizophrenic because of changes in their diagnosis rather than their clinical symptoms,” he contends. So what’s the solution? Metzl concedes the answers aren’t easy because multicultural training doesn’t begin to address the problem. Metzl’s new book is called "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease.” Harriet A. Washington, author of “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,” has described Metzl’s book as “both powerful and measured.”
Source: http://www.annarbor.com/news/black-men-over-diagnosed-with-schizophrenia-university-of-michigan-research-says/
Free podcasts and slides are available from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Self-Determination Summit, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) and the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The materials, available at the following link http://www.cmhsrp.uic.edu/nrtc/summit2009/summit-home.asp, offer information about self-determination in a time of economic uncertainty, with an emphasis on person-directed recovery, peer-run services, economic security, and transparency and accountability in behavioral health care.
Source: http://www.cmhsrp.uic.edu/nrtc
The National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse is assembling a list of warm lines around the country. If you operate or know of a warm line, please share this information with us by e-mailing info@mhselfhelp.org or calling 800-553-4539.
topThe Clearinghouse welcomes all programs in which consumers play a significant role in leadership and operation to apply for inclusion in its Directory of Consumer-Driven Services. The directory, accessible at www.cdsdirectory.org, is searchable by location, type of organization, and targeted clientele and serves as a free resource for consumers, program administrators and researchers.
Apply online, via fax at 215-636-6312, or by phone at 800-553-4KEY (4539). To receive an application by mail, write to info@cdsdirectory.org or NMHCSH Clearinghouse, 1211 Chestnut Street, Suite 1100, Philadelphia, PA 19107
ACMHA: The College for Behavioral Health Leadership, in conjunction with the Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, is pleased to be able to provide financial support to consumer leaders to participate in the 2010 ACMHA Summit, March 24-26, 2010, in Santa Fe, N.M. The purpose of the scholarships is to foster the transformation of mental health care and to bring to the Summit individuals who can actively participate in, contribute to, and learn from and with other members of the behavioral health community. Scholarship recipients are selected from the pool of applications received, with consideration given to geographic representation, age/gender/race/ethnicity diversity, and individuals who have not previously attended an ACMHA Summit. To be eligible, you must be a U.S. citizen, a mental health consumer, and submit a completed application received by e-mail or postmarked no later than February 8, 2010. E-mail submissions will be acknowledged as received. A copy of the scholarship application may be downloaded at the following link: http://www.mhselfhelp.org/resources/view.php?resource_id=661
Source: http://www.acmha.org/
The Key Update is the free monthly e-newsletter of the National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse Volume 6 No.5, January 2010, http://www.mhselfhelp.org
To subscribe send a message to: subscribe thekey. To unsubscribe send a message to: unsubscribe thekey. For content, reproduction or publication information, contact Susan Rogers at 215-751-1800 x288 or srogers@mhasp.org.
