Mental Health

Every month I receive a copy of Brain News from the non-profit Dana Foundation in New York. Lately, I've read the publication with increasing interest because it reports on wide-ranging research about how brains work or don't work - and what that means for our world's population.

Of special note this month is an article entitled Diabetes Research Could Aid in Alzheimer's Fight, first published by the Globe and Mail in Toronto. Here are the paragraphs that caught my eye:

Jack Diamond, scientific director of the Alzheimer Society of Canada, said there are whisperings in the scientific community that Alzheimer's disease may actually be "Type 3 diabetes," where a resistance to insulin causes inflammation only in the brain, just like it does in the pancreases of those with Type 2 diabetes.

From the News & Observer, a story that a bill to insure North Carolina's high-risk population has been killed in the Senate. The idea came from a N.C. Institute of Medicine task force, which included such varying interests as business owners, health insurnace executives, hospital admins, docs, consumer advocates, and lawmakers themselves.

The bill was so finely crafted by this task force of experts that it passed the House 95-10 just yesterday. But, it has been killed in the Senate.

What is a high-risk person?

After hours of slogging through drivel from the Carolina Journal and the extended Puppetshow family, I finally came across something worthwhile today, a smart and well-written column by Don Stedman, dean emeritus in education at UNC Chapel Hill. His commentary about the state of mental health services in North Carolina is right on the money and well worth reading. And his closing line is an awesome response to free-market maniacs who want big bidness to take over everything.

No mistake -- residential care and treatment are badly needed as key parts of a mostly community-based service system, but they need to be downsized and more widely distributed and clearly connected to regional coordination centers with the resources necessary to carry out their missions. And forget privatization. There is no profit in human service. If there is, we have another kind of problem.

Asheville Citizen-Times: "Gov. Mike Easley today proposed an $18.9 billion budget for the next fiscal year that would use a historic surplus for 8 percent teacher raises, a quarter-penny decrease in the sales tax and nearly $90 million to accelerate mental health reform."

Ah, fiscal sanity. Can you dig it?

Show me one Republican who's going to stand against raising teacher's pay and cutting taxes? I love this proposal.

Also, as a mental health professional, it's a relief to see that the governor gets it on mental health reform. The current reform is underfunding area programs and cutting services that no one else performs.

I get emails from The Fitzsimmon File regularly, and today's is depressing as hell. Not coincidentally, it's about the sad state of mental health in North Carolina.

Robert started our week with his piece on Medicaid. I thought I would include my take on it to start our weekend.

A program essential to the health, even the survival of many of our most vulnerable citizens has been targeted for massive cuts by the Bush administration and the Republicans in congress. The poor, the elderly and disabled children will be particularly affected by these cuts and in many states are in a more tenuous situation than ever before. These groups may fare a bit better in North Carolina than in other states, but the possibility of a negative impact looms in the future.

Keep reading . . .

The Winston-Salem Journal: bad communication, misplaced priorities, lack of low-income housing, and tight budgets result in NC mental patients being dropped off at homeless shelters with nothing but a bottle of pills.

[Shelter] managers are not trained in counseling psychiatric patients, and there are no staff members to dispense residents' medications or remind them when to take their drugs, she said. Patients who are in crisis are simply picked up by the police.