MHA Society for Behavioral Health

Study: Methadone common cause for painkiller deaths

A new study suggests that methadone is commonly a culprit in prescription opioid deaths--and that Medicaid enrollees could be at particular risk.

The study, which was released by the CDC, concluded that the number of U.S. poisoning deaths has almost doubled between 1999 and 2006, primarily due to deaths in which prescription opioids played a role. This increase in deaths parallels an almost four-fold increase in overall prescription opioid use during the same period.

Medicaid enrollees are especially likely to die from use of prescription opioids, the CDC concluded. For example, the Medicaid population in Washington made up 45.4 percent of the 1,668 people who died of prescription opioid-related overdoses.

To learn more about the study, read this CDC report.

UMMC Hosts First Board Meeting for new MIND Center

 
Pictured are (from left) Dr. Thomas Mosley, director of the MIND Center; former Gov. William Winter, honorary chairman; Patricia McClure, co-chair; Ambassador John N. Palmer, chairman; Suzan Thames, co-chair; Dr. Robert C. Khayat, honorary chair; and Dr. Dan Jones, chancellor of the University of Mississippi.

On Oct. 7, the University of Mississippi Medical Center hosted the first meeting of the Memory Impairment and Neurodegenerative Dementia (MIND) Center Advisory Board.

The MIND Center Advisory Board will be supporting UMMC's development of a state-of-the-art center for the research of Alzheimer's disease and related forms of dementia.

Present at the Board meeting were Ambassador John N. Palmer, chairman of the board; Suzan Thames, Patricia McClure and Ann Calhoon, co-chairs; former Gov. William Winter and Dr. Robert C. Khayat, honorary chairs; Patricia Bennett; William Bynum; John and Lee Corlew; Clay Davidson; Dr. Kathy Travis Gregg; Anne Keenan; Dr. George Patton; Elee Reeves; Stephanie Rippee; Beth Magee Smith; Troy Stovall and Cindy Wilson. Board members not in attendance were Mary Preston Dubberly, David Nutt and former state Sen. Charlie Ross.

Representing the university and the medical center were Chancellor Dan Jones; Interim Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs James Keeton; Dr. Thomas Mosley, director of the MIND Center; Dr. Richard deShazo, chairman of the Department of Medic ine; Dr. Mark Meeks, director of the Division of Geriatrics; Matt Isch, executive director of the Office of Development; Joshua Cogswell, development director for the MIND Center and Dr. Ruth Black, UMMC Chaplain.

A Push For Colleges To Prioritize Mental Health

When budgets get tight, colleges struggle to support the students who need psychiatric help. Experts stress that it is vital that schools keep their counseling centers and other mental health resources intact.

Learn more from NPR here.

Doctors called on to screen all adults for depression

A new position statement from the American College of Preventive Medicine says primary care physicians have a key role in combating the undertreatment of depression.

Read more here.

APF Pearson Early Career Grant Request for Proposals

The American Psychological Foundation (APF) is now accepting proposals for the American Psychological Foundation’s (APF) 2009 Pearson Early Career Grant, which supports psychology’s efforts to improve areas of critical need in society and encourages early career clinicians to work in an area of critical societal need. Attached you will find the formal Request for Proposals.

The deadline for proposals is December 31, 2009.

For more information, see the document attached below or contact Kimberly Palmer Rowsome at krowsome@apa.org.

Download Pearson RFP

DMH Receives Grant for Youth Programs

Over the next five years, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health (DMH) plans to develop and expand programs for youth with mental illness who are transitioning from child mental health services to adult mental health services and/or from an institutional setting to the community.

DMH’s Bureau of Community Services has been awarded a System of Care grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to help with the development and expansion of programs for youth ages 16-21. The $8 million, six-year grant will require state and local match funding. The grant funding will be provided to local Community Mental Health Centers to increase their capacity to serve transitional aged youth and to provide a broad array of accessible and coordinated services/supports.

“Our goal is for youth in Mississippi to have the necessary supports and structure to be prepared for independent living and to be productively engaged in the community,” said Sandra Parks, DMH Director of the Division of Children and Youth. “We strongly believe these programs will enable Mississippi’s youth to have a brighter future.”

In Mississippi, an estimated 12,300 youth between the ages of 18 – 21 years have a serious emotional disorder (SED). According to national studies, youth with a SED have a higher dropout, arrest, and unemployment rate than their peers without a SED. Young adults with a SED are nearly 14 times less likely to complete high school and are 82%  more likely to be unemployed after exiting high school than their peers without a serious emotional disorder.

Anticipated outcomes of this project include:
 improved social and clinical functioning outcomes,
 decreased caregiver strain,
 improved educational events and outcomes,
 fewer juvenile justice and/or adult justice system incidences,
 enhanced employment skills and opportunities,
 fewer out-of-home placements, and
 stable housing situation. 

For more information about services available to children and youth in Mississippi, contact DMH’s Helpline at 1-877-210-8513.

Grenada CIC Pilot Program Begins

During the 2009 Legislative session, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health (DMH) sought and received permission to contract with Life Help Community Mental Health Center for the operation of the Grenada Crisis Intervention Center (CIC). The pilot program began September 1 with the purpose of studying the potential for increased efficiencies and improved access to services without being involuntarily committed.

The goal is for the pilot to improve two of the items NAMI lists as urgent needs for Mississippi. The pilot will help us move towards reducing the use of jails for people under civil commitment orders. In addition, it will save money which in turn will be used for partial funding for other crisis services such as PACT teams.

“I believe the CIC’s may function best as a part of the Community Mental Health Centers array of services and when coupled with a PACT program will help persons who live with mental illnesses to stay in the community and avoid the need for hospitalization,” said Diana Mikula, Director of the Bureau of Mental Health. “We believe this model of operation will provide counties with an option to placing mentally ill individuals in jail before or after being involuntarily committed.”

The CICs are providing treatment closer to patients’ homes and have contributed to the Life Help has committed to maintain the employment of all staff currently working at the Grenada CIC.

“This partnership is a critical step towards transforming Mississippi’s mental health system to one that provides more community-based services and allows the opportunity to study the potential for increased efficiencies and improved access to services without being involuntarily committed,” said Ed LeGrand, DMH Executive Director.

The pilot program is designed to accomplish the following goals:

• To allow individuals with serious mental illnesses to access the psychiatric services they need on a voluntary basis before they decompensate to the point of meeting involuntary commitment criteria.
• To improve the efficiency and decrease the cost per day of operating the CIC.
• To provide psychiatric services to individuals awaiting pre-evaluation screening prior to involuntary commitment.
• To keep individuals connected to their community mental health provider while psychiatric stabilization services are provided.
• To implement a Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), which is commonly described as a mobile psychiatric hospital without walls. PACT team services are targeted at individuals who are high users of hospital services and are designed to prevent the need of repeated hospitalizations.

The CICs have been providing treatment closer to patients’ homes and have contributed to the significant reduction in waiting time for services statewide.

Primary-care docs should do depression screens, group says

A physicians' group has released guidelines recommending that primary-care doctors routinely screen adults for depression. The group, the American College of Preventive Medicine, notes that depressive disorders are associated with substantial morbidity and disability - and that the primary-care encounter is often the earliest and best opportunity to identify the disorder.

This conclusion squares with recent finding that depression is strikingly more common in the U.S. population than once previously thought, affecting 41 percent of people, ages 18 to 32.

Conducting depression screens can be as easy as having patients fill out well-known, reliable depression screening instruments while in the PCP waiting room, such as the Beck Depression Inventory and the Patient Health Questionnaire, which typically take about 5 to 10 minutes to complete, the group notes.

The ACPM would also like to see all PCPs make sure that depressed adults receive timely and appropriate treatment, whether through their own practices, or through an established mental health referral system.

Learn more about the guidelines here.

[ via Anne Zieger, Fierce Healthcare ]

HHS expects to issue parity regulations before 2010

The Department of Health and Human Services plans by January to issue regulations implementing the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addition Equity Act, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an Oct. 2 letter to Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). Franken and other members of Congress have requested an update from HHS and the departments of Labor and Treasury on the status of the regulations, which were supposed to be issued by Oct. 3, 2009.

The law requires group health plans to offer the same financial and treatment limits for mental health and substance-related disorder benefits as they do for medical and surgical benefits, effective for plan years beginning after Oct. 3, 2009. For most plans, this means the effective date is Jan. 1, 2010.

The American Hospital Association supported the legislation.

Congress urges agencies to issue mental health parity regulations

Seventy-three members of the U.S. House are asking the U.S. departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury to quickly issue regulations to implement the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addition Equity Act of 2008. The law requires group health plans to offer the same financial and treatment limits for mental health and substance-related disorder benefits as they do for medical and surgical benefits, effective for plan years beginning after Oct. 3, 2009.

For most plans, this means the effective date is Jan. 1, 2010. “To avoid misinterpretation of the law and to ensure access to critical mental health and substance use disorder services, we hope you will issue timely and specific regulations in accordance with Congressional intent,” the lawmakers wrote.

The American Hospital Association supported the legislation.