-
How Will Health Care Reform Affect Older Adults with Mental Health Problems?
Even though the recent health care reform legislation substantially neglects mental health concerns, older adults with mental health conditions will benefit from it in four ways. First, they will benefit from improved coverage of physical health care, which is of considerable importance to older...
-
Taking Stock: Mental Health in the Workplace
Mental illness has a broad reach in the workplace. From corporate boardrooms and your accountant’s desk to the fields of star athletes, this set of diseases can take many forms. It doesn’t discriminate either. Mental illness affects men and women, rich and poor, entry-level staff to senior...
-
Parity for Consumers: What We Learned, and Where We Go from Here
State and federal parity laws help end decades of discriminatory insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse services by insurance companies. Historically, families with mental illness have faced terrible choices, from skipping care altogether to facing bankruptcy to pay for it. In New...
-
No More Flying Solo: Why Integration Works
This will be the ninth time you’ve visited your primary care doctor in three months. Your arm rests on the chair, and you wonder why your fatigue has not subsided despite different treatments she has tried with you. You considered seeking out a second opinion, but you stopped yourself since...
-
New Directions in Healthcare and the Promise of Recovery
In case you didn’t notice, this is a time of radical change in the behavioral health and health fields. However, challenging the policy and fiscal landscapes have become, it’s important to remember that we’re all still in the business of helping people to recover, achieve goals, and be part...
-
Mental Health in Health Care Reform: High Hopes but Big Battles Ahead
Federal health care reform promises health coverage for most of the 50 million American citizens and documented immigrants who are currently uncovered. This will include coverage of mental health and substance abuse treatment. It also promises improved quality of physical and behavioral health...
-
Medicating Mindfully: How Your Doctor Thinks
It’s been said that prescribing medication for our patients is as much art as science. Certainly, the science of psychopharmacology has exploded over the past three decades. Our understanding of how and where medications work has become identifiable and precise. Effects and side effects have been...
-
Can New York State Healthcare Reforms Advance Recovery?
In 1971, I spent 6 weeks in a Long Island hospital psychiatric ward for severe depression, the beginning of my long and rewarding personal recovery journey. In the ensuing years, I learned hard lessons about the great limitations of traditional treatments and the critical role hope, dignity, work,...
-
The World of Bullying
The topic of bullying is one that has garnered a lot of attention in the last few years. Events like the shooting at Columbine High School, and the tragedies that were the deaths of Pheobe Prince and Tyler Clementi certainly helped move the topic to the front page as opposed to page six. Bullying...
-
The NYSPA Report – Medicaid, Behavioral Healthcare, and the 2011 NYS Budget: Taking Stock
There can be no question that 2011 has been a tough budget year all around, including in New York State. The end of the legislative session provides an opportune time to take stock and see where we are. When our new governor, Andrew Cuomo, took office in January, New York State was facing a $10.5...
