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Assessing Racial Equity Impact in Mental Health Policymaking: Reflections and Recommendations
Racism has a long and unique history in the practice and policy of mental health in the United States. In colonial times, for example, it was a common belief that Blacks did not have the intellectual capacity to experience mental illness. In later periods runaway slaves were diagnosed with...
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Point of View – Looking Back with Pride: Mental Health Policy in the 2nd Half of the 20th Century
I have had the good fortune over most of the past two decades to participate in the vast effort made by the Mental Health Association movement to make life better for people with mental illness, especially those who are disabled and rejected by society. There are two tremendously important...
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The Economics of Recovery: When Worlds Collide
To quote Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste - it’s an opportunity.” In the past decade, it’s been one crisis after another: 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina and tsunamis’, Wall Street meltdown, global warming, the gulf oil spill, Haiti, bankrupt governments, even...
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The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by the first President Bush in 1990. The bill, championed by Senator Bob Dole, who himself suffers from a physical disability, was enacted with the intention of eliminating discrimination against the disabled, whether it be a physical or...
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The Economics of Recovery: Threading the Needle
The Government Guy was summing up his four hour PowerPoint presentation on how easy it was for people with disabilities to get a job; “You just need to take advantage of the many work incentives like Ticket-to-Work, PASS Plan, Medicaid Buy-In, IRWEs, Subsidies, Tax Credits, etc., don’t worry...
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NYSPA Report – Mental Health and Addiction Parity: Law and Regulations
On October 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law H.R. 1424, which was known as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The law was more commonly referred to by the system it created, the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP, which was used to stabilize the economy during the...
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Social Security: Dispelling the Myths
Very often in the human services field we encounter people who want to help but just are not equipped. Their desire to make a difference in another’s life or situation prompts them to pass on bits of information that they themselves have learned, experienced or heard. As often happens in the...
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The NYSPA Report – Outpatient Mental Health Clinic Reimbursement Reform
The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) has embarked upon a far-ranging project to reform outpatient mental health clinic programs and the Medicaid reimbursement methodology which supports them. A particular target of this reform process is the elimination of the COPs add-on. COPs (short...
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NYS OMH Engaged in Mental Health Services Restructuring
New York State is engaged in a multi-year initiative to restructure the way the State delivers and reimburses publicly supported mental health services. Over the past 50 years, New York’s public mental health system evolved from one dominated by large State psychiatric hospitals serving tens of...
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Our Economy’s Effect on New York State’s Mental Health Budget
One can hardly turn on a television or listen to the radio without coming across some discussion of our present economic times. Terms like financial tsunami and economic disaster are cavalierly bandied about as ways of describing where our economy presently stands. With unemployment rates reaching...
