An excellent link for MH/SA/DD news

http://mentalhopenews.blogspot.com/

Membership on Secretary Benton's Working Groups

The list of members of DHHS Secretary Benton's Facility Management Working Groups has been announced:

A. Central Hospital Construction Review Group
Dr. Marvin Swartz, Duke & member, Mental Health Commission
Mary Silverman First Health of Carolinas (Moore/Richmond)
Mary Beck and Eileen Spahl, UNC
Dr. Tony Lindsey, Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, UNC Dept Psychiatry

B. Management and Operations Work Group
Peter Mumma, New Hanover Health Network
Laura Thomas, Carolinas Health Care – Mecklenburg
Carmen R. Vincent, University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina
Dr. David Rubinow, Chair, Department of Psychiatry, UNC
Dr. Tony Lindsey, Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, UNC Dept Psychiatry
Eileen Spahl, Director, UNC Psychiatry Inpatient & Rehab Center
Mike Pedneau, Former Director of Dorothea Dix & DMHDDSAS
Mike Hennike, Former Section Head, State Operated Services
Dr. Ranota Hall, Former Clinical Director, JUH Child Psychiatry
Debbie Dihoff, NAMI
Dr. Michael Zarzar, Psychiatrist, Raleigh
Donald H. Baucom, Prof. Psychology, UNC & NC Psychol. Assoc.

C. Crisis Services Group
Peter Mumma, New Hanover Health Network
Amy Blackwell, Wake Medical
Wendy Webster, Duke University Hospital
Sarah Wiltgen, Brynn Marr Hospital, Onslow
Dr. David Rubinow, Chair, Department of Psychiatry, UNC
Jack Naftel, Professor of Psychiatry, UNC
Dr. Tony Lindsey, Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs, UNC Dept Psychiatry
Ellen Holloman, Director, Durham Center
Mike Watson, Director, Sandhills Center
Foster Norman, Director, Five County-Vance-Granville
Barbara Beatty, County Commissioner, Catawba County
Patrice Reesler, Deputy Director, NCCCA
John Tote, NC Mental Health Association
Robin Huffman, NC Psychiatric Association
Dr. Marvin Swartz, Duke & member, Mental Health Commission
Dr. Brent Myers, NC College of Emergency Physicians
John Meads, Private Provider-1st Responder
Dr. Darlyne Menscer, NC Medical Society
Carl Britton-Watkins, State CFAC

What Would the Next Governor Do?

What would you do about mental health and substance abuse if you were the next Governor?

This Website is based on the idea that mental health and substance abuse affects everyone. If you're reading this, you already know this and don't need to be convinced. But the politicians and policymakers do -- not that they don't have loved ones who suffer from mental illness or substance abuse, not that they don't have friends who do. But somehow this realization is divorced from their daily work of campaigning and policymaking. And they have learned that this blind spot is shared by the electorate at large.

This Website strives to change that. If enough people join us by saying their vote is strongly influenced by MH/SA issues, politicians will have to take notice.

Why is this important?

Because we have learned since 2001 that it is the attention or inattention of the Governor that determines what happens in MH/SA. And because of what the current administration has done, we now have a mess that will take a lot of work and a lot of money to fix.

It seems to me that as the enormity of the current crisis has become apparent, the state government has been limited in what it can do. And, all things considered, this is understandable. The General Assembly has been reluctant to invest new money in a situation where it seems appropriated money has not been fully spent and, apparently, fraud has come into play. The new DHHS Secretary, an able and honorable man, is doing the best he can with the situation he has inherited. I think everyone realizes that only a new Governor can bring the new start that is needed.

What I would say to the next Governor is this:

1. This is a big problem. Fixing it will not be cheap.

2. The first thing that needs to happen is to restore the safety net. This means that everyone in the state must have access to a full-service clinical home where assessment and treatment services are available.

3. For this to happen, policymakers must stop trying to make the clinical needs of sick people match the contortions required by multiple funding streams. The design of the mental health / substance abuse system must be based on clinical needs, with funding flows supporting that.

4. Substance abuse treatment capacity, including medical detox, needs to be expanded dramatically throughout the state. (This should be very attractive to politicians, given the high returns of money invested in substance abuse treatment -- in human terms, in mental health system terms, and in terms of reducing criminal behavior.)

5. The clinical home must be designed so that the clinical workforce can be restored. The current Administration's policy could not have been better designed if it had explicitly wanted to drive dedicated professionals out of public mental health. This needs to be reversed.

The next Governor needs to understand that the imperatives of privatization and the imperatives of a safety net are mutually exclusive. You cannot have a safety net in an unfettered "any willing provider" environment. You have to have a clinical home where patient care is coordinated and provided.

And, to repeat, it won't be cheap.

Is anyone who wants to be Governor able to do this?

Welcome to NCMentalHealthVote.org

Thanks for your interest in NCMentalHealthVote.org. To get things started, I'm posting the remarks that I made at our formal announcement/press conference this morning in front of the State Legislative Building in Raleigh.

We really would like to hear from you - your experiences with North Carolina's mental health, substance abuse, and developmental disabilities system - good and bad - as well as your thoughts about how to improve things. The new DHHS Secretary Benton has made some very impressive first steps, but we all know the problems are so deep and pervasive that it will take years of committed leadership to bring real improvement to North Carolina's mental health system - hence our focus on the 2008 election and the next leaders of North Carolina.

My remarks:

I’m Dr. John Gilmore, a Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I am Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program. I’m also Chair of the Legislative Committee of the North Carolina Psychiatric Association.

I’m here to announce the creation of NCMental HealthVote.org, a project intended to raise awareness of the enormous problems facing the mental health system in North Carolina. We hope that this effort will help make mental health care in North Carolina an issue that each candidate will address during the upcoming election, one that each candidate will offer solutions for.

Through our website, bumperstickers, advertisements, and other activities, we hope to help educate the candidates and voters about the critical issues that need to be dealt with. NCMental HealthVote.org is non-partisan and is endorsing quality mental health care for the citizens of NC – not specific political candidates or parties.

The mental health care system in North Carolina has undergone a so-called “reform” over the past several years, one that has included the privatization of the public mental health system and the downsizing of state psychiatric hospital beds. This reform has left a system in chaos.

The evidence of the system’s failure comes every day as North Carolina’s citizens are falling through the cracks, unable to find a psychiatrist or other provider who will take care of them. We wait, sometimes for days, in emergency rooms because there are not enough psychiatric hospital beds in the community or in our state hospitals. There is no safety net and we are all paying the price.

When psychiatrists stand up and speak out, you know things are really bad. As a group, we’d rather sit back, listen, observe, and quietly do our job. But things are really bad, and we are speaking out. We do believe that once the citizens of North Carolina and our elected leaders understand what the problems are, they will want to fix them. Mental illness is very common, and we all know someone, a family member or friend – even ourselves - who has had to deal with a mental illness.

NCMentalHealthVote.org was developed by the N.C. Psychiatric Association, and has been joined by other partners, including the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in North Carolina, the Mental Health Association of North Carolina, the Foundation of Hope, and many other organizations and individuals. Today, NCMentalHealthVote.org is starting a constructive, non-partisan discussion that will stop the ongoing failures and create something all North Carolinians deserve - a decent mental health care system that works.