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March 28, 2007Progress on Budget It appears that Governor Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Bruno and Assembly Speaker Silver have reached a general agreement on budget projections in anticipation of the April 1 budget deadline. The tentative agreement calls for $1 billion in new funding, half of which will be targeted to school aid. Over the years many of us have seen negotiations fall apart in the last minute and both the Governor and the Senate Majority Leader have acknowledged that possibility. We have continued our communications and advocacy with Senate and Assembly staff around our priorities of building on the $2 million in funding initiatives for community services, insure funding for Parents with Psychiatric Disabilities, The Geriatric Mental Health Act and Suicide Prevention and advocate for insuring that anti-depressants are added back to the mental health medication carve out in the Preferred Drug List and that 500 of the 2000 new beds in the budget are dedicated to adult home residents. We still have great concern that there is a limited amount of money available in the mental hygiene table this year when the legislature does reach an agreement on the numbers. That is why it is important that you give the message to your Senator and Assembly member about our priorities as many of you did two weeks ago at our Legislative Day. It is very difficult to meet any of the priority needs of individuals with psychiatric disabilities, developmental disabilities and addiction disorders with a limited funding pool. It is a sad commentary on public policy priorities when there is a billion dollars in new funding, of which less than 2% is dedicated to mental hygiene. Thankfully because of the strong and dedicated leadership of Assembly member Rivera and Senator Morahan, we know that this funding will be targeted appropriately and will include funding for the needs of individuals with psychiatric disabilities and community based services. Health Insurance Coverage for Mental Health Workers Over the last several years, the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) has provided funding to providers to help defray the cost of health insurance coverage for direct care staff. We have has a few conversations with providers who represent both mental health and developmental disabilities recipients about making this a future advocacy priority in mental health. We will keep you posted as we get more information about the funding streams related to this program. OMH Offering Clinical Training and Consultation for Treating Children and Youth with Trauma-based or Depressive Symptoms The New York State Office of Mental Health’s Division of Children and Families will again offer an intensive training program in evidence-based treatment for children and youth with trauma-based and/or depressive symptoms. This three-day training will be followed by one year of expert consultation to help clinicians develop expertise in providing these treatment models. The trainings will be scheduled for June or July 2007. To design this training program, we worked with the national experts who developed these effective treatment models. Specifically, for Trauma-Focused CBT, we partnered with Judith Cohen, MD, and Anthony Mannarino, PhD, both of Allegheny General Hospital and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. For CBT for Depressive Symptoms, we worked with John F. Curry, PhD, of the Duke Child & Family Study Center and Kevin Stark, PhD, of the University of Texas at Austin. Much of the training will be delivered by these experts. To participate, programs and designated staff must agree to: •
attend the full three-day clinical training program If your agency is interested in participating in this program and can make the commitment of time and staff necessary to implement these treatment models we asked that you review the attached information on appropriate children and youth for these treatments to ensure that your clinicians will have ample opportunity to apply their new skills and meet program requirements. Informational meetings will be held in March and April. Please see attached schedule. These meetings are not mandatory for participation in the project. They are a chance for you to hear about the project and ask questions. If you are interested but can not attend the meeting, please contact Anne Smigel at (518) 473-6902 for an informational powerpoints and an application. IN THE NEWS Suicide
Comedy "Wristcutters" Leaps Into Theaters The suicide comedy "Wristcutters: A Love Story" will be released in August, with a marketing campaign featuring cardboard cutouts of characters jumping off a bridge, electrocuting and hanging themselves. The signage will be placed on telephone poles and trees in major markets beginning next month. "We just hope they don't cause too many accidents," said Courtney Solomon, a partner in AfterDark Films, which acquired North American rights to rookie Croatian director Goran Dukic's dark romantic comedy and will release the film through indie distributor Lionsgate. "Wristcutters," based on a short story by Israeli writer Etgar Keret, follows a group of young adults stuck in purgatory after committing suicide. Patrick Fugit ("Almost Famous") will play a heartbroken member of the group, who embarks on a "Wizard of Oz"-style road trip. Shannyn Sossamon ("The Holiday) plays a hitchhiker who claims her fate is all a big mistake. They stop at a magical camp run by an eccentric man (musician Tom Waits) on their way to meeting the messiah (Will Arnett). The film debuted at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win best feature honors at last year's Gen Art Film Festival. Solomon already has had test screenings of the R-rated film and plans to begin an Internet and college campus campaign targeting target ages 17-30 in April before its platform release. Mental Health America’s TAKE ACTION Alert Dear friends, We need your help. AfterDark Films plans to release a Lionsgate Entertainment movie this summer called Wristcutters: A Love Story. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year to some acclaim. Mental Health America and its national partners have not yet been able to view the film and cannot yet share any detail on the content. This month, however, AfterDark will launch an alarming “shock and awe” advertising campaign featuring cutouts of the movie characters in the states in which they kill themselves (e.g., jumping off bridges and electrocuting and hanging themselves). These signs will hang from telephone poles and trees in communities nationwide. Interestingly enough, recent outrage around the advertising campaign of another one of the companies’ films, Captivity, forced AfterDark to remove billboards that showed graphic images of women, being kidnapped, confined, tortured and killed. On March 12, Mental Health America and 13 of its national colleagues signed a joint letter to AfterDark and Lionsgate, asking the companies to drop Wristcutters’ marketing campaign. Our letters and calls have gone unanswered by AfterDark. Lionsgate claims they have nothing to do with marketing decisions. You Can Help stop the Wristcutters suicide marketing campaign. Send
a handwritten or typed letter to Lionsgate and AfterDark demanding
they pull the marketing campaign. Use the messages and contact information
below. The
planned marketing campaign for Wristcutters, which features graphic
depictions of suicide, is both alarming and dangerous. Mr.
Jon Feltheimer
Mr.
Courtney Solomon
Kids
with Mental Illness Often Rejected Socially NEW YORK - Research suggests that a "substantial minority" of American adults are reluctant to let their children interact with children who suffer from depression or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. About one out of five parents would not want these children as neighbors, in their child's classroom, or as their child's friend, report Jack K. Martin and colleagues from Indiana University in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Older children and boys with mental conditions are most likely to be rejected. This troubling pattern, the investigators report, appears to result from perceptions that a mentally ill child may be "dangerous." "If, as it seems, the 'mental illness' of either children or adults signals danger to the public, this barrier must be addressed by future political, legal, and research agendas," according to Martin and colleagues. The research stems from interviews with more than 1,100 adults as part of the General Social Survey administered by the National Opinion Research Center. The interviewees were given descriptions of children of various ages with asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression or "normal" ups and downs of childhood. Levels of rejection for children with depression and ADHD were two to three times higher than those reported for children with asthma or "normal" childhood troubles. The results showed that almost 30 percent of parents said they would not like their child to become friends with a child who was depressed and more than 18 percent wouldn't want to live next door to a family with a depressed child. Roughly 23 percent of parents said they preferred that their child not make friends with a child with behaviors consistent with ADHD and 22 percent wouldn't want to live next door to a family with a child with ADHD. "In line with the 1999 Surgeon General's report on mental illness, our analyses point to continuing barriers to public acceptance," note the report's authors. "While not as significant an obstacle as the rejection of adults, social distance does reflect stigma surrounding children's mental health problems." They hope a greater understanding of the roots of this stigma will lead to effective efforts to confront the persistent lack of social acceptance of the mentally ill.
N.Y.
Gov. Spitzer Signs Civil Confinement Legislation into Law New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer this month signed into law a new bill that will allow for the ongoing supervision and custody of sex offenders at state psychiatric centers upon the expiration of their criminal sentence. According to Spitzer’s office, under the Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act, mental health professionals will determine whether a detained sex offender has a mental abnormality that predisposes him or her to commit future sex crimes. The new law will create the Office of Sex Offender Management in the State Division of Criminal Justice Services to develop a comprehensive policy and standards for the evaluation, treatment and management of sex offenders. The Attorney General would have the burden to prove the mental abnormality to a jury. Under the unanimous finding, a judge would order an individual either confined to a mental health facility or require the individual to undergo intensive supervision after his or her release from prison, according to the new law. According to the Journal News, New York State will join 19 other states that have civil confinement laws. New York mental health advocates have expressed concerns about the new law, which permits the civil confinement of sex offenders in state psychiatric centers, which they say are not appropriate places for the offenders. “Civil commitment in state mental hospitals is not the appropriate policy answer to confinement on treating sexual offenders,” Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), told MHW. The Office of Sexual Offender Management however, will provide a mechanism for more appropriate comprehensive interagency response that will integrate sexual offender treatment, along with parole and probation services, and other appropriate community services, he said. Rosenthal noted that a previous proposal pushed by former N.Y. Governor George Pataki would have sent more people to state hospitals who would not have been afforded community supervision. “We’re trying to make the best of the situation,” said Rosenthal. “The major concern we have is the stigma associated with equating sexual offenders with people who are in psychiatric facilities,” Glen Liebman, chief executive of the Mental Health Association in New York State (MHANYS), told MHW. One major reason advocates decry stigma about mental illness is when legislation like this perpetuates the stigma of people with mental illness, he said. Another major issue is funding, he said. Advocates are also concerned about the funding that is part of this new law which is more than $70 million, said Liebman. “Our general concern is that we, as advocates, have been fighting so long and so hard for more funding for community mental health services,” said Liebman. “Yet, when [it’s about providing] funding for sexual offenders, money can be found.” The state Office of Mental Health will have greater involvement in the process than was originally thought to happen, which is a good thing, he added. “There’s going to be more clinical oversight in the process through OMH than there would have been in the past.” |
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