Fight Mental Illness Thursday: Ask Republicans for their Healthcare Plan

NAMI Montana friends,

Thursday June 14th is the second Thursday of the month.  That means it's Fight Mental Illness Thursday.  This month we're asking Montanans to contact the Montana Republican Party and ask them for details on their alternative to healthcare reform.  Please give them a call at (406) 442-6469 or send them a message on their website, http://www.mtgop.org/index.php/get-involved/contact-us.html.

Thanks for all your help!  Here's a fuller description of why we're asking them for these details.

Thanks,
Matt

Need for Specifics on Republicans’ Alternative to Healthcare Reform

The primary season is over. The hard-line Republicans and Democrats now know who they are going to vote for and the battle for independent voters is just beginning.  NAMI Montana has leaders and members of both political stripes with plenty falling somewhere in between. The same can be said of all of the one-in-five Montana families that are impacted by serious mental illnesses.

Republicans could finish this election season in control of the presidency, two-thirds of Montana’s congressional delegation, the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office, the Insurance Commissioner’s office, the Secretary of State’s office and both branches of the Montana Legislature. In layman’s terms, the Republicans have the opportunity to take the keys and get behind the wheel of both the federal and state governments. 

If the Republicans get this opportunity, one of their main priorities will be erasing the Democrats’ efforts to rework the nation’s healthcare system. The candidates’ primary talking points have left little doubt about what they will oppose, but Montanans need to know more about what these candidates would like our healthcare system to look like and how they plan to make that vision happen. Montana voters have seen some generalities, but we need to see the specifics.

If you want to accomplish tort reform, what does that look like? If you want to open Montana’s insurance market up to out-of-state companies, will the State Auditor police those contracts or should it be strictly buyer-beware? Will there be protections to ensure that insurance companies don’t refuse to cover people with medical issues or histories of having medical issues? What options will be available to Montana families that cannot afford private insurance due economic circumstances or health issues that priced them out of the market?

These are politically-loaded questions, but the answers are critical to the lives of every Montanan who will come in contact, either personally or through a loved one, with our state’s medical system. The Democrats’ healthcare reform efforts have given us a good idea where they stand on these issues. Montana’s Republican Party and its candidates need to formalize their vision for our healthcare system so Montana’s voters can use that information to determine which candidates to support this fall. Healthcare is too big of an issue for us to wait until after the election to find out the specifics of each party’s agenda.

An Issue of Serious Concern

NAMI Montana received this email and thought it should be shared. The email's author is quietly becoming one of the state's leading advocates for Montanans who live with mental illness who are incarcerated.

NAMI Montana, 

I must express some serious concerns about MSH forensic patients appearing before the parole board. No one on the parole board has experience or knowledge about mental illness and the success with medications, etc. I just got off the phone with a mother who is extremely upset that the parole board ordered a pre-release placement, where her son will not get the necessary mental health treatment. The treatment team had recommended a placement at a mental health center group home in Missoula. I have sat in on many parole board hearings where the parole board members intimidate and challenge a person on a GBMI commitment who is left speechless, anxious and shattered after the hearing. The parole board members are familiar with dealing with criminals, not persons who were determined to be Guilty but Mentally Ill.

I would like to see some changes with the governor’s appointments to the parole board. At least two members need to be familiar and comfortable with mental illnesses; either persons in recovery, family members, sympathetic providers, someone from NAMI—anyone who can provide knowledgeable and persuasive input regarding mental illness and how people can recover.

Thanks.

Janette Reget, LCSW

Fight Mental Illness Thursday - Service Dogs for Injured Soldiers

NAMI Friends,

Every second Thursday of the month is “Fight Mental Illness” Thursday. After fighting for children’s crisis services at the state-level last month, this month we’re moving to the federal level and fighting so soldiers with severe post-traumatic stress and/or mild traumatic brain injuries can access service dogs. Specifically, we’re asking supporters to sign this web petition, http://www.change.org/petitions/secretary-of-the-army-john-mchugh-change-the-army-s-restrictive-policy-on-service-dogs, asking the Secretary of the Army to change the Army’s service dog policy to make it clear that: (1) service dogs are not a treatment of last resort, (2) soldiers with service dogs will have housing accommodations where they can use their service dog, and (3) that the service dog accreditation standard be broadened to include other reputable service dog training organizations.

If you don’t feel comfortable signing a web petition, you can all the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army at 703-545-0672 and ask to leave a message requesting that the Secretary of the Army change the policy.  The Secretary of the Army probably doesn’t get a lot of call in requests, so you’ll have to be patient with the staff.

Here's an article from the Billings Gazette that describes why we're asking you to get involved in this fight. http://billingsgazette.com/article_ba319e78-23f6-5971-a4f1-c560b58c4cf5.html

Thanks for your help!

Matt

Matt Kuntz

Executive Director

NAMI Montana

Fight Mental Illness Thursday - Kids' Crisis Services

NAMI Montana is excited to announce that the second Thursday of each month will be Fight Mental Illness Thursday. On Fight Mental Illness Thursday, we’re asking Montanans to make one phone call or email to support the fight against mental illness.

On Thursday April 12^th, we’re asking as many Montanans as possible to call into Governor Schweitzer’s office or send them an electronic message asking Governor Schweitzer to develop a plan to increase access to mental health crisis services for Montana’s children. Suicide is a major problem in this state and we desperately need services for Montanans younger than 18 who are actively suicidal.

Please take a few minutes and make your voice heard by calling Governor Schweitzer at (406) 444-3111 or sending him an electronic message through this link http://governor.mt.gov/contact/commentsform.asp. Montana.

Please share this blog post on facebook, Twitter, by email, Google +, or whatever to help other support the fight against suicide in Montana. We can make a difference for families in need.

Answers to a few questions about this call-in (email-in):

First, what’s so important about this Thursday?

We’re starting Fight Mental Illness Thursdays on the second Thursday of each month as a way of making it very easy for people across Montana to make mental illness advocacy a part of their monthly routine. There will always be a need for phone trees and other ways of getting people involved for targeted calls for committee hearings, etc. But we’re trying this as a way of getting a larger amount of people involved as consistent voices in the fight against serious mental illness.

The lack of children’s mental health crisis services in this state is one of the most critical weaknesses in Montana’s mental illness treatment system. Our families of children in mental health crisis are desperate for some kind of help. The serious nature of that need, especially in relation to Montana’s consistently high suicide rates, led NAMI Montana to choose it as the topic of our first Fight Mental Illness Thursday.

Second, why have people call Governor Schweitzer’s office even though he’s term-limited out?

This is a great question. The next governor and Legislature will definitely have their collective ears bent on this issue after the election and throughout the legislative session. The question is what can we do to give these critical services the best chance possible of ending up in the next governor’s budget that is proposed to the Legislature.

The Governor just released a major plan for a long-term fix for the administrative pension program. We'd love to have his team apply a similar process to children's crisis services.

The worst that he can tell us is “no.” NAMI Montana thinks that it’s worth a shot. There’s too much at stake not to try.

Montana's New Psychiatric Consultation Service

NAMI Montana is always on the lookout for new methods of increasing the access to high quality psychiatric care, especially to our rural communities. One new program seeks to meet this goal by providing medical providers with the ability to receive a consultation from a psychiatrist.

The materials below are all provided by AWARE. We are providing them for informational purposes only. Please let us know of any other programs that you'd like us to feature.

Thanks,

matt

PSYCHIATRIC EDUCATIONAL CONSULTATION SERVICES

Many healthcare providers living in rural areas often treat patients with a mental illness due to patients not being able to access psychiatry because of where they live. Questions come up for those providers when treating some patients with a serious disabling mental illness (SDMI) and since psychiatry is not their specialty, it may be more of a challenge to treat a patient. Through supports provided by DPHHS, AMDD Division, AWARE, Inc. is working to bring psychiatric consultation educational services to providers in need. The services provided are educational in nature and are intended to provide psychiatric educational supports to treating Physician’s, PA’s, APRN’s, healthcare facilities, nursing care facilities and detention facilities. No doctor patient relationship is intended nor implicitly created. The relationship is between the treating provider and the Psychiatrist and is designed to increase the capacity of the treating physician to serve those with an SDMI in their community over time.

AWARE PSYCHIATRISTS

· Dr. Len Lantz; Dr. Krista David; Dr. Tom Hoffman; Dr. Lynn Mousel; Dr. Celeste Pfister; Dr. Alan Reyes; Dr. John Tupper

SERVICES

· This is a service provided by AWARE Inc. Psychiatrists, to Physician’s, Physician Assistant’s, APRN’s, healthcare facilities, nursing care facilities, and detention facilities

seeking educational information regarding an individual that qualifies as an Adult with a Severely Disabling Mental Illness (SDMI)

· Education provided by the psychiatrists is solely based on the premise of the information being sought after by the primary caregiver, is a general question from a provider, not geared toward a specific patient.

· Grand Rounds Style based

· The system for providers to request this service may be accessed by either email or phone

HOW DOES IT WORK

· Service availability, Monday thru Friday, 8am-5pm, regular office hours

· Initial email/phone call made by provider to request a psychiatrist call back–

Email: DocTalk@aware-inc.org

or phone: (406)449-3120 REQUEST THE “DOCTALK LINE”

· Request YOUR need and your own availability to schedule a call back time from a psychiatrist within the Monday thru Friday, 8am-5pm office hours

· Calls can range from several minutes, up to an hour for more complexity

*** An AWARE rep is available to travel to your site/community to discuss individualized needs that your community may have regarding this service

Please Contact: Dawn Ann Peterson, Practice Manager At 406-560-2527, or email dpeterson@aware-inc.org

FUTURE POTENTIAL

This educational service is seen as a potential stepping stone towards bringing telepsychiatry services to rural communities that may include direct patient care. Services may also be an opportunity for long-term patient care through telepsychiatry from AWARE doctors, in conjunction with the patient’s primary caregiver.

Two Posts from NIMH's Blog

I wanted to point out these two great blog posts from Dr. Insel on research advances and the direction of research. I hope you like them.

matt

Treatment Development: Where Do We Go From Here
by Dr. Thomas Insel

NIMH's Top 10 Research Advances of 2011
by Dr. Thomas Insel

The Wrong Diagnosis

I applaud the New York Review of Books for publishing Dr. Marcia Angell’s articles on “The Illusions of Psychiatry.” Three years ago, I responded to my step-brother’s suicide by giving up my practice as a corporate attorney to become the Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness for Montana (NAMI Montana). Shortly after that, another one of my loved ones was struck by serious mental illness. I have been personally and professionally immersed in the stark realities of serious mental illnesses and the haphazard treatment system that has evolved to treat those conditions.

While I disagree with many of Dr. Angell’s conclusions, I could not agree more that the method of diagnosing mental illnesses needs serious improvement. This ineffective diagnostic methodology has led to too many people taking medications that they do not need and too many people that do need medications taking the wrong types or dosages. As Dr. Angell described, some of the most heart-breaking examples of this systemic failure involve the improper medication of children. The financial impacts of these misdiagnoses on the public and private healthcare system are staggering. The pharmaceutical industry’s marketing efforts deserve some of the blame for this state of affairs, but it is not the main culprit.

The real problem is that medical providers are trying to diagnose biologically-based conditions without biologically-based screening tests. Doctors do not have effective brain scans, blood tests, or other tangible biological screening tool to identify which patients are affected by biologically-based mental illnesses. Instead, they try to use patients’ perceptions and behaviors to discern the presence or absence of a biological condition. It is the equivalent of trying to determine whether a patient has a broken leg by asking them if they can walk or if they are in pain. If we were forced to apply that method of diagnosing broken legs, one would expect to find a number of books decrying the number of casts on people that did not need them and the number of people in need of casts that are forced to go without.

We must find a way to foster the development of biologically-based mental illness diagnostic tools. There are many ways of going about this task and many of them would likely succeed. Personally, I recommend establishing a Mental Illness Screening X Prize, similar to the multi-million dollar prizes that have been used to stimulate innovation in commercial space flight and fuel efficient vehicles. The winner of the Mental Illness Screening X Prize would be able to use a biological test to determine whether a person has either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

That biological test would be a major step toward revamping our broken mental illness treatment system to address many of the legitimate issues that Dr. Angell described in her article. With the billions of dollars that our nation spends on treating these conditions each year, it is time to make the development of that screening tool a priority.

Matt Kuntz, JD
Executive Director
NAMI Montana