Addictions Treatment in VR

October 6, 2008

“Are services in the virtual world near?” is an article in this months Addiction Professional Magazine, highlighting Preferred Family Healthcare’s work in Second Life. Addiction Professional is the addiction treatment and prevention field’s premier trade journal.

The article focuses on Dick Dillon’s work at Nonprofit Commons, in Second Life, and his organization’s plans for delivering behavioral healthcare and substance abuse treatment in the virtual space. It’s a positive article that will reach lots of healthcare leaders and professionals. Click here to read or here http://tinyurl.com/4r3pyt

Thanks Dick for mentioning the National Council! That helps us put a shining light on Second Life and the power of social networking for our members, and helps us all.


30 Seconds

September 20, 2008

A little imagination and 30 seconds - that’s all it takes to end stigma


Flashback to May 2008

September 2, 2008

Short clip of National Council Conference, Boston MA


National Council 2008 Conference Flashback from Gale Beckwith on Vimeo.


TechSoup

August 1, 2008

Highly recommended service to improve your tech library of tools and software.

TechSoup.org offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support. In addition to online information and resources, they offer a product philanthropy service called TechSoup Stock. Here, nonprofits can access donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners.

www.techsoup.org


Also From Maine

July 15, 2008

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)

Sen. Collins has supported programs to expand access to healthcare for citizens living in rural areas. She co-authored the Access to Affordable Health Care Act, which takes significant strides toward universal health coverage by bringing millions more Americans into the insurance system, strengthening the healthcare safety net and addressing Medicare inequities. As co-chair of the Senate Alzheimer’s Caucus, Sen. Collins has worked to increase funding for Alzheimer research and strengthen support for family caregivers.

Sen. Collins is commitment to mental health issues. She is focused on preventing parents whose children have serious emotional disturbances from being forced to forfeit legal custody to state agencies for the sole purpose of obtaining mental health services for their children. Senator Collins is also a champion for preserving Medicaid services for Americans living with mental illnesses and addiction disorders.


Dorothea Dix

June 22, 2008

Dorothea Dix

Do you know who Dorothea Dix is?

She is an historical personage worthy of note by all National Council members, particularly those who participated in this week’s Hill Day. Bob Beckwith, National Council IT manager, mentioned her in the previous blog entry. You may find a look at her fascinating life particularly inspiring as you pursue making a difference in the lives of people around the country.

Up in my neck of the woods, Dix is true hero for her lobbying efforts to establish hospitals for the insane poor and her being named Superintendent of Union Army Nurses by President Abraham Lincoln. Born in 1802 in Hampden, Maine, she has one of the state’s psychiatric centers is named for her, as well as a local park. Several towns in Maine are named for her family, as her grandfather was a major land owner in the state in the 19th century. The child of a highly dysfunctional immediate family, Dix transformed her childhood experience and inherent compassion into a crusade to help those suffering from mental illness.

Dix was the daughter of an alcoholic itinerant minister who wrote religious tracts and a seriously depressed mother who sent her and her two siblings to Boston to live with their grandparents. Like many abused children, Dix later refused to ever reveal the extent of the abuse she suffered. It was a trip to England after a severe breakdown that exposed her to social reform and her true vocation.

Returning to Massachusetts, Dix was asked to teach Sunday school to 20 women at the East Cambridge jail. Later walking through the dungeons of the jail — over the strong objections of the jailer — Dix was appalled at the filth, misery and suffering she saw among the insane and naked inmates. She confronted the jailer and was told that the insane didn’t feel heat or cold. Nonetheless, she was able to get the inmates clothed and a stove installed in the main cell.

From 1840-41, Dix undertook a complete inventory of jails and almshouses throughout the state and wrote a highly confrontive report, Memorial, to the state Legislature:

I proceed, Gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of Insane Persons confined within this Commonwealth, in cages, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.

Her lobbying resulted in a bill to expand the state’s mental hospital in Worcester.
Dix took her crusade to other states, including New Hampshire, Louisiana, and North Carolina, and even the Maritimes in Canada. The first state hospital built because of her efforts was in New Jersey. She was instrumental in getting established the first hospital for the mentally ill in Pennsylvania. Traveling thousands of miles to every state east of the Mississippi River, she worked with numerous legislators to make reforms, always focusing on humanitarian reasoning. Interestingly enough, she held rather low opinions of politicians, which she diplomatically hid.

“They are the meanest and lowest party demagogues, shocking to say, — the basest characters,” she wrote.

Nonetheless, Dix was tireless in her efforts and completely determined to make reforms. “They say nothing can be done here!’ I reply, ‘I know no such word in the vocabulary I adopt!” she wrote to a friend.

Dix even pursued legislation for the establishment of a federal hospital for the mentally ill and handicapped, with money from the sale of federal land to be distributed to the states for creation of more hospitals. The bill passed both houses of Congress, but was vetoed in 1854 by President Franklin Pierce, who said that federal government shouldn’t be in the business of social welfare. Defeated, Dix took her crusade to Europe.

At the age of 60, Dix became Superintendent of Union Army Nurses, organizing care for both Union and Confederate soldiers. She also worked diligently to change the perception of female nurses, but was less successful in this position.

She eventually retired to the New Jersey State Hospital, where she maintained a suite made available to her by the state Legislature. Dix continued to write letters to people around the world in support of reform until her death in 1887. She is buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.


Tireless, determined and passionate, Dorothea Dix truly is a hero and her life an inspiration to all who care and fight for mental health.

Sources:
Dorothea Dix, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Dix
Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix, by Frances Tiffany, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin Company
Biography of Dorothea Lynde Dix, North Carolina Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services, http://www.dhhs.state.nc.us/MHDDSAS/DIX/dorothea.html

–Jeanne Curran, friend of the National Council


Build a Community

June 18, 2008

The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare is establishing resources to help our members build community using social networking technology. The word “Community” in our organization’s name could be said to refer to an idea John Kennedy famously promoted with the Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963 - turning back over a hundred years of malaise since President Pierce vetoed a bill proposed by Dorothea Dix in 1854. However, to build a community service you need to have a working community. Our members desperately need ways to connect and network, while facing severe cuts in funding.

The National Council’s annual conference, the member list serve, NC Live webinars and numerous face-to-face meetings use traditional media and the tried and true technologies of the past (and present). We need to harness the social networking tools used by the technorati. These services and products are available and often free. Lets use them.

Bob Beckwith, IT Manager, National Council


Clinical Excellence

June 5, 2008

Linda

Improving quality means pursuing clinical excellence and when there isn’t enough money to do it right, we must refuse to do it. We must challenge the service fad of the month; we must demand rates that cover costs and include training and supervision; and we must resist never ending system re-organization that is proven to have no impact on improving consumer outcomes. We must remember that getting well takes time and money and there are no shortcuts.


Memorial Day 2008

May 26, 2008

As a veteran, I am pained by daily reports of increasing mental illnesses that our troops face and of how hard it is for them to get help. This is a new kind of war, with citizen soldiers being called to multiple deployments. And help for their serious mental health issues lies outside our overloaded military system.

- Jeannie Campbell, executive vice president of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare

Across our nation, there are more than 2,000 community-based mental health organizations, ready and qualified to provide quality psychological care to our veterans close to their homes.


Medicaid Moratoria

May 22, 2008

The United States Senate today passed the Iraq war supplemental appropriation bill by a 75-22 (veto proof) margin. The bill included provisions to delay by one year, seven recent Medicaid regulations proposed by the Bush Administration, including slashing of funds for case management and the rehabilitative services option.

 

On April 23, the House of Representatives also passed a bill delaying the proposed Medicaid cuts by a veto-proof, 349-62 margin.

 

The House and Senate passage of these Medicaid moratoria provisions takes us one step closer to our goal of protecting and strengthening the most important funding source for the public mental health systemBut we have much left to do as we head toward a vote on the final package and the threat of a presidential veto looms large.


38th Annual Conference

May 8, 2008

A participant speaks her mind: 

I am just getting back into the swing of things here at work, but I keep thinking of the wonderful week that I had last week at the conference in Boston with the National Council. It was great to meet with you and your staff and I cannot compliment you enough on what an outstanding job you all did to bring this conference together. It was organized, productive and very inspirational to me. You should all be very proud of the work that you did on this and on your work every day on behalf of people living with mental illness and addiction disorders. We could not continue to do this important work without the Council’s support and advocacy.

I look forward to working more with the Council and please let me know what I can be doing as an executive and individually to continue to promote our cause and to “tell the story” of the fine work we all do!

I look forward to seeing you again and again, great job on the conference.


Ending Insurance Discrimination

April 12, 2008

Linda

Adequate care requires adequate dollars. Public insurance pays for at least 75 percent of treatment services for people with chronic and serious mental illnesses in community settings. Despite its discriminatory approach, it is the only option for millions of poor, unemployed, homeless, incarcerated and other vulnerable populations with mental illness. So we must act to end the discrimination. We must eliminate ongoing and threatened cuts to Medicaid. And Medicare must stop requiring higher co-pays from people with mental illness, while strengthening its sadly inadequate mental health benefits package.


Virtual World Provides Access to Information, Treatment and Training

March 2, 2008

This is a true story.
Jeanne and Lore

A woman with depression chats openly with a mental health professional she has never met in person. A gentleman attending a multi-national meeting cannot negotiate the steps because of his cerebral palsy, so he “flies” his wheelchair onto the stage where he gives a presentation on the power of modern computing. A lonely, elderly man in the United States spends an evening sharing his feelings with a girlfriend in Chile.

Lore out front

In “virtual space” web visits are truly real and interactive for the first time. The essence of meaningful interaction is a caring conversation, the exchange and sharing of thoughts and emotions through language, which is at the heart of the online community Second Life. While there are limitations, they are of technology, not of imagination and creativity.

Skeptics argue that it is a make believe world, only pixels on a screen, while the ubber geek knows the mechanisms for communication are not virtual; the digital device doesn’t classify input/output as real versus imaginary. The logs of every conversation, every meeting and every training session are stored on her computer. At present virtual worlds are restricted to audio, video, 3D visuals and spoken language … but only for now!

National Council in Second Life

The National Council has setup operations in this “virtual space” through generous donations of time and effort from volunteers. Next week’s “virtual post” features an interview with Jeannedellalune Prudhomme, a former print journalist and an expert in supporting virtual communities in Second Life.

Hanging out at the National Council Hanging out at the National Council


Illinois College Campus Shooting

February 15, 2008

Mental Health Experts Available for Interviews

Washington, DC (February 15, 2008)—Mental health experts from the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (National Council) are available to comment on yesterday’s shootings at Northern Illinois University.

National Council experts can answers questions about the tragedy such as:

  • What kind of mental health issues may people who commit these kinds of heinous crimes be suffering from?
  • Are there warning signs to look for in people with mental illness?
  • Who can community members who may be struggling in the aftermath of
    the tragedy turn to for help?
  • What kind of mental health counseling for students and community members may be needed?
  • What sort of long-term challenges may students and community members face in the weeks, months and years after this tragedy?

Jim Collins

February 10, 2008

Good to Great: Lessons for the Nonprofit World
General Session, May 2, 8:30 am

Jim Collins has trained senior executives at more than 100 top corporations. And now, he’s leading our one-of-a-kind session, generally reserved for Fortune 100 companies and rarely presented for the public sector.

Collins will explain how even the dowdiest of organizations can make the leap to outperform market leaders, only at the 38th National Council Conference


National debate on mental health and addiction recovery

February 5, 2008

The National Council wants to be part of the national debate on healthcare. The 2008 presidential election is the perfect opportunity to get involved on the national, state and local levels, to send a message that mental health and addiction recovery are integral to the health of all Americans. This is one of many campaign updates that will let you know what the National Council and its members are doing to influence the candidates’ messages and what you can do to have a say.

See more here

Tammy Seltzer


Senate Action

January 31, 2008

Linda

It is the National Council’s public policy successes of which we are most proud. For an association with limited resources, our accomplishments are monumental, particularly within the context of the millions and millions of dollars spent by groups lobbying the Hill.

When I joined the National Council three years ago we committed to becoming a stronger voice on behalf of our member organizations and the adults and children they serve—and we have made considerable progress. The introduction of S.2182, the “Community Mental Health Services Improvement Act” by Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) in the United States Senate is an important milestone in National Council history and in behavioral health.

Linda


Jim Collins to present in Boston

January 24, 2008

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to discover the secrets of enduring companies: how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how they move from good to great. Hear Jim Collins in Boston this May 1 at the National Council’s annual conference.

Jim Collins

Jim Collins in Aspen, CO, talking about his book, Good to Great, with T.V. host Charlie Rose. The full 58 minute interview.


James Carville to present at the National Council conference

January 21, 2008

Election 2008: An Insider’s View of Politics and the Political Process
General Session, May 1, 9:30 am

Come hear Carville insiders analysis!


Premier behavioral health conference

January 15, 2008

The 38th National Council Conference, Boston, May 1-3, 2008, spotlights successful clinical and business practices in mental health and addictions.

Read more here