Archive for » June 19th, 2012«

19 Jun 2012

More Mental Health Woes in College Kids Who Abuse Prescription …

TUESDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Prescription drug abuse among American college students is linked to depression and suicidal thoughts, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 26,000 college students at 40 campuses who took part in the 2008 American College Health Association National College Assessment survey.

As part of the survey, the students were asked about their nonmedical use of prescription drugs such as painkillers, stimulants, sedatives and antidepressants, and about their mental health symptoms over the past year.

About 13 percent of the college students reported nonmedical use of prescription drugs. Those who said they had felt hopeless, sad, depressed or had considered suicide were much more likely to abuse prescription drugs.

This association was especially strong among female students who reported painkiller use, the researchers found.

The study will be published in the August issue of Addictive Behaviors: An International Journal.

“Because prescription drugs are tested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and prescribed by a doctor, most people perceive them as ‘safe’ and don’t see the harm in sharing with friends or family if they have a few extra pills left over,” study co-author Amanda Divin, an assistant professor of health sciences at Western Illinois University, said in a university news release.

“Unfortunately, all drugs potentially have dangerous side effects. As our study demonstrates, use of prescription drugs — particularly painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin — is related to depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in college students. This is why use of such drugs need to be monitored by a doctor and why mental health outreach on college campuses is particularly important,” Divin explained.

The findings suggest that college students are abusing prescription drugs to ease mental distress.

“Considering how common prescription sharing is on college campuses and the prevalence of mental health issues during the college years, more investigation in this area is definitely warranted,” Divin said. “Our study is just one of the many first steps in exploring the relationship between nonmedical prescription drug use and mental health.”

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about prescription drug abuse.

Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


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19 Jun 2012

Hide Your Donations, Hide Your Comic; They Are Suing Everybody …

Last week, we wrote about the legal spat between online comic artist Matthew Inman, who runs The Oatmeal, and the website FunnyJunk.

The folks at FunnyJunk threatened to sue Inman for copyright infringement and defamation, and the internet comedian responded with another comic, of course, and a plea to his readers to raise $20,000, not for settling the legal threat, but for a “Bear Love” charity campaign on behalf of of the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. (Inman also mentioned something about a drawing of the FunnyJunk attorney’s mother seducing a Kodiak.) In any case, we’re off a pretty good start here, right? Sure, but it gets way better….

ATL Editor Emeritus Kashmir Hill tweeted yesterday:

The lawyer suing The Oatmeal is just trolling the legal system (and Internet) with his latest, right?

One can only hope. So, how could this situation get any more ridiculous? Well, let’s turn to Popehat:

On Friday, June 15, 2012, attorney Charles Carreon passed from mundane short-term internet notoriety into a sort of legal cartoon-supervillainy.

He transcended typical internet infamy when he filed a federal lawsuit last Friday in the United Sates District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland. He belonged to the ages the moment he filed that lawsuit not only against Matthew Inman, proprietor of The Oatmeal, but also against IndieGoGo Inc., the company that hosted Inman’s ridiculously effective fundraiser for the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.

But that level of censorious litigiousness was not enough for Charles Carreon. He sought something more. And so, on that same Friday, Charles Carreon also sued the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society, the beneficiaries of Matthew Inman’s fundraiser.

Yep. In addition to a number of potential substantive problems in the new lawsuits, which Popehat and Kevin Underhill of Lowering the Bar investigate in more detail, Carreon somehow felt it was a good idea to respond to a lawsuit he didn’t like by suing not one, but two ubiquitous, well-respected charities that are simply the beneficiaries of the Oatmeal’s — how shall we say — hilarious protest of the original lawsuit.

What are the grounds of the new suits? “Trademark infringement and incitement to cyber-vandalism,” according to Courthouse News documents cited by Popehat. Ooooookay then, dude. The folks over at Popehat express their opinion on the matter more boldly than I might (not that I disagree):

Yes. Charles Carreon, butthurt that someone had leveraged his douchebaggery into almost two hundred thousand dollars of donations to two worthy charities, sued the charities.

Oh yeah, we should probably mention that the charity campaign was a wild success.

As for Charles Carreon, good luck with his case, I suppose. But in the meantime, as Barbra Streisand might suggest, he might want to prepare himself for more cartoons.

The Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, Part IV: Charles Carreon Sues Everybody [Popehat]
The Guy Continues to Mess With The Oatmeal [Lowering the Bar]

Earlier: Potential Lawsuit of the Day: War of the Web Comics


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19 Jun 2012

Catholic Charities holds Changing Lives gala

The Women’s Board of Catholic Charities of Lake County hosted its 23rd Annual Art of Caring benefit, “Changing Lives,” a gala that supports Catholic Charities services in Lake County.

The event was attended by more than 220 guests at Knollwood. Guests were welcomed by the Rev. Monsignor Michael M. Boland, administrator, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago; Al and Mary Ann Moschner, honorary chair couple; and Debby Lambert, women’s board president.

Guests enjoyed a reception, cocktails, appetizers, dinner, live/silent auction and live music. There were 10 live auction items, including three nights for four in a mountain view casita at the Sanctuary Camelback Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz.; a five-day, four-night wine experience for two to Napa Valley; a weekend at the 2013 Kentucky Derby, with three nights at the Central Park Bed and Breakfast Inn in Louisville, plus two box-seat tickets for May 3 and 4, 2013; two tickets for the 2012 Ryder Cup, with admittance to the International Pavillion and Medinah course grounds for the final round; and a luxury weekend in Chicago at the Drake Hotel.

A grand raffle drawing for a dream destination for two valued at more than $15,000 also was offered. Music entertainment was provided by Chris Lambert Trio.

The Irene Leahy McMahon Award was presented to Debbie Stepan by last year’s recipient, Alisun Blanda. This award is presented each year to a member who has given unselfishly of her time and talent to the activities of the Women’s Board and to Catholic Charities.

All the proceeds from the event directly support Catholic Charities programs in Lake County, including Children and Family Services (adoption and maternity counseling); community casework (emergency assistance, housing and budget counseling and HIV/case management); Samaritan House; family self sufficiency programs; SAFE Housing Services (Meals on Wheels and senior dining sites) and the Christmas Gift Giving Program.

Catholic Charities Lake County Office is at 671 S. Lewis, Waukegan. The office serves the communities of: Antioch, Wadsworth, Zion, Winthrop Harbor, Waukegan, Gurnee, Lake Villa, Ingleside, Fox Lake, Round Lake, Gurnee, Grayslake, Libertyville, North Chicago, Lake Bluff, Mundelein, Wauconda, Island Lake, Barrington, Lake Zurich, Vernon Hills, Lincolnshire, Buffalo Grove, Deerfield, Highwood, Highland Park.

For details, call (847) 782-4000.


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19 Jun 2012

Enclarity Subsidizes Mission of Give an Hour by Connecting Military Personnel With Mental Health Professionals

ALISO VIEJO, CA–(Marketwire -06/19/12)-
Enclarity, Inc., a leading healthcare information solutions company, is helping Give an Hour, a national nonprofit organization, fulfill its mission of meeting the mental health needs of military personnel, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, their loved ones and communities by donating a subscription to Enclarity ProviderLookup. This web-based, real-time provider information search service allows Give an Hour to query Enclarity’s Master Provider Referential Database to view the most correct, current and comprehensive profile available for mental health providers who can treat returning veterans, their families and the communities affected by the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Enclarity shares Give an Hour’s sense of indebtedness to America’s military personnel, and we recognize that individuals who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and their families — may need help dealing with the effects of wartime service,” said Sean Downs, chief executive officer, Enclarity. “We are proud to help Give an Hour and its members by granting access to detailed, accurate and timely information on local mental healthcare providers. By donating Enclarity ProviderLookup, we can help our wartime heroes heal by connecting them with a variety of mental health services to address their needs.”

The goal of Give an Hour is to have 10 percent of the approximately 400,000 licensed mental health professionals in the United States join its efforts. If 40,000 mental health providers offer free services, Give an Hour has the potential to save the military and U.S. taxpayers $4 million per week. The organization relies upon the Enclarity ProviderLookup solution to fulfill its work. From the organization’s Enclarity ProviderLookup-powered website, Give an Hour members can search for mental health professionals near them and seek services to address mental health needs resulting from their military service, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome.

“The volunteer mental health professionals on our network are all licensed within their particular practice area,” said Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, founder and president, Give an Hour. “Our providers include psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, professional counselors and pastoral counselors. We are thankful to Enclarity for their partnership in finding appropriate mental health professionals for recruitment and rely upon their technology to ensure our members have immediate access to the most up-to-date information on providers within their areas.”

For her vision, TIME magazine named Dr. Van Dahlen as one of the 100 most influential people in the world this year. In April, Give an Hour was honored as one of five winners of the Joining Forces Community Challenge at the White House. Dr. Van Dahlen received a citation as one of Woman’s Day magazine’s 50 Women Who Are Changing the World, the Maryland Governor’s Volunteer Service Award, the WJLA 2010 Working Woman of the Year and the American Psychiatric Association’s 2009 Rosalee Weiss Distinguished Public Service award. In 2010, she was selected as a featured speaker at the annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy. She has become a notable source and expert on the psychological impact of war on troops and families, and a thought leader in mobilizing civilian constituencies in support of active duty service members, veterans and their families.

About Enclarity, Inc.

Enclarity solves healthcare’s provider information problem by compiling the largest, most accurate and current medical provider database. Five of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies, seven of the 10 largest health insurance plans, four of the 10 largest preferred provider organizations and the two largest medical device manufacturers count on Enclarity. Its solutions improve claims processing, provider directories, regulatory compliance and marketing optimization. For more information, visit www.enclarity.com.

About Give an Hour

Give an Hour is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) founded in September 2005 by Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a psychologist in the Washington, D.C., area. The organization’s mission is to develop national networks of volunteers capable of responding to both acute and chronic conditions that arise within our society. Currently, Give an Hour is dedicated to meeting the mental health needs of military personnel, their families and the communities affected by the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As of February 2012, Give an Hour has more than 6,100 providers across the nation — in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and Guam — with more volunteer mental health professionals joining its network every day. In addition to counseling, providers also consult to schools, first responders, employers and community organizations. Give an Hour has already provided nearly 50,000 hours of free service, valued at approximately $5 million. To learn more, visit http://www.giveanhour.org or http://connected.giveanhour.org.


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19 Jun 2012

‘Mental health is a lottery’

Author, poet and journalist Jerry Pinto’s Em And The Big Hoom is a movingly funny take on dealing with mental illness

“I wanted to tell a story, and I wanted to do it well,” says Jerry Pinto, national award-winning writer (Best Book on Cinema for Helen: The Life And Times Of An H Bomb). On a visit to the city for the launch of Em And The Big Hoom, he talks about the book that was 25 years in the making. “I wrote nearly 7.5 lakh words — all in longhand — and then discovered I didn’t like it much. So I typed out the bits I thought I could live with, about 12,000 words, and it is in these that I found enough material to open out into a novel, one that is 95 per cent fiction, 95 per cent autobiography.” And the remaining 5 per cent, he says, is what the reader makes out of it.

Mania and moods

Set in 1980’s Bombay, Em And The Big Hoom is the story of a family where the mother, Em, battles a mental illness, and everybody else battles her mania and moods. The husband, the big Hoom, never loses control; the teenage children become stoic, not by choice, but by the lack of it (“there was no going in. And there was no going away”). And the son — the unnamed narrator (whose birth, the mother matter-of-factly tells him, gave birth to her depression) tries to find signs of the madness that engulfs his mother, “the trigger” as Pinto says, “where it all started, so that he can, possibly, avoid it himself”.

And so, he talks to Em in her lucid moments, when she’s not “a parody of herself”, to her mother and friends and husband; he reads her old letters and tries to piece together his whole mother from the fragments he recollects from his memory and others’.

And yet, despite depression being central to the book, it’s anything but a depressing read. It’s moving, yes, but also madly funny; and that’s what makes it so real. “If you try to construct something credible, it should have some sorrow, some laughter,” says Pinto. But the book, he says, is not a memoir; “I could not write a memoir, it would’ve been much more painful.” Plus, since it was fictionalised, “any time it grew bleak” he could always take refuge in fiction.

Learning to live

The book — with its beautiful, incisive prose, written without a hint of self-pity — Pinto discovered at 40, wasn’t going to be a catharsis. So he sets the novel dramatically in a 450-sq.ft apartment, where the characters are forced to “live and love and deceive within earshot of each other”.

He dates it to 1980’s Bombay, because “if you move time around, you are going to end up with an anachronism”. And the novel becomes a social commentary of that time, when the “mentally ill are simply mad”, when asylums for the mentally ill are “human dumping ground”, where the patients have no identity except being mad.

Except, some of these have not changed much over the years, as Pinto observed when he recently went to visit a suicidical friend in an asylum for the mentally ill. And yet, “we prefer not to talk about things; it is an endemic feature of Indian life. And not talking about becomes a problem”. “Mental health”, says Pinto, “is a lottery”. And when you’re the caregiver for someone with a mental illness, “you’re looking at the loser of that lottery”.

Jerry Pinto’s Em and the big Hoom was launched recently at Amethyst by the Prakriti Foundation. In conversation with Vandana Gopikumar of The Banyan and Ranvir Shah of Prakriti Foundation, Pinto — after reading out poignantly funny passages from his book — said that “dealing with the mentally unwell was like looking through a refracting prism. Sometimes it was outrageously colourful, sometimes blown-up”. Vandana spoke about the stigma attached to mental illness. “There are no positive stories portrayed in the media; films too are very stereotyped. The solution lies in accepting wholeheartedly, and appropriately portraying people with differences.” And that can only come, said Pinto, “if you constantly examine the self and its shortcomings. Then, perhaps, you can accept other people’s differences.”


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19 Jun 2012

Campaign donations coming soon to Twitter

Political donations by text message? So last week.

A Portland, Ore.-based tech company says it will today launch a platform through which people may tweet contributions to politicians and political committees, further capitalizing on mobile technology’s potential as a campaign fundraising weapon.

Continue Reading

To date, about two dozen congressional campaigns — both Democratic and Republican — have committed to using the service, Chris Teso, founder and chief executive of four-month-old Chirpify, told POLITICO.

Teso declined to name them, saying they’ll make individual announcements but confirmed that the campaigns of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have not signed up.

“There’s no shopping cart, no check-out process. You can simply tweet money, which should be very attractive to campaigns,” said Teso, whose company is collaborating with political consulting firm Digital Acumen on the launch. “I expect many campaigns to follow suit and get on board.”

It’s “pure coincidence,” he added, that Chirpify is launching the week after the Federal Election Commission allowed a trio of companies to create a political donation-by-text message system.

“We planned to be in compliance with federal law anyway, but the text message decision last week absolutely makes us feel feel more comfortable,” Teso said.

Chirpify’s system is supposed to work like this: A prospective donor fills out a registration form, links a PayPal account to his or her Twitter handle then tweets a message such as “Donate $20 to @MittRomney for Election 2012.”

If Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign has itself signed up for the service, it’ll instantly receive that $20.

If not, Chirpify will inform the campaign of its pending cash — and urge it to likewise sign up in order to receive it.

Once a donation is successfully received, the contributor will receive a receipt through Twitter by direct message.

Political committees and groups may also use the Chirpify service to proactively fundraise.

For example, @BarackObama might tweet “Help today! Reply ‘donate’ to give our campaign $10 via @Chirpify.”

The company will cap donations made to any single candidate or political committee, such as a political action committee or super PAC, at $200. This allows political committees to avoid collecting detailed information about the donors and disclosing it publicly.

Chirpify intends to take a 5 percent cut of each donation made.

If its plan is profitable, Teso expects competition to quickly crop up.

“With any successful business,” he said, “there are copycats.”


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19 Jun 2012

The Principal Charity Classic Renewed Through 2015


DES MOINES, Iowa, Jun 19, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
The Principal Financial Group(R) has renewed a three-year
agreement, through 2015, to remain the title sponsor of The Principal
Charity Classic presented by Wells Fargo, teeing up continued benefit to
children’s charities in Central Iowa.

“We’re extremely proud of the meaningful impact The Principal Charity
Classic has had on Central Iowa over the last five years,” said Larry
Zimpleman, chairman, president and CEO, The Principal(R). “Year
after year, we continue to be impressed with the incredible support from
the ever-growing list of sponsors, volunteers, community partners and
fans who help us make this tournament a can’t-miss event. We are pleased
and excited to renew the tournament for another three years.”

From 2007 to 2011, The Principal Charity Classic, the only Champions
Tour event in Iowa, has distributed over $3 million for local children’s
charities, funding efforts that have benefited thousands of children in
Central Iowa. The 2012 charity amount has not been announced.

“Each year we hear new and inspiring stories about how children and
their families have benefited from the programs supported by this
tournament,” said Mary O’Keefe, senior vice president, The Principal and
chair of The Principal Charity Classic Board. “These stories remind us
of how important this event is to the Central Iowa community and beyond.
It renews our commitment to make The Principal Charity Classic an event
that offers more than golf, and to never forget the bottom line —
helping kids.”

According to the PGA TOUR, The Principal Charity Classic is among the
top two of all Champions Tour events in terms of tournament-generated
proceeds raised for charity. The tournament has been recognized as the
Best Event on the Champions Tour and the number one tour stop as voted
by Champions Tour professionals.

“We are delighted to continue our partnership with The Principal through
their title sponsorship of this tournament and to bring some of the
greatest legends in golf to fans in Iowa,” said Mike Stevens, president,
Champions Tour. “The Principal has been an incredibly engaged sponsor
and a driver of community support in Iowa. We look forward to three more
years of an exciting event.”

In addition to benefitting local charities, the PGA TOUR and an Iowa
State University study estimate the tournament generates an economic
impact of $20.8 million for the region, including increased business for
area hotels, restaurants, shopping establishments and other
entertainment venues. The event also showcases Des Moines to an
international television audience and to more than 80 Champions Tour
golfers.

For more news and insights from The Principal, connect with us on
Twitter at
http://twitter.com/ThePrincipal .

About The Principal Charity Classic The
Principal Charity Classic, sponsored by the
Principal Financial Group and presented by Wells
Fargo brings PGA Champions Tour pro golf to Des Moines. Voted the
No. 1 stop by Champions Tour professionals in 2010.

Hosted by the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines, funds raised
through the event will benefit FORE Our Kids, a group of five select
charities that support Iowa’s children: Blank Children’s Hospital; Bravo
Greater Des Moines; Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines; United
Way of Central Iowa; and Variety, The Children’s Charity of Iowa. For
more information on the charities and the tournament, visit
www.principalcharityclassic.com
or connect with the tournament on Facebook
or Twitter.

About the Principal Financial Group The Principal Financial
Group(R) (The Principal(R))(1) is a global
investment management leader including retirement services, insurance
solutions and asset management. The Principal offers businesses,
individuals and institutional clients a wide range of financial products
and services, including retirement, asset management and insurance
through its diverse family of financial services companies. Founded in
1879 and a member of the FORTUNE 500(R), the Principal
Financial Group has $364.1 billion in assets under management(2)and
serves some 17.3 million customers worldwide from offices in Asia,
Australia, Europe, Latin America and the United States. Principal
Financial Group, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the
ticker symbol PFG. For more information, visit
www.principal.com .

About The Champions Tour Collectively, the Champions Tour
has the most recognizable and accomplished players in the game with many
of its 30 members of the World Golf Hall of Fame competing regularly in
its events and numerous other major championship winners among its
members. The Champions Tour is a membership organization of professional
golfers age 50 and older. Conceived in 1980 as the Senior PGA Tour, it
started with just four events and purses totaling $475,000. Points
earned in official Charles Schwab Cup events in 2011 determined Tom
Lehman as the Charles Schwab Cup champion, the season-long competition
designed to recognize the Champions Tour’s leading player. The Champions
Tour’s primary purpose is to provide financial opportunities for its
players, entertain and inspire its fans, deliver substantial value to
its partners, create outlets for volunteers to give back, protect the
integrity of the game and generate significant charitable and economic
impact in communities in which it plays. In 2011, tournaments on all
three Tours (PGA TOUR, Champions Tour and Nationwide Tour) generated
more than $118 million for local charitable organizations, bringing the
TOUR’s all-time total of charitable contributions to more than $1.7
billion. The Commissioner of the PGA TOUR is Tim Finchem. Mike Stevens
is President of the Champions Tour. The PGA TOUR’s website is
www.pgatour.com ,
the No. 1 site in golf, and the organization is headquartered in Ponte
Vedra Beach, FL.

(1) “The Principal Financial Group” and “The Principal” are
registered service marks of Principal Financial Services, Inc., a member
of the Principal Financial Group. (2) As of March 31, 2012.

SOURCE: The Principal Financial Group


        The Principal Financial Group
        Joelle Kirchhoff
        515-246-4907
        kirchhoff.joelle@principal.com
        or
        Champions Tour
        Mark Williams
        904-280-5058
        markwilliams@pgatourhq.com

Copyright Business Wire 2012


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19 Jun 2012

Mental health services in flux, county official says

MUSCATINE, Iowa — Every year since 1996, Mike Johannsen, Muscatine County’s community services director, has been handed the same allotment of money — $2.055 million — to provide mental health services for county residents who don’t have insurance to pay for services they need.

Put a different way, the mental health portion of a local homeowner’s property tax bill fell from $2.09 per $1,000 assessed valuation in 1996 to $1.26 today.

However, owing to inflation, purchasing those same mental health services today would cost about $2.9 million annually.

That’s where finding creative solutions and unleashing the competitive power of the market can come in handy, Johannsen told the Muscatine Rotary Club on Monday — but that kind of local innovation could be out the window as soon as next year.

That’s when the Iowa Legislature’s plan to begin revamping the delivery of mental health services — from local counties to a regional approach, in an effort to equalize access to services across the state — begins in earnest.

Each of Iowa’s 99 county boards of supervisors must decide which region it will join — or whether the county will seek a state waiver from joining the new system, which will begin in July 2013 and be fully implemented the following year.

Muscatine County supervisors have met with mental health and elected officials in Scott and Johnson counties and others, Johannsen said. They don’t have to decide which district is the best fit until next spring.

“The Iowa Legislature wanted to lay on another layer of bureaucracy,” Johannsen said, “but the best government is the government that’s closest to the people — local government.”

“The citizens of Muscatine County have told us to take care of the most vulnerable citizens,” he added. “We’ve changed (since 1996) and not without some pain.”

There will be even more change as a result of the new legislation, although Johannsen said it’s too soon to know the extent of the changes.

State rule-makers will define the core mental health services that each county must provide. But some counties, including Muscatine County, provide a level of service beyond the core.

In Muscatine County, for example, Community Services helps fund Special Olympics and sheltered workshop sites for people with developmental disabilities at places like CrossRoads, Inc.

Under the new system, that funding could be threatened.

Supervisors also weighed in on the future of mental health services during their regular meeting Monday morning.

Unknown at this point, supervisors said, is how regions will be governed. Should each county in the region have one vote in deciding important matters? Or should the boards be proportional, reflecting each county’s population?

Bob Howard compared the mix of large and small counties seeking to partner together to “a big bear looking at a little rabbit, drooling.”

Jeff Sorensen noted that Muscatine County taxpayers pay an average rate in their property taxes among the 99 counties.

Under the new system, the real savings, according to Sorensen, will be for taxpayers in rural counties, where economies of scale to help reduce costs are less readily available.

“We will have growing pains,” Chairwoman Kas Kelly said. “There will be unintended consequences.”


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19 Jun 2012

Mental health center gets new director

The Center for Mental Health will join with Western Montana Mental Health Center as part of an ongoing effort to improve services in Lewis and Clark, Jefferson and Broadwater counties — a move that might put an end to the search for a new care provider.

After meeting with Lewis and Clark County officials and members of an advisory committee last week, Sydney Blair, the chief executive officer for the Center for Mental Health, said while her organization will continue to own and operate the Helena agency, Jodi Daly will take over the position of southern services director. Daly, a clinical psychologist, is the southwest regional director for Western and has been working with the Center for Mental Health for the past nine months to bring back the Crisis Response Team that had been discontinued.

“We’ve been talking about this partnership for a long time,” Blair said on Monday. “They’re bigger, so their management structure is a little different, but I think we see eye to eye on a lot of things. We feel they’re really strong in the area of crisis services, and we’ve enjoyed working together.

“I anticipate this will be a fairly smooth transition.”

The move comes as a Mental Health Local Advisory Committee (LAC) is two months into putting together a request for proposals (RFP) from mental health care providers to possibly replace the Center for Mental Health, due to ongoing concerns about the services being provided.

Members of the advisory committee want a “continuum of care” for people living with mental illnesses instead of what they see as piecemeal operations offered through the Great Falls-based Center. A list of services the advisory group would like to see in the area, which was put together in April, totaled 34 items; at that time the Center for Mental Health was providing only 18. Items included prompt access to psychiatrists, a mental health court and emergency access to psychiatric medications.

Only a limited number of agencies are present in central Montana that might be able to provide those services.

Members of the LAC had discussed whether Western might be interested in taking over from the Center for Mental Health, but with the new partnership that might not be necessary, noted Lewis and Clark County Commissioner Andy Hunthausen, who’s a member of the advisory group. Still, it’s going forward with developing the RFP.

“We just want really good mental health services in Helena,” Hunthausen said. “If there were some other entities that would be able to do that, they’re welcome to look at the RFP, but right now, we’re just trying to say ‘Who can help us do this plan?’ and the Center and Western are trying to put a good-faith effort toward that. I’m encouraged with the way they are moving.”

Matt Kuntz, director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Montana, said he also sees the partnership as a positive move.

“I think that Western does know how to run a mental health center,” Kuntz said. “We see this as a positive step forward for Helenans who live with a mental illness.”

Daly said she’s thrilled with the new opportunity, adding that she’s already seen important improvements in the past year. One of her first moves will be to hire a full-time licensed clinician, which is a position Western has filled at its campuses in Missoula, Bozeman, Butte and Kalispell.

“What we find is we really need a full-time clinical lead who has mental health expertise,” Daly said. “That person, on site, will handle the administrative and clinical work, and I oversee that. I will hope that there will not be major visible changes for their employees.”

Rick Henson, who came out of retirement nine months ago to become the Center for Mental Health’s southern services director in Helena, will be phased out. Daly praised Henson’s work, noting that his background as a hospital administrator helped him build a good foundation at the Helena center.

“He’s done things like putting together a corrective action plan, going through state audits and helping with licensing and budgets,” Daly said. “The next step is the clinical models and that’s where Western can help.”

“We think that together we can maintain some stability and grow the programs. In the long run, I think it will be a good partnership.”

Other areas where the two agencies will collaborate include improvements to the Center for Mental Health’s electronic medical records and payroll system and financial budgeting. It has had cash flow problems in recent years, but Daly said that financially, the it had “done a 360.”

“But we all worry about the upcoming health care economics,” she said. Last year, reimbursements were cut and we have another legislative session coming up. It’s good to go into that with partnerships.”

Reporter Eve Byron:447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com

Follow Eve at Twitter@IR_EveByron


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19 Jun 2012

Donations sought to help pay for funeral of drowned San Mateo girl

A bank account has been established to raise money to help pay for the funeral expenses of Tatiana Eiland-Clinton, age 3, who drowned in a San Mateo lagoon on Saturday afternoon.

The young girl’s extended family also plans to host a gathering in Milpitas on Sunday to help raise funds for her burial, although details have not yet been finalized.

Her father works as a security guard in Fremont. In addition to raising two older children, the family cares for Tatiana’s twin brother, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. Like Tatiana, he is autistic.

Tatiana had been home with her mother, two older sisters and twin brother before the tragedy happened. The family was tired after a nighttime trip to the emergency room. Tatiana’s twin brother, Deshawn, had been having severe respiratory problems and the family slept little the previous night.

So when the twins’ father, Len Clinton, came home from his security guard job in Fremont, Deahna Eiland went upstairs to lie down with the boy. Clinton also went upstairs to change out of his work clothes.

In the moments that followed, Tatiana managed to open a back door and fence gate, her mother said.

“My niece was very resourceful and very intelligent — we had child locks all over the house, and still she was able to find a way out,” said aunt Shawntae Eiland.

“This has been really tough for the families,” said Eiland. “We are hoping people will reach out to help.”

Contributions

can be made at any Wells Fargo Bank branch for deposit in the Tatiana Eiland-Clinton Funeral Acct. No. 8048772191.

Contact Lisa M. Krieger at 650-492-4098.


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