Tagged: mental health

The following is a summary of a previously recorded interview. To hear the complete segment, click the audio above.

Today we looked at Michigan's treatment of mental health.

Milton Mack, Chief Judge of Michigan County Probate Court, and Dr. Michele Reid, Medical Director of Detroit-Wayne County Community Mental Health Agency, spoke with Cyndy about the ways we treat mental health.

“I see case after case of people who didn’t get timely treatment. We have a mental health model in Michigan which is based on inpatient, but we live in an outpatient world….Today we know that early intervention helps people survive,” said Mack.

Depression in teens is a serious illness with a difficult diagnosis.

To better understand how to effectively communicate with one’s child we spoke with two men from the University of Michigan Depression Center.

Dr. Richard Dopp is a psychiatrist who specializes in teenage depression. And Eric Hipple, a former quarterback for the Detroit Lions, is the Center’s Outreach Coordinator.

“There is a lot of news that goes out when there is the loss of a teen. What we see over time is certain populations will have an increase in suicide, but what you are actually seeing is more people are talking about it,” said Dopp.

The holidays often highlight family and special meals. But those can be delicate issues for some people, including homeless kids.  Pam Cornell-Allen is Associate Director of Ozone House, a non-profit that helps homeless youth in Washtenaw County. She says the holidays focus on a sense of family, and that can be a tender subject for homeless kids.

About a quarter of Michigan's 43,000 state prisoners are mentally ill, and new Michigan Corrections Director Dan Heyns says he wants to shift responsibility for their treatment from his department to other agencies.
    

Heyns says in an interview with The Detroit News that his department "has had a kind of mission creep over the years." He says the department needs to return to its original mission.
    

With the news of the world's first "Tickle Spa" opening in Madrid last week, the BBC's James Coomarasamy spoke with Carrie Graham, a Laughter and Happiness Coach based in London.

Graham conducts laughter workshops in which participants are "pretend tickled" if they're not familiar with each other, and full-on tickled if they are.

Naturally, Graham had to try out a little tickle therapy on her BBC interviewer.

Have a listen:

Feel better? You can listen to the full interview from the BBC Newshour (click on chapter 10).

A coalition of mental health advocates is calling on the state Department of Corrections to alter its policy of moving as many prisoners as possible from brand-name prescriptions to generic drugs.

The Department says the new policy will save taxpayers’ money without endangering prisoners’ health.

The Mental Health/Justice Coalition says the policy is too sweeping when it comes to inmates with mental illnesses. The Coalition includes inmates’ families, psychiatrists, judges, and attorneys.

Peggy Christian is the mother of an inmate:

The state's prison system is in line for some budget cuts like a lot of other parts of the state government.

Now, a recent audit says the prison system could save more in prescription costs.

From the Associated Press:

DETROIT (AP) - State auditors say Michigan could have saved millions of dollars by choosing lower-cost alternatives to a mental-health drug that is widely prescribed in prisons.

The audit released Friday says psychotropic drugs are dominating the cost of prescriptions in the prison system. They added up to more than $8 million from January through July last year - 41 percent of all pharmaceuticals.

Seroquel is the most prescribed antipsychotic drug. Auditors say the Corrections Department could have saved $350,000 a month by switching just half of those prescriptions to a drug called Risperdal.

The Corrections Department says it's taking steps to control costs. The audit also found that prisoners are not being charged for over-the-counter medicine even if they can afford it.

Rosalynn Carter is in Grand Rapids raising awareness of mental illness. She's promoting her new book about how to end what she calls a "national mental health care crisis."