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Health problems have put North Carolina Mental Hope on hold for the past several months. It is my hope and certainly my desire that we begin moving forward once again. Paths, even if well mapped, can be problematic, and the will to walk, by itself, is not enough. But the willl is strong and with your support, we hope to make progress. |
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“He was denied (help) from the first, when he first went to get help. I don’t think that incident would have happened if they had did their job.”
Abdullah El-Amin Shareef showed no emotion Wednesday when a jury said he is guilty in a 2004 road rampage that left one man dead and four others injured.
Law enforcement officials with both the Elizabeth City Police Department and Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Department received specialized training last week in techniques for responding to mental health crisis situations.
People sometimes wage their most heated arguments over issues with solutions that are elusive because of a lack of strong data. That’s the case with mental-health-care reform. So it’s good that a local researcher is trying to compile that information.
The researcher, Doris Paez, is the associate director of Forsyth Futures, a group that recently released its second exhaustive report on local concerns ranging from domestic violence to infant mortality. That report also included some important data on mental-health-care reform. For example, only 38 percent of children and 42 percent of adults with mental-health problems received mental-health care during the last quarter of fiscal
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s Medicaid office has created a list of drugs it wants physicians to prescribe as a way to discourage more expensive or less effective medications while saving tens of millions of dollars annually.
The state Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday the start of a preferred drug list similar to those used by private insurers and Medicaid in most other states. Officials say more than $90 million in federal and state money could be saved with the change.
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s Medicaid office has created a list of drugs it wants physicians to prescribe as a way to discourage more expensive or less effective medications while saving tens of millions of dollars annually.
The state Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday the start of a preferred drug list similar to those used by private insurers and Medicaid in most other states. Officials say more than $90 million in federal and state money could be saved with the change.
GREENSBORO — After nearly seven decades of marriage, Clyde Wilson still enjoys joking around with his wife, Ruby. But Alzheimer’s disease has stolen most of her ability to respond.
Wilson tells her she’s stayed pretty over the years, while he’s gotten ugly. He shows her pictures of their grandchildren to spark a memory. He mostly receives blank stares or unintelligible replies.
The jury deliberated for about five hours Monday without reaching a verdict in the Abdullah El-Amin Shareef capital murder trial.
The jury has now deliberated a total of eight hours after starting Friday.
RALEIGH, N.C. Stubbornly weak tax collections and double-digit unemployment rates mean more spending cuts are looming for North Carolina’s public agencies and nonprofit groups that depend on state funds.
Although the state’s fiscal picture isn’t as bleak as last year, Democratic budget-writers who are preparing for the legislative session that begins May 12 will likely confront a gap of several hundred million dollars between projected revenues and expenses for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Here’s the kind of story that makes every honest taxpayer grind enamel off the molars: Medicaid investigators say a Wake County company owes the state nearly $1 million in false claims and fines for providing personal care services that were supposed to be provided to poor people and disabled individuals. Trouble is, many people never got the services taxpayers paid for – and some who did receive them were not qualified.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Vice President Dr. Genie Komives and lobbyist Mark Fleming both appeared recently before a legislative study committee to oppose legislation that would require insurance companies to cover more comprehensive treatments and therapies for children with autism.
MARSHALL — Two mental health providers are stepping in to help patients in Madison County who were left without a place to get care last week.
RHA Health Services and October Road are contacting about 85 patients in Madison County who were left without a provider for the second time in four months after Patton Counselingnotified its employees last week that they would be furloughed indefinitely.
A Wilmington facility to treat mental health emergencies will reopen after shutting down nearly two years ago.
A crisis station once run by Southeastern Center for Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services is expected to start seeing people again in the coming months, said Foster Norman, Southeastern’s area director.
DURHAM — The economy has pushed more people in Durham into homelessness, advocates said at a news conference Thursday.
A “point-in-time count,” Jan. 27 to 28, found 675 people on the streets or in shelters, up 26 percent from the 535 counted a year ago.
The number of homeless families increased from 34 to 51.
Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons dismissed two motions Friday from defense lawyers for a mistrial in the Abdullah El-Amin Shareef capital murder trial.
The jury started deliberations in the Cumberland County case on Friday morning. Just after 5 p.m., the 12 jurors were excused for the weekend following less than three hours of deliberations.
Middle school is a scary place for a significant number of Charlotte-Mecklenburg students, while high-school students are less likely to report fear and bullying at school, a just-released survey of youth risk behaviors shows.
Every two years, health officials poll students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools about violence, bullying, drinking, drugs, depression and other activities that put them at risk. The 2009 survey was the third given in high schools, and some positive trends emerged: drops in binge drinking, cigarette smoking, weapon carrying and early sexual activity.
Craven County resident Phyllis Jones was adopted as a girl, and the question sometimes ran through her head, “What was wrong with me that my parents didn’t want me?” she said.
Although there are signs that the economy is slowly improving, the hardship for many won’t end for months to come. That’s the message sent by the latest local count of the homeless in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. It found 547 people without homes, including 105 children. We need new strategies for getting people into homes and helping them stay there.
Mar. 11–Since Wilson Medical Center closed its psychiatric unit two years ago, resources in Wilson County have been reduced, mental health officials said.
Closing the unit, known as New Foundations, meant the hospital started assessing mentally ill patients in its emergency room while trying to help patients find appropriate placement. The unit closed when medical director Dr. Bush Kavuru moved out of state.
Away on advocacy matters …. posts resume Thursday.
Though he says he has no recollection of the incident, Abdullah El-Amin Shareef believes he is not guilty of the road rampage that killed one person and injured four on April 14, 2004, according to a psychiatrist who testified in the case Monday.
Shareef’s capital murder trial entered its third week of testimony in Cumberland County Superior Court.
RALEIGH — A young mental patient from Louisburg who died last summer at a psychiatric hospital in Rocky Mount was killed by an overdose of prescription medications, according to the state medical examiner.
For more than five years, doctors and la
wyers have disputed the competency of accused killer Kent Lewis Welch.
People on both sides of the case recently came to a unanimous agreement that he is capable of standing trial for first-degree murder. But another obstacle is stalling his trial a while longer.
The world seemed to come crashing down on June 20, 1993, for then-36-year-old “Bart” of Queens, N.Y. Before that day, he had college degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard, and was earning $135,000 a year in business. His wife was a New York psychologist.
But afterward?
“That day, I was talking on the phone to a colleague about future technologies,” Bart, now 52, said in a telephone interview. (His name has been changed.) “During the call, I had what felt similar to a panic attack and felt this rush of heat all over my body. By the time I’d hung up, I was shaking. I was completely freaked out.”
In my last blog post, “Mental Illness at the Movies,” I discussed Charles Darwin’s hallucinations in the film, Creation, and concluded that “the psychotic strand may in the end be an advantageous trait.”
Several days later, in a piece in the New York Times Magazine, titled “Depression’s Upside ,” Jonah Lehrer broached a similar possibility: that depression, not psychosis per se, may be an adaptation favored by evolution. He cited several experts who have argued that depression can improve one’s focus and enhance one’s analytical skills.
Researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health have determined that mandatory outpatient treatment for New Yorkers with severe mental illness leads to a drop in violent criminal behaviour. The study was published in the journal Psychiatric Services.
We hope we've helped make a difference and hope to make one for many years to come. Needless to say, your support is deeply appreciated from the heart.
Our appreciation as always for the generous support of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation.
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Tentative steps forward
