Author: Namieastbay

PUBLIC POLICY involves local, state and national legislative advocacy. It is the intent of this web site to note relevant current bills and provide an overview for the reader. The following websites are valuable as references in that they will explore the bills in a more comprehensive manner, with more detail at times than will be provided here.

http://mentalhealthcrisisday.com/hr2646.html

http://lauras-law.org

http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/states/lauraslawindex.html

http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/states/lauraslawindex.html

http://mentalillnesspolicy.org

   An IMD is an Institute for Mental Disease facility that can offer more than 16 acute inpatient hospital beds. The federal IMD exclusion has barred the use of Medicaid payments for these facilities.

Historically, the exclusion was considered a preventive measure against the “warehousing” of individuals with mental illness. In the light of the housing crisis and the recent instances of mass shooting violence, there are efforts being put forth to have waivers given to states to address society’s needs for an increase of treatment interventions. Waivers will be awarded where robust community-based treatment services are offered as well.

The absence of appropriate mental health treatments offered within a full range of service options has brought us to the point where jails and prisons have become the primary dumping ground for our family members. So we join with NAMI California and other NAMI affiliates across the state in advocating for application for the waiver.

Please address your concerns regarding this to Jennifer Kent, Director, Department of Health Care Services, PO Box 997413, MS 0000, Sacramento, Ca 95899-7413 or jennifer.kent@dhcs.

      Current advocacy efforts for the hoped-for reclassification of Schizophrenia as a neurological disorder are being spearheaded by the nonprofit Schizophrenia and Related Disorders Alliance of America (SARDAA), whose website is sardaa.org. We recommend you take a look at the site along with the comprehensive, well researched letter and join the advocacy by sending on the letter or your own.

 The letter provides an excellent overview of the disorder, describing the research evidence as “overwhelmingly … indicating that the disease is a brain- based highly heritable … neurodevelopmental disorder. … Prevailing hypotheses … include dysregulation of the dopamine, glutamate and GABA neurotransmitter systems. Synaptic pruning—a critical process that refines neural circuits … is perturbed, in particular during adolescence … significant enough to show decreased grey matter volume in structural MRI studies of schizophrenia.”

This disorder shares features with the two neurologically based disorders of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease (brain/cognitive deterioration along with social/sensory/motor/affective disturbances, brain structural and functional changes, clinical rather than lab-based diagnosis, genetic basis, treatment via meds and research approaches). The main difference is the paucity of timely and appropriate care for the individual with schizophrenia, with “striking rates of patients being untreated, homeless and incarcerated … associated with much suffering, debilitation and public health cost.”

 So if you’d like to encourage a more humane and studied approach to mental illness that fully realizes that we are dealing with a brain/neurological disorder, we recommend that you take a look at the SARDAA website and do some advocacy towards that end.