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Story Archives of 'Mental Health'
The State of the Granite State’s Mental Health
By Laura Knoy on Friday, February 19, 2010.A new report shows New Hampshire’s ten community mental health centers have operated on razor-thin margins in recent years, and now they face another challenge: further Medicaid cuts as the state continues to reduce its budget. We’ll look more closely at the mental health system, and how it might adapt to this new fiscal picture.
Guests
- Nancy Kane, Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of a recent study of the fiscal health of New Hampshire’s Community Mental Health System
- Jay Couture, Executive Director of Seacoast Mental Health Center and Director of the New Hampshire Community Behavioral Health Association
We'll also hear from
- Jeanne Ryer, Program Director on Economic Barriers to Health at the New Hampshire Endowment for Health
- Nancy Rollins, Associate Commissioner for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services
The Protest Psychosis
By Virginia Prescott on Wednesday, January 20, 2010.
The source of mental illness has long been a mystery, opening the floodgates for evolving theories, from witches’ spells and wandering wombs to chemical imbalances in the brain.
At given times, dissatisfied housewives were assumed to be neurotic. In the 1850s, American psychiatrists believed enslaved blacks who ran away from white enslavers were suffering from a mental illness called Drapetomania, which could be cured by excessive whipping.
So when doctors suddenly start diagnosing a variety of people with the same illness, eyebrows raise. Or that’s what should have happened at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in the 1960s. Instead, thousands of young black men were picked up at civil rights marches, brought to ionia, and diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Jonathan Metzl is at a unique vantage point to view the civil rights rootings of mental illness. He is both a psychiatrist, who prescribes medication, and a cultural critic and historian. His provocative new book is The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease.
(Photo by dsb nola via Flickr/CreativeCommons)
HHS to Review Philbrook Findings Next Week
By Dan Gorenstein on Wednesday, December 23, 2009.Health and Human Services plans to review findings from its investigation into why young patients with mental illness were placed on an adult ward at the New Hampshire Hospital.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
National Alliance on Mental Illness: New Hampshire
By Deborah Schachter on Saturday, December 5, 2009.The National Alliance on Mental Illness New Hampshire works to improve the wuality of life for those with mental illness and their families. Liz Feingold turned to NAMI, when she lost her 21-year-old nephew, Josh, to suicide.
As Caseloads Grow, Funding for Mental Health Care is Shrinking
By Elaine Grant on Thursday, October 15, 2009.As the recession has deepened, more and more people have needed help dealing with mental health crises. But as caseloads grow, resources are shrinking. Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services reduced Medicaid payments to mental health providers.
And as NHPR’s health reporter Elaine Grant reports, that’s creating some brutal choices.
A Breaking Point for Mental Health
By Laura Knoy on Thursday, October 8, 2009.Over the past year the number of mental health patients in New Hampshire jumped by thirteen percent. But even as demand for services goes up, budget cuts are on their way that could affect the amount support that’s provided. We’ll look at how the Granite State delivers mental health care and how it will deal with rising caseloads and the lack of funding to support those cases.
Guests
- Jay Couture, Executive Director of Seacoast Mental Health Center and Director of the New Hampshire Community Behavioral Health Association New Hampshire Community Behavioral Health Association
- Nick Toumpas, Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services
We'll also hear from
- Fran Wendelboe, Republican Representative from New Hampton and member of the New Hampshire House Finance Committee
Small Children, Big Mental Health Needs
By Elaine Grant on Friday, May 29, 2009.A new report shows that thousands of young children in New Hampshire need mental health services, but few receive them.
NHPR’s Elaine Grant has more.
Telemedicine "Buddy" Offers Radical Approach to Managing Health of the Mentally Ill
By Elaine Grant on Tuesday, May 12, 2009.As anyone with diabetes or heart disease knows, chronic health conditions are hard to manage.
Add a mental illness and it gets even tougher.
But some local health care agencies are working with a unique program that helps monitor symptoms and teach patients how to care for themselves.
NHPR health reporter Elaine Grant has the story.
Is PTSD Overdiagnosed?
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, April 6, 2009.
As soldiers come home after serving in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, they face huge barriers. One moment they’re ducking roadside bombs; soon after, they’re dealing with crowded grocery stores, job applications, and traffic jams. The abrupt change can trigger anxiety or depression - some reports estimate that post-traumatic stress disorder affects one out of five returning soldiers. But questions over those PTSD numbers are percolating. Some members of the medical community say PTSD is being over-diagnosed, and that it’s harming struggling soldiers.
Reporter David Dobbs wrote about this debate for Scientific American, and he joins us with more.
David Dobbs in Scientific American: "Soldiers' Stress: What Doctors Get Wrong about PTSD"
(Photo courtesy Army.mil via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Seacoast Mental Health Center
By Deborah Schachter on Saturday, January 24, 2009.Among its many services and partnerships, the Seacoast Mental Health Center works with several organizations to run the Adolescent Substance Abuse program. Charles Rosa helps facilitate the program by sharing his personal experience of loss.
