Cuts to mental health funding leaving the most vulnerable behind
By Kim Krisberg
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Since fiscal year 2009, states have cut more than $1.6 billion in general funds from mental health agency budgets, the NAMI report states. The cuts come at a time when significantly more people are seeking mental health services. Many of those looking for help have never sought such services before, but have been hit hard by the recession, job losses and foreclosures. The state cuts also coincide with recent declines in federal Medicaid funds (which were boosted through a stimulus measure that's now expired ), forcing many states to shift existing resources into their Medicaid programs. This leaves little for residents who don't qualify for Medicaid and have no insurance. For example, in the summer of 2010, Arizona eliminated nearly all services for 12,000 residents diagnosed with serious mental health illnesses who weren't eligible for Medicaid, NAMI reports.
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Typically, when mental health service cuts of this magnitude are enacted, money isn't really saved -- costs just shift, Honberg told me. Costs and care are shifted to correctional systems, homeless agencies, hospital emergency departments and police, whom Honberg said are often the first responders to people in crisis. In reality, "large city jails have become the country's de facto psychiatric hospitals," he noted. On the brighter side, Honberg said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does have the potential to expand access to mental health services. For example, millions of people living with mental illness could benefit from ACA's Medicaid eligibility expansion starting in 2014, and insurance plans offered via state-based health insurance exchanges will have to abide by federal parity laws that require equal coverage for mental and physical health services. Though Honberg added that "what parity actually means is still the source of some debate."
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"I guess we're all eternal optimists and I thought 2011 would be the worst of it, but 2012 is still worse," Braughton told me. "Reality is starting to temper my optimism. With the erosion of government support and the erosion of our tax base...people are going to have fewer resources to turn to and what the long-term consequences of that may be, well, only God knows."
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Rep. Dan Burton's Legacy: Lots of Sick Kids
By Stephanie Mencimer
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So Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) is finally retiring, after two decades in Congress. . .
Burton has said he believes one of his grandchildren became autistic after receiving a childhood vaccination. As a result, he spent many years and lots of congressional resources trying to investigate the alleged link between the two. In 2000, he held a circus-like hearing in which he provided a very high profile platform for the now entirely disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who helped spawn the myth that vaccines cause autism. Wakefield has since lost his medical license for allegedly falsifying the medical histories of the children he claimed had gotten autism from vaccines, among other issues.
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The impact of Burton's official endorsement of Wakefield's science has had a wide-ranging impact. He gave high-level approval of an utterly false theory that ended up persuading thousands of American parents not to immunize their kids, leading to a resurgence of a lot of preventable diseases. Whooping cough has surged nationally, largely because of vaccine refusal. In places like California, where lots of parents refused to immunize their kids, whooping cough became epidemic. In 2010, four babies needlessly died as a result. Measles outbreaks are also becoming more common.
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Exercise fights chronic disease sadness
By (UPI)
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Feelings of sadness that often accompany chronic illness can improve after exercise, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham said.
Lead author Matthew Herring, a research associate in the UAB's School of Public Health's department of epidemiology, said it is known that exercise can decrease depressive symptoms.
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The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found among patients with a chronic illness, exercise training -- including aerobic exercise like jogging, cycling and resistance exercise -- reduced depressive symptoms by 22 percent overall. More improvement was seen in participants who met physical activity recommendations of at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week or at least 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise, the study said.
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Big pharma donates drugs, know-how for neglected diseases
By (News Desk)
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GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer and Johnson & Johnson are among the big pharmaceutical companies donating drugs and scientific know-how in an effort to eliminate or control 10 neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) by 2020.
Teaming up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the drugmakers will donate an average of 1.4 billion treatments each year to those in need, provide more than $785 million in funding and share expertise and facilities, according to TG Daily.
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The group will also target soil-transmitted helminthes, schistosomiasis, river blindness, Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis, the TG Daily reported.
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Therapeutic Ultrasound Effectively Stops Sperm Production, Could be Used As Contraceptive for Men
By Tiffany Kaiser
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There are many ways to prevent conception, from temporary methods like condoms and birth control pills to more permanent techniques like a vasectomy. Now, researchers have found that ultrasound could finally be a noninvasive and effective addition to the list of contraceptive practices.
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The only problem with this particular study is that it could not be funded long enough to tell when (if at all) fertility returned, although two or three months is the estimated time. Thankfully, other research teams around the globe took part in separate studies to show that ultrasound does work, and not only in rats. For instance, the Paresmus Foundation, a funder for the male contraceptive movement, which also funded Tsuruta's study, provided money to researchers at the University of California - Davis to perform the same study on monkeys. According to lead UC Davis researcher Dr. Catherine VandeVoort, they were able to successfully use ultrasound as a contraceptive in monkeys after three 30-minute sessions, which were two days apart. However, the process was a long and difficult one.
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Despite the trying and somewhat odd research, the UC Davis was the one team that was able to show that ultrasound contraceptive was reversible, which is important since many believed it may be an irreversible method. For instance, Dr. Raffaella Leoci, a veterinary researcher from the University of Bari in Italy, paid close attention to the previous two ultrasound studies from the U.S. and applied the method to stray dogs in Italy. After Monday-Wednesday-Friday sessions at five minutes a piece, the method worked, but still showed no signs of reversibility.
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New online test tries to cut deaths from asthma attacks
By Dominic Hughes
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A new online test is being launched that will help people with asthma gauge to what extent they are at risk from a serious attack.
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The online test is called Triple A: Avoid Asthma Attacks.
It asks simple questions about factors which have been linked to increasing the risk of an asthma attack that could lead to a hospital admission.
According to the charity Asthma UK, which is behind the new website, about 75% of asthma-related emergency hospital admissions could be prevented.
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