Skip to main content

Mental Health

Our Health Policy Matters often focuses on mental health.  This page contains links to many of those columns.

For more information about a variety of contemporary issues in mental health policy, please click on any of the following column titles to be taken to the full column (and hyperlinks within columns to many relevant sources of good mental health data and information).

More recent blogs written by the author about mental health policy can be found here.

For the 37 Percent, Stigma Trumps Acceptance

New Programs Show Value of Health and Behavioral Health Integration

Veterans and Mental Illness - A 2013 Update

Is Medicare Clearing Better Pathways to Wellness for Men with Depression?

Women and Depression - Stoicism or Neglect?

Why Are We Afraid of Mental Health Screening?

Mental Illnesses a Leading Cause of Hospital Admissions, But Treatment Lags Behind

Let's Treat Mental Illness Before It's Too Late

A Long Road Back To Sanity: States Finally Reversing Cuts to Mental Health

The Chain of Neglect: The Real Link Between Violence and Mental Illness

The Tragedy of Sandy Hook

When George McGovern Made Mental Health a Campaign Issue

Pushing for Mental  Health Parity

Our Mental Health Policy Mistakes and the Sons and Daughters Who Pay for Them

Mental Illness, Aging, and the Failure of Public Policy

Mental Disorders in the Armed Forces

Iraq and Back: Veterans Experience Tragic Delays in Seeking Mental Health Care

Anna Brown's Death

The Disintegration of Health and Mental Health Care

Mental Health Cuts Will Lead to Increased Health Costs

California Screaming

Veterans Dazed, Not Dazzled, By Mental Health Care

BCBSFL Wrong to Cut Mental Health Providers

Fifty Years Later: Class, Children, Mental Illness, and Cancer

Veterans and Mental Illness

Mental Health Budget Cutters on the Wrong Side of Reality

Making People With Mental Illness Pay the Price

Violence is a Public Health, Not a Mental Health, Problem

The Mental Illness Epidemic





















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Missing Mental Health Element in the Ferguson Story

By now, everyone has heard the news from Ferguson, Missouri.  An unarmed 18 year old named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer.  Michael Brown was black. Some of the events surrounding the shooting are in dispute.  But what isn’t in dispute is that for the past two weeks, a community has been torn apart by race – a community that until recently was best known for its proximity to St. Louis and its designation as a Playful City, USA . Picture credit: Health Affairs Media reports since the August 9 th shooting have focused almost entirely on one angle – race relations.  We’ve heard about unrest in the city, the National Guard, police in riot gear, and danger in the streets.  We’ve heard about the District Attorney’s ties to law enforcement, and concerns that a too-white Grand Jury may be racially motivated not to indict the police officer involved in the deadly shooting. But the media have been strangely silent about a different angle – this comm
Post a Comment
Read more

Celebrating Larissa Gionfriddo Podermanski Five Years Later

My daughter Larissa died of Metastatic Breast Cancer five years ago, in May of 2018.  She had only two wishes at the end. One was that we plant a tree for her. We did - in a Middletown CT city park - and it has grown straight and tall. The other was that she not be forgotten. Larissa's family and friends took pains to reassure that she could not be forgotten. If you were fortunate enough to know Larissa, you would know why. Still, I wondered how I might celebrate her a little more now that some years have passed, while sharing some of her memorable spirit with others (some who knew her and others who did not), while reminding us why she was such an extraordinary woman. In early 2017, Larissa started a blog called Metastatically Speaking, through which she chronicled her life with MBC. Unfortunately - and through no one's fault - her blog disappeared some time after her death. So, if you search for it now, you can't find it.  However, I was fortunate enough to see and retain
Post a Comment
Read more

Judgment Day

Ironic. I was not as nervous as you would think on April 23 rd .  Martin, my mother and I drove up to Dana Farber.  All weekend I wanted plan for Poland, Barbados and Florida, as we brainstormed ideas of what could be attainable or possible. I started to realize I looked pregnant… but that couldn’t be. When the appointment began I noticed it felt like a routine visit. Everything went smoothly, but what were we focusing on? It was this: if I did nothing the outlook for me was living three weeks to a few months longer. So, is that my only option, I wanted to know?   No, I was told we can try a low dose chemo and see how it works.   Since it is low dose, they said, it won’t do much harm, but we truly don’t know how it will work. It’s not a treatment we have used a lot at low dose and technically you are in liver failure, leaving you with limited options.   Of course, the goal would still be to get you to be stable; however, this is a blind treatment. We don’t know if this approach w
Post a Comment
Read more