The National Alliance on Mental Illness released a report this month that included policy recommendations for states to consider including educating the public, families and peers about mental illness and incorporating behavioral health screening into primary care. The good news is that we’re on the mark here in Arizona as we’ve already begun to implement [...]
Congrats to the Arizona Peer and Family Coalition for rolling out their new user friendly website last week. The Coalition is a group of people from AZ’s behavioral health community, including peers, family members, government representatives, and providers. Their mission is to advocate for statewide behavioral Health policy development by peers and family members. Their [...]
A number of published studies have found that using marijuana (and other psychoactive substances) is associated with an earlier onset of psychotic illness (notice I said “is associated with” rather than “causes”). National mental health surveys have repeatedly found more substance use, especially cannabis use, among people with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. A [...]
One of our primary objectives over the last couple of years in behavioral health has been to shift the focus of our performance measures away from process and procedures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we don’t want to measure our success on whether someone’s paperwork is right, but on whether the services we provide [...]
For the past 18 months our tobacco cessation and behavioral health teams have been working together in a way that is positioning Arizona as a national leader in closing the gap in life expectancy for people with a mental illness! Consider these startling facts which confront Arizonans with a mental illness: Life expectancy is 30 [...]
Twenty-two employees from ADHS and members of their families teamed up last week and joined the national effort to rid the nation and our state of homelessness. The beginning step is to produce clear evidence of the need by providing the government of (as closely as we can) the actual number of people who are [...]
On January 15, 2011, Governor Brewer released her proposed budget for next fiscal year (which begins July 1, 2011). One of the budget items would change AHCCCS (Medicaid) eligibility for adults without children (called childless adults). The ADHS currently provides behavioral health services to approximately 5,200 persons with serious mental illnesses that are childless adults. [...]
I know many of you are following the tragedy that occurred over the weekend in Tucson. If you’re like me, you’ve been trying to make sense of something that is senseless. It is not uncommon to have a variety of reactions to a sudden and violent event such as this, and you may be struggling [...]
The US Department of Health and Human Services is in line to receive $11 Billion in funding over the next 5 years for the operation, expansion and construction of health centers nationwide. These funds will be made available through a nationwide competitive grant application process. Our Bureau of Health Systems Development is the Arizona designated [...]
The name of the game for Public Health Prevention in 2011 is integration and leverage. Our Public Health Prevention Team will be focusing on the social determinants of health and working to implement policies, systems and environmental changes that make the healthy choices easy. Here are some examples of our public health prevention priorities for the [...]
