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March 2010 - Sober News

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  • Are Celebrity Rehabs Cures Or Cons? - CBS2 Chicago

    E! Online (blog) Are Celebrity Rehabs Cures Or Cons? CBS2 Chicago ... actor Mel Gibson blaming alcohol addiction for an anti-semitic rant, and Miss Universe Tara Conner, entering drug rehab to avoid losing her crown, ... Did Jesse James Check Into Rehab...

  • Are Celebrity Rehabs Cures Or Cons? - CBS 2 Chicago

    Are celebrity rehabs cures or cons ... actor Mel Gibson blaming alcohol addiction for an anti-semitic rant, and Miss Universe Tara Connor, entering drug rehab to avoid losing her crown, the public seems to have gotten wise to what Ganis calls crisis ...

  • Co-occurring disorders draw a crowd

    With the recent passage of the healthcare reform bill that will establish a link between the divided sectors of health services in the U.S., integration is on everyone’s mind. This was especially clear yesterday afternoon as 1,400 addictions, behavioral health, and developmental disability professionals logged in to Addiction Professional ’s latest webinar, “Integrating Treatment for Co-occurring Disorders.” The webinar was...

  • Confluence

    Whitewater rafting is, for many, the adventure of a lifetime, the thrill of navigating visible and invisible obstacles amid fast changing, turbulent waters. With passage of national healthcare reform legislation, the raft of our profession floats quietly, just upstream of the most powerful confluence of change it has ever faced. While some of our readers have navigated some of these streams, none of us have faced their combined force. The demands...

  • Looking to a new horizon

    As we move from advocating to implementing national health reform legislation, our certitude will decrease and our anxiety will grow. We will be moving into an unknown field of action, in which the vast majority of Americans will have personal health insurance through either a private or a public plan, yet we have a lot to learn about how this field operates. This dramatic change will reverberate across the health and specialty service delivery systems...

  • Leaders ask for IT funding fix

    Recognizing the importance of improved technology, notably, adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), to meeting the nation's goals of improving care, eliminating errors, and reducing costs, many healthcare providers celebrated the announcement of major information technology funding incentives provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Within the ARRA, the $50 billion Health Information Technology for Economic Clinical...

  • Rosenberg: Reform is a “game changer”

    “Healthcare reform is really a ‘game changer,’ something that opens up wonderful new opportunities as well as a range of important challenges,” says Linda Rosenberg, CEO of The National Council. Reform marks a new milestone for the field's professionals: “We've now got what we always wanted, to have mental health and addiction disorders treated the same way as other illnesses. It's a huge victory. We've...

  • Confidentiality law: Time for change?

    In 1972, Congress adopted The Federal Confidentiality of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Patient Records law (now codified at 42 USC 290dd-2), reflecting its concern that individuals not be made more vulnerable as a result of seeking treatment for a substance use disorder. In the eyes of addiction treatment patients and their families, the fear and reality of stigma and discrimination remain just as real today as they were in 1972. As a result, we must continue...

  • Ready, set, integrate!

    Last month we opened a conversation about the merits of program integration. We focused on two topics: the benefits of integrating peers into a traditional workforce and the advantages of integrating physical health services into behavioral health services. In both cases, the evidence supporting integration is indisputable, yet the implementation is very slow in coming. We ended the conversation by pointing out the urgency of beginning the integration...

  • Remembering history, creating history

    Over the past several decades, the field of addiction treatment has gone through numerous changes, from the development of the Minnesota Model of treatment nearly 60 years ago to the use of experiential therapies and advancements in neurological or pharmacological treatments today. As the founders of modern addiction treatment leave the field and a new generation of leaders emerges, treatment professionals are looking for ways to move the industry...

  • Mismatching Offenders for Treatment

    More than 80 percent of state prison inmates have indications of serious drug or alcohol involvement. 1 After nearly 15 years of clinical and administrative involvement with offender programs at Gateway Rehabilitation, I have observed that some offenders seemed to need more intensive treatment than they were receiving, while others did not seem to need as much as we provided. I wondered, “Why the mismatch?” It turns out that the corrections...

  • Learning from the best

    For a decade, leaders at the Betty Ford Center (Rancho Mirage, Calif.) looked on with pride as the National Association for Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP) recognized addiction treatment organizations for outstanding quality improvements with an award inspired by the Center's first medical director, James W. West, MD. Michael S. Netherton, president, Betty Ford Recovery Hospital “When we were approached by NAATP to get involved in...

  • Adult TBI clubhouses offer hope

    At least 1.7 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the United States each year, according to statistics compiled by the CDC. Among TBI cases that reach the emergency room for treatment, 80 percent (1.36 million) are treated and released, three percent (52,000) die, and 16 percent (275,000) are hospitalized. Among those who suffer more serious brain injuries, many will never fully recover. Typically, following an initial hospitalization...

  • Dual environments for dual disorders

    Even before I founded the beautiful new addiction and mental health recovery center, Brentwood Meadows ( http://www.brentwoodmeadows.com ), I admit that I have always been a big dreamer. I started out in the field of social work in 1982 believing that I could change the world by helping one person at a time get their life back on track. Twenty-eight years later, in March 2008, I fulfilled one of my biggest dreams with the purchase of 12 acres of land...

  • New Tools for Managing Non-Adherence

    Adherence to psychiatric medications poses a formidable challenge to behavioral health clinicians working with seriously mentally ill (SMI) patients. Consider this case: Sally is a 42-year-old single, unemployed woman with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia since her first hospitalization at the age of 23. Sally is treated by Dr. Kathleen Degen, the medical director at Sound Community Services Inc., a private, not-for-profit community mental health...
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