File under good news: Deputies Find Missing Woman
And a top o’ the mornin’: World experts to attend suicide conference in Killarney
Least surprising headline of the morning: Mental health funding helps many gain stability
liz | 9:07 AM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
Too bad suicide reduction or any other laudable mental health goal is not a function of the number of conferences, commissions, task forces, colloquia, presentations, seminars, meetings, forums, conclaves, retreats, conventions, sessions, caucuses, roundtables, etc. Perhaps, one day the words and the deeds will intersect.
On Florida: From the original column, Communities will suffer if cutbacks hit mental health Services, “Florida ranks 48th in the nation in per-capita mental health spending ….” If there is a cut of “4% to 10%” Florida’s per capita mental health spending will likely be the lowest in the nation. Is this what Florida’s DCF had in mind when it promised that, “Florida is transforming its publicly funded mental health system ….” More verbiage at DCF’s website including, “Florida’s transformed mental health system will: Offer meaningful services and supports to customers and their families that reflect individual choices and needs ….” http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/mentalhealth/mhtransform/
“Words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.”
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