Prisons are increasingly being filled with inmates who suffer from mental illness. This paper examines the prevalence of mental illness in American jails and prisons, the duty government and society has to provide appropriate mental health treatment, and the implications for inmate safety, costs, recidivism, and community reintegration if…

In this article, the author gives a summary of a conference, organized by Voice of Young People in Care (VOYPIC). The event celebrated the publication of the Caspar Research Report--a report on the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers in Northern Ireland. The event was opened by Vivian McConvey, Director of VOYPIC, who gave some…

Throughout the country and especially in Texas, local communities opened their arms to hurricane Katrina evacuees. Like the federal government, emergency health and mental health entities were unprepared for the massive numbers of people needing assistance. Mental health professionals, though armed with a wealth of crisis intervention information,…

Objective: The authors describe the evolution of a novel national training program to develop minority faculty for mental health services research careers. Recruiting, training, and sustaining minority health professionals for academic research careers in mental health services research have proven challenging. Method: Over the past 8 years the…

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was launched in January 2005. Lifeline, supported by a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, consists of a network of more than 120 crisis centers located in communities across the country that are committed to suicide prevention. Lifeline's Certification and…

This report describes states' use of federal maternal and child health services (MCH) block grant funds to support their children's medical services (CMS) programs. Program officials and appropriate documents in 10 states were reviewed. Although all states allocated MCH funds to CMS programs, they did not typically designate the funds for…

Within the past decade the role of the primary care physician caring for older patients has expanded to include counseling and "healthy aging" education to reduce multiple behavior risk factors. Project AGE WELL was a longitudinal study of the impact of a comprehensive and team delivered health promotion program on the health status of the…

The people of Boston made a commitment that no homeless person will be denied a bed, a meal, quality health care, and transportation to shelter during the winter of 1989-90. This commitment was difficult to fulfill due to a decline in services for the mentally ill, federal housing cutbacks, and an increase in the number of families living in…

This report describes the Maternal Infant Health Outreach Worker (MIHOW) program which operates in Appalachia and rural Western Tennessee. The program, which constitutes a partnership between community organizations and the Vanderbilt University Center for Health Services, trains local women to use home visitations to educate and support other…

The four sections of this paper outline changes in UNICEF programs from their inception in 1946 to recent initiatives circa 1983. The first section delineates shifts in program emphasis, showing how the organization's focus has moved from meeting the emergency needs of post-World War II European children toward addressing the long-term needs of…

This document presents a review of the history of the implementation of de-institutionalization in Queens County, a borough of New York City. A number of issues confronting the mental health profession, the community, the patients, and their families are discussed. It notes that Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, the major provider of services for the…

This report summarizes the activities of a planning workshop dealing with school-based education on elevated blood cholesterol. The workshop brought together a group of professionals in a collaborative planning process designed to identify: (1) the current level of knowledge about blood cholesterol nutrition, and diet among school-age children;…

This booklet provides an overview of the Medicaid Early and Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment program (EPSDT). In five brief sections the origins, operations, concepts, functions, and questions and answers about EPSDT are covered. Section I emphasizes that the EPSDT is a step toward a comprehensive health care system that combines…

Criteria developed to assist educators in their selection of instructional materials in nutrition education are presented in question format in seven categories. This technique is used both to avoid an authoritative approach and to stimulate indepth thinking as the user selects materials based on his or her own needs, keeping in mind that no one…

This report deals with parents who either drop out or continue to cooperate with procedures for identification of problem children. Some suggestions are made regarding measures for identifying dropouts and continuers in mental health agencies. These suggestions are based on data collected over two years of time while families were being recruited…