Monday, August 08, 2005

Quarter of Prop. 36 drug offenders complete treatment, UCLA finds (California) AP story at the Mercury News - "About a quarter of drug offenders diverted from prison completed their alternative treatment under a program approved by California voters nearly five years ago, with results similar to other treatment programs, according to a UCLA study released Monday. The results of the third year of independent tracking of offenders sentenced under Proposition 36 came as lawmakers debate renewing funding for the program and whether to allow judges to incarcerate offenders who refuse treatment or keep abusing drugs. Proposition 36, approved by 61 percent of voters in November 2000, requires that first-and second-time nonviolent drug offenders be sent to treatment programs instead of prison."  
  

 Sunday, July 31, 2005

2003 Survey Found Teens Hear Prevention Messages SAMHSA press release - "The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) today released data showing that youth who reported seeing or hearing media messages on preventing drug and alcohol use are significantly less likely to report substance use. While 10.3 percent of youths who reported seeing or hearing media prevention messages in the past year reported binge alcohol use in the past month, 12.5 percent of youth who were not exposed to media prevention messages engaged in binge drinking. Similarly, 10.8 percent of youth who saw or heard media prevention messages reported past month illicit drug use compared to 13.7 percent who received no messages. In 2003, 83.6 percent of youth (20.8 million) reported seeing or hearing an alcohol or drug prevention message. SAMHSA extracted the data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2003, which asked youth ages 12-17 if they had seen or heard any alcohol or drug prevention messages from posters, pamphlets, radio, TV or other sources. The survey also asked about alcohol and drug use." See also the full report (in HTML and PDF formats) and related resources at the OAS site.  
  

Clinical Support System Available to Assist Physicians who Treat Patients Dependent on Opiates  SAMHSA press release - "The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) today announced the availability of the Physician Clinical Support System (PCSS) to assist physicians who prescribe or dispense buprenorphine to their patients dependent on heroin or prescription drugs containing opiates. SAMHSA, in collaboration with the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and other specialty addiction medicine, psychiatric, pain and general medicine societies, created the support system to assist physicians in the appropriate use of buprenorphine, and to promote improved patient care, research and education."  
  

 Monday, July 25, 2005

Building capacity — A framework for serving Albertans affected by addiction and mental health issues (Canada)A 54 page report, in PDF format, brought to our attention by CMHA/Ontario's Mental Health Notes, which describes the report as "a strategy document" which "outlines a provincial framework for service delivery for people with concurrent disorders. The document suggests a strategy of a dynamic, collaborative approach to better help people affected by addiction and mental health issues. A dynamic model allows consumers to enter into the system at any point, and move between service points as their needs change. The framework emphasizes a collaborative system based on partnerships between service providers at all levels: community, regional, provincial and national. The document notes that information, prevention and early intervention are key to helping persons with less severe symptoms to get treatment."  
  

 Thursday, July 21, 2005

Less than 1 percent of health plan members are diagnosed with alcohol use disorders AMA press release reprinted at EurekAlert, based on the 2005 eValue8 RFI Initiative, which captures voluntarily reported data from more than 250 health plans nationwide - "Less than 1 percent of health plan members are actually diagnosed with alcoholism or related disorders, according to data from a national performance measurement project released today in New York City at the American Medical Association Media Briefing, Alcohol Dependence: From Science to Solutions. Based on general population rates, health plans should be diagnosing at least four or five times as many members with alcohol problems."  
  

 Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2003: Area Profiles of Drug-Related Mortality Data from the SAMHSA DAWN project - "This is the first publication of mortality data from the new Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). Virtually every feature of DAWN, except its name, changed in 2003. In this publication, we refer to "new DAWN" to emphasize these differences. The purpose of this publication is to profile the drug-related deaths reported to DAWN by participating medical examiners and coroners (ME/Cs) for 2003. Each metropolitan area or State is presented separately, with participating and non-participating jurisdictions clearly identified. No system-wide summaries are provided, either in the text or in tables. Our intent is to discourage aggregation of data across areas, because the mortality component of DAWN is not national in scope nor can it be used to derive national estimates. DAWN mortality data for 2003 are not comparable to those for any prior years. In fact, no comparisons of data from the "old" and "new" DAWN are possible. "  
  

NIAAA Issues New Clinician’s Guide for Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much I-Newswire press release - "The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has released a new guide for health care practitioners to help them identify and care for patients with heavy drinking and alcohol use disorders. Helping Patients Who Drink Too Much: A Clinician’s Guide is now available free online and in print, with a pocket version included."  
  

 Monday, July 18, 2005

Trends in Employer-Provided Mental Health and Substance Abuse Benefits Black Enterprise story - "Traditionally, employer-provided coverage for mental disorders and substance abuse treatment has been more restrictive than for other medical care benefits; recent data from the BLS National Compensation Survey show substantive changes in narrowing some of those differences, primarily as a result of State and federally- mandated benefits. Employer-provided mental health coverge has experienced dramatic changes ver the last decade. Prior to the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) of 1996, nearly all employer-financed health insurance plans covered mental disorders, but benefits were traditionally more restrictive than for other illnesses.1 Coverage for mental disorders, for example, was usually for shorter periods, and plans generally provided lower annual and lifetime maximum dollar benefits..."  
  

 Wednesday, July 13, 2005

New Drug Abuse Treatment Shows Promise Science Daily story - "Patients who receive buprenorphine treatment for opioid addiction in an office--based setting are more likely than those receiving methadone treatment to be young men, new to drug use, and with no history of methadone treatment, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Approved for treating heroin and prescription opiate pain killer abuse in 2002, office--based buprenorphine holds the promise of bringing new patients into treatment. While heroin and prescription opiate pain killer abuse has substantially increased over the years, the availability of treatment has not increased with the demand."