Things That Make Me Crazy

I sometimes think I live in a tight little fantasy bubble where I want life to make sense and be fair.  I want it to be an uncomplicated place where, when resources are limited, we assess the problems and direct the dollars to things we know will efficiently fix the problems.  I'd like us to use our public health  dollars to feed hungry people, to house those without some place warm to stay, to help those in need learn strategies and get jobs so they can help themselves, and to provide health care to those who are ill.  In cases where there are big-picture items that lead to devastating consequences and enormous costs to society, I'd like us to target the causes with early interventions that are known to be effective: so measures to prevent drug/alcohol/tobacco abuse, better and more available drug treatments, and more resources dedicated to early education so that everyone gets the skills they need to earn a living and grow up to be a taxpayer.  

Instead, through some mix of politics and medicine, there are these untested (or poorly tested) ideas out there that cost billions of dollars and money gets diverted away from being used for the direct good of the people.  Maybe I'm wrong-- I'm sure there are plenty of people who disagree with me and think that these changes are important and will make the world a better place -- so by all means, feel free to comment. tell me why I'm wrong, or do add to my list.  It's a little of 'one guy unsuccessfully tried to blow up a plane with his sneakers so millions take off their shoes for screening every day.'  The cost is phenomenal, but I do have to  admit that no planes have been blown up with shoe bombs since, and if my child was on a plane that didn't explode, then the cost to society was worth it, but it's not a very "public health" way of thinking.  But you have to wonder what we're giving up when we put a lot of time, money, or resources towards low-probability events or towards paperwork for the sake of paperwork.  In no particular order:

Dinah's List of Aggravating Diversions from Productivity in 2013

• CPT codes that force psychiatrists to differentiate "medical care" from psychotherapy with rate changes depending on whether the psychotherapy component takes 52 minutes or 53 minutes or the session, and creates 15 different options for coding a single psychotherapy session.
• 68,000 ICD-10 codes for the purpose of diagnosis/billing. Really?  ClinkShrink will be thrilled, code Y92146 is for getting hurt at a prison swimming pool.  Prisons have swimming pools?  And Y92253 is for being hurt at the opera, so Clink and Jesse can both rest assured that injuries they may incur can be coded. This helps us how?  And, no, US prisons don't have swimming pools, but why should that stop us from having codes?
  
• Legislation -- complete with the cost of databanks, means for reporting to such databanks, and the cost of enforcement -- to keep the poorly-defined 'mentally ill' from owning guns when there is no such effort to keep the family members or roommates of those people from owning guns, and there is no such effort to keep guns from those who are known to be dangerous if they are not mentally ill.  The laws in Maryland also include 'habitual drunkards,' -- but there is no provision to report those who goes to detox/rehab or have a second DWI/DUI from having a gun. 
• Continued support of the Second Amendment as interpreted rather widely, despite 40,000 gun deaths/ year, some of them innocent small children. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  I'm just not sure that the founding fathers foresaw a society of drug addiction, rampant suicide, and a country with a firearms death rate beyond any other country in the world.  There was slavery when the second amendment was written, and I don't think the amendment included slaves, so clearly the 'right of the people' did not mean all people, or include assault weapons that did not yet exist.  The second amendment has become an impenetrable devotion -- in Maryland's it's some state legislator's main forum -- as if it were a religious belief.  And people with mental illnesses have taken the blame for all inappropriate uses of guns.  See yesterdays Bloomberg Report for our President's pronouncement, and by all means, read the comments.   
•  Meaningful use -- a government/Medicare phenomena that creates a tremendous amount of work for physicians that does not seem to directly improve patient care (correct me if I'm wrong), and if it does, it doesn't improve patient care/outcomes in a way that warrants the time, and expense.  I don't really know what Meaningful Use is (such details never stop me from ranting), but I know the government will give me money if I'll convert to electronic records and use it in a particular way.  Otherwise, for every Medicare  patient I see, I must charge a lower fee if I don't use e-prescribing (which is not conclusively shown to improve patient outcomes) a certain percentage of the time, and that in 2013, to prevent an drop in my fees, I needed to put a PQRS code on one patient's insurance claim form.  I could not figure out what that meant, so I asked an APA assembly member who runs a hospital.  After two  separate half-hour phone conversations, one in-person meeting, and I have no idea how many hours of his time, he provided me a list of options which included things like "medications not reconciled, reason not given."  I opted to list on one patient's claim a code indicating he was not a tobacco user, and I'm told this was good enough to keep my fees from dropping 1.5% next year.  What's meaningful about this?
• CRISP/Government portals of patient records collected without patient knowledge/permission.  These may be very helpful for emergency care in crisis situation,  and perhaps they allow for data/outcome collection that will be used for outcomes research, but they cost a lot of money and after the NSA scandal, are we all comfortable with the government keeping our health records without our expressed permission?  Are we sure our health information won't bounce back at us in unwanted ways?
• Hospitals that spend HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to replace existing, function, Electronic Medical Records when there are people sleeping on cardboard boxes outside their doors, and when such medical records increase the amount of time clinicians spend with computers and decrease the amount of time they spend with patients -- and don't necessarily decrease medical errors.  This feels wrong to me  on so many levels: there are shortages of physicians and we're diverting their attention to clicking through screens and checking off boxes that have nothing to do with the care of that particular patient, adding hours a day to physician workload, promoting physician burnout, and diverting funds to this project that could be used to pay for health care for human beings.
• Government-run health insurance exchange(ACA) websites that are basically unusuable and create too much frustration for the average person --especially the average person with medical or psychiatric issues-- to work efficiently.  One of my patients was blocked from signing up because he forgot his password, and the recovery question involved his pet's name, only he's never had a pet and was locked out of the system. 
• Hospital medical records that afford no privacy because thousands of people have access to them and patients can not opt out, other than to get care at another institution.  But if you want information about a patient from another institution, with the patient's permission, barriers are put in place to make this next to impossible.  I recently requested records from a local hospital ten minutes from my office, and two weeks later they sent me a form saying that the authorization my patient signed was not good enough, it had to be signed on their specific form.  How crazy is this?  Perhaps it's because that hospital's administrator was so busy looking up my PQRS codes that he wasn't updating their information release policies.
• That my state is proposing to spend money on programs to increase cultural awareness and competency on number of measures when people need food/housing/healthcare/job training.  I'm all for treating people respectfully, but maybe it would be cheaper to fire those who are demeaning to others rather than to set up training programs to make them 'culturally aware.' (Please forgive my cynicism, in a world where everyone is fed, housed, has healthcare, heat, education and jobs, I'm all in favor of programs to increase sensitivity to cultural issues).
• "That my state is proposing to add Assisted Outpatient Treatment (read: forced care) when we don't have enough information to know if this really works without other services in place.  We don't have  enough resources to care for people who want care, and this will entail forcing people to take medications that are known to have detrimental cardiovascular effects in some people,  distressing side effects in others, and may include forcing care on people when that care does not decrease their symptoms. If I thought the legislation was truly about getting care for the very sickest of people -- those 'dying in the streets with their rights on' -- I would be in favor, but I believe it's a "do something" measure to address spree shooters and has been tied to federal funding. 

Thank you for letting me rant.  That's what this was, and I appreciate it.  I feel much better now. 

The Wicked Witch of the West, Behind the Scene

One week from now our legislative session will be over and we'll be left to sort through the wreckage of the new laws that hit us. Every year I do this I wish we had some way to limit the number of bills that could be introduced, to give the public a fighting chance to figure out what their representatives are trying to do to them.

The Shrink Rappers have been pretty busy with this particular session and I've written a short column about it over on Clinical Psychiatry News. Feel free to hop over there and read my piece "A Glimpse Under the Hood." The site doesn't require you to register anymore although there is one small annoying popup ad you have to click past first.

This afternoon is the big day. The House version of our governor's gun bill is going to a vote in a joint committee. If it passes, which everyone expects it will, that will be the final step before it joins the other version already passed by the Senate to become law. We've managed to keep psychiatry out of the decision to take guns away from people and to at least provide some education to the legislators about the limitations and dangers of policies based on categorical mental illness.

It looks like insanity acquittees, criminal defendants who are incompetent to stand trial and people under guardianship will be barred from purchasing weapons, as will be anyone under an active protective order. This addition is required by the Federal government to be compliant with their gun laws. People can petition to have their gun rights restored although the administrative logistics for this have yet to be hammered out, and legislators (in spite of their professed intent to get guns out of the hands of dangerous people) have shown a striking reluctance to enforce seizure of weapons from anyone who falls into one of these categories. And yes, they carved out certain assault weapons out of the list of proposed banned weapons.

The final piece is the Maryland version of the New York SAFE Act. The original bill has been dropped, but it bounced back in the form of an amendment to today's bill which will be voted on this afternoon. The last three days have been pretty intense with discussions about how to protect our patients from getting reported to police. Dinah has already written extensively about this in USA Today and in Clinical Psychiatry News, and I outlined the New York requirements here. We're hopeful Maryland is not going to skip down that yellow brick road. That yellow isn't gold.

Which brings me back to the Wicked Witch of the West. When crafting law, her advice "These things must be done carefully" is a good thing to remember. I thought of this often when looking at bills proposed to modify all of our involuntary treatment laws. Regardless of which way you fall on the issue, the worst outcome is to create confusion. I don't know if any of the changes will actually make it out of committee next week so I won't speculate here, but like most states following all these high profile shootings there was a rush to cobble together a lot of changes while the time was ripe. And it showed in the legislation.

And now for something completely different:

Well, not completely. I listened to a presentation yesterday by Dr. Jeff Swanson, a sociologist and epidemiologist who studies the impact of certain public policy decisions and programs. He was part of a summit meeting on gun policy recently at Johns Hopkins. I listened to 90 minutes of impressive outcome data on gun violence and mental illness. His research provides strong support for the futility of reducing gun-related violence by singling out people by diagnosis. Unfortunately, as we've already seen with the sex offender registries, futility and costly ineffective public policies are not mutually exclusive.

So that's where I've been disappeared to lately. I hope to come up for air soon.

What This Shrink Rapper Would Tell Congress

Recently one of our readers posted this comment:

“If any Shrink Rapper ever has the time and inclination it would be interesting to read about what you would do to fix the mental health system, particularly the issue of involuntary hospitalization, if you had unlimited funds and political resources. You've been in the trenches, it would be great to hear your thoughts.”

Simultaneously, over on Peter Earley’s blog I see that he is planning to testify next week before a U.S. house subcommittee regarding issues related to violence and severe mental illness. He is asking for people to contribute responses to six specific questions he expects to be asked. Please go over there and contribute your ideas---this is your chance to make a difference.

Meanwhile, I have my own thoughts about this which may or may not be directly relevant to the six questions, but I want to bring this to the attention of the subcommittee if Mr. Earley would be kind enough to include it. For those of you who want the "bottom line," I've underlined my main ideas.

First, a bit about why I think my experience and ideas are relevant.

As a forensic psychiatrist, I evaluate and treat severely mentally ill people who are or have been violent. I see the rare exceptions, the people who as a result of their disease commit acts that seriously injure or kill others. As a correctional psychiatrist I have also evaluated and treated thousands of prisoners, many of whom also have serious psychiatric disorders.

I will emphasize, as you've already heard from others, that violent offenses due to psychosis are the exception to the rule. Almost all crimes of violence are not committed by people with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. Drug and alcohol abuse is the culprit in most violent crimes and we must vigorously address this and do more to provide treatment to people with substance abuse problems at the time that they are willing to accept treatment.

From evaluating insanity acquittees, people who are found not criminally responsible for  their crimes due to mental illness, I’ve learned that one significant systemic problem is the lack of public awareness about psychosis and how to recognize prodromal symptoms. Often the early symptoms get written off as attributable to some other life stressor: the breakup of a relationship, the stress of a young adult's transition to college or some other understandable life event. Sadness, withdrawal from family, loss of interest in hobbies or friendships can be explained in this context. However, as the illness gets worse and the patient's personality changes, there is more recognition that something serious is going on. Friends, neighbors and teachers recognize psychosis only when there is increasing disorganization, inability to complete tasks, or eventual bizarre behavior and unusual statements.

Therefore, my first suggestion to address violence due to mental illness would be to provide better public education to recognize emerging psychosis.

Once the psychotic episode is recognized for what it is, the challenge for families then becomes figuring out what to do. Finding a psychiatrist and getting prompt evaluation and treatment is a tremendous challenge particularly in rural or underserved areas. In southwestern Minnesota where I was raised, there is only one fulltime psychiatrist serving a seven county area of 70,000 people. Our local Baltimore City Detention Center has a higher per capita number of psychiatrists than my hometown. That has to change.

My second recommendation is this: the government needs to provide increased funding for medical education, particularly the training of psychiatrists. There should be additional incentives, beyond Federal public health service commitments, to work in underserved regions or state facilities.

All of my patients are institutionalized but most will return to the community eventually. Insanity acquittees typically are hospitalized for substantially longer than they would have been incarcerated if convicted. The majority of my mentally ill offenders are convicted of misdemeanor property offenses that are drug or alcohol-related, and return to the community within months to a few years. Regardless of the length of confinement, we need better programs to transition patients from a public institution to the community. Insanity acquittees and mentally ill offenders need housing, transportation, educational and vocational programs in addition to addressing their medical and mental health needs. Lack of adequate community services and transition plans are a key factor in unnecessarily prolonged hospitalizations.

Many recent high profile crimes have lead the public to demand looser civil commitment standards and easing of laws for involuntary treatment. In my opinion, this creates an adversarial atmosphere and unnecessarily sets families in opposition to their mentally ill loved ones. People with psychiatric illnesses have legitimate reasons to oppose confinement, and we should examine these reasons thoroughly and address them.

Some public psychiatric hospitals, of the few that remain, are antiquated and dilapidated. We need to improve environmental conditions of these facilities and address the poor ventilation, bad plumbing and faulty infrastructure. The inpatient unit should emphasize treatment plans that respect a patient's educational level, skills and interests rather than focussing solely on disability. Inpatient safety and security are increasing concerns, leading some patients to be strip-searched arbitrarily. We must improve hospital security to protect both patients and staff from physical assault. As a recent story in our local newspaper indicates, concern about violence is not limited to free society and must be addressed within facilities as well.

Finally, we need to reinvigorate collaborative treatment planning through the use of psychiatric advance directives. Make them meaningful and useful. Currently patients don't trust them because they know doctors can override them. Ironically, doctors don't trust advance directives for exactly the same reason---because they can be revoked by patients. We need to update psychiatric advance directive laws to make them binding, effective and safe, then make sure treatment providers are educated about their use.

Thank you for reading this far. We can’t make the system perfect, but I’m sure we can make it better.

My Day With Our State Legislature

It was a long day in Annapolis yesterday.  I was one of an estimated 1,300 people who showed up to give testimony on gun legislation.  For details, see The Baltimore Sun article.

On the public testimony, I was #162  and I went at nearly 9 pm, they were estimating 16 hours of testimony and it didn't start until 4:30 pm. My quick demographic estimates: 99% white, over 90% Male, & over 95% or those who came to testify opposed the governor's bill. The supporters, including busloads of school children, were outside rallying in the morning.

There were 4 hours of expert testimony, then I heard  4 hours of  public testimony with the same handful of messages : civil rights, why I need an assault weapons, statistics on how gun control doesn't decrease violence, I'm gonna move to another state if this passes, you're going to make me a criminal, go after the criminals and the mentally ill,  all of these measure prevent straw purchases but no one is ever prosecuted for straw purchases, this won't fix anything, and my personal favorite: the little girl who testified that if the law passed she'd have to move away from her friends, her school, and going to McDonald's.  Where were the victims of gun violence? Where were the mental health advocates?  They were part of the expert testimony -- I'll talk more about this below--but I was the only one (of those I heard) who was not giving public testimony on the Firearms Act.  I left after I testified, but it went on until early the next day --I've heard 3 AM and 6 AM. 

I got to testify around 9 pm, maybe a little earlier, thanks to our kind psychiatric society lobbyists who signed me up, even though I wasn't the designated speaker for the expert testimony. It fast-forwarded me out of a long line to get into the building and I got me a much better number than I'd have gotten myself, being that I'm not a "morning person."  I was psychologically prepared to stay until 10 or 11, so being heard by 9 was good.  I'd brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a pear, and some carrots.  I resorted to water from a faucet in the rest room, and at one point, I was sitting on the floor of the hearing room with my phone charging while I tweeted, and a kind staffer offered me a chair.  I didn't want a chair, but I did ask if he could get me a cold beer. 

I had prepared three minutes of testimony, but given the numbers, they cut the time to one minute. Everyone ran over, and the Chairman, Delegate Pete Hammen, sometimes let people ramble on, and other times, cut them off.  I thought he was incredibly rude and dismissive to me.  I seem to remember going to meet with him years ago, and that he was dismissive then --not to me specifically but to our psychiatrist group.  Is this my imagination or does he not like psychiatrists?  I think I felt like our readers feel when they talk about being dissed because they are psychiatric patients; I felt dissed because I was a psychiatrist.  I pointed out to him that I was the only person there not testifying on the Firearms Bill, I was talking about HB810 --mandatory reporting of dangerous patients.  He'd been more patient listening to  gun-owner after gun owner make one of the same 4-5 points about why they oppose the legislation.  Me, as the only one giving testimony on a different bill, he cut off repeatedly and was quick to dismiss.  In all fairness, it was nearly 9 pm and everyone was fading, some of the legislators had left, and  I can't imagine what they were like at 3 AM.  I did go over my allotted time and I did give my testimony as a story, not as bullet points, something I knew might be risky. The bill's sponsor had been in and out of the hearing room, but during my testimony, he was gone. 

There was on ob-gyn who testified in favor of the bill --one of only 3 pro-gun control advocates I heard --  and they were much nicer to her.  I guess on the positive side, someone in the room applauded me -- no one else was applauded while I was in the hearing room -- and one of the legislators said, while I was speaking, "That's why we shouldn't pass this."  So I guess it was worthwhile.  No one had any questions for me, but Hammen phrased it as "Any questions? Next." And they were all understandably a bit zoned out by that hour.  One person gave testimony that she'd been mistakenly diagnosed with a mental disorder and could never get a gun because no one would say the doctors at the hospital were wrong, and this was part of the Firearms Act.

By the way, when someone (? I think it wasn't one of the bill's sponsors, but I missed the introduction) described HB810, he described the three Tarasoff options and said this bill would require mental health professionals to tell the police if there was a specific threat against someone else. He proposed it as a tightening of the Tarasoff requirements, while the HB810 actually undermines Tarasoff.   In fact, the bill requires mental health professionals to report to the "Director of Mental Hygiene" : a nonexistent agency.  Perhaps they meant MHA or DHMH.  The Direct of Mental Hygiene then decides whether to tell the State Police for the purpose of preventing gun sales (so reporting to the FBI NICS database, I assume?), who then decides if they should contact the local police. 

As far as the expert testimony went -- the first 4 hours of the proceedings --Dr. Brian Zimnitsky from the Maryland Psychiatric Society did a great job, and an internist testified who also did a wonderful job-- he described that 1/4 of his patients have psychiatric issues and how hard it is to get people in to see psychiatrists, how many don't take insurance and how clinics aren't open late for people who work, and the long waits.  And he was very articulate about how the process to get your gun back doesn't/won't work because psychiatrists  won't certify people to use guns, either because they are liberal urbanites against gun ownership, or because they won't accept the liability.  Dr. Zimnitsky did a good job of re-iterating that with a little more detail about what it is we can do.  It was very confusing because the Firearms Act was the focus of attention, yet there were other mental health issues which got no space for discussion.  And most of the testimony was about the details of guns and assault rifles and statistics about how gun control effects morbidity and mortality.

Overall, Dr. Zimnitsky was the only psychiatrist, and there were 2 psychologists and 1 lawyer from the Maryland Disability Law Center -- in 4 hours of expert testimony, and the 4+ hours I watched of public testimony.  Is there anyway to get a stronger psychiatrist presence at the table?  These lawmakers clearly don't understand the issues, and I think it's hard because they seem to have their minds made up about psychiatric patients and either they are not open to learning, or we're not doing a good enough job explaining.  Even with the Emergency Petition issue that came up, it sounded like EP's happen when a doctor files one, and there was no mention of the fact that a family member or neighbor can easily obtain one, and then if the professional in the ER doesn't have enough information, they may want to hold a patient for a day or two to observe and clarify whether they are safe. In this case, a person will be deprived of a civil right without any due process. This was an 11th hour amendment that was brought into the Firearms Act on the night it passed the state senate.

There was nothing mentioned about doctor-patient confidentiality and how this is necessary for psychiatric treatment to ensue.  The point was made they times that using a 30 day cutoff for reporting would affect eating disorder patients who aren't dangerous, but I think the point should be that reporting voluntary patients forces physicians to violate the doctor-patient confidentiality that is necessary for psychiatric treatment it and  deprives people with mental illness of a civil right and that this singles out psychiatric patients as the only group of people who can be deprived of civil rights without any legal due process.  It's all terribly stigmatizing and may well serve the opposite of the intended effect: to leave people fearful of psychiatrists and less willing to get help.  And it's striking that HB810 only applies to mental health professionals and no other health care provider is being asked to report dangerousness.  I wasn't really sure by then end of all of it if the 30 day voluntary inpatient reporting was still part of the bill passed by the senate; it was twice mentioned that this had been removed.  We need to move the terminology from "the mentally ill" to "those who are dangerous" for any reason.

It's amazing that there is nothing about substance abuse, that you can go for eight rehabs, and still have your arsenal. 

In terms of actual safety issues, I think it might be helpful, though I imagine it's too late, to have a  process by which all physicians are "allowed" (as opposed to required) to violate confidentiality and the police are "required" to investigate and confiscate weapons then have a quick legal process that would ensue to return such weapons if they were confiscated in error.  This could be used for psychiatric patients, substance abusers, or simply angry, mean people who are making threats or behaving erratically.  And because it wouldn't be about just reporting to a database, it might serve as a mechanism to get guns out of the hands of those who have them illegally, something none of this legislation addresses.

If you read through all this, thank you.  Eleven hours yesterday and I needed to vent.  It was really fascinating and I'm so glad I went.

One Dad's Perspective

Okay, while our presidential candidates are debating, I thought I would link to an article by a former state legislator.  In "How I Helped Create a Flawed Mental Health System That Failed Millions -- and My Son," Paul Gianfriddo talks about his decades-long attempts to help his ill son, a young man who sounds to have mental health and educational needs that couldn't be met by a system with limitations.

Gianfriddo writes:

The 1980s was the decade when many of the state’s large psychiatric hospitals were emptied. We had the right idea. After years of neglect, the hospitals’ programs and buildings were in decay. But we didn’t always understand what we were doing. In my new legislative role, I jumped at the opportunity to move people out of “those places.” Through my subcommittee, I initiated funding for community mental health and substance abuse treatment programs for adults, returned young people from institution-based “special school districts” to schools in their hometowns, and provided for care coordinators to help manage the transition of people back into the community. 

But we legislators in Connecticut and many other states made a series of critical misjudgments that have haunted us all ever since. 

First, we didn’t understand how poorly prepared the public school systems were to educate children with serious mental illnesses in regular schools and classrooms. Second, we didn’t adequately fund community agencies to meet the new demand for community mental health services—ultimately forcing our county jails to fill the void. And third, we didn’t realize how important it would be to create collaborations among educators, primary care clinicians, mental health professionals, social services providers, and even members of the criminal justice system, if people with serious mental illnesses were to have a reasonable chance of living successfully in the community. 

During the twenty-five years since, I’ve experienced firsthand the devastating consequences of these mistakes.

The story about his son is heart-breaking and there is no happy ending.  I'll leave you to read the whole article and see what you think.  And if you'd like to check it out, Mr. Gianfriddo blogs, often about mental health issues, at Our Health Policy Matters.

Should State Legislators Determine Indications for Medical Treatment?

The FDA evaluates studies on medications and deems them safe enough to justify use.  They also determine the "indications" for using any particular medicine, and once that's done, physicians will often use a medication 'off label.'  That means that Medicine A was found to be safe (or relatively safe, because even over-the-counter meds can be fatal for the wrong person at the wrong time), and it works better than a placebo at treating Disease A, but some studies have found it useful for Disease B, but the FDA hasn't gotten to approving it for this yet, and perhaps never will, but docs use it for Disease B anyway.  This is very common with the SSRI's, where one has been approved for a condition, but maybe the patient isn't tolerating that one so well, so the doc uses another SSRI with a different side effect profile, even though that particular med has not been approved for that particular condition.  Just an FYI, the SSRI's are : Prozac Zoloft Paxil Luvox Celexa Lexapro.   


So the FDA says inhaled marijuana (as opposed to Marinol, a pill form of cannabis) has no medical uses and the discussion is ended.  It can't really be studied at this point, because it has no medical value so your local university can't grow or get any weed and do studies on it, because it has no medical value.  And the federal government says it's illegal.   I do believe that with 16 states disagreeing, that perhaps the FDA should reconsider this stance and repeat a study or two on inhaled cannabis for nausea induced by chemotherapy or anorexia in AIDS so that medical marijuana can be studied, monitored, grown in a pure regulated way, prescribed for a known and proven condition with some parameters like other medical interventions: 30 day supply, directions on how much and how often to smoke it (ah, the pharmacy could roll for you), reassessment so that if your doc decides to give it to you "off label" for your low back pain, and that pain is so much better but funny, you've stopped working, you lie on the couch all day playing Grand Theft Auto, and your life has virtually stopped, the doc can say, "Glad it's helped your pain, but it's put you into an apathetic, amotivational state and your life has now gone down the toilet, I'm stopping this so you can go back to work and pay the mortgage and feed those hungry children."  Or for us shrinks, "Funny, but you didn't have schizophrenia until you started smoking this stuff, let's stop it."  Obviously, if the person has become addicted (and yes, you can get addicted to weed), they'll get it illegally, but the same is true of benzos or opiates, and really medical marijuana just can't be any worse then the fiasco we've had in this country with oxycontin, especially when it gets mixed with a bit of also-legal Xanax and also-legal Vodka, and I can give you a long list of names of people who can no longer testify to this, famous and otherwise.  


So for the moment, the demand for legalized Medical Marijuana is left in the hands of our legislators.  Who better to determine medical indication, necessity, length of treatment, and methods of monitoring.  In Maryland, there was a study group led by the state's health secretary, Joshua Sharfstein.  The plan called for going slow, required training of docs to prescribe it, and required that it be distributed through academic centers.  Two legislators who are pushing bills to legalize medical marijuana called it Misguided and Heartless.


Delegate Glenn of Maryland has proposed House Bill 15, a Medical Marijuana Act.  It provides that marijuana could be used for a variety of conditions.  They include: 

(1) “DEBILITATING MEDICAL CONDITION” MEANS:
(I) A CHRONIC OR DEBILITATING DISEASE OR MEDICAL CONDITION OR ITS TREATMENT THAT PRODUCES ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. CACHEXIA OR WASTING SYNDROME;
   
2. SEVERE, DEBILITATING, OR CHRONIC PAIN;
   
3. SEVERE NAUSEA;
   

4. SEIZURES, INCLUDING THOSE CHARACTERISTIC
OF EPILEPSY;
5. SEVERE AND PERSISTENT MUSCLE SPASMS, INCLUDING THOSE CHARACTERISTIC OF MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS OR CROHN’S
DISEASE;

6. AGITATION OF ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE;
   
7. ANXIETY; OR
   
8. DEPRESSION; OR
   

(2)
VIRUS (HIV);

“DEBILITATING MEDICAL CONDITION” INCLUDES:

1. (I)  CANCER;
   
2. (II)  GLAUCOMA;
   
3. (III)  POSITIVE STATUS FOR HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY
   
4. (IV)  ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME (AIDS);
   
5. (V)  HEPATITIS C;
   
6. (VI)  AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS;
   
7. (VII)  NAIL PATELLA;
   
8. (VIII)  POST–TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER;
   
9. (IX)  BIPOLAR DISORDER; OR
   
10. (X)  THE TREATMENT OF ANY OF THE ABOVE LISTED CONDITIONS. 
    
    
    On the positive side, the law does require that "compassion centers" to either grow or distribute marijuana be at least 500 feet from pre-existing schools.  Because children can't walk 600 feet?  
    
    I'm told this bill won't pass, but another one, with out the listed psychiatric indications for the use of medical marijuana, may well pass.  I might be more pro-MMJ if the stats didn't reveal that 2% of recipients in Colorado have cancer and AIDS, and that many people are prescribed marijuana by non-psychiatrists for psychiatric reasons, including insomnia.  And if medical marijuana was distributed by a pharmacy with directions on how much and how often to use it.  The one-year toke your heart out cards with the boutique flavors all as part of "wellness" don't fly so well with me.  If people want marijuana to be legal, then legalize it, but this type of legislation puts physicians in the middle as an agent.  Really, if we were talking about people smoking a little during their cancer treatments, this just wouldn't be the issue that it is.
    
    Okay, so my questions for you:
    
    1) A person gets medical marijuana for back pain or anxiety or whatever.  He gets arrested.  Should it be continued in jail?  Prison not be such a bad experience if you get to be high the whole time?
    
    2) Shrink Rap readers don't really like uninformed consent with meds.  How do we feel about giving it to agitated Alzheimers patients and how would that work?  Can you smoke in nursing homes?  Do they have to taken outside in restraints?  Agitation is not usually associated with early Alzheimers.
    
    3) Do we think it's just a little weird that a state legislator is making laws listing which medical indications a drug should be used for?  I must have missed those lectures in residency where pot is the treatment for depression, etc.   Can legislators also decide that methotrexate should be legal for the flu?  I sort of don't get it.  
    
    Okay, my rant for the day.
    

Send a Message to Congress: Don't Cut Access to Healthcare for Medicare Patients

Medicare has been using a flawed formula to annually revise Medicare fees to all providers. The formula results in a larger and larger cut each year, which often gets temporarily "fixed" at the last minute. Due to the current dysfunctional Congress, the expectation is that it won't get fixed this time around, and so this year's cut -- 30%! -- will stay in place, resulting in many doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and other providers to drop Medicare.

What we need is for them to repeal this flawed "Sustainable Growth Rate" (SGR) formula, and replace it with something that makes sense.

Please CLICK HERE to take a few minutes to let your elected representatives know what you think about this.

Thank you.

Florida Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Gun Law Modified

Here's a follow-up to my March post about the Florida bill to outlaw physicians from asking their patients about access to firearms. Dinah later posted about the effects of the bill on pediatricians. The bill passed, though it was amended to remove the jail time and the potential $5M fine (a bit excessive?).

The Florida Medical Association originally opposed the bill, but now has expressed satisfaction with the compromise language. In March, Asher Gorelik, M.D., president of the Florida Psychiatric Society (FPS), expressed to Psychiatric News his membership's opposition to the bill, particularly “a great deal of concern about how this law would interfere with the ability of the psychiatrist to properly assess a patient.” But in a recent follow-up interview, Gorelik stated that the new language in the bill “no longer interferes with the ability of a psychiatrist to perform a risk assessment.

~Psychiatric Times

Doctors to Go to Jail for Asking Patients About Guns in the Home

Imagine the scenario where you are an ER physician, nurse, or social worker and a person is brought to the hospital by the police for making a suicidal threat.

"I want to die. My wife left me and our house is in foreclosure."--"Do you have any plans to harm yourself?""My dad shot himself when I was little. That's how I would do it."--"Do you have any firearms at home?""OFFICER! Can you arrest this social worker? He just asked me if I have guns at home."[officer]: "Come with me sir. You have the right to remain silent..."

This is the scenario that could actually happen if Senate Bill 432 passes in Florida. The bill makes it a felony to inquire about firearms access or to include any information about firearms access in the medical record, punishable by up to 5 years in jail and/or a $5 million fine. Excuse my French, but WTF?!

An article in the Psychiatric News by Bob Guldin explains that the bill was introduced in both the House and Senate at the suggestion of the National Rifle Association (NRA) to prevent intrusion into the constitutionally protected right to bear arms.

It has been shown that removal of firearms from the home reduces the risk of a completed suicide. So you'd think such a bill would get laughed out of the legislature? Florida child psychiatrist and APA Assembly recorder said, "This bill is not a stunt... the financial power of the NRA in Florida will make it very difficult for sensible legislators to vote against this bill."

I note that a second version of the bill has been proposed, one that reduces the fine to a minimum of $10,000 for the first offense and a minimum of $100,000 for the third offense. It also reduces the offense from a felony to a "noncriminal violation" and compels the states attorney to pursue a possible violation or face professional misconduct charges. This version does permit certain health care providers to ask the question only in certain specific situations (e.g., an emergency "mental health or psychotic episode") but cannot tell anyone else other than the police. Apparently, a similar bill passed one house in Virginia five years ago before dying.

Next will be a bill that outlaws common sense.

********************

Clink comments: We've talked about issues related to guns before here, in Dinah's post "Guns and the Mentally Ill" and again when I mentioned a poster session that talked about gun ownership laws nationally. At my last American Academy of Psychiatry and Law conference I mentioned that 27 states have statutes with lifetime restrictions on gun ownership for people with mental illness. Other states have time limited restrictions on ownership, and some allow restoration of full rights contingent on a physician's documentation of recovery.

So now we have a dilemma: in states where you need a physician's certificate to buy a gun, how can that same physician then be banned from asking about ownership?? I can imagine the session in which a patient comes in to be "cleared" to buy a weapon.

MD: "Well, you're taking your medicine and your symptoms are all under control. You tell me you're feeling well and you'd like to buy that awesome weapon you've been dreaming about."

Gun buyer: "Yeah! I've done the research and I know exactly what I want."

MD: "I need to know whether you have cognitive skills and emotional stability to handle a responsibility like that. Tell me, have you ever owned a gun before?"

Gun buyer: "Awesome!! Now I can sue you for infliction of emotional distress for violating my Second Amendment rights. Those triple damages will really help me stock up my arsenal."

Bottom line: The NRA can't have it both ways. If they involve psychiatrists in restoration of gun rights, they can't ban them for asking questions about ownership.

Medical Marijuana on KevinMD

Lockup doc gave us the head's up that KevinMD is also talking about the legalization of marijuana for medical uses. He has good discussion of the issues up, do check it out: Medical Marijuana has Doctors Asking Questions. How'd he know I was asking about this?

The summary comes from HCPLive:

In January, New Jersey became the 14th state in the nation to legalize marijuana use for certain chronic illnesses. Other states where the use of medical marijuana is permitted include Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington; around a dozen more states are weighing pending bills.

The New Jersey law is the most restrictive in the nation and authorizes prescribed marijuana for only a handful of chronic illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis, cancer, glaucoma, epilepsy, Crohn’s disease, AIDS, muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig’s disease. Unlike other states, physicians in New Jersey will not be able to prescribe medical marijuana for anxiety, headaches, or chronic pain.

It goes on to discuss the lack of evidence to support uses for medical marijuana, and the obstacles to research:

Despite the Obama administration’s relaxation on prosecutions, many researchers are still having difficulty getting approval to conduct studies that involve smoking marijuana. Requests to conduct the studies must go through the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which controls supply from a plantation at the University of Mississippi, the only federally approved source of marijuana. NIDA routinely turns down study requests unless they are designed to evaluate the potential harm from smoking marijuana. The Drug Enforcement Agency has also declined petitions from researchers requesting permission to grow their own marijuana for use in studies.

The article notes that there are some continued issues:

Most states with medical marijuana laws allow employers to refuse employment to individuals who use medical marijuana. In some states, like Colorado, the laws are ambiguous and employers are unclear as to whether they can forbid employees to use medical marijuana outside of work. Schools are also grappling with the issue, as well, with more high school students—particularly in areas with less restrictive medical marijuana laws—receiving prescriptions for marijuana, increasingly to treat ADHD. In addition, some facilities that perform organ transplants acknowledge denying transplants to patients who use medical marijuana.

In the absence of any proven benefits from smoking marijuana, physicians in the 14 states where it is legal may want to discuss some of the pros and cons with their patients prior to issuing a prescription. Patients need to be aware of the potential impact of medical marijuana on all facets of life and should be wary of letting the anecdotal hype surrounding medical marijuana use dissuade them from first trying a proven treatment option.

View the discussion on HCPLive.com.

________________

On another note, Rach asked us to post the following:

Stan Kutcher at Dalhousie University (Halifax, NS) is asking Canadians for feedback on how to improve infant, child and youth mental health services via an anonymous survey.

https://surveys.dal.ca/opinio/s?s=7808

Going to Pot (or Let's Talk about Medical Marijuana)

Our state is considering legalizing medical marijuana.

As a psychiatrist, my first thought is : NO! We treat addictions, and we try hard not to cause them. Marijuana (and many other illegal substances) may help mood and anxiety in the moment, but they don't seem to fix things for the long haul. And chronic pot smoking decreased motivation, burbles your brain, and does nothing good to your lungs. I have visions of patients at the door saying they need me to prescribe pot for their anxiety. Please, doctor, please.

But then I think of end-stage cancer patients, and it really doesn't bother me if a little cannabis helps with their symptoms.

There are those who claim that oral THC (marinol) can be helpful for many symptoms, oh, but unliked the smoked stuff, Marinol doesn't get you high. There's less evidence about inhaled marijuana being effective.

So here's my question: How does medical marijuana work in your state? How widespread is the use? What are the terms and conditions under which it can be prescribed? Who gets it and with what regulation? Is it a good thing or a bad thing and why? And please, if you have links to data or studies or interesting articles about the legalization of medical marijuana, by all means put them in your comments. If you want to tell me why cannabis should be legal and it's a government plot to keep it illegal and any information from NORML, you can hold off on those links...I think I've heard that side of the story.

HR1558: Bill to End Health Insurance Discrimination Against Preexisting Conditions

Here are some tweets and links about this proposed legislation.  Dinah's recent post about Sally Satel on Stigma generated some great comments discussion, especially this one by AA.

1. 
   ShrinkRapRoy PsyN: [hopefully] HR1558 & S623-US bills to end health insur exclusions for preexisting conditions. http://bit.ly/12pkQ4 24 Apr 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   brendanor Preexisting Condition Patient Protection Act of 2009 require insurance coverage of 133 million suffers with illness. http://tiny.cc/xJnlS 05 Apr 2009 from web
3. 
   diamondgreg Political theater: 'how is that (the fork in a guys head) a preexisting condition?' 08 Apr 2009 from txt
4. 
   lauriereece Also pls support fed legis: Preexisting Condition Patient Protection Act/2009. Rep. Joe Courtney, Sen. Rockefeller. http://thomas.loc.gov 22 Apr 2009 from web
5. 
   Traivor Breathing is a preexisting condition. No health insurance for you! 03 Apr 2009 from web

-- this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Parity as Bogus Bail-out Bonus?

[credit: flickr user The_Leader]

Nice to see Clink sharing her AAPL learnings with us, as the forensic experts try to understand the behavior of forensic bogeymen (or the gender-neutral bogeypeople) like Freddie and Jason.   Just in time for Halloween. 

I was struck by the total lack of understanding by two nay-sayers in yesterday's Opinion column in the Baltimore Sun.  Richard Vatz and Jeffrey Schaler often write about the so-called "myth of mental illness", taking a page from the 1960 Szasz book of the same name.

In the newspaper article, they lambast our legislators for using "political legerdemain" to sneak the long-negotiated Mental Health Parity Bill into the $700B bank bail-out bill.  Their opinion is that the category of "mental illness" is too broad and too costly, and provides an impression that most people with a label of mental illness are actually just whiny babies who can't accept the responsibility of dealing with "problems in living", like death, rape, or loss of job/house/401k/spouse.  They write:

"• Supporters of parity celebrate the new law as signaling the end of "stigma," but they fail to consider that stigmatization is a marvelous negative reinforcer for undesired behavior, some of which is called "mental illness." 



• Substance disorders are arguably a function of behavioral choices and in no way constitute diseases to which insurance should apply. Such self-destructive behavior is best explained by mindset, personal values and how a person copes with his or her environment. Incidence varies by cultural context, and people can clearly stop or control their addictions through an exercise of free will. Not so when it comes to bodily illness; one can no more will away cancer, heart disease or diabetes than he or she can will their onset."

Lack of understanding.

They appear to also have a lack of understanding about how our health care system works for other (non-mental) illnesses.  One of the reasons they are against parity is that "there is no way to accurately confirm or disconfirm 'mental illness' ."  The same could be said for many somatic problems, such as headaches, back pain, nausea, and fatigue.  However, our health care system will pay for treatment of all these conditions, no matter how minor or subjective.  There is not a severity-based system where only physical conditions deemed worthy or severe enough get covered.  If you go to the doctor for a stubbed toe, the insurance company will pay for the visit and the Xray.  So, unless they advocate just as strongly for similar changes to the rest of health care, this argument does not hold water. 

By the way, I also did not like the fact that the Parity bill was tacked on to the Bail-out bill, but only because I think such a bill should pass on its own merits.  

And with Halloween right around the corner, what is truly frightening about their article is that one of the authors is an associate editor for the Psychology section of USA Today magazine, and is thus in an influential position to control what the nation's population of hotel customers and other readers get to read about these topics.  [Correction: I think this is USA Today Magazine, which appears to be a very different animal than the newspaper that gets placed in front of every hotel room door every morning... still...]

Boo!

Washington State Task Force Recommends Changes to Laws

An article by Carol Smith in the Seattle Post-Intelligence discusses a task force's recommendation to the state's involuntary commitment laws after a man with a psychotic illness murdered Sierra Club worker Shannon Harps last year.

James Williams, a repeat violent offender with severe schizophrenia, has been charged with first-degree murder in Harps' death. Williams, who was under community supervision at the time of the murder, wasn't complying with court-ordered treatment and had been off the medications that helped control his violent hallucinations when he allegedly stabbed Harps to death.

Community corrections officers supervising Williams used every tool the system provided to try to keep Williams in treatment and out of trouble, said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who convened the task force to examine the case.

"The bottom line -- they ran out of tools, Mr. Williams was let out and 10 days later he was charged in Harps' death," Satterberg said.

Their recommendations noted in the story:

1. Change the state's involuntary commitment laws to mandate treatment for those with a significant history of violence.
2. Provide more tools for enforcing outpatient treatment in the community.
3. Reduce privacy barriers so police can know the mental health histories of people they deal with in "real time."
4. Allow those who make involuntary treatment decisions more leeway to consider past history of violence.

This issue of compulsory treatment is gaining more and more supporters, usually after this or a Virginia Tech-like story.  It is something our society continues to struggle with -- the balance between civil liberties and the right to control one's own body on one side, and public safety and the responsibility that society has to "help" vulnerable people.

I see the pros and cons on either side.  Personally, I think that when one's illness interferes with others, particularly other's safety (think epilepsy and driving, TB and isolation, STD and contact reporting), that is when society has a responsibility to intervene.

Resources:

1997 King County Mentally Ill Offender Task Force Recommendations

2008 King County Mental Illness and Drug Dependency (MIDD) Oversight, Implementation and Evaluation Plans

Details on the Implementation Plan (1.3MB Word doc)

PS: My apologies to the readers for my extended absence.  If you knew what was going on in my life, you'd understand (all is well, though).  A big Thank You to Dinah for keeping the flame alive!!

Landmark Medicare Bill Passes Senate; Removes Federal Discrimination Against Mentally Ill

Yesterday, the US Senate passed, by a 69-30 vote, a bill that would finally remove the anachronistic and discriminatory "brain tax" from Medicare.  Elderly and disabled on Medicare have had to pay a 50% copay for outpatient treatment for mental illness since Medicare started in 1965.  Any other type of illness requires only a 20% copay.

But mainstream media is largely ignoring this historic success in the fight against this discrimination.

This blatantly discriminatory and stigmatizing financial penalty against America's seniors has long resulted in undertreatment of mental health problems, often leading to even higher costs for other somatic conditions due to self-neglect.  Finally... a Medicare parity bill that passed both House and Senate!

I did a search on Google News for "medicare bill +mental|psychiatric" and "medicare bill -mental|psychiatric" to determine the number of articles in the past month on the Medicare bill which either did or did not mention the words "mental" or "psychiatric."

6,466 Articles . . . . . DO NOT mention the bill's mental health provisions

   408 Articles . . . . . DO mention the bill's mental health provisions

Please write to these article's authors and tell them to get a clue.  And let Bush know that you don't want him to veto the bill (McCain has already said he would have voted against it).  

This is much bigger news than the annual passage of a bill to block cuts in Medicare physician (and all other providers, BTW, incl. social workers, psychologists, etc) fees.

Online Access to Prescription Medication History

I saw a headline this morning that the California attorney general is moving to provide instant access to a patient's prescription history for doctors and pharmacists (regulatory boards and law enforcement organizations currently have ready access to this info).  

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown unveiled a plan Wednesday to provide doctors and pharmacists with almost instant Internet

 access to patient prescription drug histories to help prevent so-called doctor shopping and other abuses of pharmaceuticals.

Brown told a Los Angeles news conference that the state's prescription monitoring is a "horse-and-buggy" system that needs significant improvements because it now can take healthcare professionals weeks to obtain information on drug use by patients. That delay can allow some patients to get large quantities of drugs from multiple doctors for personal use or sale.

"If California puts this on real-time access, it will give doctors and pharmacies the technology they need to fight prescription drug abuse, which is burdening our healthcare system," Brown said.

The database, known as the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System, contains 86 million entries for prescription drugs dispensed in California.

I have mixed feelings about this issue.  Maryland passed a similar bill this past session to study such a program.  There is a very serious problem with abuse and diversion of controlled medications, such as Percocet, OxyContin, Lortab, and Xanax.  It is indeed very easy to get scripts from duped physicians and nurse practitioners and PAs, get it filled, and then sell it on the street for a 1000-5000% profit.  We need methods to control this.

The flip side is the risk of privacy violation.  Patients could have their privacy breached.  So, how much are we as a society willing to give up to combat this problem?

My suggestion:  Build in banking-level protections, provide patients access to their own histories, provide patients the ability to permit or deny access on an individual basis (so that they have control over access), and permit patients to see who has accessed their records.  Also, provide protections to prescribers and pharmacists which allow them to not prescribe or fill a medication if the patient refuses access to their history.

This provides a greater amount of control over access to personal info, while still providing the ability of prescribers and pharmacists to exercise careful judgment about the medications they write or fill.

I'm not totally sold on this solution, but it does seem to be a better compromise than the big brother approach.  I'd like to hear your thoughts on this difficult problem.  Please add your comment below.