Psychiatric News July 16, 2004
Volume 39 Number 14
© 2004 American Psychiatric Association
p. 14
`Combining Forces' Called Best Strategy to Reform MH Care
Eve Bender
Children and minorities are two of the specific populations who will
benefit from a long-awaited action agenda on mental health by several federal
agencies.
By collaborating with a number of federal agencies that administer policies
related to labor, education, and criminal justice, federal mental health
officials are one step closer to achieving the goals set forth in the 2003
report of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental
Health.
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A. Kathryn Power, M.Ed.: "We believe that a recovery-oriented
system focuses on the overall health of a person and accepts the mind and body
as inseparable."
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A. Kathryn Power, M.Ed., director of the federal Center for Mental Health
Services (CMHS), spoke recently about the steps she and others are taking to
make this vision a reality.
"Combining forces is our best option for fighting for America's
mental health," Power told attendees at the annual meeting of the
National Mental Health Association in Washington, D.C., last month.
"We're engaging dozens of public and private organizations, government
agencies, consumers, and families in transforming mental health
care."
The federal action agenda outlines the plan for meeting the six goals named
in the President's New Freedom Commission report, titled "Achieving the
Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America." Although it is not
yet available to the public, Power previewed a few of the actions in the
plan.
Members of a "federal partners work group," which is composed
of representatives from more than 20 federal agencies including the Department
of Education, Department of Labor, and Department of Justice, are working
together to develop the action agenda.
"These agencies realize they have a stake in the nation's mental
health," Power said.
The Department of Education is involved because "50 percent of
children with severe emotional disturbances drop out of high school,"
Power said.
With regard to the Department of Labor, 1 of 3 people with mental illness
is unemployed, she pointed out. As for the Department of Justice,
"approximately 800,000 people with serious mental illness are admitted
annually to U.S. prisons and jails."
As part of the action agenda, officials with the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, the parent organization of CMHS, plan to
convene a task force composed of representatives from the public and private
mental health sectors to create a national strategic workforce development
plan, Power said, "which will focus on developing a mental health
work-force able to deliver culturally competent, evidence-based" mental
health care.
In addition, Power said some members of the work group will review the
agendas and curricula of a number of mental heath education and training
programs that receive federal funding to ensure that the programs recruit and
retain an adequate number of racial and ethnic minority trainees and
"emphasize and develop cultural and linguistic competence" in
clinical practice.
There are also a number of initiatives the work group will undertake to
improve the state of children's mental health services to eliminate the
barriers faced by children and families who seek mental health care, according
to Power.
Among those is a plan to review mental health screening instruments
"to identify those that are developmentally, culturally, and
environmentally appropriate to children," she said.
Power said she would like to raise public awareness and educate parents,
clinicians, and policymakers about "the importance of a child's first
years as a foundation for healthy social, emotional, and cognitive
development."
The audience burst into applause when Power announced her intentions to
"take action to help parents obtain mental health services for their
children without having to give up custody of them."
Elderly patients could benefit from the federal action plan too, Power
pointed out. Members of the work group plan to collaborate with the
Administration on Aging to enhance mental health care services for elderly
patients, by, for instance, training primary care physicians to recognize
mental health problems in that population.
"As the partners of those we serve," Power said, "we have
been called upon to remove the barriers preventing people with mental illness
from living their lives to the fullest and from seeking and finding hope in
their own recovery." 
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