Tag: SAMHSA

Hopefully, one of the first actions Dr. Delphin-Rittmon takes at SAMHSA will be ending the stonewalling about support for involuntary mental health care.

Ivory McCuen needed warmth and a home the night she died. Court-ordered psychiatric drugs deliver neither warmth nor a home. Federal agencies need to consider people with lived experience.

From Education Week: The Substance Use and Mental Health Services Administration has put a halt on the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, a...

Even after working for decades for human rights in mental health, I have been surprised about how involuntary outpatient ideology is taking over. SAMHSA plans to spend as much as $54 million of US taxpayer money for 17 programs across the country to spread this coercive approach.

This new “Mental Health Czar,” as it is popularly known, will preside over a SAMHSA that is supposed to be far more friendly to the mental health industry. The approval ceremony is scheduled for streaming on the US Senate HELP (Health Education Labor Pensions) Committee website this Tuesday at 2:30 pm EST.

Mental health agencies are mainly asking about her positions regarding “recovery” and “peers,” but here are some tougher questions for President Trump's new "mental health czar": Do you support court-ordered psychiatric drugging? Do you endorse the use of federal money for it? Why aren’t non-drug alternatives offered to Americans?

This “Mental Health Czar” appointment is moving below the radar of many people. The US Senate should be asking some tough questions of Dr. McCance-Katz before deciding on her confirmation. Everyone should contact their Senators, now!

From The New York Times: President Trump's nominee to direct SAMHSA, Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, who is a strong proponent of the medical model of psychiatry,...

From STAT: President Trump has nominated Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, a proponent of increased psychiatric treatment for those diagnosed with serious mental illness, to run the Substance...

SAMHSA should be commended for undertaking an important educational task with laudable goals. Unfortunately, I have to conclude that SAMHSA’s Recovery to Practice module on medications for psychiatrists is a very minimal and even misleading attempt at educating psychiatrists.

This email came to me from one of my advocacy friends. It seems to me like this would be a super good opportunity to point out that "quality care" includes doing more good than harm, using evidence-based treatments, which may or may not be medication, and various other approaches we are all working for.