Gun Control, Mental Health On Minds Of Lawmakers
By Larry Wright, KTTS
CREATED 3:20 AM
(Missourinet) – More money, more family attention and changing the mindset of people about mental illness will be on the agenda today when a Missouri house committee exams ways to deal the problem.
One argument from those opposing expanded gun control laws is that not enough is being done to deal with mental health issues.
The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on Health, Mental Health and Social Services, Sue Allen says for a long time mental health is underfunded in Missouri. She says her committee will look for places to pull money from elsewhere in the budget for mental health.
The executive director of the Missouri Alliance on Mental Illness says better family support can prevent tragedies like the massacre last month at the school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Loneliness May Take a Physical Toll
Feelings of social isolation linked to poorer immunity, more inflammation in study patients
January 21, 2013
MONDAY, Jan. 21 (HealthDay News) — Being lonely does more than just make a person feel sad — loneliness can affect a person’s physical health, researchers report.
In a study of 200 breast cancer survivors, average age 51, compared to study participants with more social connections, people who said they felt lonely showed more inflammation in response to stress, and higher levels of reactivation of a latent herpes virus, which is a sign of poor immunity.
Chronic inflammation is associated with numerous conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, as well age-related physical and mental decline, the researchers said.
The investigators also noted that the reactivation of a latent herpes virus is known to be linked with stress, and said these findings suggest that loneliness acts as a chronic source of stress that triggers a poorly controlled immune response.
The study was scheduled for presentation Saturday at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in New Orleans. The data and conclusions of research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
“It is clear from previous research that poor-quality relationships are linked to a number of health problems, including premature mortality [death] and all sorts of other very serious health conditions. And people who are lonely clearly feel like they are in poor-quality relationships,” study author Lisa Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University, said in a university news release.
“One reason this type of research is important is to understand how loneliness and relationships broadly affect health,” she explained. “The more we understand about the process, the more potential there is to counter those negative effects — to perhaps intervene. If we don’t know the physiological processes, what are we going to do to change them?”
Feeling down? Blue Monday thought to be most depressing day of the year
Published Monday, Jan. 21, 2013 4:03PM MST
“It’s dark outside when you go out in the morning and when you come back it’s still dark,” said Dr. Arya Sharma, Chair of Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta.
Although Sharma says he’s never seen actual evidence to support the claim that Blue Monday is the most depressing of the year, the doctor says seasonal affective disorder does play a role in people’s attitudes at this time.
“It’s not a good time,” Sharma said.
He offers up a few tips to help brighten your mood – and ensure you don’t gain weight while you’re at it.
“Sleep is important. Getting enough sleep is good for mood, it’s good for your metabolism and in fact we now know that people who get more sleep tend to have less weight,” Sharma said.
“Watching your calories, that’s important. All kinds of calories can contribute to weight gain… eating too much, not getting enough sleep increases hunger, depression increases hunger.”
Regular consumption of soda linked to depression, study finds
Monday, January 21, 2013 by: Michael Ravensthorpe
(NaturalNews) There are many reasons to avoid soda and other soft drinks: High refined sugar levels, extreme acidity, unnatural and often toxic ingredients, and much more. According to a new study by U.S. researchers for the National Institute of Health; however, we can add another reason to the list – the regular consumption of soda, especially those that contained artificial sweeteners, can lead to depression.
The study, which was released in January 2013 and will be delivered in full at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual conference in March, studied the drinking habits of 265,000 men and women between 50-71 years old. The researchers monitored their consumption of soft drinks, teas, and coffees between the years of 1995 and 1996 and then, one decade later, asked them if their doctors had diagnosed them with depression from 2000 onwards.
The results showed that individuals who drank four or more sodas daily were 30 percent likelier to suffer from depression than individuals who didn’t drink soda, while individuals that drank diet soda were even likelier to suffer from depression than individuals who drank regular soda. Moreover, the research showed that regular coffee drinkers were 10 percent unlikelier to be diagnosed with depression than individuals who didn’t drink coffee.
“Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk” said Dr. Honlei Chen, the leader of the study, but added that “more research is needed to confirm these findings.”
‘Soft drinks are evil’
Dr. Chen’s study for the National Institute of Health is the latest in a long line of studies documenting the negative effects of soft drinks on our overall health. In October 2012, a research team at Osaka University found that women who drink one fizzy drink per day increase their risk of a stroke by 80 percent, while a separate study by Swedish scientists for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that men who drank one fizzy drink per day increased their risk of prostate cancer by 40 percent.
Arguably the most damning and memorable anti-soft drink study of 2012; however, is that of the biologist Dr. Hans-Peter Kubis. Dr. Kubris’s study, which was published in the European Journal of Nutrition, showed that regular soft drink consumption was directly linked to an altered metabolism, obesity, osteoporosis, an increased risk of diabetes and fatty liver disease, and just about everything else.
“Having seen all the medical evidence, I don’t touch soft drinks now,” Dr. Kubis concluded. “I think drinks with added sugar are, frankly, evil.”
Dr. Chen might quietly agree.
Sources for this article include:
http://www.usnews.com
http://aww.ninemsn.com
http://www.dailymail.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
Legislature Considers Big Changes In Mental Health Policy After Newtown
By DANIELA ALTIMARI, altimari@courant.comThe Hartford Courant
7:14 p.m. EST, January 21, 2013
Better behavioral health screening in the public schools. Greater access to mental health services for adolescents and young adults. And a new look at the state’s controversial policy barring involuntary outpatient commitment for people with mental illness.
Those are some of the sweeping policy changes that Connecticut lawmakers may consider this session in response to the massacre in Newtown.
The shooting of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14 already has sparked a broad-ranging policy discussion on mental health, both in Washington and in state capitols across the nation, just as it has prompted debate on gun control and school security.
President Barack Obama is calling for a national dialogue on mental health. He also promised better access to behavioral health services in schools: his plan would allocate $15 million for training for teachers and other adults to detect and respond to mental illness in children and young adults.
Sen. Beth Bye praised the president’s plan, and said she plans to make her own proposal for more social workers in the state’s public schools.
“We need people in the schools to be more aware of kids who are dealing with social and emotional issues,” said Bye, a Democrat from West Hartford who is a member of the newly formed legislative task force examining post-Sandy Hook proposals. “Early intervention does make a difference.”
Lobotomies done with an ice pick: Take a ride on psychiatry’s ‘loboto-mobile’
Monday, January 21, 2013 by: Mike Bundrant
(NaturalNews) Yes, it is true. Modern psychiatrists stand on the shoulders of the mobile lobotomist, Dr. Walter Freeman (1895 – 1972). Good ole Dr. Walt pioneered the lobotomy, relieving thousands from what he called “the burden of consciousness.”
His weapon of choice was an ice pick, which he hammered into the eye socket of his victims. Once the ice pick hit home, he would slash it back and forth, effectively destroying the tissue of consciousness or frontal lobe.
Better yet, if you couldn’t get to the brain-scrambling doc, no worries. He was mobile. Dr. Freeman traveled the country in his recreational vehicle, dubbed the “loboto-mobile,” demonstrating his methods and spreading psychiatry’s good news to his colleagues.
The doctor did the stabbing and scrambling without anesthesia. Rather, he used electroshock to induce a seizure before going in for the brain kill. Dr. Freeman did his deed on children as young as 12 years of age, and also managed to kill at least one housewife.
Of course, any other sociopath who went around stabbing innocent people in the eye and destroying their brains would be charged with criminal assault and put into prison for life.
Dr. Freeman performed 3500 such assaults without as much as a slap on the wrist. In fact, he is recognized as a pioneer and contributor to the field of psychiatry.
California Senate leader pushes national mental health plan
Come for the party, stay for the lobbying. Or is that vice-versa?State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) is in Washington, D.C., this week to attend the inaugural festivities. But he’s mixing a little business with pleasure, looking to bend the ear of congressional leaders on mental health issues.
Motivated by the shootings in Newtown, Conn., Steinberg is urging Washington to adopt a national mental health policy. He presented his recommendations to a commission spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden to come up with ideas about how do reduce gun violence.
Steinberg says his $10-billion plan to diagnose and treat mental illness would go a long way toward reducing mass shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last year. Steinberg led the effort for Proposition 63, which generated about $1 billion a year for mental health programs in California.
The measure was funded with a 1% state surcharge on incomes of more than $1 million.
Era of thought crimes now here as psychiatrists given ‘Judge Dredd’ authority to strip citizens of their constitutional rights
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) Most Americans operate under the assumption that your thoughts are your own private business and that they cannot be used against you to forfeit your rights and freedoms. It’s only actions that matter when it comes to being judged, right? Merely thinking something doesn’t mean you’re going to act on it, right?
Enter Barack Obama and his 23 executive orders issued last week. (And don’t forget New York mafia Governor Cuomo and his new “psychiatric police” law.) Suddenly merely thinking about doing something violent or dangerous can cause all your constitutional rights to be stripped away by the state. Here’s how it works:
If you’re seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist and you say something that might be considered violent — “I can’t stand my boss and I wish he would just die!” — under Obama’s executive orders the psychiatrist must now report you to the government as a possible danger to society. This is done in complete violation of doctor-patient confidentiality, of course.
Once the government receives this information, it then conducts a raid on the home of the person in question, seizes his or her firearms, and places that person on a “no gun buy” list maintained by the FBI, completely outside of law and due process.
This isn’t a bill being debated that might be passed into law — this is in effect right now! This is what happens if you visit a psychiatrist tomorrow. And you can bet that every psychiatrist or psychologist will immediately report even the smallest hint of violent thinking to government authorities in order to avoid being blamed for NOT reporting that person if something violent happens.
So now, with the stroke of a pen, Obama has transformed the entire industry of modern psychiatry into the thought police with Judge Dredd-like authority over your life.
No judge, no jury, no due process: You are just GUILTY by decree
It used to be that a judge had to declare you mentally incompetent in order to take away your constitutional rights. That process, found in the judicial branch of government, at least gave people the opportunity to present refuting evidence and in many cases even benefit from the help of legal counsel. But now all that has been stripped away in the idiotic, irrational reaction to the actions of one crazed person who murdered children at Sandy Hook. Now the executive branch of government has taken over the entire domain of mental health.
Thanks to Obama’s executive orders, you no longer have the right to the privacy of your own thoughts. There mere act of seeking professional help for anguish, or anger, or imbalanced emotions now makes you GUILTY of things you’ve never even done!
…gun owners who may reasonably or unreasonably think, ‘I’m not going anywhere near a mental health person, because if they misinterpret something I say as an indication I’m going to hurt myself or someone else, they’re going to report me and take away my guns,’ said Paul Applebaum, director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at Columbia University in an NBC News article.
That story goes on to report:
New York’s expanded gun law signed by Cuomo on January 15 goes further than most state laws in that it requires mental health professionals to report any person considered “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others” to local health officials. Those officials would be authorized to report that person to law enforcement, which could seize the person’s firearms.
State’s mental health program could be national model: Opinion
One of the first bits of advice Vice President Joe Biden received after becoming the point person for shaping new federal gun control and mental health proposals in the wake of December’s mass shootings in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school was to follow the California example.
Copy this state’s strategy for funding mental health programs, suggested Darrell Steinberg, Democratic leader of the state Senate. That’s one way, he said, to lessen the chance of deranged individuals blasting dozens of children and teachers with assault rifles or machine pistols.
There was more than a little irony in Steinberg’s suggestion. Only last August, he formally requested a formal audit of billions of dollars in mental health funds raised by the 2004 Proposition 63, which imposes a 1 percent supplemental tax for mental health care on incomes over $1 million.
So far, this levy has taken more than $8 billion from high-income Californians.
But last summer, the Associated Press reported that tens of millions of Prop. 63 dollars have gone to programs aiding state residents not diagnosed as mentally ill, including yoga, art and drama classes, horseback riding and gardening.
The audit results are not yet in, and there are explanations for some of the expenditures the AP noted. Gardening, for example, was to attract Cambodian immigrants who might otherwise avoid mental health services for cultural reasons. Yoga and art therapy can help stave off some
forms of mental illness.There’s no doubt the Proposition 63 money has been helpful in keeping government-funded mental health care alive while other programs like in-home care for frail or disabled senior citizens were severely truncated during half a decade of severe state budget crises.
In 2011, Patricia Ryan, executive director of the California Mental Health Directors Association, reported that “The programs made possible are as varied as California is diverse.”
She cited the highly individualized Vietnamese Full Service Partnership in Santa Clara County, aiming to help Vietnamese adults with serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Within a year after that program started in 2006, participants were using emergency psychiatric services 28 percent less than before and were hospitalized 65 percent less, while using long-term care facilities 82 percent less than before. So Proposition 63 has saved insurance companies and that county big bucks, although no one has put a precise figure on the savings.
Prop. 63-funded programs in Los Angeles County, Ryan reported, served more than 6,200 persons in 2011, producing a 68 percent reduction in homelessness among those clients and a 53 percent increase in days spent living independently, along with a 46 percent reduction of time spent in jails.
Those programs were designed to fit specific local needs, the result of counties being allowed to choose most uses of Prop. 63 money.
Ryan also says one provision in Prop. 63 might be most useful in preventing mass slayings: The measure requires that 20 percent of funds it raises go to prevention and early intervention in mental illness or substance abuse. If Colorado or Connecticut had a mandate like that, there’s at least a chance the Aurora and Newtown massacres could have been prevented.
“If there’s one part of what we do here that should be adopted nationally, that’s it,” Ryan said in an interview.
Tending to back that up, Robert Cabaj, medical director of Community Behavioral Health Services in San Francisco, told the magazine Psychiatric News that “intensive case management in the counties (San Francisco added 400 such slots after Prop. 63 money began flowing) has led to reduced hospitalizations. We have cut our acute inpatient psych beds by more than half, but have had no increase in recidivism or emergency services.” So Prop. 63 has definitely helped prevent some serious problems.
But things are far from perfect here. An estimated 750,000 Californians in 2011 failed to get mental health treatment they needed. About half the counties have no inpatient psychiatric services, suggesting jails are used to hold many persons who actually belong in hospitals.
Mental health treatment must remain priority
By Sid Salter, DeSoto Times
President Barack Obama’s strategy of responding to the Connecticut school shootings and other recent mass shootings with overreaching limits on Second Amendment rights is burdened by precious little attention to the mental health component of such atrocities.
Obama proposes background checks on all gun sales, a renewal for the former assault weapons ban, renewal of a 10-round limit on magazines, a prohibition on ownership of armor-piercing ammunition and other initiatives designed to impede Second Amendment rights. But in terms of the mental health component of such crimes, the president’s initiatives are far less bold and intrusive on individual liberties.
Here in Mississippi, where public officials from the Governor’s Mansion to the town hall of the smallest hamlet are usually gun owners and staunch defenders of Second Amendment rights, the reaction was predictable. Gov. Phil Bryant flatly promised to block any new federal gun restrictions — that after forming a task force to make school safety recommendations.
Joining Bryant in that stance was House Speaker Philip Gunn and a number of state legislators. Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves is on record opposing any infringement on current Second Amendment rights and got out front of proposed legislation to fund a $7.5 million grant program to helps Mississippi schools hire more armed law enforcement officers.
Legal scholars question how effective the efforts of state officials to block federal gun restrictions can be. Since Southern states are virtually uniform in their opposition to additional gun restrictions, it stands to reason that many of those same legal scholars cite the “supremacy clause” of the Constitution as the basis for their doubts and liken opposition to new federal guns laws today to opposition to new federal civil rights laws in the 1960s.
But what is most disturbing is that for a nation appalled by the shooting of former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the mass shooting at the Aurora, CO, movie theater and in the Connecticut school shooting, guns were only half of the common denominators of those crimes. The fact that all three of these shooters had identifiable patterns of mental illness is left in the political dust of a rush to implement new laws that erode basic gun ownership rights.
New York’s Psychiatric Police State
Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
January 21, 2013
It’s a done deal.
Governor Cuomo, along with Democrat and Republican legislators, is ramming through a bill to restrict gun ownership, re-classify weapons in order to ban them—and, in a far-reaching move, create psychiatrists as cops who must report patients to law-enforcement, in order to keep the patients from owning a weapon.
Psychiatrists must report patients “who could potentially harm themselves or others.” If such a patient owns a gun, it will be confiscated.
This means a comprehensive data base, accessible by law-enforcement personnel and anyone else involved in doing background checks. These “problematic” patients will be kept from buying a new weapon, too. Otherwise, the law would have no teeth.
As usual, the devil is in the details. Psychiatrists will err on the side of caution and report many patients. No shrink wants to blink into television cameras after one of his patients has just shot his father.
Patients who want to own weapons will lie to psychiatrists about their thoughts and feelings, never admitting they’re considering suicide or murder.
After such a murder, a psychiatrist will say: “He never said anything about killing anybody. Here, look at my notes. There’s nothing there.”
For this and other reasons, such as the existence of the data base, doctor-patient confidentiality will go out the window.
Therefore, the practice of psychiatry, which already minimizes talk therapy and merely dispenses drugs, will move even further in that direction. Tight-lipped patients, who don’t want to go on a police list, will seek an office visit with the sole motive of obtaining a drug.
Since all the emphasis is now on “mentally ill patients who are prone to violence,” the possibility of indicting the drugs in violence will recede over the horizon.
SSRI antidepressants (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc.) and other brain drugs do, in fact, cause people to go crazy and commit violent crimes, including murder. This is an open secret in the psychiatric profession, and the public is becoming more aware of it every day.
But it will be swept under the carpet.
Under the new law, a psychiatrist can’t be prosecuted for failing to report a patient who later commits murder, as long as the psychiatrist “acted in good faith.” The meaning of that phrase is broad enough to automatically cast blanket exoneration on most shrinks, which closes off the chance a psychiatrist will be pilloried for prescribing a drug he knows can induce violence in the patient.
This New York law will be copied and passed by other states, and in the end, we will see a national data base of psychiatric patients.
The official attitude will be: anyone who sees a psychiatrist is a potential killer.
This will give rise to protests on behalf of “a new underclass”: psychiatric patients. Advocates will arise to take up their cause. Court cases will abound. The whole business will devolve into a complete mess.
But out of it will come a hands-on partnership between cops and shrinks, who’ll march shoulder to shoulder into their version of a psychiatric police state.
Experts: Mental Health Guns Laws Likely Ineffective
- by s.e. smith
- January 21, 2013
- 4:00 pm
In the aftermath of a particularly awful year of gun violence, capped by the horrific Sandy Hook shooting, the federal government, as well as individual states, is acting quickly to tighten up gun control in the United States. Many advocates are hailing this as a long-needed measure, arguing that with decreased access to weapons, rampage violence will be reduced. Some, however, are concerned about whether the gun control policies being hastily passed by legislatures are actually going to be effective.
One such example has come up in New York, which just mandated that mental health professionals report anyone they suspect as likely to do violence (though Dr. Art Caplan noted in a radio interview that mental health professionals have been reporting safety concerns regarding patients for decades). Such reports can trigger a law enforcement investigation and seizure of any firearms. On the surface, some might think this policy is a good idea, despite the fact that statistics on mental illness and violence really don’t support the thesis that mental illness is the problem when it comes to rampage violence.
However, this legislation could actually be really bad news. Mental health professionals point out that it’s actually quite difficult to predict a risk of violence, and in studies, even those with special training aren’t necessarily very good at determining which patients are likely to harm themselves or others. And that phrase, “special training,” is also important: the law applies to all mental health professionals, but learning to assess patients for violent tendencies actually takes years of training and practical experience. Even then, there are no “precise signs” indicative of a risk of violence, says Kaplan. Psychiatric professionals need access to patient records, lots of time to review the available information, and interaction with other professionals who’ve treated the patient to adequately predict risks.
Under legal pressure, there’s a risk that mental health professionals could over report to reduce the risk of lawsuits and legal penalties.
Demanding that inexperienced and untrained mental health professionals report patients they think are dangerous is not a good idea. And not just because it could potentially abridge some rights and freedoms for mentally ill people. It could also make people reluctant to seek medical assistance for mental health conditions, and it could increase the risk of false positives resulting in costly investigations and the potential for forced institutionalisation, medication and other interventions. These can be traumatic for patients and aren’t necessarily productive.
Worst of all, “maybe we’ll prevent an incident or two,” said Barry Rosenfeld, an expert on the subject, highlighting the overall effectiveness of the law in an NPR interview. For all the costs associated with implementation and enforcement, it’s not likely to save many lives. While the temptation to blame mentally ill people for gun violence is easy to give in to for many people, it shouldn’t become a policy priority, because it distracts from the real, larger issues. Critically, it also positions mental health as a public safety issue rather than a public health one, and it increases the stigma associated with mental health conditions. This doesn’t lead to a safer society for mentally ill people or their loved ones.
NJ Mental Health and Substance Abuse Parity Bill Advances
A bill that would require public health insurance providers to cover the treatment of mental and nervous disorders, alcoholism and substance abuse under the same terms and conditions as other medical illnesses has been unanimously approved by the Health Committee.
The measure is sponsored by Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee Chairman Senator Joe Vitale and Health Committee member Senator Bob Gordon.
Vitale explained, “Long ago, we established that mental health disorders and drug and alcohol dependencies should be treated as diseases, but insurance providers in New Jersey and throughout the country have failed to get with the times. By requiring the two largest health plans for public employees to provide parity coverage for mental illnesses and alcohol and substance abuse disorders, we can make a statement that insurers need to update their policies.”
The bill would expand mandated health insurance coverage for the treatment of mental and nervous disorders and substance and alcohol abuse disorders under the State Health Benefits Plan (SHBP) and the School Employee Health Benefits Program (SEHBP). It would also require parity when it comes to the treatment of alcoholism and other substance-use disorders under the same terms and conditions applied to other diseases or illnesses.
Week ahead: Mental health debate moves to Congress
President Obama’s proposals to reduce gun violence sparked new debate on how to strengthen the U.S. mental health system. After inauguration festivities conclude, Congress will pick up the baton with several hearings this week.
The House Democratic Gun Violence Prevention Task Force will host a briefing and panel discussion Tuesday afternoon designed to look comprehensively at the U.S. mental health system. Staff members said the event would focus on issues of funding, research, prevention and intervention.
Pamela Hyde, administrator of the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration; Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health; and several other leaders are scheduled to participate.
Senators will have the opportunity to weigh in Thursday, when both Hyde and Insel return to Capitol Hill for a hearing at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“The hearing will provide senators an opportunity to examine the most pressing problems in our mental health system, including a need to focus on prevention and early intervention,” a HELP planning memo said last week.
Programs target teen suicide, mental health
Partnership aims to give high school districts resources to help students, prevent tragedies
HANFORD — Kings and Tulare counties have partnered to introduce two mental health training programs to help area high school students increase their knowledge of mental health issues and prevent suicide and other tragedies
Hanford Joint Union High School District, Lemoore Union High School District and other local districts are in talks to run the programs, Signs of Suicide (SOS) and RESTATE. The idea originated about two years ago with the Tulare-Kings Suicide Task Force, which approached the Tulare County Office of Education, Kings County Office of Education and Kings County Behavioral Health about pooling their resources to get these programs in schools within the next two months.
Adam Valencia, director of the Tulare County Office of Education’s choices prevention program, is part of a team overseeing the development of the programs in Tulare and Kings counties. “We’re trying to educate students on issues pertaining to mental health and how to reduce stigma and discrimination,” said Valencia.
The goal of the SOS program is to help students learn to identify signs of suicide in peers, identify where they can turn for help and what other preventive steps they can take. RESTATE, which stands for Reduction and Elimination of Stigma through Art Targeted Education, is a local curriculum-based program that educates students in a specific area of mental health over a three-semester time period. During the program, students must put together an arts project or public service announcement related to a mental health topic they studied.
“These programs are a great way for students to utilize their talents while also learning something new,” Valencia said.
Funding for the programs comes from the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), which was passed in 2004 to expand mental health services in the state.
The organizations couldn’t launch the programs separately based on their individual allocations, so they have combined their funding with approval from the state.
“This is really a communitywide effort,” Valencia said. “We wanted to share all the great resources available.”
The project is costing the counties $800,000 through June 2014, mostly for the training and certification of teachers for the RESTATE program. After that, the schools are expected to financially sustain the programs if they want to continue them.
Ward Whaley, director of administrative services for the Hanford Joint Union High School District, said the district has been in talks with Kings County Behavioral Health about bringing the program to the schools.
“I think it would be a good fit with the district,” Whaley said. “I think they can really help our students. There are a couple of art teachers that would be great for the RESTATE program.”
Whaley said the district has developed a good relationship with Kings County Behavioral Health through other programs the organization and district have collaborated on. He said it’s likely that Superintendent Bill Fishbough will approve the project.
“Programs like these become great resources for our counselors that treat students with mental health issues,” he said. “With these programs, we would have more resources to refer students to and can better help them.”
Whaley said he is especially interested in the RESTATE program due to its focus on mixing art projects with mental health education.
“We’ve recognized that at-risk kids can be very artistic and do well in classes where they can show their creativity,” he said.
“This could be a good outlet for them, a way to channel their energy in a more positive direction.”
Whaley said these programs, especially RESTATE, could help prevent future tragedies similar to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. In a $500 million gun control proposal revealed last week, President Barack Obama stressed his desire to see more training of mental health professionals and more preventative programs put in place for students.
“These programs are going to help students develop a better awareness of themselves in a nonjudgmental way, which could have a large effect on their mental stability,” Whaley said.
Whaley said they hope to get an agreement for the programs in place soon.
Kings County Behavioral Health officials said they want to have the programs running in schools by February or March.
The organization’s director, Mary Anne Ford-Sherman, said the most important part of the programs is that they’re addressing stigma and student discrimination as well as promoting education.
“Through awareness and reduction of stigma, we might be able to better access care and know sooner if someone needs care,” she said.
“We need to remove the barriers between people and their struggles.”
The reporter can be reached at 583-2429 or by email at jluiz@HanfordSentinel.com.
Rotten to the (Common) Core
Dave Hodges, Contributor
Activist Post
Your child has been sentenced from 12-16 years to a re-education camp. No, we are not talking about a FEMA camp, but we may as well be.
Our education system is rotten to the core, the Common Core, that is. Common Core is the latest of the educational fad programs which is supposedly designed to raise American school children’s academic performance. This program is insidious and bad for students and America at its core. This is a multi-part series which will examine the origins of this Common Core program, the stated goals behind the program, the real hidden agenda behind Common Core and most importantly, the threat that this program poses to our children and to the United States as whole.
One Fad After Another
Most any veteran teacher in the public school system will tell you that about every six to seven years, the American educational system embarks on the latest “miracle” designed to fix the low standardized test scores American students achieve in comparison to our international counterparts. Teachers have endured such educational faux pas from Goals 2000, to School to Work, to No Child Left Behind and now we are witnessing the latest in fad in American education, Common Core Standards.
Each one of the aforementioned programs threw billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, while contributing to the dramatic decrease in student performance. For example, SAT Reading scores, for the high school class of 2012, reached a 40+ year low since the implementation of No Child Left Behind.
Everyone of these previous educational reform programs emanated from the United Nations organization, UNESCO. Everyone of these programs is a propaganda tool designed to dumb down our children and these programs are being remarkably effective to this end.
The Hidden Agenda Behind Common Core
The undeniable truth is that each of these United Nations inspired and failed educational programs have ulterior designs on what should be taught to our children. The undeniable fact is that the brainwashing of our children is the ultimate goal of Common Core.
Common Core is based upon social justice, arriving at knowledge and subsequent decision making through a spirit of collectivism and developing a communal agreement about the need to teach and to integrate into each classroom an underlying theme of sustainable development. These goals are not just going to be taught in specific Environmental Science courses, but these philosophies are to be implemented and taught in EACH and EVERY course that a child takes during their educational experiences beginning with pre-K and stretching to post graduate secondary education.
Agenda 21 Controls Your Child’s Mind
For the more aware readers, you surely recognize the terms, sustainable development, social justice and collectivism as staples of the philosophy which underlies Agenda 21.
Globalist and Eugenics proponent, Bill Gates, is one of the Founding Fathers of the Common Core movement and its copyright holders, NGA/CCSSO. Gates donated about $25 million dollars to promote his version of global education. Gates has made several donations to CCSSO to promote Common Core. In 2009, Gates made two separate donations of $9,961,842 and $3,185,750.cIn 2010, Gates donated $743,331 and in 2011, he contributed $9,388,911 . In 2008, Gates donated $2,259,780 to the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to develop and implement Common Core. The NGA is the conduit into America from the United Nations UNESCO, Education for All Agenda 21 version of globalist education being forced down the throats of our young people.
Gates is listed as partner with UNESCO/UN to fund ”Education For All,” which in turn was transferred to the NGA which changed the name to Common Core. In a key document, The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments’ which identifies the goals for what became Common Core. The document speaks directly to the Agenda 21 educational ideals of collectivism, social justice, environmental justice and the espousing of the beliefs of the pseudoscience known as sustainable development.
Chapter 36
Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 Public Awareness and Training focuses on impressing upon every citizen on the planet, the indispensable need for achieving sustainable development. In plain language, Common Core is going into every country. The implementation names of this global education may vary, but the underlying Agenda 21 philosophies do not. Chapter 36 also states that the globalists plan to “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. In future installments in this series, the weak academic standards of Common Core will be revealed.
Reform of the nation’s standardized objectives is merely a smokescreen to the true intent of the program which is the acceptance for Agenda 21 policies. Subsequently, the Agenda 21/UNESCO documents clearly state their intention to turn each student into a globalist who will accept smaller living space, residing in the stack-and-pack cities of the future, acceptance of drastic energy reduction and the loss of Constitutional liberties. The document goes on to say that
While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods.
Please take note of reference to spiritual education. The implication is subtle, but undeniable. This phrase opens the door to the evisceration of the Christian religion. This phrase allows Common Core to propagandize school children into belittling the importance of Jesus Christ. And what will Christianity be replaced with? Anyone who has read the Agenda 21 documents in earnest, understands that the replacement for Christianity has been groomed for decades, and that replacement is the pagan religion called GAIA.
GAIA changes the Christian worldview significantly. Christians fundamentally believe that God gave dominion over the earth to man with the remainder of the hierarchy consisting of animal, fish, plants and finally, the earth. GAIA teachers that the earth reigns supreme followed by animal, fish, plants, and man in last place. This is a decidedly anti-human agenda. The undeniable conclusion is that your children will receive cleverly crafted lessons designed to lessen the appreciation for their own worth as a human being. This is the beginning of spiritual enslavement paradigm which will accompany the already implemented policies of economic enslavement presently being thrust upon the American people through the acquisition of massive debt created by the globalists.
When Common Core is fully implemented in 2015 and your child begins being assessed on the PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments, your child will be an Agenda 21 globalist minion in training. This is not a warning about what will be, the enemy is already inside the gates propagandizing your child.
Second-hand smoke increases risk of severe dementia
Saturday, January 19, 2013 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Exposure to secondhand smoke significantly increases a person’s risk of developing severe dementia, according to a study conducted by researchers from China’s Anhui Medical University and researchers from U.S. and U.K. universities, and published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Secondhand smoke is also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or passive smoking. Numerous studies have conclusively linked secondhand smoke exposure to dramatic increase in the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, such as lung cancer or coronary heart disease.
Studies have also shown that exposure to secondhand smoke is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment, and a recent study by Anhui Medical University researchers found a connection between secondhand smoke and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. But the new study is one of the first to look directly at the connection between secondhand smoke and the symptoms of severe dementia.
From 2001 to 2003, the researchers interviewed 5,921 people over the age of 60 in the Chinese communities of Anhui, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Shanghai and Shanxi. Some communities were urban, while others were rural. Based on the interviews, researchers assessed participants’ dementia symptoms. In follow-up interviews conducted in 2007 and 2008, the researchers reevaluated participants’ dementia symptoms, along with their smoking habits and levels of secondhand smoke exposure.
China has the greatest number of dementia patients in the world, and the number continues to increase.
“China, along with many other countries, now has a significantly aging population, so dementia has a significant impact not only on the patients but on their families and careers,” researcher Ruoling Chen said. “It’s a huge burden on society.”
Suffering from brain fog? Studies reveal its main causes
(NaturalNews) Brain fog, or cognitive dysfunction, is an increasingly common condition in today’s society. It is characterized by a lack of mental clarity and poor concentration, and almost everyone has suffered from it at some point in their lives. Due to the subjective nature of brain fog; however, it is often difficult for individuals to determine its exact causes. Fortunately, a number of studies into brain fog have emerged in the last few years, helping us to isolate the main culprits behind this vexing and misunderstood condition. The most significant causes are listed below.
Consumption of wheat
Eating the wrong food is arguably the biggest cause of long-term brain fog, and no single food is worse at causing and sustaining it than wheat. In his popular 2011 book Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis revealed that the modified gliadin protein in today’s semi-dwarf strain of wheat, which is contained in its gluten polymer, has a devastating impact upon our cognitive faculties, from increased appetite stimulation to chronic brain fog. In fact, after weight loss and reduced fatigue, superior mental clarity is the biggest benefit that people report after going wheat-free.
Heavy metal toxicity
According to a study by Dr. Lawrence Wilson for The Center for Development, brain fog is a common symptom of heavy metal toxicity. Consuming spirulina, chlorella, kelp, and other foods that contain alginate (a compound that can remove radioactive and heavy metal particles from the body) can aid the detoxification process, and thus brain fog. Wilson also discovered that a copper imbalance also contributes to brain fog due to its negative effect on the thyroid gland. He added that fatigue, stress, use of the birth control pill, a zinc deficiency, and consuming food and water contaminated with copper are the main causes of a copper imbalance.
Electromagnetic pollution
Most people live and work in an environment that is saturated with EMFs, whether they be from mobile phone masts, Wi-Fi, electrical appliances, or otherwise. While we often can’t do much about this pollution on a larger scale, we can minimize its intensity in our own homes by favoring wired appliances over wireless alternatives, turning off some or all electrical outlets when they’re not in use, and placing orgone generators around the biggest polluters.
Dehydration
Drinking water (preferably spring or distilled water) helps to release the toxins that accumulate in the intestinal tract, which is important since bowel toxicity is directly linked to brain fog. Water also helps to flush the blood of metabolic waste products that can travel to the brain and disrupt its functioning.