National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

an educational foundation and advocacy organization serving mental health consumers and professionals

President’s Report - Fall 2005

From the President: What the National Coalition is doing and what we need from you throughout 2005 and 2006 

All National Coalition Board members and officers gathered for our annual retreat weekend in New York at the end of July. This was a time of truly enjoyable fellowship and focused, productive work, in which much critical priority-setting and strategic planning, as well as needed organizational basics, were accomplished. All Board members were re-elected for another 2-year term, as were all officers.

We are most appreciative to everyone who has been renewing memberships and joining as new members, and all who have worked to help revitalize our membership and to continue bringing fiscal stability for our work, as well as all of you who contribute to our work in all the ways you do. Our work certainly needs all the help we can get!

We set our top priorities for the forthcoming year in the development of two critical and most ambitious projects:

Ø      1) Active work to impact the 2006 recommendations of the Citizen’s Health Care Working Group (CWG) through organizing broad public engagement, with our particular emphasis on engaging health care professionals and consumers.

           A key means of this organizing work is our being a National Partner in the Making Health Care Work for All Campaign – see the Fact Sheet and Campaign Statement pages later in this issue of the Coalition Report.

           Our message is that the federal government must develop a strategy to achieve universal coverage by 2010, affirming the 2004 recommendations of the Institute of Medicine – see: http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=17632

           To make sure that mental health and substance abuse care is not relegated to a low priority service by this Citizen’s Health Care Working Group that is charged by Congress to make recommendations to Congress (both houses, all committees) by 9/29/06, and to lead to Presidential and Congressional legislative proposals by 2007.

We all know that the opponents of real change in the health care system will use their huge budgets to spread half-truths and total falsehoods. Health care industry propaganda must be countered with a powerful, positive message that:

·       Quality, affordable health care for all is a moral and economic necessity for our nation.  

·        By cutting waste and inefficiency in health care, we can afford health care for all.

·        The American public wants prompt action by our political leaders to achieve quality, affordable health care for all!

          The National Coalition needs from you that you pay close attention to all e-mails and reports from us and our partnering organizations, Making Health Care Work for All Campaign  and UHCAN, and be informed and ready to provide input on key questions from the CWG, to help organize your colleagues, and fellow health care consumers, to submit comments and testimony/recommendations by all traditional and electronic means of communicating, to attend CWG “official” Community Meetings, and/or organize your own local citizens’ community meetings.

Ø      2) Collaborating with a major initiative that is going to be launched soon to give parents information concerning the mental health needs of their families.  We will be continuing to raise and expand awareness that managed care has not only hijacked psychotherapy, but the entire assessment and referral process to remove choice and quality from consideration of a family’s mental health needs. 

These and other efforts are aimed at creating a broadly-voiced grievance throughout our nation, a recognition among citizens that quality mental health care does not have to be sacrificed in the name of saving money for “priorities” and an awareness among families that there are more ways to help their child and their family emotional problems than medication. 

We reaffirmed our commitment to preserve confidentiality, to the fight for the restoration of patient consent prior to the release of personal (identifiable) health information:

Ø      We remain steadfast in our fight – all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – in moving forward our lawsuit to restore privacy rights (to invalidate/overturn the Privacy (“Disclosure Rule” under HIPAA)  - we are still awaiting the federal appellate court ruling.

Ø      We are continuing to file amicus briefs in other privacy protection briefs, and to inform and advocate for other tactics, such as legislation. See Dr. Janis Chester’s essay in this issue.

The National Coalition needs your renewed support of our lawsuit with fundraising – see http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/welcome.htm

We also continue to work with grassroots advocacy groups, as well as health care professional organizations, to make sure that real care accessible to all, as well as the privacy, quality access and choice necessary for comprehensive, quality mental health and substance abuse services are “on the table” in any discussion of health care reform. An essential part of this work, as well as all our priorities and commitments, are focused on freeing all “Talk Therapy” from the years of industry propaganda and insurance coverage (lack) indoctrinating of America about ultra-brief treatment, medication-only and other profit-making rationing as if this is “real” and adequate treatment. See our flyer at: http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/hiJack.htm

Ø      We continue as a partnering organization with the American Mental Health Alliance –USA, an invaluable resource to practitioners and the public – see http://www.americanmentalhealth.com/home.tpl

Ø      We have become a Collaborative Partner in the Health Care for the Whole Person Collaborative, which is a coalition of 24 health care provider, public health and consumer groups, including the American Psychological Association, the American Public Health Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Nurses Association, the National Association of Community Health Centers, Families USA and the Consumers Union among others. The mission is to of build a strong partnership of health, consumer and public health groups to endorse a vision of health care that integrates mental and behavioral health services, and which corrects the current model of health care in the United States artificially separates emotional and mental health from physical health leading to higher health care costs and negative effects on health care access and outcomes - these partners will assemble the evidence and rationale for integrated care via committees which span science to practice to policy and  produce a report addressing issues such as clinical examples, culture and disparities, the economics of integration, and rural health issues.

The National Coalition needs from you:

·       To support the goals and mission of the National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, you can start be joining us and become a member.  If you are a Member, thanks, and please renew promptly. Check with us if you are unsure: NCMHPC@aol.com

·       If you are already a member, please recruit your colleagues, relatives, friends and acquaintenances.  Students in professional training are greatly needed!

·       Find others to make additional donations. Any grant information and leads – contact persons - are most welcome as well!

·       You can then volunteer to serve on one of the committees and projects of the Coalition, even by doing advocacy work in your own community. 

·       For information, go to our website at http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/ or contact us at 888-729-6662.  

The National Coalition is still alive and well in its 14^th year in operation.

·       We continue to be the only organization of public interest citizens, consumers and professionals working collectively, that speaks clearly and strongly for choice, privacy and quality of mental health and substance abuse care that is truly accessible and affordable for all who need help.

·       We focus on education, on networking and organizing, and on political and legal action to preserve the highest standards of prevention, assessment and treatment.

·       We have had solid successes along the way.

·       We have worked to create common ground with other health care groups.

·       We have mutual support and collective projects with mental health organizations and health care justice organizations, both professional and grassroots.

·       We remain so grateful to all of you, all you do, and all the help working with us that you will give!    

These are powerful forces that are arrayed against us, all with war chests of enormous sums of monies, and with clever ideas and their own ideologues and investors, with their own funded policymakers.  

We will continue to fight this fight, as long as you all stand with us. And, the next few years will tell, that we maximized our voices, and those of our fellow Americans, in advocating for prompt comprehensive reform – for affordable health care for all. 

Thanks, and be well. In the face of tragedies at home and abroad, I am trying to follow a saying attributed to Mother Jones:  
                       "Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living"