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The Blue House on Swiss Avenue

           Let me introduce you to the blue house on Swiss Avenue; it is where I found a new family and acceptance. It was the blue house that opened up my eyes to the truth about mental illness and the condition that had left me silenced by my own “blood” family.  The blue house gave me a consistent place to call mine when I lived out of my car as I first claimed my emotional support dog. The blue house didn’t close its doors to me in judgement or abandonment, but invited me in with open arms when I was at my lowest. It even allowed shelter to my emotional support dog and made me a part of the family when I felt alone with no place to go. The blue house became my safe haven and a place where I was able to blossom and finally find my voice in a world that stigmatized those living with mental health conditions. Those inside the blue house on Swiss Avenue became my new family and strength while I was navigating these new waters of recovery and self-identity. I did not have to hide here at the blue house; it was my transition to find my own spot in society as an individual and not as a statistic. The blue house gave me the encouragement to keep going and to listen to others who have been victimized and silenced by their own suffering. I no longer have to be afraid, because the family in the blue house broke my silence and gave me the power to find my purpose. My new family loved and cared for me despite my illness and saw me for the person I was not the mental health conditions I had.  It was the blue house on Swiss Avenue that helped me finally break free from the chains of stigma that held me captive for far too long.

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Pinch and a Burn: Student Side Effects

The nurse steps in with some alcohol swabs and a syringe. “Ok, now I have your _(insert drug of choice here)___. You’re just gonna feel a quick pinch and a burn.” I have learned this routine the past three years of my life. Not just as a patient, but a nursing student. It is a very monotonous, monotone medley we are trained to say. Three years. Three different campuses. 

My student experience has been very cut and dry, but I thought I was handling things pretty well for a 21 year old blonde with some slight boy troubles. I thought everyone dealt with the stressors that I had until a late night junior year caught up to me pretty fast. A panic attack. 1 am in my room with my heart racing, brain going in a thousand directions, and no fellow nurses to shrug off my feeling of terror and uncertainty.

Keep reading

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2015 NAMIWalks Dallas: 2015 10th Annual NAMIWalks Dallas! We walk to raise awareness on mental health. So many individuals young, old, wealthy, poor are faced with mental health challenges and this 5K walk allows us to increase our advocacy efforts in the Dallas area.

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How Do We Fix America’s Mental Health Care System?

At the end of February at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., the Hill hosted a event on the economic and human consequences of policies that limit access to treatment to mental health services. The event, entitled Fixing America’s Mental Healthcare System, featured policy leaders in a discussion about limited access to treatment for people living with mentally illness.

The event included a keynote interview with Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Congressman Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), followed by a case study presented by Dr. Seth Seabury, of the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and a panel discussion with four leaders in the mental health care movement.

In light of the significance of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the overall goal of the event was to discuss the gaps that still exist in America’s mental health care system and possible actions we as a the nation could take to close them.  

Editor-in-chief of the The Hill, Bob Cusak, gave opening remarks and introduced Sen. Murphy and Rep. Murphy who then discussed the key challenges with the current mental health system, many of which they hoped to rectify with proposed legislation. The most critical issue regarded the treatment and approach to mental illness—how it is often treated as an attitude problem as opposed to a medical condition.

Rep. Murphy stated that only a small fraction of the nearly $130 billion appropriated by the federal government for mental health finds its way down to families or communities. “We do not have to wait for another tragedy to pass this bill,” Sen. Murphy declared.

Following the interview Sen. Murphy and Rep. Murphy, Dr. Seabury presented a case study on findings related to Medicaid access and restrictions on psychiatric drugs. He noted that costs are cut through prior authorization, a procedure that requires a prescriber to obtain permission to prescribe a medication prior to prescribing it, and step therapy restrictions, the practice of starting drug therapy for a medical condition with the most cost-effective and safest drug, then progressing to other more costly or risky therapy. However, the cost savings did not improve outcomes and were not beneficial to the actual people receiving medication.

Seabury argued that removing these restrictions would benefit those living with mental illness and would not harm federal government spending.          

The panel discussion with four mental health experts closed the event. Here is a brief summary of what each of the experts had to say:

Matt Salo, Executive Director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, supported the implementation of comprehensive mental health reform, but was wary of federal expenditures. He stated that the federal government would consider providing more integrated mental health care only if the costs were low.

Allen Doederlein, President of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, described the benefits of integrating his personal experience when advocating for patient-centered therapy. Doerdelein’s experience suggested that a peer-specialist who has experienced a patient’s hardships firsthand could provide more effective methods of treatment, leading to more successful recovery.

Dr. Ron Manderscheid, Executive Director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors, believes that the public needs to change its language when discussing mental health. He stressed the importance of early mental illness identification, since early targeting can lead to quicker recoveries.

Dr. Azfar Malik, the CEO and Chief Medical Officer of CentrePoint Hospital, emphasized the lack of focus on mental health among health care professionals. In the field, Dr. Malik has been forced to prescribe ineffective medications to people simply because of prior authorization and step therapy regulations currently in place.

While the event itself wasn’t able to implement an immediate plan of action to solve the situation that we are still faced with, it did offer up a few excellent ideas that set the table to come up with a solution. With each suggestion, the federal government and American public has hope of filling the gaps and providing comprehensive mental healthcare in the near future.

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Own It!

Let's be honest here, mental illness is not something that's going away anytime soon. We can't run from it and we can ignore it. Why does mental illness get such a bad rep anyway? Would you scorn someone for having cancer? Would being diagnosed with tumor be the fault of a person's own doing? This is how society treats mental illness? It's like "well I chose to hear voices so people could ostracize me". That's not something people can control. DISEASES CAN ALSO AFFECT THE BRAIN. After national tragedies from celebrity suicide, veteran suicide (22 per day by the way), child abuse and more we STILL brush it to the side because it's not a heart felt cause. Now make no mistake - other causes deserve just as much attention, the point we're making here is that mental illness is not getting enough attention. When someone is diagnosed with a physical illness- their mental health is also affected. When someone loses their job, a loved one or experiences a traumatic event- how can we question it's effects on that person. We will continue to experience the consequences if we continue to do nothing. Let's just OWN IT and put it out there. Start talking my friends

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Longtime Dallas crisis hotline to shut down due to lack of funds

By DIANE JENNINGS

Staff Writer

Published: 30 December 2014 10:58 PM

Updated: 30 December 2014 11:13 PM

For 47 years, the phones have rung around the clock at Dallas’ Contact Crisis Line. From the early morning hours to the dead of night, callers have phoned to talk about everything from suicide to grief to loneliness to financial worries.

And the call was always — always — answered by someone who cared.

But Wednesday the phones will fall silent and the small staff of paid employees and a larger group of trained volunteers will turn out the lights.

Contact is shutting down not because of a lack of callers — about 47,000 calls were taken this year — but because of a lack of funds.

“I’m really sad,” said interim president Amy Stewart, her voice breaking. “I just think it’s very devastating for the community.”

The decision to close was made by the board Dec. 15, and it stunned many of the nonprofit organization’s supporters and volunteers.

“It was like getting punched in the stomach,” said retired teacher Jeannie Nadel, a volunteer since 1997.

The loss to the community is “tragic,” she said, “because we help people.”

Her husband, Eric, the Texas Rangers broadcaster, who helped raise money for the center in recent years, also was reeling from the news. He became involved because his family has a history of “people with anxiety and depression,” he said. “And so I know something about it. And know how important it is for people to get help, to talk to somebody before it gets to a crisis stage.”

Other hotlines are available — lines for domestic violence victims, lines for suicide, lines for runaway teens. But “the nice thing about Contact,” Jeannie Nadel said, “has always been that it doesn’t have to have a specific issue or problem that you’re having. You can just be lonely or even not identify what it is you’re feeling, but you just feel rotten for whatever reason. You can be suicidal or you can have stubbed your toe and be mad — anything — which was the beauty to me of Contact.”

Jan Langbein, chief executive officer of Genesis Women’s Shelter, said the closing is a “tremendous loss.“

Contact has been “an invaluable resource for [domestic violence] victims to find services,” she said.

One critical need Contact met was providing transportation to victims, Langbein said. Shelters could call Contact and volunteers would arrange taxi service.

Contact’s emergency assistance program also helped pay for prescription medication if a caller was unable to afford it, said board member Susan Odom.

Those programs were relatively easy to fund through grants and contributions from foundations and major donors, Odom said. But in recent years raising money for mundane expenses such as rent and electricity became difficult. The center’s annual budget was about $1 million, covering seven full-time and five part-time employees.

Paying the phone bill is not exciting, Odom said. Donors prefer to fund specific programs they can point to, she said, not nuts and bolts.

As a longtime, low-key nonprofit, Contact was easy for donors to overlook. The group has a loyal band of supporters but “in the broader metroplex community there’s probably not the recognition that would have helped us,” said board chairman Dave Monaco.

Contact, which was started by a group of local pastors in 1967, was “a bit of a hidden gem,” Monaco said.

Board members didn’t realize “exactly how challenging our economic circumstances were until we were in the latter part of the year,” he said.

“We should have been more attentive.”

By the time they did recognize the problem, it was too late. Major donors wanted to see a sustainability plan, Monaco said. But “we didn’t have enough liquidity,” to devise one.

Over the last few years, “we’ve been up and down and forward and back and this is just more than we can surmount,” Odom said.

One million dollars may not be much in a town that loves glittering charity balls, but “it seems like a big amount to us.”

When the last call is answered Wednesday, the army of several hundred volunteers who have manned the phones, will leave wondering about the thousands of anonymous callers who reached out for help.

Jeannie Nadel remembers the man who refused to go to a hospital until volunteers found someone to care for his dog.

Odom recalls the man who drove around aimlessly because he couldn’t face an empty house after his wife left; Odom persuaded him to go home and get in touch with others who cared about him.

Stewart remembers the suicidal young woman she checked on as part of a voluntary follow-up program.

“She couldn’t believe that someone who didn’t even know her cared enough to call back and make sure she was OK,” Stewart said. “She said, ‘I know I have a long way to go but I know now that people care.’”

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All my life I have carried with me a huge sack of seeds. Seeds of: love and hate, hope and fear, weakness and strength. It was as if I was living a double life. I thought I was beautiful but I didn’t like the reflection in the mirror. I wanted to save myself for marriage but I yearned to be held....

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After 15 years, mental health insurance experiment may be ending

By: MATTHEW WATKINS

Staff Writer

  Published: 20 December 2014 10:54 PM

Updated: 20 December 2014 11:58 PM

  North Texas leaders have boasted for years about the unique way they provide mental health care to the poor.

  They say their partially privatized system called NorthSTAR uses less money to treat more people than in any other part of the state. More important, they say no one in need of care ever goes on a waiting list.

  But critics have argued that the system offers less comprehensive care and causes the region to lose out on state dollars. And now, an effort to break it up seems to be gaining steam. This month, a state oversight panel described NorthSTAR as "outdated" and suggested that it be scrapped.

  Nothing will change without the approval of the Texas Legislature, but dismayed local leaders and mental health care advocates say they're preparing for the end. They expect that they will soon have to give up the system and build a new one from scratch.

  "We are disappointed," said Ron Stretcher, director of criminal justice for Dallas County. "We felt like the NorthSTAR model was one that had been effective for us and we hoped to keep it."

  Technically, after 15 years, NorthSTAR is still a pilot program. Lawmakers created it in 1999 to serve seven counties - Dallas, Collin, Ellis, Hunt, Kaufman, Navarro and Rockwall. If the system worked, it was supposed to spread to the rest of the state.

  It's set up like an HMO. The state contracts with a private company to manage patients' care. The company, ValueOptions, maintains a list of more than 300 counselors, hospitals and substance abuse programs that its clients can use. That's different from the rest of the state, where the mentally ill are treated through state-funded community centers.

  The system has grown popular in Dallas in recent years. Government officials like that providers have to compete for customers. Patients and their advocates have lauded the choices that the system offers.

  The most significant improvement, advocates say, is the elimination of a waiting list. In other areas, mental health care is largely provided on a first-come, first-served basis. If someone troubled by, say, depression needs help from a government-run center that has reached capacity, he or she will probably have to wait for a spot to open up.

  Waiting lists have long been a problem in the state. In 2012, almost 60,000 poor Texans waited for mental health care. In 2013, the Legislature spent more than $46 million to reduce the waiting list to fewer than 300. Still, about one-third of traditional centers couldn't immediately treat everyone seeking help.

  ValueOptions, on the other hand, promised in its contract with the state to treat everyone who qualifies. As a result, NorthSTAR has never had a waiting list. Advocates say that's made a huge difference.

  But in a system with limited money, sacrifices must be made to achieve that goal. And not everyone agrees with what NorthSTAR has given up.

  "They are very, very proud of the fact that they don't have a wait list," said Collin County Commissioner Cheryl Williams, who serves on the board that oversees NorthSTAR. "But they haven't magically done that with less money.

  "How they have done it is they have really cut back on payments to the actual providers ... and denied services to some of the people in need."

  Cheryl Williams calls it "the myth of no wait list." It's true that everyone gets treatment, she says, but that treatment isn't nearly as comprehensive as what's offered in other parts of the state.

  Collin County study

A 2010 study commissioned by Collin County seems to support Williams' contention. The study, by researchers from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, examined six of NorthSTAR's biggest providers of care to Collin County residents. Five of those six providers recommended a higher level of care than what ValueOptions would pay for at least 10 percent of the time.

  People with the most serious mental illnesses tend to congregate in and near the cores of big cities, where there may be more governmental and nonprofit services available to them. Collin County, therefore, has a higher share of less serious cases. And those patients tend to receive less comprehensive treatment under the NorthSTAR model.

  "They are just keeping people stabilized," Williams said.

  NorthSTAR supporters acknowledge that shortcoming, but say it's the better of two bad options. In a state where per capita spending on mental health is low, officials have to choose between treating everyone in a limited manner or leaving some people waiting weeks for help.

  "If you have a brother with schizophrenia, you know in your heart why it is important not to have a waiting list," said Janie Metzinger, public policy director for the Mental Health Association of Greater Dallas.

  "These illnesses progress, and the more that someone stays untreated, the brain becomes more and more diseased."

  Resisting experiment

While local leaders debate waiting lists and service levels, outside the region little consideration has been given to NorthSTAR's effectiveness. Officials and care providers elsewhere in the state have stuck by the traditional model and resisted adopting the NorthSTAR experiment. Until this year, the Texas Department of State Health Services lacked the data even to compare how much patients' mental health improved under each system.

  Unable to make such side-by-side evaluations, state leaders have continued tinkering with the rest of the state's system, leaving NorthSTAR further isolated. North Texas leaders, meanwhile, say they've struggled to make their one-of-a-kind experiment fit into the larger whole.

  Their biggest complaint has been how NorthSTAR is financed. Dallas County officials have long argued that the region doesn't get a fair share of state mental health dollars.

  In part because of its no-wait policy, NorthSTAR treats a disproportionate number of Texas patients - 32 percent - while receiving only about 14 percent of the mental health dollars.

  In 2013, legislators added more than $330 million to the statewide system, leading local officials to dream of expanded in-home services and new 24-hour urgent care centers. But NorthSTAR has barely benefited. Total mental health funding statewide rose 15 percent in the last budget cycle, while the amount sent to NorthSTAR grew by less than 1 percent.

  Into the sunset?

In November, the Dallas County Commissioners Court was so fed up that it hired a law firm to look into suing the state for more money. That option, however, was set aside once the  

Texas Sunset Commission recommended scrapping NorthSTAR altogether.

  The commission periodically reviews state agencies and offers ideas on how the Legislature might improve them. This year, it separately examined the Department of State Health Services and the Health and Human Services Commission, two agencies with oversight of NorthSTAR.

  Local leaders were hopeful after the first of those two sunset reviews chided the Department of State Health Services for its "byzantine" funding methods and for failing to study the effectiveness of NorthSTAR. But that optimism faded when the Health and Human Services Commission report called NorthSTAR an "outdated" and "never-ending" experiment that should be ended.

  The Dallas area was losing up to $40 million a year because NorthSTAR's structure made it ineligible for many state and federal funding sources, the report said.

  Also, it said NorthSTAR's structure precluded it from pursuing the latest trends in caring for the mentally ill. In recent years, the field has moved toward an "integrated" care model, one that combines physical and mental health treatment. The rest of the state has begun to transition to such a model for Medicaid patients. But NorthSTAR can't join in because it blends its Medicaid dollars with other funding in a way that the rest of the state does not.

  The sunset recommendation was roundly criticized by North Texas patients, providers and government officials. Among other things, they said the commission's report was riddled with inaccuracies.

  It did no good. Under the commission's recommendations, NorthSTAR's seven member counties were given until March 10 to come up with a preliminary plan for a new system.

  If the Legislature signs off on those recommendations, it's unclear what would replace NorthSTAR, whether the seven North Texas counties would continue to work together, and whether any part of the privatization model would survive.

  Some local leaders vow to keep fighting to save NorthSTAR. But others are already looking to the future.

  "Does this mean the end of NorthSTAR? If so, so be it," said Dallas County Commissioner Theresa Daniel. "I am not married to the concept if we can find a way to continue to improve the system."  

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Spring 2015 Classes

NAMI Dallas now accepting registration for Spring 2015 classes! Learn more and/or register online at www.namidallas.org! 6 Family-to-Family locations and 2 Peer-to-Peer locations. Free mental health education for family members/caregivers and persons living with a mental illness. What do you have to lose?

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I’ve dealt with depression and prescription med issues my entire adult life. It was after making decisions that I knew I would never do in a right frame of mind that lead to my divorce that I finally decided it was time to get myself figured out. After a suggestion to see a psychiatrist, I was...

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Interesting!

Article from Huffington Post: 

It's no secret there's a serious stigma attached to mental illness. According to the CDC, only 25 percent of people with mental health issues feel that other people are compassionate and sympathetic toward them. It's a shameful statistic when one in four people have been touched by some form of mental illness.

Experts say that part of the problem when it comes to criticizing someone's mental health is a lack of empathy and knowledge about the ailments. Yet, despite the staggering evidence and rhetoric aimed at helping people understand, many people still don't get that being diagnosed with a mental illness isn't something that's in their control -- just like having the flu, or food poisoning, or cancer isn't in their control.

In an effort to re-frame the conversation, artist Robot Hugs created a comic that displays what it would be like if we discussed physical illnesses in the same way we do mental illnesses. By Lindsay Holmes

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Community Hero Award

NAMI Dallas honors Asst. Chief Seals of Dallas Fire & Rescue

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Hang onto your hat. Hang onto your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

E. B. White

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There has never been a meaningful life built on easy street.

John Paul Warren