The judge rejected as "egregiously deficient" the remedy proposed by the State, saying that it “scarcely begins to address the violations identified...A proposal that affords a remedy to only 23% of those individuals whose civil rights are currently being violated...is grossly inadequate.”
The judge ruled “in order to rectify the violations found by the court, [state officials] must change the way they manage their mental health system so that [adult home residents] have a choice – a real and meaningful choice – to receive the services to which they are entitled in supported housing instead of an adult home.”
In doing so, the State must:
* Provide all qualified adult home residents the chance to move to supported housing within four years and ensure that appropriate services are in place...
* Create at least 1,500 supported housing units per year for three years, and create additional units as necessary after, to accommodate all current adult home residents and future individuals with mental illnesses being considered for adult home placement...
* Contract with supported housing providers to engage and educate adult home residents about their opportunities to live in their own housing with support services...This education is necessary to overcome the fear and self-doubt that have been instilled in many residents during years of living in adult homes with no other options.
* Employ “Peer Bridgers” (individuals in recovery from mental illnesses who are trained to assist others making the transition) to assist current and future adult home residents wishing to move....
"The court's order will stop the unnecessary warehousing of people with mental illnesses in institutional adult homes. For decades, people who can live in the community and receive services there have been stuck in these dismal institutions, when living in their own apartments and receiving services there would both enrich their lives and save the state money," said Cliff Zucker, executive director of Disability Advocates, Inc., plaintiff in the case.

Federal regulators have warned Johnson & Johnson that it could face fines and other sanctions for selling faulty insulin pumps and delaying disclosures of serious injuries to diabetics who were using its OneTouch Ping and 2020 pumps. The FDA ordered the Animas Corp. unit of J&J to explain why it kept selling pumps known to fail and also to submit a plan to rectify a failure to promptly report cases in which its device might have caused or contributed to death or serious injury....
In the issue with the Animas insulin pumps, some pump keypads for controlling how much insulin is injected were deteriorating prematurely, leading to failures. "We decided to go with a new keypad because it's more durable," [spokesperson Caoline] Pavis said.
But while Animas was lining up the new keypad supplier, it was still selling the older ones. The FDA demanded documents about the company's decision to do that.

Mental Health & Substance Abuse
Comorbidity/Co-occurring Disorders/ Dual Diagnosis

SAMHSA's Office of Applied Studies provides national estimates on mental health problems. As of 2001, state-level estimates on mental health measures are available. Such data includes maps showing the prevalence ranks by States. The latest available national data on serious mental problems are for 2006 and the latest State level data are for 2005. See Mental Health Variables by State, 2005.

Mental health reports:

* All mental health reports from OAS
* Latest national data on mental health problems
* State level mental health data
* Mental health treatment

Special mental health topics:

* Children's mental health
* Co-occurring disorders
* Depression
* Education & mental health
* Employment & mental health
* Homeless
* Mental health in Hurricane Katrina/Rita areas
* Mental health in State treatment planning areas
* Race/ethnicity, education & employment and mental health
* Serious psychological distress
* Suicide
* Unmet mental health treatment need
* Violence
* Youth and mental health issues (highlights)



Mental health data tables:

* OAS data tables on mental health topics
* State treatment planning area mental health data tables
* National Outcome Measures (NOMs) for co-occurring disorders

Public use data files:

* Analyzing mental health data in SAMHSA's OAS data sets

Methodology:

* Methods used for mental health measures in OAS reports

Other resources:

* SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
* Mental health statistics from SAMHSA's CMHS
* SAMHSA's National Clearinghouse on Mental health information (NMHIC)
* SAMHSA's Mental Health Services Locator
* Mental health objectives in Healthy People 2010
* Hurricane Katrina/Rita areas

Data Tables with government assistance as a variable:
* Adult (age 18 and older) mental health treatment/counseling, 2000 & 2001 (PDF format) -- Number and percent of (1) any mental health treatment, (2) inpatient, outpatient, and prescription medication treatment, and (3) unmet need for mental health treatment/counseling by socioeconomic demographics & geographic variables, family income, government assistance, and any illicit drug use (Tables 8.35A - 8.40B).
* Substance use by adult mental health treatment/counseling , 2000 & 2001 (PDF format) -- Number & percent of past year users of any illicit drugs, marijuana, nonmedical use of prescription-type drugs, cigarettes, & alcohol by receipt & perceived need for mental health treatment/counseling by sociodemographics, government assistance, and geographic variables

Tables Turned: Bank Of America Pays Couple’s Legal Fees After Deputies Threaten It With Foreclosure via @thinkprogress

Since July 2009, OSHA [posts a weekly summary] of worker fatalities and incidents in which three or more workers are hospitalized....OSHA needs to link these initial reports with its investigation results. If citations and penalties are proposed, they should be noted or [linked. Without this follow-up information, the] public is left in the dark...<br />
Responding to fatalities is one of OSHA's highest inspection priorities and its field staff devote substantial resources to responding to them. Only the harshest opponents of government programs would reject spending taxpayer dollars on worker fatality investigations. Determining for a family, for co-workers and a community whether safety rules were broken and led to a worker's death serves the common good in a civil society....<br />
[Each weekly report heading promises updates with inspection results and citation information. These] have yet to materialize.

Got Drugs? General disposal guidelines, and links to Take-Back sites mid-day Saturday, April 30th.

de1275a.pdf - Powered by Google Docs

Sullivan described taking his son to the hospital..."They put a cast on it, gave him crutches...I found out that [somebody at school] had pushed him down the stairs.” Over 2 years, Sullivan went to his son’s school 3 or 4 times a week to talk with the principal. According to court papers, officials did nothing. The Justice Department is citing...the Civil Rights Act of 1964[,] relying on a “broad reading” of Title IX, arguing that “the law also covers discrimination based on gender stereotypes["; and argues that school] officials also violated the Equal Protection Clause....[T]he Bush Justice Department was focused on installing political cronies, going after mythical voter fraud cases, and [suppressing] minority voters while looking out for the voter disenfranchisement of whites. The Obama Justice Department, by contrast, recently announced that it would also start aggressively going after “banks and mortgage brokers suspected of discriminating against minority applicants in lending.”

'I [drive to work in] my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile [on] roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation[, stopping to buy] fuel of a quality...determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school. After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to a house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department. I then log on to the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects [Agency] and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums to express my rage at the possibility of a public health care plan, because the government can't do anything right.'

Gen. Vance Coleman expresses his bafflement that Don't Ask Don't Tell has become such a high profile issue when our country is at war. Rep. Green: 'Is this not the best time when we have our soldiers serving three, four, and five tours in Iraq?'

Within California, the [Compassionate Use] Act allows for the recommendation by a physician for the medical use of marijuana by a patient, and the cultivation, transportation and use of marijuana for medical purposes by patients and caregivers.

download the USDA nutrition database

overview of USDA nutrition data release 19