RE: Question of the day

["Hollows, Anne E" <A.E.Hollows@xxxxxxxxx>]

One point which is troubling us in the UK, especially around the transitions between child and adult mental health services, is the failure of the adult services to accept diagnoses involving autism spectrum disorder and ADHD as being mental illness. So families who have received extensive case management support from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services get shut off when the child reaches 16 years - or 18 years - or some unspecified point in between. That would likely also influence the figures you are looking at. On the other hand within adult services there is increasing use of 'talking' (CBT and counselling) and 'exercise' therapies prescribed by GP's (Community based general practitioners) and generally provided outwith the standard mental health services. many GPs retain their own counsellors and 'therapists' to provide these services. So the services are formal in an overall health sense but they may be not included in the mental health services count. 
 
Anne
 
Dr Anne Hollows
Principal Lecturer / Child and Family Research Coordinator 
Sheffield Hallam University
33 Collegiate Crescent Sheffield
S10 2BP
tel +44(0) 114 2252369
email a.e.hollows@shu.ac.uk
http://www.shu.ac.uk/research/hsc/

________________________________

From: bounce-2342502-6832669@list.cornell.edu on behalf of D F MCMAHON
Sent: Sat 09/02/2008 17:38
To: Child Maltreatment Researchers
Subject: Question of the day


I am on the Mental Health Planning Council for my state (my seat is for parents of children with SED). According to federal statistics we recently reviewed in our draft state report, 5.4% of the adult population has serious mental illness but only 2% requires formal mental health services. I asked for clarification and have been told by a state statistician than the other 3.4% are "able to maintain" without formal services; formal services would include the gamut from psychiatric, psychological, to supportive services (lord knows where targeted case management fits in there). 
 
I'm feeling definitionally impaired here. "Serious mental illness," "diagnosable", "substantial impairment," etc (federal definition of SMI) doesn't quite jell with the idea of "maintaining" without formal services (unless friends/family take up the slack). Some kind of picture of this 3.4% of the population would help me. Thanks,
 
Sheri McMahon