The US Congress is considering legislation to prevent abusive restraint and seclusion of students in schools. This is a welcome consequence of the highly visible reports about terrible abuses of students’ right to be free from harm. However, as much as I support this initiative, it is important to make clear that the laws (and regulations resulting from them) must be crafted carefully.
Here’s some text from the press efforts by the US House of Representatives about this important legislation. I follow it with a cautious support of the law.
Continue reading ‘US legislators consider law for preventing abusive restraint and seclusion’
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| Twelve key children’s services for community services boards |
- specialized children’s emergency services;
- crisis stabilization;
- evaluations for Comprehensive Services Act services;
- psychiatric/medication;
- office-based mental health therapy;
- office-based substance abuse therapy;
- mental health case management;
- intellectual disabilities case management;
- substance abuse case management;
- home-based behavioral treatment and support for families;
- school-based day treatment; and
- local residential services.
|
Right here in my home commonwealth of Virginia last week, Mira Signe, Vicki Hardy-Murrell, John Morgan, and Margaret Nimmo Crowe explained why it is important that government and private organizations attend to and address issues in children’s mental health. By explaining that Virginia has inadequate services and that one in every five children or youths experience mental health problems at some time during their lives, they made the point that that there is a tremendous need for public focus on these issues. This was the kick-off event for the Campaign for Children’s Mental Health.
The Campaign for Children’s Mental Health is a 3-year sustained effort to make mental health services more available and accessible to Virginia children in need. It will strongly endorse Governor-elect McDonnell’s call for system improvements; urge the General Assembly and state and local government to work collaboratively with the administration to address system deficiencies; and conduct a high-profile three-year advocacy and education drive to build public and political support for improved mental health services for children.
Only about one in 20 of Virginia’s children have access to the key services listed in the accompanying box. So, four out of five children who need these services do not have access to them.
No, Virginia, this is not an acceptable way to treat our children. Let’s do better.
Although I have followed the promotion of secretin as a treatment for Autism pretty much since the first reports about it, I hadn’t checked on it lately. My initial foray into the topic in 1998 resulted in some skepticism with hedges. As the research evolved, it became clear that the skepticism was warranted.
However, I was surprised that Stephen Edelson, writing in a 2008 article entitled The secretin story: Still a promising treatment for autism,” considered “the studies investigating the efficacy of secretin have been very positive.” Coupled with some vaguely remembered notion that fewer than 50% of physicians discouraged use of secretin, the article gave me pause. I thought, “Hmmm. Maybe you’re earlier analysis was hasty, John.”
Continue reading ‘Secretin reminder’
The recent posts about news coverage of mental illness (e.g., “Danny Watt’s Story” and “Jani Illustrates Troubles“) has had me thinking about how popular media portray these problems. Over on Psych Central, Margarita Tartakovsky has an article entitled “Media’s Damaging Depictions of Mental Illness” that I recommend to readers of EBD Blog. In addition to discussing myths that are too commonly perpetuated by media such as television and film, she recommends ways to help distinguish between accurate and inaccurate portrayals of mental illness.
Link to Ms. Tartakovsky’s article.
Over on her Ed Week blog, Christina Samuels posted an entry entitled, “Use of Seclusion, Restraints on Students at Issue: Watchdog agency preparing report on practices.” She reports not only about current efforts to keep awareness of the issue high, but also about the sometimes-tragic background on the issue.
In my view, paddling and spanking should also be on the list. These are not appropriate, let alone effective, methods.
Because students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders are probably more likely to experience seclusion and restraint, it is important for the special education and mental health communities to help in sustaining awareness of the issue.
Read Ms. Samuels’ post.
The spring 2009 issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine, a publication of the Stanford University School of Medicine, examines the turmoil swirling around vaccines. In “Hot Shots: Vaccines under the gun” one can read any of ten articles (not counting an introductory comment by Rosalyn Carter):
- The demonization of immunization: Shots get the once-over
- What is a vaccine? Immunization demystified
- Asking How: Vaccine Side Effects Probed
- When science gets hijacked: NBC News chief medical editor tells why she broke her silence
- Insourced to India: A vaccine for a scourge of the developing world
- Peet’s passion: The medical education of Amanda Peet
- Field yields: Can genetically engineered plants provide vaccines?
- Shoot it, don’t smoke it: An injectable tobacco-grown vaccine
- Golden needles: Vaccines for seniors
- Grow up: Can vaccines built for kids work in older immune systems too?
Few of the folks who ardently oppose vaccines will likely be swayed by the content provided here. However, this magazine provides an excellent broad-brush treatment of the topic for those who are curious, savvy, and vulnerable to reason.
Link to the issue on the Web. Flash of the electrons to Liz Ditz for alerting me to this excellent resource.
I’ve harped on this a couple of times before, but I’m returning to it because it is very important. We have to resist the sirens’ call to ignore academic instruction for students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Just as much as their peers who do not have disabilities, these pupils need to learn the skills and content that will allow them to have a reasonable chance at success in life. Reading competence is critical.
Watch this video as a refresher course:
Link to the video and to the Children of the Code Web site. Explore there.
“Hyperbaric treatment for children with autism: a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial” by Daniel A. Rossignol, Lanier W. Rossignol, Scott Smith, Cindy Schneider, Sally Logerquist, Anju Usman, Jim Neubrander, Eric M. Madren, Gregg Hintz, Barry Grushkin, Elizabeth A. Mumper appeared as an on-line publication 13 March 2009 and will appear in print in BMC Pediatrics. The article URL is http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/9/21
The recently published study by Rossignol and colleagues about hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for Autism has generated lots of commentary and is sure to lead to more. Because it is a treatment study and employs more careful methods than are common in many of the therapies promoted these days, I sat up and said, “Hmm. I ought to read this one.”
So I did. And I found it to be, indeed, a cut above much of the ersatz research that’s passed off as evidence in the Autism arena. But, I found some concerns, too.
Those concerns led me to poke about a bit on the Internet to see whether there were any others who were raising questions. There are. And I still have some more poking to do. But, I thought I ought to record my concerns. Thus this post.
Continue reading ‘Does Rossignol et al. show HBOT’s effective?’
The combination of a child and a gun is frightening to me. Although guns are certainly not involved in all of them, “In the United States, unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide are the first, second, and fourth leading causes of death among persons aged 1–19 years, respectively,” according to Stephanie J. Bernard, Leonard J. Paulozzi, and L. J. David Wallace, of the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (U. S. Center for Disease Control).
When one adds into the kids-guns mix the variable of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, the situation becomes even more concerning. Some children with EBD may lack the ability to discriminate between a real and a toy gun; others may not have the impulse control to defer acting like they are shooting a gun upon picking one up; clowning around might lead to an accident. And none of those examples even begin to consider the possibility of premeditated actions.
Continue reading ‘Gun safety at home’
In “Failing Sam,” Jessica Shyu—who taught special education for two years at an American Indian reservation school in New Mexico—makes an important point about what we provide educationally for students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. Teachers may become lulled by having a quiet, disruption-free classroom and overlook the need to provide beneficial instruction. She recalls a particularly challenging student named “Sam.”
His reputation preceded him. A week before he even arrived at school, the teachers were eagerly sharing horror stories they’d heard about the 12-year-old. It was a mix of rumor and truth. They told me about his alcohol problem. They told me about how he doused his cousin with gasoline and lit her on fire. They told me I would be lucky to get him to sit down and not hurt anyone.
Continue reading ‘Teaching them matters’
Writing for the New York Times, Melissa Fay Greene provides a sympathetic view of the variation on D.I.R.-Floortime (D.I.R. stands for “developmental, individual-difference, relationship-based) methods employed by The Community School of Decatur (GA, US). In “Reaching an Autistic Teenager,” Ms. Greene describes several youths behavior and progress at the school, which was started by a parent of one of the students.
Continue reading ‘Greene on Floortime’
According to correspondent Julio C. Abreu (Senior Director for Government Affairs at Mental Health America), negotiators for the US House and Senate are near or have reached a compromise that reconciles H.R. 1424 (“No Discrimination in Health Insurance Act of 2008″) and S. 558 (“Mental Health Parity Act of 2007″). These two bills are different versions of similar legislation that will require private health insurance plans to cover mental health (and other) services, just as they cover other conditions. This is, excuse me, HUGE for families of children and youths with emotional and behavioral disorders. I hope that the mental health community, including Mental Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Alliance for Children and Families, springs into action and endorses resolution of this long-festering problem.
Continue reading ‘Legislation to cheer’
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