Tom Jackman’s article about Danny Watt to which I referred a few days ago (see this post) is generating a lot of discussion on the Post’s Web site. The comments on Mr. Jackman’s story are informative. For example, at least a half dozen mention having a family member with mental illness. Link to the comments.
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The parents of Daniel Watt, a youth who had multiple problems, told the story of their son’s life and suicide. Tom Jackman of the Washington Post reported the story of Danny and his parents, helping explain some of the problems of addressing the needs of children with multiple diagnoses—co-morbid schizoaffective disorder and substance abuse, in Danny’s case.
Danny Watt once leapt from a moving train. He hurtled through the windshield of a rolling car. Got pummeled by drug dealers. Overdosed. Swallowed rat poison. Tried to hang himself.
In his tumultuous 21 years, Danny Watt danced with death in the most amazing, horrible ways. In the end, two college students spotted him facedown in the cold, murky water of the C&O Canal one afternoon in April 2008. The medical examiner said Danny had drowned.
Continue reading ‘Danny Watt’s story’
Sphere: Related ContentParade Magazine, the insert into millions of Sunday newspapers in the US, carried a brief piece about seclusion and restraint in the versions to be delivered 26 July 2009 (available on line 25 Jul 2009). The piece doesn’t present anything new, but we can hope that it helps to sustain concern about providing appropriate treatment for individuals with disabilities.
Link to the story. Flash of the electrons to Mike Kruger of the US House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor News of the Day: Should Schools Use Restraints on Students?. On the House Ed & Labor blog one can also see a video of Chair George Miller talking about seclusion and restraint.
For previous coverage of seclusion and restraint on EBD Blog, please use the items with that label in the “tags” section of the side rail.
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“Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go,” a movie about a UK school for children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, will air on US television 28 July 2009 on P.O.V. The film, made by Kim Longinotto (pictured at right), features the children and staff at Mulberry Bush School in the Oxfordshire village of Standlake. P.O.V. (Point of View) provides “documentaries with a point of view.”
Variety describes it as a film “mixing ferocity with tenderness, delicacy with tenacity”–exactly like the unusual school it explores. In Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, one of Britain’s leading documentary filmmakers takes a verité look at Oxford’s Mulberry Bush School for emotionally disturbed children. Mulberry’s heroically forbearing staff greets extreme, sometimes violent behavior with only consolation and gentle restraint. Kim Longinotto’s unblinking camera captures an arduous process and a nearly unhinged environment, but it also records the daily dramas of troubled kids trying to survive and the moments of hope they achieve with Mulberry’s clear-eyed staff.
Link to the US PBS site, where one can learn when the entire film will be available in different areas. Visit the Mulberry Bush organization’s Web site. See the UK’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) listing for the Mulberry Bush School. Link to an extended piece, “Inside the home for angry infants: It costs £123,000 a year to send a child to this special school — because nobody else will have them,” by Caroline Scott in the Times Online (11 May 2009). Learn about other P.O.V. shows.
Sphere: Related ContentAccording to Mary Ann Roser of the Austin (TX, US) Statesman, a clinic that provided chelation therapy for Autism is apparently under investigation by federal authorities. Ms. Roser did not report the nature or cause of the investigation of the CARE Clinics.
CARE Clinics, an autism clinic on Bee Cave Road that was being investigated by insurance companies over insurance claims, was raided by the FBI and IRS agents today.
The clinic has been closed, perhaps permanently.
Agents are removing dozens of boxes of documents, but they declined to say what they are looking for. They directed inquiries to Special IRS Agent Mike Lemoine, who did not immediately return a call.
In an article in May of 2009, Ms. Roser reported that the clinic was having financial trouble.
The owner of an Austin-area clinic that treats children with autism — using techniques that are controversial in mainstream medicine — says investigations by three major insurers have left it with a pile of unpaid claims and a crisis: She’s had to lay off most of her staff and drastically reduce the clinic’s hours.
In addition, Kazuko Grace Curtin said the Texas Medical Board is investigating her medical director. She and the doctor — Jesus Caquias — say the investigation is a way of harassing them because they offer nontraditional care for autism patients.
Link to Ms. Roser’s post entitled “Autism clinic raided by federal authorities” and to the earlier article, “Insurance companies question autism clinic’s charges” Check the discussion following the blog post (the first link).
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Children and youths with ADHD and their families ought to know about systems of care. Systems of care are networks of services that are coordinated across different agencies and groups within the community. A system of care focuses on the needs of individuals and should be designed so that it takes advantage of that person’s strengths (i.e., is “strengths based”) and unique characteristics (e.g., ethnic background and native language).
Systems of care have been studied extensively in the disciplines focused on Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. They are not just for kids “lost to the streets.” The coordination of services can be beneficial for individuals with ADHD, too.
Learn more about ADHD and systems of care from the SAMHSA, the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Download a PDF.
Sphere: Related ContentOn behalf of the families of two children with Autism, a consumer advocacy groups claims that regulators in California (US) are allowing insurers to deny access to needed therapy. Consumer Watchdog seeks to require the Department of Managed Health Care to mandate that insurers pay for treatment based on applied behavior analysis for children with Autism.
On the heels of the recent agreement in Michigan (US), I have to wonder whether advocates for children with Autism are seeing the beginning of a wave of changes in insurance support for early and intensive behavioral treatment of Autism.
Consumer Watchdog, which was previously known as “Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights,” has a pretty broad agenda. In addition to insurance issues, it addresses patients’ rights, political corruption, corporate excesses, and other topics. Consumer Watchdog’s site has links to multiple items regarding Autism.
Also see coverage by Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times: “Autism patients’ treatment is denied illegally, group says“; Ms. Girion covered this topic previously (see 10 Mar 2009). For other earlier posts on EBD Blog about insurance coverage for children with Autism, see 25 Jun 2009 and 20 Sep 2008.
Sphere: Related ContentIn the US state of Michigan, a major health insurance provider will now reimburse families for the cost of providing therapy for children with autism. The case, Johns v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, arose because Blue-Cross-Blue-Shield denied payment for behavioral treatment often called “ABA” to the family of a child with Autism. The case was settled in favor of the family last week.
Represented by Gerard Mantese, Mr. Christopher Johns alleged that the insurer should pay for the therapy for his son under the provisions of the policy. The insurance company refused and Mr. Johns sued. During depositions, Mr. Mantese and others on the Mr. Johns’ legal team learned of a draft memorandum identifying the behavioral therapy as effective and that a representative of the insurer would probably elect the behavioral therapy if that representative had a child with Autism.
Because Mr. Johns’ complaint was part of a class action suit, many other families will also benefit from the settlement. In an independent analysis of the case, Tresa Baldas discussed the implications.
The $1 million class action settlement from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan comes amid a legislative wave in which a growing number of a states are passing laws that require insurance companies to pay for autism treatments and screenings. To date, 13 states have such laws, the most recent being Connecticut, Colorado and Nevada. New Jersey is currently considering an autism bill, and Pennsylvania’s law goes into effect July 1.
The June 17 Michigan settlement, meanwhile, has autism advocates hopeful that insurance companies will stop claiming that behavioral therapy for autistic children is experimental, and start paying for it.
“It is a significant victory for the families, obviously, and it marks a trend, hopefully, that insurance companies will start to look at autism treatment differently,” said Areva Martin, an attorney at Los Angeles-based Martin & Martin who is currently handling about 30 autism cases. She believes the labeling of autism treatments as experimental is “absurd.”
I wonder what this will mean for the California rules that do not expressly exclude behavioral therapies, but set requirements for deciding whether they are reimbursable (see my earlier post on that story).
Link for a quasi-news article about the settlement. Read another of the law firm’s press releases. Here’s link to Ms. Baldas’ analysis of the case.
Sphere: Related ContentEdward G. Carr, a widely respected respected authority on Autism, was killed in an automobile accident Saturday 20 June. I’ve posted an obituary on SpedPro.
Writing in the Chicago (IL, US) Tribune, Trine Tsouderos has published an informed and valuable story about the use of Lupron to treat Autism.
Desperate to help their autistic children, hundreds of parents nationwide are turning to an unproven and potentially damaging treatment: multiple high doses of a drug sometimes used to chemically castrate sex offenders.
The therapy is based on a theory, unsupported by mainstream medicine, that autism is caused by a harmful link between mercury and testosterone. Children with autism have too much of the hormone, according to the theory, and a drug called Lupron can fix that.
“Lupron is the miracle drug,” Dr. Mark Geier of Maryland said after meeting with an autistic patient in suburban Chicago.
Geier and his son developed the “Lupron protocol” for autism and are marketing it across the country, opening clinics in states from Washington to New Jersey. In the Chicago area, the treatment is available through Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, a family practitioner in Rolling Meadows.
As is usually the case with these sorts of therapies, testimonials are the main source of evidence about effectiveness. There are no controlled studies of pharmacotherapy with Lupron for children with Autism. The drug, which decreases secretion of gonadotropins, is legitimately used in treating prostate or breast cancer, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, or precocious puberty.
Link to “‘Miracle drug’ called junk science: Powerful castration drug pushed for autistic children, but medical experts denounce unproven claims.” Also, see a companion piece entitled “Autism doctor: Troubling record trails doctor treating autism,” in which Patricia Callahan and Ms. Tsouderos provide a detailed report of the history of one of the physcians in the Chicago area, Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, who has been prescribing Lupron for children with Autism.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Council for Children with Behavior Disorders (CCBD), an international group concerned about children and youths with EBD, published statements about the use of seclusion and restraint with students. Although the documents appear to be in preliminary form, they began circulating on the Internet today, so I’m posting copies of the PDFs here. Watch for an update of them.
- CCBD’s Position Summary on Physical Restraint & Seclusion Procedures in School Settings
- CCBD’S Position Summary on the Use of Physical Restraint Procedures in School Settings
- CCBD’S Position Summary on the The Use of Seclusion in School Settings
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