From my files Friday:  School is out for the summer but here’s a test to check your mental health knowledge. I first published this in December 2010. Enjoy!

Eleven Questions about Mental Health  

           Question one:  A recent president — not President Obama — appointed a commission to study mental illness. Critics immediately attacked that commission and recruited a celebrity to blast it. What president appointed The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health: Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America and who was the celebrity who criticized it?

1. President George H.W. Bush and Tom Cruise
2. President Bill Clinton and John Travolta
3. President George W. Bush and Patch Adams
4. President George W. Bush and Britney Spears

Question two: What is the “largest, public mental health facility” in the United States? Click to continue…

I wish the author of this recent email that I received could have spoken at the White House summit held a few weeks ago or be heard by Rep. Tim Murphy’s House subcommittee investigating our mental health care system. Sadly, I get a lot of emails like this from dedicating and caring workers who simply get burned out.

Hi Mr. Earley.

I’m a family therapist in [deleted for privacy] having recently graduated from [a prestigious school]  I interned at a federal correction facility in its mental health unit and I currently work in a psychiatric residential treatment facility for children ages 6-12 who’ve been through complex trauma.

I’m beyond disgusted with our system.

I’ll be honest — the mental health treatment was better in the federal prison where I have worked than what I’ve witnessed in our community mental health system.

Click to continue…

                 SAMHSA Director Pamela Hyde now will have the GAO Investigating her agency.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), who is both a psychologist  and member of Congress, is keeping his promise to continue shining a much needed spotlight on our nation’s problem-plagued mental health care system.  Late last week, Rep.  Diana DeGette (D-Co.),  joined him in asking the General Accountability Office to investigate how the U.S.  government delivers mental health services to the public and whether the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is doing a responsible job in allocating the $3.6 billion each year that it spends.

Reps. Murphy and DeGette deserve big KUDOS for continuing to make mental health reform a priority — especially since their counterparts in the Senate and other members of the House appear to have put mental health on a back burner while they chase after more recent scandals (IRS and privacy concerns) that are more likely to get them on the national news.

Have they forgotten Sandy Hook and all of the promises that were made about improving our  mental health system?

Rep. Murphy chairs the Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee and Rep. DeGette is its ranking Democrat member. Under their bipartisan leadership, the subcommittee already has held a public forum and two hearings about mental health care — all prompted by the Newtown shootings.  The same question was asked at each hearing. Is the federal government meeting the needs of the sickest of the sick?

The answer has been and continues to be an loud NO.

Click to continue…

Courtesy of Adrian Raine

Several years ago, I attended a lunch discussion with the Nobel Prize winner, Eric Kandel, where we had a lively discussion about whether someone could be born missing a part of their brain that tells them the difference between right and wrong. Dr. Kandel predicted the use of brain scans would become commonplace in courtrooms in the future. They would be used by defense attorneys to explain violence.

I don’t like to reprint articles here but this Op Ed piece in The Washington Post is well worth your time.

Can Brain Scans Explain Crime?

By Adrian Raine and Sally Satel, Published: June 7 in The Washington Post.

University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Adrian Raine, author of “The Anatomy of Violence,” believes that advances in brain imagery are helping to explain the biological roots of crime. American Enterprise Institute scholar and psychiatrist Sally Satel, co-author of “Brainwashed,” is wary of the seduction of brain scans. The Washington Post brought them together for a conversation about the promises and pitfalls of brain imagery. An abridged version of that conversation follows.

Click to continue…