We've Moved

The Seven Counties Services Blog has found a new home on the Seven Counties Services webpage. We're now hosting the blog ourselves.

Please visit us and sign up for our RSS feed at http://www.sevencounties.org/.

Needed: A New Stigma Battle Plan

Who knew? Seems people in general don't buy the "disease like any other disease" argument used prominently by health care providers and advocates to reduce the stigma of mental illness. That's the conclusion of study results released by Indiana University and Columbia University in mid-September and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The researcher found that "prejudice and discrimination in the U.S. aren't moving...In fact, in some cases, it may be increasing..."

Stigma is a big problem. It produces discrimination. It negatively impacts quality of life. And most of all, it perpetuates the devaluation of persons afflicted by the illnesses and the services they need. This, in turn, pushes mental health services further to the edge of the plate of public support and funding.

The study suggests that stigma reduction efforts would do better to focus on the person rather than the disease - emphasizing the abilities and competencies of people with mental illness. The authors also suggest that the hymns need to move well beyond the choir.

If you think about it, isn't that the model of cancer fighting advocates? They focus on the victory, the recovery, the triumph - not on the disease.

These findings give us all a challenge - to re-think our thoughts, re-think our expressions and re-focus our attention where they always should have been - on the people, not the disease.

Shades of the Cleaver Family

TV family shows of the 50s, 60s and even the 70s regularly featured scenes around the family dinner table. Remarkably, the entire family was normally present! Try finding that on a family TV show today. OK, maybe the Thanksgiving or Christmas episodes, at best. It's a struggle for families to come together on a regular basis for a shared meal. But it's a struggle that well worth winning.

A study performed by Columbia University revealed that children who eat dinner with their families each night at least 3 times a week are less likely to use drugs, smoke or drink.

What a great prevention measure - dinner with the family!

Monday, September 27th is Family Day - a day to bring your family together for dinner. It's a great day to start a very worthwhile and healthy family tradition.

New National Drug Use Stats Don't Look Healthy

From today's press release by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration:

The use of illicit drugs among Americans increased between 2008 and 2009 according to a national survey conducted by SAMHSA. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) shows that the overall rate of current illicit drug use in the United States rose from 8.0 percent of the population age 12 and older in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009. This rise in overall drug use was driven in large part by increases in marijuana use.

The annual NSDUH survey, released by SAMHSA at the kickoff of the 21st annual National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, also shows that the nonmedical use of prescription drugs rose from 2.5 percent of the population in 2008 to 2.8 percent in 2009. Additionally, the estimated number of past-month Ecstasy users rose from 555,000 in 2008 to 760,000 in 2009, and the number of methamphetamine users rose from 314,000 to 502,000 during that period.
"These results are a wake up call to the Nation," said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde, J.D. "Our strategies of the past appear to have stalled out with 'Generation Next.' Parents and caregivers, teachers, coaches, faith and community leaders, must find credible new ways to communicate with our youth about the dangers of substance abuse."

"Today's findings are disappointing, but not surprising, because eroding attitudes and perceptions of harm about drug use over the past 2 years have served as warning signs for exactly what we see today," said Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske. "

Blah Blah Health Care Reform Blah Blah

By Dean L. Johnson, Vice President

Community Relations

Seems to me there's plenty of nonsense reporting and self-interested revelations surrounding the health insurance reform act passed earlier this year. If the mass media is your only source of information about what the act does and how it might affect you, your family, your business or your employer, then you've been shortchanged. 2 column articles and 30 second sound bites can't do it justice. Mostly, they do an injustice. Your most likely to find out somebody's beef with the bill. You're leastly likely to find out how it will affect you.

There is another way. An industry selling manuals, articles and slideshows centered on "what's in the bill" instantly materialized and continues to grow. I've had no less than four documents explaining the reform package in my briefcase at any one time for the past two months. I've read health insurance reform papers on planes, on trains, on buses and in automobiles.Most of them are large. Many of them are barely comprehensible. Nearly all are focused on how the bill affects a particular segment of the health care industry.

There's not a lot out there that delivers comprehensive, easy to understand and unbiased information to Joe and Jane Public, who need to understand what this bill does for and to them.

Fortunately, in Kentucky, we have a resource that fits the need. It's a ten page, easy-to-follow piece created by a coalition of organizations called Kentucky Voices for Health. It's simply titled: "The New Health Reform Law: What it Means to Kentuckians." Want to know if you'll be eligible for a subsidy to pay your insurance? It's in there. Wondering if your employer will have to provide you with insurance coverage? It's in there. Looking for small business assistance? It's in there. Worried about how the law affects Medicare recipients? The answers are in there.

Want to know how you can get one? It's in here: http://www.kyvoicesforhealth.com/.

Happy Birthday, Seven Counties!

Seven Counties Services celebrated its 32nd birthday on August 1…but celebrate may be the wrong word. In fact, I didn’t hear any of my colleagues mention it, even once! In years past, Seven Counties’ birthday was a big deal to many of us…it meant another year of growth, another year in the business and health communities, another year of providing community residents with high quality behavioral health, developmental and intellectual, and substance abuse services.

There’s nothing different about this year; Seven Counties is still providing services – now to more than 32,000 people every year. The organization is solid financially, has good name-recognition in the community and a national reputation for excellence, innovation and quality. It’s a great place to work, and staff (according to a recently completed independently-conducted staff survey) feel personally satisfied about the work they do in helping Seven Counties achieve its mission.

Our President/Chief Executive Office Dr. Howard Bracco was recently named the recipient of the Center for Non-Profit Excellence’s Lifetime Achievement Award, marking his 32 years of serving this community through his leadership of Seven Counties. Last year, our Vice President of Finance and Administration, Vicki Knable, was named the Business First Non-Profit CFO of the Year. Seven Counties routinely tops the Business First’s list of top non-profit organizations in the region. A number of our programs have won recognitions recently for quality and excellence. While Seven Counties will certainly continue to seek excellence in all areas of operations and staffing, I’d say we’ve done pretty well thus far.

So, with all these successes, why didn’t we celebrate our birthday this year? Perhaps, like a lot of people, it gets to the point where the actual number doesn’t seem important – it’s the quality that matters. Perhaps staff no longer feel we must prove ourselves within the community. Again, we don’t want to rest on our laurels – far from it; we want to keep pushing the envelope to identify better ways of helping people achieve recovery, but perhaps we don’t feel that we have quite as much to prove, considering our great track record for…uhmm… 32 years.

So, just in case you missed it (and I believe nearly everyone did), Happy Birthday, Seven Counties.

A Vacation Full of Brain Food

By Dean Johnson, VP Community Relations

I took a vacation last week - sort of. Technically, it was five days of vacation. In reality, it was five days of very hard labor.

I spent a week in Vermont on a "Volunteer Vacation" helping to build the Cross-Vermont Trail, a four-season, multi-use trail that will eventually run from one side of the state to the other.

Trail building in southeast Vermont involves three basic activities - digging ditches, moving boulders and crushing granite. Since I was working with an organization dedicated to low-impact trail building techniques, that meant doing all three with hand tools - shovels, rock bars (picture a six foot crowbar on steroids), picks and sledge hammers. No machines - just human bodies at work.

I got more exercise in the course of two hours than I normally get in two days - and I exercise regularly. By the end of the week, I was about as "bone weary" as I can ever remember being.

But I was also happy. I felt very accomplished. I felt satisfied. And I felt like I had done something worthwhile for a bunch of folks I'll never meet. My mind and mood seemed to be at their zenith, while my body was in the depths of despair.

Maybe I did more than I should have, but all that exercise had a positive effect on my brain. Not a big surprise. Years ago, Duke University researchers discovered that exercise has antidepressant properties. Others revealed the benefit of exercise to brain functioning and its ability to ward off dimentia. Theories on the science behind these effects vary, but the conclusion is undeniable.

Exercise is brain food. In Vermont, it's nearly as good as the seafood.