White Paper on Improving Outcomes

Faith Myers, Susan Musante, Peter Gøtzsche, David Healy, David Cohen, the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry and I have just published, a "White Paper" on improving psychiatric patient outcomes. While it was written for a specific situation in Alaska most of it is generally applicable and I like to think it is a powerful advocacy piece for non-coercive approaches, such as Peer Respites and Soteria Houses for people who are now sucked into psychiatry's maw. E-mail me if you would like the Microsoft Word version in order to adapt it for your specific advocacy purposes.

By way of background, last year, when the Alaska Legislature was considering bills to implement "Crisis Now" as part of a settlement over Alaska's illegal stashing of people waiting for court ordered psychiatric evaluations in emergency rooms and jails for an extended period of time, it also required the state to submit a report to the legislature in a year about certain aspects of Alaska's mental health system, including keeping track of patient injuies and the patient grievance process (Report). They did this because Faith had been lobbying for these for over ten years and legislators said there wasn't enough time to craft language for the bill to implement Crisis Now which they had to pass immediately. I suggested adding just three words, "improve patient outcomes," to the topics on which the Report was to make recommendations. In preparing the Report, the state has to receive input from various stakeholders, advocates and the public. The White Paper is direct input into the Report.

To me, the White Paper is an example of seizing an opportunity to advance the cause. For example, how could anyone object to the Report making recommendations on how to improve outcomes? I don't know to what extent the Report is going to honestly deal with the issues raised in the White Paper, but you can be sure it will be sent to all 60 members of the Alaska State Legislature. The approach taken in the White Paper is to lay out the whole picture regardless of how much of it is likely to be implemented, or even has any chance. I do think it is possible some of it might, including establishing one or more peer respites in Alaska and re-launching Soteria-Alaska. We will see.

As always, donations will be greatly appreciated to support the Summit's important work. To donate, click here and select Peer Respite/Soteria Summit in the "Preferred campaign or program you'd like your donation to support" dropdown menu.