A number of published studies have found that using marijuana (and other psychoactive substances) is associated with an earlier onset of psychotic illness (notice I said “is associated with” rather than “causes”). National mental health surveys have repeatedly found more substance use, especially cannabis use, among people with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. A [...]
This month we also distributed to stakeholders (and posted on our website) a new resource called “An Introduction to Arizona’s Public Behavioral Health System.” It's a high-level summary for people who wish to better understand who we are and what we do. The short document covers the service delivery structure and the continuum of care available, [...]
Our primary care and behavioral health folks put together a fabulous forum called the Arizona Integrated Models of Care in Behavioral Health and Primary Care Forum. Our team joined with the Milbank Memorial Fund to sponsor a forum on January 25 and 26 in Chandler, AZ, for policy makers in both the mental health and [...]
One of our primary objectives over the last couple of years in behavioral health has been to shift the focus of our performance measures away from process and procedures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we don’t want to measure our success on whether someone’s paperwork is right, but on whether the services we provide [...]
For the past 18 months our tobacco cessation and behavioral health teams have been working together in a way that is positioning Arizona as a national leader in closing the gap in life expectancy for people with a mental illness! Consider these startling facts which confront Arizonans with a mental illness: Life expectancy is 30 [...]
The Arizona Department of Health Services is partnering with the Arizona Department of Education to help schools make health a priority. Arizona has the 15th highest childhood obesity rate in the nation. By creating healthier places to learn, schools are part of the solution to the childhood obesity epidemic. One of the most effective ways [...]
Three cheers for our interdisciplinary team that’s been working hard on the latest round of Administrative Code to implement the new medical marijuana law that will take effect April 14. We changed lots of provisions since the latest draft that we released on January 31. Here are just a few highlights: The new draft rules [...]
You know how when California passes a new car emission standard or something all the manufacturers comply with all of their fleet even though they don’t sell them all in CA? That’s because the car makers can’t afford to miss out on the California market. Well, Walmart is kinda like that when it comes to [...]
Our Behavioral Health team polished off this year’s 2010 Annual Substance Abuse Report to the Legislature and Governor on December 30, 2010. A few highlights include: We began statewide implementation of the American Society of Addiction Medicine Placement Patient Criteria. Once fully adopted, this process will be the uniform criteria for assessing a client’s addiction [...]
Twenty-two employees from ADHS and members of their families teamed up last week and joined the national effort to rid the nation and our state of homelessness. The beginning step is to produce clear evidence of the need by providing the government of (as closely as we can) the actual number of people who are [...]
