Podcast #69 : Partnering WITH Patients

Here are the topics we discuss on this fine evening at Roy's house:

• What does "Shrink Rap" mean (reader request)?

• Roy talks about an "amazing" conference he went to called Partnership with Patients.  This conference was started by Regina Holliday, patient-advocate-extraordinaire. Here are some links for things that caught his attention:
• HealthCamp: http://HealthCa.mp/kansascity
• http://partnershipwithpatients.com/
• Donate to Patient Pod at Medstartr at http://bit.ly/patientpod where Pat Mastors is trying to raise $4200 by Oct Nov 20 (oops, we missed that deadline) (the date was extended... please help fund the project. ~Roy).

•  Clink talks about a Massachusetts legal case regarding gender reassignment of prisoners

• And finally, we talk about a reader's question about how and why patients test their therapists/healthys.

      

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Is it Different for Guys?

Men are less likely to get treatment for psychiatric disorders, more than half of those who seek help are women.
Men are less likely to attempt suicide. 
But men have three times the number of completed suicides than women: they choose more lethal methods.


Are men different?  


Here's the beginning of the Mission Statement from a site called Mantherapy.org:


Working aged men (25-54 years old) account for the largest number of suicide deaths in Colorado. These men are also the least likely to receive any kind of support. They don’t talk about it with their friends. They don’t share with their family. And they sure as heck don’t seek professional treatment. They are the victims of problematic thinking that says mental health disorders are unmanly signs of weakness. And I, Dr. Rich Mahogany, am dedicated to changing that.

Part of a multi-agency effort, including the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention, Carson J Spencer Foundation and Cactus, Man Therapy™ is giving men a resource they desperately need. A resource to help them with any problem that life sends their way, something to set them straight on the realities of suicide and mental health, and in the end, a tool to help put a stop to the suicide deaths of so many of our men.


So went to ManTherapy and listened to Dr. Rich Mahogany (I think he's an actor, the site says he's not a real therapist), I surfed around his office where there's  a dead creature with antlers on the wall, seating that's from a baseball stadium, and I took part of his symptom checklist test (it's not the M3).


The site feels like a parody of all things masculine.  I'm not a man -- so I'm not sure how to call this -- but I think if I were a distressed man, this wouldn't make me feel more comfortable getting help.  It's not that listing resources might not be useful, but I just wasn't sure.  If you feel like checking it out, surf over to Mantherapy and tell me what you think. 

Crossing Over: Treatment Rights of Transgendered Prisoners

Over on Clinical Psychiatry News I've put up a column on the evolving treatment rights for prisoners with gender identity disorder.

In the CPN post I cover about thirty years worth of changes in prison policies and standards, up to where we are today: individual inmates suing prisons to provide sex reassignment surgery. So far no inmate has ever been given surgery, but at this point it's just a matter of time.

I think the topic is interesting in part because it traces out how correctional standards of care develop: first the courts decide if a condition "counts" as a serious medical or mental health disorder that mandates treatment, then over time an accumulation of individual cases carve out the boundaries and limitations of that care.

So why aren't doctors the people deciding this instead of judges?

Well, they are to an extent. The institutional clinician assesses the condition and makes a determination of treatment needs. Outside clinicians acting as court consultants or correctional experts offer opinions about what the standard of care should be, and professional organizations also weigh in. Courts take in all of this information, weigh it against the interests of the facility, and issues an opinion about whether or not there is a constitutional right to treatment.

This is the same process that took place in the 90's when protease inhibitors were invented to treat HIV. Correctional facilities initially balked at giving the meds because of the cost, but now this is standard and accepted.

Feel free to post questions or comments in either place (CPN or Shrink Rap).

This Week In The News

There are a lot of stories in the news lately that have a forensic connection: the disgruntled noncustodial father who blew up his house (and kids), Madonna's stalker who eloped from a psychiatric hospital, a recent legal decision out of Georgia about assisted suicide, and an inmate with gender identity disorder who may be the first to get a state-sponsored sex change operation.


Where to begin, where to begin?


The Georgia decision has personal relevance since it means one of our retired local doctors won't face murder charges for offering advice and encouragement from a distance to someone who died of suicide there. The Georgia Supreme Court decided that the law banning suicide in that state was unconstitutional since it barred mere conversation about the issue separate from any act of aiding a suicide. As such, it was an unlawful infringement on free speech. It's hard to believe that it's been five years already since the first time I've blogged about this topic and fifteen years since the US Supreme Court said it was OK to ban it. Over half the country has laws against it now, but I don't know how many, if any, could be at risk because of the issue with the Georgia statute.


The story about the inmate with gender identity disorder (found thanks to my friend Lorry Schoenly's twitter feed---thanks Lorry! please follow her) also interests me because it's an emerging issue in the treatment rights of prisoners. Specifically, prisoners with gender identity disorder. We've talked about gender identity disorder before on podcasts number 20 and 21 (which included an interview with Dr. Chris Kraft about evaluation and treatment), respectively. I blogged about the history of right to treatment for prisoners here, but there's been one significant change since that 2006 blog post: courts have decided that gender identity disorder does constitute a serious mental disorder which requires treatment. What the courts are arguing about now is whether that right to treatment includes sex change operations. The state of Wisconsin passed a law to ban use of health care funds for this, but that law was overturned as unconstitutional. Prisons are required to continue hormone therapy if it was being prescribed prior to incarceration, though.


Separate from the issue of treatment, GID prisoners don't have a right to dress in opposite sex clothing or to have access to makeup. They don't have a right to be housed in a facility consistent with their gender identity. (Female prisoners sued, and won, cases alleging invasion of privacy when male-to-female GID inmates were housed in a female correctional facility.)


So that's where we are on the GID inmate front. Regarding the Madonna stalker, well, I have some personal experiences with psychotic stalkers but since I don't blog about specific patients that story will go untold.


That leaves the child murder story. Ugh. No thanks. I've seen these cases, they're awful, I'd rather not dwell on them. I'm taking a personal pass.