According to the Washington Post, Virginia is holding several public hearings on the proposed state plan to revise special education rules, including one at 6:30 p.m. next Thursday at Freedom High School in Loudoun County, and at 6:30 p.m. June 2 at Oakton High School in Fairfax County.
The Washington Post reports:
But other proposals are also drawing close scrutiny. One would reduce the number of regular progress reports families receive on a student’s “individualized education plan,” or IEP, a roadmap of objectives and goals. Another would allow school systems to refuse a parent’s request for more than one IEP meeting a year with school officials, and a third would expand the criteria used to define student disabilities. Parents say the latter measure could make it harder for children to qualify for special services.
…Parents also worry about new state criteria for disabilities, Brown-Kaplan said. She said some children could be disqualified from help they need, citing students with Asperger’s Syndrome as an example. “These kids are often bright and are able to function in general education classrooms,” Brown-Kaplan said. “But the school could say, ‘He doesn’t fit the [disability] category and doesn’t get any services.’ ”
According to the Seattle Times, Samson Berhe, “the man who fatally shot Newport High School tennis coach Mike Robb in 2005 was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity Monday and sent to a mental hospital indefinitely.”
Defense and prosecuting attorneys agreed to avoid a trial after three mental-health evaluators determined Berhe was insane when he shot Robb, said King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mary Barbosa. Berhe had been found competent to stand trial in December.
The acquittal means prosecutors cannot refile charges against Berhe even if he is released from Western State Hospital one day.
Robb’s family seems angry and of the belief that this is insufficient punishment for Berge. Perhaps they don’t understand that unless Berhe can somehow prove that he is no longer a danger, this amounts to a life sentence without hope of parole.
NAMI is sponsoring a course aimed at educating legal professionals on mental illness from the families’ perspective in Ventura, CA. The class begins this Friday.
According to the Ventura County Star:
The cost is $50 for private attorneys. Scholarships are available for county employees and those for whom the fee would be a hardship.
Organizers plan to offer the eight-hour course on successive Friday afternoons in May and June at the Ventura College of Law, 4475 Market St., Ventura.
The first session is from 1 to 5 p.m. Friday and May 16. The class will be repeated from 1 to 5 p.m. June 20 and 27.
Registration is required. To register or obtain more information, call 641-2426 or e-mail namiventura@gmail.com.
According to Israel News, the Veterans Health Administration recently admitted that that the suicide rate among veterans is 18 per day.
Not surprising, given the study released by the RAND Corporation last week stating that about 300,000 U.S. troops sent to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from major depression or PTSD, and 320,000 received traumatic brain injuries.
Two veterans’ advocacy groups, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, brought class-action lawsuit last year alleging that a systematic breakdown at the VA has led to an epidemic of suicides, where the VA claims that veterans are not entitled to mental health care to handle what seems to be a PTSD epidemic. The plaintiffs are now seeking a preliminary injunction to force the VA to immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk of suicide.
You really should read the full article from Israel News; it offers a good overview of a case well worth watching.
Wrightslaw has announced a Call to Action asking you to step up to the plate on Tuesday, May 6 by calling your Congressional Representatives (202-224-3121) and asking that they co-sponsor H.R. 4188, the IDEA Fairness Restoration Act (H.R. 4188).
The IDEA Fairness Restoration Act will override the Supreme Court’s decision in Arlington Central School District v. Murphy (2006) and allow parents who prevail to be reimbursed for their expert witness fees. That’s the point, really - if parents can’t afford to pay expert witnesses, how are they supposed to gather the evidence needed to get their children the treatment they need?
Check out the full text of Wrightslaw’s Call to Action for more details.
Via the U.S. Department of Defense
The Defense Department will change a question on its long-standing security clearance form referencing an applicant’s mental health history because officials believe it is needlessly preventing some people from seeking counseling.
The Standard Form 86, Questionnaire for National Security Positions, asks the applicant to acknowledge mental health care in the past seven years. It does not ask for treatment details if the care involved only marital, family, or grief counseling, not related to violence by the applicant, unless the treatment was court-ordered.
Officials said surveys have shown that troops feel if they answer “yes” to the question, they could jeopardize their security clearances, required for many occupations in the military.
As of April 18, applicants no longer have to acknowledge care under the same conditions, nor if the care was related to service in a military combat zone. The revised wording has been distributed to the services and will be attached to the cover of the questionnaire. The revised question will not show up printed on the forms until the department depletes its pre-printed stock later this year, officials said.
DoD security officials said no one has been denied a security clearance based solely on the fact they received mental health counseling, but the perception that receiving care would jeopardize a security clearance, combined with the stigma of having to acknowledge the care on the form, may have been preventing some from receiving needed care…
Read the full article for more info.
Via Hodgson Russ, The SED recently informed school districts in New York that they are not authorized to provide special education services to homeschooled students. However, school districts still have some obligations to homeschooled students with disabilities:
In accordance with its child find obligations, the Committee on Special Education (CSE) still must locate and evaluate—if a parent or guardian consents to such an evaluation—all homeschooled students with disabilities. The CSE must then develop an appropriate Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for those students, which shall be offered if any such student is enrolled in public school. Consistent with this new rule, school districts should arrange for the CSE to reconvene to determine if any amendments should be made to the IEPs of all homeschooled students with disabilities.
Since the school district is no longer responsible for the provision of special education services to homeschooled students, SED has advised that parents of homeschooled students should be notified of their need to review and revise, as deemed necessary, their child’s IHIP to appropriately address any special education needs. The amended must then be reviewed and approved by the school district superintendent.
The Moscow Times reports that opposition activist Roman Nikolaichik has been confined in a mental ward in Russia:
Nikolaichik’s detention echoes similar cases over the past year that human rights organizations have criticized as a step toward Soviet-era repression tactics. In December, human rights groups said Andrei Novikov, a reporter for a news service connected to the Chechen separatist government, had been released after nine months in a psychiatric hospital. Last summer, Larisa Arap, an Other Russia activist and journalist, spent six weeks in a psychiatric clinic.
Which law enforcement agency questioned Nikolaichik and sent him to the hospital was unclear Monday.
Novikov and Svetovidov said Tver region prosecutors tried to charge Nikolaichik with attempted murder while questioning him on Monday. Svetovidov, citing Nikolaichik’s relatives, said that after questioning, a doctor declared the activist mentally unstable and ordered him to undergo treatment.
Note: This is old news, but my blogging software has been broken for a while now. I am posting it late to test the upgraded software.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
New York Legal Update reports that Governor Spitzer has signed Bill No. S06422 (full text available here), explaining in part:
Those inmates with serious mental illness who are not removed from segregated confinement will be offered a heightened level of care, including additional out-of-cell treatment and programming. Mental health clinicians will also conduct periodic mental health assessments of all inmates who remain in segregated confinement.
You can read my earlier coverage of this bill here.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
In further response to the Virginia Tech shootings. the state of Virginia is moving towards lowering the standards for involuntary civil commitment.
According to the Washington Post:
Under state law, people can be committed against their will only if they pose an “imminent danger to self or others.” The law does not define “imminent danger,” and the standard is applied differently by magistrates and special justices from county to county.
The proposal approved by lawmakers on the Courts of Justice Committee would allow a magistrate or special justice to commit someone to treatment if there is “a substantial likelihood” that the person would cause “serious physical harm to himself or herself” in the near future or could “suffer serious harm due to substantial deterioration.”
Alison Hymes over at Charlottesville Prejudice Watch mentioned that the social workers organization in Virginia supports Senate Bill 177, “an expanded program of outpatient commitment with loosened standards for who may be forced to participate in outpatient treatment by the state.”
She calls for social workers and psychiatrists to recognize that forced treatment doesn’t work, and to speak out for your patients by telling the State what you think, as a professional in the field. I’d like to pass that plea along.
The shootings were a tragedy, and if this is what comes of them, the tragedy will only be compounded.
