Idiots and the Insane

Good news on the civil rights front: It looks like New Jersey may finally remove the terms "idiots" and "insane" from its Constitution. The AP reports:

A resolution introduced Monday by Senate President Richard J. Codey would remove the archaic language, inserted in 1844, by proposing a constitutional amendment. The measure would have to be approved by both houses of the Legislature and by voters in November... [The state constitution] states, "No idiot or insane person shall enjoy the right of suffrage."

Kudos to State Senator Codey for backing this important measure! Six other states have similar provisions that disenfranchise folks, and it's high time that these states jumped into the 21st century (Hell, I'd settle for the the 20th century) and started getting rid of such antiquated, disempowering, meaningless... and, frankly, discriminatory items in the constitutions, regulations and laws that govern voting.

This simple truth is this: If you can't -- or don't -- vote, you're not likely to bend many ears in Washington, DC, at the State House or City Hall. And without that influence, it's easy to keep mental health issues (and the folks affected by them) on the margins.

So I guess what I'm saying is this: It's about time.

Garden State

I just recently watched the movie Garden State again. I loved it when I first saw it, although the whole piece of it where his psychiatrist dad has him on pills that he doesn't need sort of bugged me, because I felt like it promoted in a very hip way that psychiatry is nonsense and what people need is simply natalie portman's love and strange adventures with their friends. I guess that's just what that character needed, but still, there was an air of triumph over psychiatry that made me a little weasy as someone who relies on lithium and therapy. I do wonder, what will we say in fifty about our era of psychiatric solutions to mental illness? Will we say that big pharma began a powerful path to treating mental illness or will we say they went horribly off course? Or both maybe...Will Garden State seem prophetic about our generation of people struggling with mental health, or naive?

Mental Health Parity at Last?

It's such a basic question of fairness -- the ability of insurers to offer different levels of coverage of mental health services than they do for physical health services (never mind how closely related the two are). Well, it looks like this question may finally be resolved this Congress. As they say, though, the devil is in the details. It will be interesting to see just how far the business community is willing to go to help address unmet needs that are costing the U.S. economy billions each year.