Nebraska lacking in mental health resources

The most vital of mental health services are often unavailable or under-funded for the individuals that need them the most, health officials say.

10 to 20 percent of Nebraska's populace suffers from some kind of mental illness, and the state lacks the resources to comprehensively address and treat them. Reform is slow in coming and funding is even slower.

In 2003, Nebraska lawmakers passed LB1083 in a move to transform regional centers to more community-based centers. Three years later, Nebraska received a nearly failing grade from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, an organization for individuals with mental illnesses and their families.

"One of the big problems was the lack of community-based services where people can get services right in their own area," said Jonah Deppe, the executive director for NAMI Nebraska.



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Spirituality of the individual and ways to work with it

Spirituality is not dependent on what one's outlook on God or higher consciousness is. Everyone and every organization has a spiritual component. It could be God, working with a sustainable environment, the pursuit of knowledge, or the law and the profits.

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Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making

This seminar is designed for supervisors, managers and executives who are required to handle various issues and challenges. This course is also recommended for professionals who desire to enhance their critical thinking, problem solving and decision making for better workplace performance. This seminar aims to enable participants to achieve the following objectives: - Provide tools and techniques to enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills. - Learn how to find out what you don't know and solve the real problem. - Build a workplace culture that promotes creative problem solving. - Become familiar with different styles of thinking and identify your personal preferences. - Develop critical thinking for improved leadership. .


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In print

Dreams and psychotic ruminations have certain strange features in common, and psychiatrists have now measured the degree of similarity.

Both dreams and waking psychotic moments share cognitive bizarreness — a well-defined term in psychology. It consists of impossible plots, characters and actions: flying over Elvis' first concert or conversing with Fido the dog. It also includes discontinuity or uncertainty in time and place: stepping outside your house, which is really your aunt's house, and onto Mars, the day before.

“We are not talking about hallucinations," says Silvio Scarone of the University of Milan in Italy, “but rather the organization of thinking." When awake, normal people don't have bizarre fantasies, he says. But when asleep, their dreams are as bizarre as a schizophrenia patient's waking fantasies.


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Katrina victims cool to mental-health help

NEW ORLEANS, April 30 (UPI) -- Mental health advocates are urging a new push to provide psychiatric help for Louisiana residents still suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

A survey released Tuesday found that two-thirds of the residents surveyed in coastal Louisiana could not identify any of the resources available to Katrina survivors plagued with mental health issues.

"I don't think we're doing as good a job as we can at meeting communities where they are," said women's health advocate Ghairunisa Galeta.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune said professionals meeting in the Crescent City Tuesday noted that mental healthcare still has a stigma in the region; however it was proposed that teaming up with faith-based groups and other trusted organizations might be effective.


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Granting wishes a top priority for Make-a-Wish

The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Wyoming would like to express its gratitude to Midas of Cheyenne and Cool Customs of Torrington for their participation in helping grant the wish of Wyoming wish child, Travis, from Torrington, whose wish was a �Car Makeover.� The time and effort to �transform� Travis�s car was overwhelming, and we cannot thank them enough.

Travis, who has been diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition, when asked by Make-A-Wish what he wanted more than anything, chose having his car �made over� with a new stereo, wheels, tires and new paint job! He was thrilled beyond belief and couldn�t wait to drive his �new� car! �

At the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Wyoming, our first priority has been and always will be the special children whose wishes we work hard to grant.


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From inspiration to repudiation

In his achingly slow steps toward repudiating the repugnant words of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama has run the risk of serious political damage by leaving vague what it was that attracted him to this outspoken critic of American society.

In the rational part of Wright's appearance Monday at the National Press Club, before he got to the self-justification and the denunciations of our government and the nation's values, he offered some clues to that question. They came in the form of his succinct interpretation of the historic goals of the black church.

They can be boiled down, he said, to three words: liberation, transformation and reconciliation.

To Wright, liberation means more than opposing all forms of oppression. It also encompasses freeing oneself from any feelings of inferiority or superiority and recognizing that "being different does not mean one is deficient."

Transformation, in his terms, is all-encompassing: "Changed lives, changed minds, changed laws, changed social orders and changed hearts in a changed world."

Reconciliation, he concluded, "means we embrace our individual rich histories, all of them.


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