forwarded from one of my colleagues

Action Alert, from David Byrom, Ph.D., President
The National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

Hello colleagues and friends,

Recently, I was asked to help present a workshop on suicide prevention among GLBT individuals, at the third in a series of five regional conferences on suicide prevention in the U.S. This particular conference covers Public Health Regions 9 and 10 (basically, the entire west coast). Following is a statement my co-presenters and I have prepared outlining recent chilling events surrounding our workshop. One interesting thing to note ­ the two previous conferences, one in New Orleans and the other in Denver, contained workshops very similar to ours and were not a problem. The difference? Both were held PRIOR to the last election.

We give permission to forward this to whoever you believe needs to read it:
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Statement of Concern and Protest

Government funders within the Bush Administration at SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) notified the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) that SAMHSA Administrator, Charles Curie, would not be allowed to attend a SPRC regional conference on suicide prevention if conference organizers went forward with a workshop title that included the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual", and "transgender". The conference is scheduled to take place in Portland, Oregon, February 28-March 2. The original title of the workshop was "Suicide Prevention Among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender Individuals."

On January 31, Lloyd Potter, SPRC Center Director, contacted workshop presenters Ron Bloodworth, Joyce Liljeholm and Reid Vanderburgh and requested that we come up with alternative wording for the workshop so that the words "gay","lesbian","bisexual", or "transgender" did not appear in the workshop title or descriptor.

We worked with SPRC to create alternative wording so that the workshop could continue to be offered but we expressed deep concern about government intrusion to remove any reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the workshop title and descriptor. After agreeing to the title "suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations", we were told that the new title would be acceptable to SAMHSA and that we could use the term "sexual orientation" in the workshop descriptor but that the term "gender identity" would "not fly with SAMHSA."

We are still planning to offer the workshop as originally planned even though the workshop title and descriptor had to be changed but we will not be quiet about the heavy handed efforts of SAMSHA to render gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender people invisible. The action of our government in this regard is the very reason a workshop on suicide prevention with gay,lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender individuals is needed. How ironic! The discriminatory and intimidating actions of SAMHSA and the Bush administration should not go unchallenged and should be of concern to all Americans.

Let them leave.

Some folks in Overton, Texas have created their very own little government, with currency, and want to secede.

Bye, y'all. You'll need passports to get back in.

Perspective. Or lack thereof.

The NYTimes.com posted an article this morning about sweeps-month TV lesbian kisses. One of the sidebar photo captions references the relationship of Willow and Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but Willow's kissage partner is the irritating Kennedy. The scene is not from the episode quoted ("The Body") but from a fluffy seventh season episode ("Storyteller"? I don't know.)

When I brought this up at home this morning, I got a surprising response. Now I want to take a poll.

1) Is this error crucial enough to call to the NYTimes' attention? You may include your support or disapproval of Kennedy's character in this answer.
2) What larger role does this error play in your opinion of the NYTimes? Bonus points if (like Elwood) you can include William Safire in your response.

Discuss!

State of the Pandemic: The Good, the Bad, and the Personal

Maybe it's just my line of work or something, but it seems that HIV/AIDS has been cropping up everywhere... in the news, that is. The NYTimes ran an encouraging article by Marc Santora entitled, "US Close to Eliminating AIDS in Infants, Officials Say". I quote freely, since it was published on 1/30 and already archived. If you'd like the entire article, let me know.

In 1990, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; now, that number has been reduced to a bit more than 200 a year, according to health officials. In New York City, the center of the epidemic, there were 321 newborns infected with H.I.V. in 1990, the year the virus peaked among newborns in the city. In 2003, five babies were born with the virus. Across the country, mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. has dropped so sharply that public health officials now talk about wiping it out.
...success in treating AIDS has raised the concern that the public may be growing complacent about AIDS prevention. A survey conducted by the city's health department in 2003 showed that 40 percent of people who had sex with multiple partners said they did not use condoms.
But as the struggle with pediatric AIDS shows, much can be accomplished when there are a clear focus and a concerted effort. Not only are children born with H.I.V. living longer, mothers now can take action to make sure they never pass on the virus, and there is anecdotal evidence that many now feel free to have more children.

The article is quick to point out that in the developing world the story is much different--more than two million people in sub-Saharan Africa died of AIDS last year alone. And it's not just abroad that people are getting left out. Yesterday's "Health and Science" segment of "All Things Considered" pointed out that black women are 23 times more likely than white women to be infected with HIV and five times more likely than Hispanic women. 53% of African Americans believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld. Distrust and suspicion of the medical community is widespread. So now that we've made AIDS easier to prevent and easier to treat, will we push further to eradicate the disease worldwide, or will we let it fester among underprivileged nations and communities?

However, epidemiology only gets one so far. One of my acquaintances on LiveJournal is a woman named Christina, who was infected with HIV by her mother in infancy. She is just a few years younger than I am, and hasn't yet developed AIDS. Reading about her life has changed the way I answer questions from my students in class: yes, it is possible for someone to live for 15 years or more with HIV. Yes, it is possible to be born with HIV and grow to adulthood. Change a few circumstances, however, and you get a much different outcome. Without the right drug regimens, a well-informed doctor, or the medical care and concern that one gets for being young, white, and pretty, the prognosis dramatically worsens. A distrustful patient who can't afford or can't withstand the medical rigamarole will certainly not fare so well. And when parents die before their kids reach adulthood, someone--extended family, school systems, foster care--has to pick up the slack, emotionally and financially. The medical breakthroughs of the last two decades are stunning but meaningless if we cannot back them up with a conviction to provide care to every patient in every nation, improving their quality of life as well as our mortality rates.

There is still much work to do.

sometimes i feel like...