Since 1990, pharmaceutical fentanyl (e.g., Duragesic transdermal patches) has been approved for patient use to relieve severe or chronic pain. Pharmaceutical fentanyl has also been misused and associated with fatal drug overdoses. In May 2006, in response to concern over reports of increased nonpharmaceutical fentanyl (NPF) related deaths, the CDC collaborated with medical examiners, law enforcement agencies, and public health departments in six state and local jurisdictions to establish an ad hoc surveillance system for NPF-related deaths. In each jurisdiction, reports from participating medical examiners were reviewed. James M. Topolski, PhD, of the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, with the St. Louis medical examiners, reported on NPF-related deaths that occurred during April 2005–May 2006 and on new NPF-related deaths as they were identified.

Read the JAMA article: 

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is awarding $66 million over the next five years for 15 cooperative agreements to provide communities expanded capacity to identify individuals with substance abuse problems and intervene appropriately. These cooperative agreement programs will implement Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral and Treatment (SBIRT) projects, which help health providers learn how to recognize patients at risk for problems related to substance abuse and, if so, how to provide timely and effective help. The announcement was made today by Tevi Troy, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, during a meeting convened by the White House.

The state of Missouri is expected to receive $2.3 million in the first year and $12.3 million over the next five years to enhance the SBIRT capacity of its statewide healthcare system. Over the next five years the program is projected to screen over 80,000 patients and provide expanded early intervention services to those in need of substance abuse treatment.

For more information: http://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/advisories/0809080442.aspx 

In 2006, homicide claimed the lives of 526 Kansans and Missourians. Tragedies all, and rightly the subject of community outrage, police investigations and news headlines. In the same year, suicide killed more than double that number: 1,175.

Surprised? Most are, say experts who argue that America's poor understanding of suicide reflects a continued stigma attached to mental health problems in general and suicide in particular.

Scott Perkins, project coordinator at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health, said many people would rather ignore the issue altogether. read more ...

Three of Missouri's alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs have been awarded the National Exemplary Award for Innovative Substance Abuse Prevention Programs, Practices and Policies! Those programs awarded were Partners in Prevention at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Promoting Responsibility through Education and Preparation (PREP) at Discovering Options in St. Louis, and How to Cope at the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Kansas City. Missouri's programs received the top three of six awards given across the United States. These 2008 Exemplary Award recipients will be recognized at the National Prevention Network's annual Research Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, this month.

Discovering Options, Inc. is a not-for-profit agency that provides substance abuse prevention programming for children and youth living in extremely impoverished areas of the City of St. Louis, Missouri. Through its Promoting Responsibility through Education and Preparation (PREP) elementary school program, Discovering Options offers after-school and mentoring services to African-American 4th and 5th grade children that provide a different and more healthy way of looking at the world.

Missouri Partners in Prevention is a statewide coalition of twelve public universities which serve over 130,000 Missouri college students through an innovative program based on building a collaborative and supportive approach to addressing college drinking by implementing best practices. The members of Partners in Prevention are dedicated to creating a positive, safe, and healthy campus learning environment by using a comprehensive approach to addressing college health behavior issues.

How to Cope offers education, support, awareness, and help to individuals who are affected by another person's abuse of alcohol or drugs. The goals of the program are to develop an awareness of alcoholism and drug addiction as a family disease and for families to regain balance in their lives. The participants are ultimately shown how to live a healthier and more self-empowered lifestyle.

Faculty and staff at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health (MIMH) were instrumental in developing the Exemplary Award applications to NASADAD for the How to Cope program in Kansas City and the Promoting Responsibility through Education and Preparation program (PREP) in St. Louis. Through contracts with the Missouri Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, MIMH is conducting evaluations of both of these prevention programs.

The 2008 Exemplary Awards, sponsored by SAMHSA/CSAP, highlight innovation and showcase evidence-based, state-of-the-art substance abuse prevention programs in the United States. As the field broadens and matures, proven prevention strategies and practices can be adapted and tailored to new populations or venues, address emerging problems and trends, and incorporate common sense evaluations. These awards serve to focus national attention on the field of substance abuse prevention.  

The Lionel Aldridge Award recognizes an individual consumer for courage, leadership, and service on behalf of all people with mental illness. As the 2008 recipient of this award, Dr. Jean Campbell, of the Missouri Institute for Mental Health, has been recognized for her service as an innovative thinker, speaker, consumer advocate, and mentor for more than 20 years. Her scholarship in all areas of consumer research, including data and quality improvement, will be the source of new ideas and will be cited for many years to come.

Her willingness to serve on a broad, national scale--evidenced by her service on the President's New Freedom Commission and, before that, as a consultant to the Surgeon General's 1999 report on mental health--has been balanced by the personal relationships she has established with individual consumers, her generosity as a mentor, and her creation of many opportunities to educate consumers through research. Her work has been important in its own time and will continue to be important for many years to come.