Check these out...
Methamphetamine.org: new and integrated approach to dealing with methamphetamine from UCLA.
Prototypes.org: integrated approach to providing services to women
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Huntsman makes tackling meth epidemic a top priority
Deseret Morning News, Friday, December 15, 2006
By Dennis Romboy
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and his wife have made friends with the people in their neighborhood, including some hooked on methamphetamine.
A residential treatment center called House of Hope is a couple of doors down from the Governor's Mansion on South Temple. Their neighbors are moms who are trying to fight meth addiction, said Mike Mower, the governor's spokesman.
The Huntsmans visited women in the house and Mary Kaye Huntsman had them over for a tea party.
"The governor realizes the insidious nature of meth use and its disproportionate use among young women, often young mothers," Mower said.
To turn that tide, Huntsman's proposed state budget includes $5.1 million a year (half from Medicaid) to place 600 more women in treatment programs, giving priority to those involved with the Utah Division of Child and Family Services.
read the rest...
read the rest...
Women, Meth, and Children
by Terri Hurst, MSW
Women are often overlooked when it comes to treatment for meth use, especially women with children. Women usually enter treatment through the criminal justice system and by that time, CPS (Child Protective Services) has intervened.
Women who are not allowed access to their children while in treatment have a greater likelihood of relapse and are not as successful in completing treatment. It is also important for children to remain connected to their mother, unless severe abuse has taken place. Just because a mom uses meth, it does not make her a "bad" mother.
With the prevalence of ice in Hawaii, many women have lost their children due to harsh laws that are not focused on keeping families together. This goes against the Hawaiian principle of "ohana" or family and the importance of family within the Hawaiian culture. While ice use is inter-generational in the islands, it is even more important that children of meth users see that their parents can recover from drug use and that parents teach their children about ice so that they can stop the cycle of use. Women's Way, which is located on the island of Oahu, is a residential treatment program run by the Salvation Army - Family Treatment Services. Women's Way is the only subtance abuse treatment program on the islands that works with women and children. The program targets women who are pregnant and using or who have children between the ages of 0 - 3 years of age. For more information, call: (808) 732-2802 x 39
In Utah, where meth rates are also extremely high for both men and women, there are two programs that work specifically with women and children. The Volunteers of America, Center for Women and Children works with women who have children aged 10 years and younger. The Program Director stated that "meth is the number one problem we see." For more information call: (801) 261-9177
Also, Valley Mental Health offers the Cottonwood Family Treatment Center, which is a residential treatment program geared specifically for meth use among women with children. For more information call: (801) 263-7225
by Terri Hurst, MSW
Women are often overlooked when it comes to treatment for meth use, especially women with children. Women usually enter treatment through the criminal justice system and by that time, CPS (Child Protective Services) has intervened.
Women who are not allowed access to their children while in treatment have a greater likelihood of relapse and are not as successful in completing treatment. It is also important for children to remain connected to their mother, unless severe abuse has taken place. Just because a mom uses meth, it does not make her a "bad" mother.
With the prevalence of ice in Hawaii, many women have lost their children due to harsh laws that are not focused on keeping families together. This goes against the Hawaiian principle of "ohana" or family and the importance of family within the Hawaiian culture. While ice use is inter-generational in the islands, it is even more important that children of meth users see that their parents can recover from drug use and that parents teach their children about ice so that they can stop the cycle of use. Women's Way, which is located on the island of Oahu, is a residential treatment program run by the Salvation Army - Family Treatment Services. Women's Way is the only subtance abuse treatment program on the islands that works with women and children. The program targets women who are pregnant and using or who have children between the ages of 0 - 3 years of age. For more information, call: (808) 732-2802 x 39
In Utah, where meth rates are also extremely high for both men and women, there are two programs that work specifically with women and children. The Volunteers of America, Center for Women and Children works with women who have children aged 10 years and younger. The Program Director stated that "meth is the number one problem we see." For more information call: (801) 261-9177
Also, Valley Mental Health offers the Cottonwood Family Treatment Center, which is a residential treatment program geared specifically for meth use among women with children. For more information call: (801) 263-7225
Satan's son?
Montana Meth Project advertising does one thing well - it inspires creative writing.
Thanks to the aggressive, slick, and lurid advertising campaign mounted by the Montana Meth Project high school students are thoroughly versed in the purportedly inevitable consequences of meth use: a disgusting, rotting mouth; cheap sex in dirty bathrooms; scabs and oozing wounds; and crime.
Evidence of the campaign's success to scare kids straight was printed in the Billings Gazette in the form of a letter from "crystal" penned by a local high school student.
"I have very serious long-term affects. Signs that you have been hanging with me could be rotten teeth, nasty oozing scabs and a disgusting odor coming from your body. I can be injected through your mouth, nose or veins."
What appears to be a creative writing project probably in response to yet another "horrors of meth" news story is family values-inspired drug porn. Meth provides, like marijuna, heroin, and crack before it, the chance for Americans to indulge their need to be voyuers and peer into the world of the nasty "other." This time around, we feed our desires with scenes of sweet young kids being turned into thieves and whores by methamphetamine.
All of the kids featured in the Montana Meth Project video and print ads are actors. They get paid to portray drug users. The women who are all too often exposed on drug and law enforcement websites, however, are real. Their lives are summed up by mug shots, which are arrayed in chronological order typically progressing from a shot of a pretty blonde who becomes, over the course of ten years and ten busts, a haggy old crone with no teeth because she couldn't kick the habit.
In the act of laying out a woman's life in her mug shots and summing it all up to drug use is a convenient, and apparently legal, way of stripping drug users of their humanity and privacy. Like the portrayals of young users in the Montana Meth Project ads, they become part of a public peep show and the poster children of the drug warriors.
What the Montana Meth Project ads and the mug shots don't do is talk about the many reasons people turn to drugs, and they certainly don't address the realities of our world where the pressure to perform and produce and stay skinny and take care of the kids can be overwhelming.
A better use of our ad space and air time would be to engage young people in an honest conversation about turning complex problems, like methamphetamine use, into lurid stereotypes and why we find it so hard find the humanity in others.
Montana Meth Project advertising does one thing well - it inspires creative writing.
Thanks to the aggressive, slick, and lurid advertising campaign mounted by the Montana Meth Project high school students are thoroughly versed in the purportedly inevitable consequences of meth use: a disgusting, rotting mouth; cheap sex in dirty bathrooms; scabs and oozing wounds; and crime.
Evidence of the campaign's success to scare kids straight was printed in the Billings Gazette in the form of a letter from "crystal" penned by a local high school student.
"I have very serious long-term affects. Signs that you have been hanging with me could be rotten teeth, nasty oozing scabs and a disgusting odor coming from your body. I can be injected through your mouth, nose or veins."
What appears to be a creative writing project probably in response to yet another "horrors of meth" news story is family values-inspired drug porn. Meth provides, like marijuna, heroin, and crack before it, the chance for Americans to indulge their need to be voyuers and peer into the world of the nasty "other." This time around, we feed our desires with scenes of sweet young kids being turned into thieves and whores by methamphetamine.
All of the kids featured in the Montana Meth Project video and print ads are actors. They get paid to portray drug users. The women who are all too often exposed on drug and law enforcement websites, however, are real. Their lives are summed up by mug shots, which are arrayed in chronological order typically progressing from a shot of a pretty blonde who becomes, over the course of ten years and ten busts, a haggy old crone with no teeth because she couldn't kick the habit.
In the act of laying out a woman's life in her mug shots and summing it all up to drug use is a convenient, and apparently legal, way of stripping drug users of their humanity and privacy. Like the portrayals of young users in the Montana Meth Project ads, they become part of a public peep show and the poster children of the drug warriors.
What the Montana Meth Project ads and the mug shots don't do is talk about the many reasons people turn to drugs, and they certainly don't address the realities of our world where the pressure to perform and produce and stay skinny and take care of the kids can be overwhelming.
A better use of our ad space and air time would be to engage young people in an honest conversation about turning complex problems, like methamphetamine use, into lurid stereotypes and why we find it so hard find the humanity in others.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Treatment v. incarceration
by Wyndimarie Anderson
Harm Reduction Project
You hear this debate all the time. The truth is for some people it can feel like one and the same for many reason and the recent tragedy in Russia reminds me that we have to make sure our treatment centers do not become prison like (again)….
In Moscow this week, 46 women were killed in a fire in a drug treatment facility.
Apparently, the 44 patients and 2 staff were trapped between the fire and a locked gate which led to their deaths.
Locked gates in a drug treatment facility? From everything I have been able to read so far this was not a facility housing inmates from the criminal justice system. Why were there locked gates? And why didn’t the staff have the keys to open the gates?
Our work to educate people about the need for health care and drug treatment includes making sure that the programs and facilities offered are not substandard or just one step removed from jail. We don’t need steel bars to treat a drug addict. We need treatment. And we need access to that treatment.
(Yes, we need a lot more, but for the sake of this posting I’ll stay focused on that)
Here is a comment from the Russian Harm Reduction Network calling for an investigation into the fire: http://www.healthdev.org/viewmsg.aspx?msgid=9E66ED94-2DD4-4D97-AFFA-5CC7B380CA3F
The Russian Harm Reduction Network (RHRN) and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition / Region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ITCPru) express deep condolences to the families of people who died in the fire in the drug treatment hospital #17 in Moscow, as well as to those who were injured during the fire and to the hospital personnel.
On December 09, 2006 the Office of the Procecutor General of the Russian Federation announced initiation of criminal cases under two articles: malicious destruction of property and disregard of fire safety resulting in death. While we support the need for a just an unbiased investigation into this tragedy, our collective expertise as activists and professionals working in the areas of drugs and HIV/AIDS shows that the problem is as systemic as it is individual. RHRN and ITCPru assert that the cause of the tragedy is rooted in the inhumane and ineffective organisation of drug treatment in Russia, and is not merely due to the negligence of separate individuals.
"Conditions within drug treatment facilities in Russia remind more of prisons than hospitals," - says Vitaly Djuma, the Executive Director of the Russian Harm Reduction Network, which unites providers of harm reduction services to drug users from all over Russia.
"In the rest of the modern world this approach to treatment was banned decades ago. Cells, bars, insensitive personnel, indifference to the lives of their patients - all these add up to cause of the tragedy. The problem is not of a just one particular hospital, this is the problem of the whole system."
Specialists and activists agree that whatever the results of the investigation, we shouldn't blame selected individuals be them patients or personnel of the hospital. We especially denounce placing the blame on a woman in severe pain and suffering, for breaking the fire. The distribution of discriminative and speculative disinformation in press before the end of the investigation is yet one more part of the systemic problem that creates general public antipathy towards the victims.
"Blaming separate individuals means closing one's eyes on the fact that the whole system of drug treatment in Russia is absolutely ineffective, inhumane and discredited, - says Gregory Vergus of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, an association which unites HIV activists from around the world, including those from Newly Independent States and the Baltics.
"What is called 'narcological assistance' in this country in fact isn't assistance at all.
Join the Harm Reduction Project in signing this petition asking for a full investigation of what happened to the clinic in Russia. Treating addicts like throw aways or criminals cannot go unnoticed in any part of world… the deaths of these 44 women do matter.
by Wyndimarie Anderson
Harm Reduction Project
You hear this debate all the time. The truth is for some people it can feel like one and the same for many reason and the recent tragedy in Russia reminds me that we have to make sure our treatment centers do not become prison like (again)….
In Moscow this week, 46 women were killed in a fire in a drug treatment facility.
Apparently, the 44 patients and 2 staff were trapped between the fire and a locked gate which led to their deaths.
Locked gates in a drug treatment facility? From everything I have been able to read so far this was not a facility housing inmates from the criminal justice system. Why were there locked gates? And why didn’t the staff have the keys to open the gates?
Our work to educate people about the need for health care and drug treatment includes making sure that the programs and facilities offered are not substandard or just one step removed from jail. We don’t need steel bars to treat a drug addict. We need treatment. And we need access to that treatment.
(Yes, we need a lot more, but for the sake of this posting I’ll stay focused on that)
Here is a comment from the Russian Harm Reduction Network calling for an investigation into the fire: http://www.healthdev.org/viewmsg.aspx?msgid=9E66ED94-2DD4-4D97-AFFA-5CC7B380CA3F
The Russian Harm Reduction Network (RHRN) and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition / Region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ITCPru) express deep condolences to the families of people who died in the fire in the drug treatment hospital #17 in Moscow, as well as to those who were injured during the fire and to the hospital personnel.
On December 09, 2006 the Office of the Procecutor General of the Russian Federation announced initiation of criminal cases under two articles: malicious destruction of property and disregard of fire safety resulting in death. While we support the need for a just an unbiased investigation into this tragedy, our collective expertise as activists and professionals working in the areas of drugs and HIV/AIDS shows that the problem is as systemic as it is individual. RHRN and ITCPru assert that the cause of the tragedy is rooted in the inhumane and ineffective organisation of drug treatment in Russia, and is not merely due to the negligence of separate individuals.
"Conditions within drug treatment facilities in Russia remind more of prisons than hospitals," - says Vitaly Djuma, the Executive Director of the Russian Harm Reduction Network, which unites providers of harm reduction services to drug users from all over Russia.
"In the rest of the modern world this approach to treatment was banned decades ago. Cells, bars, insensitive personnel, indifference to the lives of their patients - all these add up to cause of the tragedy. The problem is not of a just one particular hospital, this is the problem of the whole system."
Specialists and activists agree that whatever the results of the investigation, we shouldn't blame selected individuals be them patients or personnel of the hospital. We especially denounce placing the blame on a woman in severe pain and suffering, for breaking the fire. The distribution of discriminative and speculative disinformation in press before the end of the investigation is yet one more part of the systemic problem that creates general public antipathy towards the victims.
"Blaming separate individuals means closing one's eyes on the fact that the whole system of drug treatment in Russia is absolutely ineffective, inhumane and discredited, - says Gregory Vergus of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, an association which unites HIV activists from around the world, including those from Newly Independent States and the Baltics.
"What is called 'narcological assistance' in this country in fact isn't assistance at all.
Join the Harm Reduction Project in signing this petition asking for a full investigation of what happened to the clinic in Russia. Treating addicts like throw aways or criminals cannot go unnoticed in any part of world… the deaths of these 44 women do matter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
