On the Front Line - In the News

NORTH SHORE CHILD AND FAMILY GUIDANCE CENTER

A plan to gut mental health


April 21, 2009, p. A34

More middle-class families are in need of mental health services ["More seek help in stressful time," News, April 20]. Yet, the New York State Office of Mental Health has a plan that is a blueprint for the destruction of children's community-based mental health services in the suburbs.

The OMH plan - called Transforming New York's Mental Health System - is dramatically skewed in favor of supporting services for families with Medicaid-only insurance coverage. That means it discriminates against the middle- and lower-middle-class and working-poor families that are underinsured or uninsured.

At the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center these kinds of families represent almost 75 percent of those seeking our help.

The answer is for Nassau County and New York State to join to restore and enhance local assistance funding - a partnership between local and state government, the local community and the consumer of mental health services.

Andrew Malekoff

Long Beach

Editor's note: The writer is executive director for North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.

NORTH SHORE CHILD AND FAMILY GUIDANCE CENTER

LETTERS: Teen depression, greed, health care and more


August 16, 2009

Are we treating what bothers the child?

By Andrew Malekoff

Jerome C. Wakefield and Allan V. Horwitz ["It's OK to feel sadness," Opinion, Aug. 9] raise an important question about teenagers' normal reactions to stress and the tendency of adults to overdiagnose, label and medicate them.

Too often teens are defined by deficits rather than capacities. Even worse, diagnostic labels and medication may be used not to address a child's silent suffering but as a way of controlling those things about him that make him an annoyance or threat to others. The challenge is to be mindful of the broader context of a child's life.
Andrew Malekoff, Long Beach

Editor's note: The writer is executive director and CEO of North Shore Family & Child Guidance Center.