Wellness

Jamie Oliver claims that he doesn’t understand modern-day poverty in the U.K. Yeah. That sounds about right.

In a recent interview promoting Jamie Oliver’s new television series and book, Oliver said, "I'm not judgmental, but I've spent a lot of time in poor communities, and I find it quite hard to talk about modern-day poverty. You might remember that scene in [a previous series] Ministry of Food, with the mum and the kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers, and behind them is a massive f****** TV.” Perhaps with one of his TV shows on it...

Many of us, I’m sure, have had friends or acquaintances who’ve committed suicide.  And the longer we live, the ever more mysterious and frequent suicide seems to become in our experience – often to the point of grieving despair.  Those left behind inevitably search themselves for missed opportunities to have helped, misperceived clues that might have signaled a call for intervention, and failures of compassion that might have lifted someone’s burden just enough...

The Human Services Division (HSD) which funds Behavioral and Mental Health as well as Medicaid has concluded that 15 New Mexico Mental and Behavioral Health Services that have served their communities for decades have been so fraudulent on her watch that only the nuclear option was possible. She plans to shut them down and bring Arizona agencies to the rescue. HSD has no stomach apparently to fix our system if it’s broken, to build New Mexico capacity and grow New Mexico jobs. New Mexico tax revenues will ship off to Arizona. There should be no surprise that this is seen as part of a purely political agenda to privatize the not-for-profit mental health providers in the state...

I see a plot in the New Mexico Medical Board's rule to make medicinal marijuana prescriptions hard to write for patients.  This is nothing but big pharma applying pressure to the Docs to make it hard to prescribe the low cost and effective herb to patients that qualify.  I mean if a few brownies take the place of outrageously expensive drugs then corporate profits will slide.   How much longer do we need to put up with this corporate manipulation of everything in our lives?   Am I being paranoid?  Or is having the munchies a threat to our way of life?...

The 15 New Mexico behavioral health provider organizations that have been accused of Medicaid fraud by their Human Services Department have been put in an impossible position. The state has tried them and found them guilty in the press and the patients they serve and the staff they employ are understandably frightened and angry.

The accused agencies have been defunded, meaning they are no longer reimbursed for providing care for the most vulnerable in their communities — persons with serious mental illnesses and substance use disorders. These persons, as well as the staff are worried, demoralized, and uncertain about the future. All as a result of a process that seems to be designed to deflect accountability from the state...

According to the USDA, over 23 million Americans live in a food desert: an area with a concentration of low-income households and low access to a supermarket.    In an urban environment, a low access area is defined by being at least one mile from a major grocery store.  Imagine the odyssey of walking for blocks or taking public transportation carrying handfuls of plastic bags stretching ever closer to rupture or pulling an overfilled personal shopping cart only to arrive at your building to begin climbing flights of stairs to your kitchen.