Your Mental Health

This booklet has been produced as part of the ‘Your Mental Health’  awareness campaign, which aims to improve awareness and  understanding of mental health and well-being in Ireland. In planning this campaign, we asked Irish people in a major national  survey about their awareness of and attitudes to mental health and
what it means. The responses were mixed. While most Irish people  agreed that anyone can experience a mental health problem (85%),  most people also admitted that if they had a problem they wouldn’t
want other people to know about it (62%). The challenge for the ‘Your Mental Health’ awareness campaign is to  make it okay to talk about mental health in everyday life. It is something  that can be good or bad and is an important part of all of us.  This booklet aims to:

• highlight some of the things we can do to look after our mental health,
• encourage us to look out for the people around us, and
• give an overview of some common mental health problems.

The booklet also lists some of the organisations and agencies that  provide advice and help on mental health issues. The ‘Your Mental Health’ campaign has been developed by the HSE  National Office for Suicide Prevention, in consultation with voluntary  and statutory partners, as part of Reach Out – the National Strategy  for Action on Suicide Prevention. The booklet was reviewed by  Sandra Hogan, Aware; Brian Howard, Mental Health Ireland; Kahlil  Thompson Coyle, Schizophrenia Ireland; and Dr Rachael Cullivan,
Irish College of Psychiatrists.

Privacy and Your Health Information

Your Privacy Is Important to All of Us:

Most of us feel that our health and medical  information is private and should be protected, and we want to know who has this information. Now, Federal law
• Gives you rights over your health information
• Sets rules and limits on who can look at and  receive your health information


Your Health Information Is Protected:

By Federal Law Who must follow this law?

• Most doctors, nurses, pharmacies, hospitals,  clinics, nursing homes, and many other health  care providers
• Health insurance companies, HMOs, most  employer group health plans
• Certain government programs that pay for health  care, such as Medicare and Medicaid
What information is protected?
• Information your doctors, nurses, and other health  care providers put in your medical record
• Conversations your doctor has about your care or  treatment with nurses and others
• Information about you in your health insurer’s  computer system
• Billing information about you at your clinic
• Most other health information about you held by  those who must follow this law

The Promise of Health IT

Health IT shows promise for transforming the delivery of healthcare in the US, improving  population health and the overall efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare.  Health IT, also  referred to as “HIT,” can be defined as the use of computers and computer programs to store,  protect, retrieve, and transfer clinical, administrative, and financial information electronically  within and between healthcare stakeholders. Health IT is used in a variety of settings: in-patie (hospital, medical/surgical/ long-term care, etc.); out-patient (ambulatory ansciences; payors; public health; and others, examples:


Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
• Electronic Medical Records (EMR
• Personal Health Records (PHRs)
• Payor-based Health Records (PBHRs)
• Electronic Prescribing (e-Prescribing)
• Financial/Billing/Administrative Systems

Enabling Healthcare Reform Using Information Technology

Call to Action: 2009 is the year for healthcare reform in the United States. HIMSS believes that lives can be saved, outcomes of care improved, and costs reduced by transforming the  healthcare system through the appropriate use of information technology (IT) and management  systems.  It is essential that health IT be harnessed as a tool in transforming healthcare, improving  quality by delivering information where and when it is most needed, reducing costs, empowering  consumers in their healthcare decisions, and providing for the privacy and security of personal  health information.  To ensure that health IT is appropriately addressed in anticipated healthcare reform policy in  2009, HIMSS developed unified recommendations for the new Congress and Administration  concerning the role of health IT in healthcare reform. The recommendations represent necessary  measures to develop and sustain a robust IT infrastructure for healthcare. Policymakers should consider the recommendations components of the necessary foundation to strengthen and sustain 

the success of their healthcare reform legislation, proposals, and regulation policies.   Healthcare Reform and the Promise of Health IT: With healthcare spending in the US totaling more than $2 trillion a year and 45 million people in the US lacking health insurance, healthcare reform must be a top priority for the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress. As a proven tool for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare, health IT is essential to  healthcare reform policy. In preparation for the 111th Congress, Members are already engaged in healthcare reform deliberations, through such initiatives as the formation of workgroups and the development of healthcare reform reports. As part of his healthcare platform during the 

presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama called for a $10 billion-a-year investment over the 

next five years to foster the broad adoption of health IT. In addition, as President-elect, Barack 

Obama is now considering including health IT as part of an economic stimulus package to be introduced in early 2009. Health IT, such as electronic medical records (EMRs), electronic health records (EHRs), personal  health records (PHRs), payor-based health records (PBHRs), and electronic prescribing (eprescribing), shows promise for transforming the delivery and payment of healthcare in the US,  and improving population health and the overall efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare. The electronic exchange of health information made possible through health IT enables providers,  payors, and consumers to effectively access health information, while reducing medical errors and eliminating unnecessary or duplicative healthcare services and costs. Recognizing the  benefits of health IT, federal and state governments, in collaboration with the private sector,  facilitate many initiatives to help foster the use of health IT.  Health IT holds great promise for healthcare throughout the US. The full benefits will be reaped when policymakers, including Members of Congress and the Administration, appropriately  address the following issues: 

• Leadership 

• Interoperability  

• Privacy and Security 

• Electronic Payments 

• Consumer Empowerment  

• Funding 

Women's Health Information

The Women's Information and Health Center of B'nei Brak is a social engineer in women's health. Through exclusive access to the Internet in an otherwise unplugged society, we forge distribution channels between modern medicine and sequestered religious women. We work within strict rabbinic mandates to service the dignity of our clientèle, while counteracting pervasive social ignorance. Through direct collaborations with top health-care providers, hospital staff, and the volunteer network of Agudah Women, we educate to promote health, prevent disease, and legitimize women's right to quality health care within the ultra-orthodox communities of Israel.

Our Mission

To forge access for ultra-orthodox women to key medical information, local resources, and health care, and to tailor comprehensive health education on women's behalf for the ultra-orthodox communities in Israel.

To this end:

• We provide a 24 hour hot line for the women of Bnei Brak to confidentially inquire after their private health concerns, and receive prompt, up-to-date, well-researched information packages by post, pertinent to their specific needs.
• We conduct comprehensive public seminars in popular and emerging fields of women's health including heart disease, nutrition, exercise, fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause and aging.
• We collect, classify, and reformat women's health information published in Hebrew. Parallel to the hot line, volunteers work to strengthen our files. Time is spent researching print and electronic sources, evaluating the long range relevance and the quality of informational presentation and content.
• And we target outreach to traditional female leaders in the community, bringing the wives of rabbis, school teachers and principles to our lectures, and into our volunteer circuit.
• We will expand our city health seminars, individualized package delivery service and adjoining telephone hot line to the national level, becoming a country-wide resource for Ultra-Orthodox women and their communities.
• We will train young female health educators with the tools necessary to infiltrate the Ultra-Orthodox primary and high schools in an effort to introduce basic provisions, and to reform health education policies for young women and girls.
• We will write specialized health-information booklets to address religious women's most frequently asked questions and concerns.
• We will broadcast a weekly radio address on the national orthodox dial, showcasing the critical medical issues raised by religious women to the hot line. Program will include a rotating focus on various aspects of women's health: exercise, nutrition, life cycles, health risk factors, and children. A brief medical news update will be followed by in depth interviews with doctors and expert guests on a specific issue within the topic of the week.

What is a regional health information organization?

A RHIO is first and foremost a governance entity whose purpose is to facilitate the accessibility and exchange of health-related information on individuals within a contiguous geographic area for the benefit of the community in that area. A RHIO exists to supplement and enhance efforts to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health and care on behalf of the individuals within its delineated geographic area. In essence, a RHIO is a type of HIO that is mission-driven and geographically bound. Prominent entities in a RHIO include those that create and maintain health-related information and may include any organization, individual or interest group with a stake in improving health care through efforts to make health information more widely available, using appropriate security measures to protect the privacy of individuals as well as the confidentiality of their information. roups of stakeholders may include:

Health care institutions and personnel that render care.

•

                        Businesses and government agencies that reimburse for those services.

                        Researchers and professionals who are engaged in health improvement activities.

                        Public health agencies.

                        Consumers of health care.

HIE within a RHIO’s geographic area is the chief means by which its objectives are achieved. The RHIO enables, facilitates and fosters collaboration among stakeholders to attain a useful level of information sharing through HIE. A RHIO may operate directly or contract for HIE services.

Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO)

A health information organization that brings together health care stakeholders within a defined geographic area and governs health information exchange among them for the purpose of improving health and care in that community.

nderstanding a RHIO. To be designated a RHIO, an entity needs to have certain core features. These attributes distinguish it from other organizations that do not or cannot execute the distinct purpose and responsibilities of a RHIO.

An organization designated as a RHIO:

Must involve data-sharing participants that are separate and distinct legal entities operating within a defined geographic area whose collaboration through the RHIO will ross organizational boundaries.

Must intend to benefit the population in the community. This requires that stakeholders come from the defined geographic area and that the RHIO provides well-defined and transparent processes to facilitate the interoperable exchange of health information across the range of participating stakeholders.

Must be inclusive and convene various types of stakeholders in the delineated geographic area who are vested in improving the health of the community.

Can arrange for the provision of additional technical and operational services supporting its primary purpose. Such services may vary based on stakeholder needs and a range of environmental factors. Examples include:

o The technology and support for physicians to create and use electronic records, delivered to their places of work through Internet connections by application service providers (ASPs).

o Electronic exchange of messages in a secure format to report and distribute medical test results.

o Data on specific patients to first responders in a community; for example, whether a patient has signed a DNR (do not resuscitate) order.

o Coordinated electronic health record and personal health record platforms for the region.

The “regional” in RHIO defines a variable area that is less than national but can be broader than legislative boundaries (i.e. state lines, city limits, etc.) This latitude allows the determination of geographic boundaries logical to a set of stakeholders seeking to pursue the objectives of a RHIO. A RHIO can be organized to support a community, groups of communities, a statewide area or a region crossing state boundaries.

The dynamic principle of existence is; survive!

No behavior or activity has been found to exist without this principle. It is not new that life is surviving. It is new that life has as its entire dynamic urge only survival. Survival is divided into four dynamics. Survival can be understood to lie in any one of the dynamics and by faulty logic can be explained in terms of any one dynamic. A man can be said to survive for self alone and by this all behavior can be formulated. He can be said to survive  for sex alone and by sex alone all behavior can be formulated. He can be said to survive for the group only or for Mankind only and in either of these the entire endeavor and behavior of the individual can be equated and explained. These are four equations of survival, each one apparently true. However, the entire problem of the purpose of Man cannot be resolved unless one admits all four dynamics in each individual. So equated, the behavior of the individual can be estimated with precision.  These dynamics then embrace the activity of one or many men.

DYNAMIC ONE: The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of self and his immediate symbiotes.

DYNAMIC TWO: The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of sex, the act and the creation of children and their rearing.

DYNAMIC THREE: The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of the group, whether civil, political, or racial, and the symbiotes of that group.

DYNAMIC FOUR: The urge of the individual to reach the highest potential of survival in terms of Mankind and the symbiotes of Mankind. Thus motivated, the individual or a society seeks survival and no human activity of any kind has other basis:  experiment, investigation and long testing demonstrated that the unaberrated individual, the clear, was motivated in his actions and decisions by all the above dynamics and not one alone. The clear, the goal of dianetic therapy, can be created from psychotic, neurotic, deranged, criminal or normal people if they have organically sound nervous systems.  He demonstrates the basic nature of Mankind and that basic nature has been found uniformly and invariably to be good. That is now an established scientific fact, not an opinion. 

The clear has attained a stable state on a very high plane. He is persistent and vigorous and pursues life with enthusiasm and satisfaction. He is motivated by the four dynamics as above. He has attained the full power and use of hitherto hidden abilities. The inhibition of one or more dynamics in an individual causes an aberrated condition, tends toward mental derangement and psycho-somatic illness and causes the individual to make irrational conclusions and act, still in an effort to survive, in destructive ways. Dianetic technique deletes, without drugs, hypnotism, surgery, shock or other artificial means, the blocks from these various dynamics. The removal of these blocks permits the free flow of the various dynamics and, of course, results in a heightened persistency in life and a much higher intelligence.

The precision of dianetics makes it possible to impede or release these dynamics at will with invariable results.The hidden source of all inorganic mental disturbance and psycho-somatic illness was one of the discoveries of dianetics. This source had been unknown and unsuspected, though vigorously sought, for thousands of years.  That the discovered source is the source requires less laboratory proof than would have been necessary to have proven the correctness of

William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. The proof does not depend upon a laboratory test with complicated apparatus but can be made in any group of men by any intelligent individual. The source of aberration has been found to be a hitherto unsuspected sub-mind which, complete with its own recordings, underlies what man understands to be his “conscious” mind.

The concept of the unconscious mind is replaced in dianetics by the discovery that the “unconscious” mind is the only mind which is always conscious.  In dianetics this sub-mind is called the reactive mind. A holdover from an earlier step in Man’s evolution, the reactive mind possesses vigor and command power on a cellular level. It does not “remember”; it records and uses the recordings only to produce action. It does not “think”; it selects recordings and impinges them upon the “conscious” mind and the body without the knowledge or consent of the individual. The only information the individual has of such action is his occasional perception that he is not acting rationally about one thing or another and cannot understand why. There is no Censor. The reactive mind operates exclusively on physical pain and painful emotion. It is not capable of differentiative thought but acts on the stimulus-response basis.  This is the principle on whi ch  the   anima l  mind  func t ions . It does not receive its recordings as memory orexperience but only as forces to be reactivated. It receives its recordings as cellular engrams when the “conscious” mind is “unconscious.”