NASW Statement on Senator Edward Kennedy's Death

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is deeply saddened by the death of United States Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who after a year-long battle with brain cancer, died this week. Sen. Kennedy has been a champion for many social policies of significance to social workers and their clients throughout his tenure in the Senate of more than 40 years. Read more...

Web-based Programs Encourage Safer Sex Behaviors among Men at Risk for HIV/AIDS

From the National Institute of Mental Health: A single-session, online, multimedia intervention effectively reduced risky sexual behaviors among young men who have sex with men, a group at high risk for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Such low-cost programs may help reverse the steady rise in HIV diagnoses among this population. The study was published online ahead of print on June 5, 2009, in the journal, AIDS and Behavior. Read more...

Mentally ill juveniles in prison

Today's NY Times has a front page story about mentally ill adolescents who end up in juvenile correctional facilities for lack of more appropriate programming:

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”