Evidenced Based Practice

This anonymous quote was posted on the OpenMinds site today and is indicative of the lack of vision, practicality and insight of the Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration:
"In our clinic, we are carrying out an EBP—family psychoeducation—and the reviewers who have deemed our practice to have high fidelity to the model focus entirely on process rather than on outcomes. We have been using a unique approach to co-occurring disorders that (in our fairly primitive field research) indicates between 40% and 50% one-year sobriety and stability rates for all who start the program. However, it will not meet the Maryland standard for an EBP, since it appears to be going to a model for which I can find no longitudinal outcome data whatsoever."

This is pretty typical of the MD MHA, which doesn't seem to have the capacity to devine what is in the best interest of Marylanders but must rely on EBP's that haven't been proven here. Millions of dollars have been wasted because of the lack of analytic capacity in the Administration.

Housing development has suffered, critical daily supports have been lost, cost-shifting to jails, emergency rooms and homeless shelters has been rampant because of exceedingly poor policy decisions.

Granted, a laudable, decades late, decision to close Upper Shore Hospital has been made and a decision to close 80 beds at Spring Grove Hospital Center has also come to fruition, but with such tardiness that no one will be able to judge the impact on the quality of lives of people with severe psychiatric disabilities in the state.

Clearly, MHA needs an opthalmic correction for its vision.