[WSIS CS-Plenary] Draft Statement for Sub-Committee B- Inclusion Issues

[Elizabeth Carll, PhD]

Sylvia,

You made an excellent point : "There are often unintended consequences and
specificity can create those also. Any listing, by its very nature, omits
items not listed."

However, in practice, not including areas, especially those which by history
have intentionally been omitted, merely perpetuates the problem.

The issues related to lack of parity between mental health and physical
health is an enormous problem. The lack of parity results from the well
intentioned assumption that those responsible ( financially) for medical
services will automatically subscribe to a holistic approach and include all
areas, as opposed to look for ways of trimming the budget and excluding
services.

I did not suggest to carve out mental health, quite the opposite, BUT RATHER
BE SURE TO INCLUDE IT UNDER HEALTH, as it is stated in the WSIS CS
Declaration.  Describing how things should be is admirable, but along with
that it must include a strategy which can accomplish the goal.

I have been in practice for more than 25 years as a clinical psychologist
and my experience is derived not only from my advocacy work but the day to
day observations of people being denied access to services and coverage
because mental health was not viewed as part of health.

One example is the refusal of a hospital to treat an severely anorexic girl,
potentially fatal disease, as the medical health coverage did not include
mental health benefits. Therefore, as soon as her vital signs were
stabilized, although significantly underweight, she was released and the
vicious cycle of multiple rehospitalizations only addressing the medical
emergency continued and did nothing to treat the problem.  Sadly, often such
cases end up becoming fatality statistics.

Dr. Elizabeth Carll
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies;
UN NGO Committee on Mental Health;
Communications Coordination Committee for the UN
Tel: 1631-754-2424
Fax: 1631-754-5032
ecarll at optonline.net




-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On Behalf
Of Sylvia Caras
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 10:37 AM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: RE: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Draft Statement for Sub-Committee B-
Inclusion Issues


At 08:41 PM 9/20/05, Elizabeth Carll, PhD wrote:

It is essential that if we are attempting to hold government and businesses
accountable for providing what they promise, it needs to be specific and
written in such a way as not to create giant loopholes to circumvent the
intent of outcome documents, declarations and other written commitments.


It is also my understanding, why we have experts (hopefully) provide input
in various thematic and specialty areas.  I would not assume I know enough
about intellectual property and legal aspects of privacy laws, to insist on
changing language.


There are often unintended consequences and specificity can create those
also.

Any listing, by its very nature, omits items not listed.