Something exciting, if you're into this kinda stuff.

Last week (ish) a new law was passed as part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This new law is the Paul Wellstone - Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. Essentially, this new law makes it easier for consumers to enter treatment for a wide variety of mental health issues. Currently, not all insurance companies will pay for treatment of mental health concerns, and even if they do, many of them are not considered equal to other health issues, so they only cover certain issues, or for a small amount of money and/or time.

I received an email at work last week about it, with a link to a short course educating on what mental health parity is and what this new law will actually do. It's a great thing; the only downside is that it doesn't go into effect until January of 2010. We'll take what we can get, though.

I'm not really sure if I'm allowed to do this, but I searched all over the website for this online course (http://www.essentiallearning.com/) and I can't see why it would be a problem to share the link. Its purpose is to educate and raise awareness, so why not spread the word?

So if you want to know more about mental health parity and about the Wellstone-Domenici Act, then please please please visit this link: http://www.essentiallearning.net/student/content/sections/Lectora/Parity/index.html

Also, essentiallearning.com is a great resource for CEUs in the future, for all you psych majors, once we're done with grad school. There are a ton of online courses to take about all kinds of topics. There's a free webinar at 1:00 tomorrow called, "Strategies to Help Community Providers Prevent Suicide in Veterans," if you're interested. I know I can do it because I work for the Mental Health Board in my county, so I can list them as my organization, but if you guys are interested, I would suggest checking it out for yourselves. Just go to the website, and you'll find a link to it on the homepage.

While I'm thinking of it - and addressing my fellow psych majors - go to http://www.psychtemps.com/ and sign up and upload your resume. And make sure you write in somewhere that I referred you there. :)

I'm just so excited for my future, and for yours, and that I have so many great friends (psych majors and not) who want to change the world. We can do it, one day at a time.. one class at a time. One person at a time.

I'm pumped.