Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Newtown Panel Offers Recommendations For State Mental Health System
Connecticut Mirror: Sandy Hook Panel: Further Tighten Gun Laws, Improve Mental Health Care
The commission Gov. Dannel P. Malloy created in the wake of the 2012 massacre of 26 students and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School will consider a draft report Friday recommending a further tightening of Connecticut's gun laws, a prospect unlikely to find traction in the General Assembly. Like many previous reports, the commission's draft also describes a need for better integrating mental and physical health care, reducing fragmentation, providing more holistic services and reducing the stigma that many people with mental illness face. The draft also points to the need to focus not just on treating mental illness once it develops but on preventing mental health problems and fostering healthy development, starting in children’s earliest years. (Rabe Thomas and Levin Becker, 2/12)
The New York Times: Newtown Panel’s Report Aims To Improve Safety
More than two years after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 schoolchildren and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., as well as killing his mother and himself, a state commission released a draft report of a wide-ranging set of recommendations on Thursday with the goal of preventing such killings. (Santora, 2/12)
The Associated Press: Newtown Panel Urges More Gun Control, Mental Health Changes
The report focuses heavily on the state's mental health system, which it called "fragmented and underfunded" and "tainted by stigma." The commission said the problems of the shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, were "not reducible to any particular category of psychiatric illness," but it is clear his needs were not met. (2/12)
