Guest many democrats, very few republicans. Host we have another caller from ohio. Caller good morning my younger brother grow up without video games. We had a stall solid christian family. He is schizophrenic, im a few years older than him. We had paid for services and help. There is no way he contributed to the society. He cannot work. He is totally medicated, excuse me. I respectfully disagree with the republican congressman who says with accounting we can do a better job. [talking over each other] caller excuse me, and what we can do is tell her parents do a better job. There were no video games when my brother was growing up. [talking over each other] guest i said many times these problems to emerge. I named a host of things that can be done. There have been a couple of shootings in my own district. One of them by a gentleman who was diagnosed with different. In another who had psychological problems. Im not blaming this on the parents. Im staying with these situations, you do have Mental Illness that emerges. The issue is getting them help. Here is what happens in society. In a move to shut down all the institutions and hospitals, look, i understand that we dont have those for the misbegotten. They were treated that way. There are many people out there who said they cannot function in society and we need alternatives for them. We cannot over medicate them into a stupor. That is wrong. They need alternatives. We also need to understand that medication can be helpful. But what we have done the only thing we offer parents and i have had situations like this, and the article you read about adam lanzas mother. Many times, they say we will get a child in a juvenile detention facility. Those are Mental Health treatment. And they never will be. But we are now turning those where people can have ongoing treatment and help. Please understand, i will never say another advocate this in the wrong way. Host the number of state psychiatric hospitals closed im sorry, 15 state hospitals closed, 4471 beds. This is between 2009 and 2012, at a time a lot of people were affected by the economy, and perhaps seeking the services. Guest the majority of people there need psychiatric care. There are so many better just institutionalized without any assistance. They come out and they get no services. Host an email came out this morning. It was kept confidential. I have bipolar disorder, and im on medicare. I have anger issues, and i cannot afford the copay for counseling or to see my psychiatrist for a medical checkup. Other Public Programs that would pay for this . I am not eligible for medicaid. I make too much in Social Security disability. Congresman griffin. You have to call your psychiatrist anyways. You can also go to the emergency room. The emergency room is required to do if you come in. He talked to the doctors there, ask to see a psychiatrist there. I have concerns right now. It is extremely important. You cannot let that go. Go to the emergency room and talk to people there. Same thing goes for people who are suicidal. Host we have the number for the Suicide Prevention lifeline hotline there. We want to go now to shirley from palm beach florida. Surely come thanks for joining us on the washington journal. Caller good morning. I worked in Mental Health services around 20 years after it raised my family and myself. Twenty years of that was then ejected. In the hospitals. I suffer from depression. And i found that i have allergies. There is a book and he talks about how allergies can affect us so severely that it can cause things like depression, retardation, epilepsy and many physical ailments as well. Hypertension and hyperglycemia and etc. And it is hard and people look at me like im crazy. And i say, look at your diet. Many people believe that schizophrenia can be cured by diet . Host congressman . Guest there are a lot of things that go into this. You people have food reactions and supplements that can affect them . Yes. As a cause of schizophrenia, i dont know. I dont want people to think that if only i change my diet, it will go away. There are a lot of other issues there. There are genetic issues, environmental issues, many other aspects here. Working with this for 35 years, working in the navy reserve as a psychologist, it isnt just the aspect of food. Its important to stay physically fit and not be isolated. Those are our part that help us overcome these aspects. And we know what a person with a sedentary lifestyle deals with. A lot of those things can impact of brain development. Especially the not sleeping correctly, the number of hormonal levels in the brain can also worsen Mental Illness. If you see a doctor and look at diet and exercise, food intake, history, symptoms all of those are apart. What we dont want to do is say here, coming a few months. Thats the role of treatment. The combination of therapy, much as needed and looking at all parts of it are very important. Guest raising children by yourself, congratulations. I felt very depressed because my husband is not necessarily the best parent my children. I was the disciplinarian. But certainly a good diet will help address some of the issues. Yes, there are clinical aspects as well. Generally if you have a good diet and eat well and eat the right foods, you wont have a ton of impairments in dealing with these issues. While it isnt the answer, it is one of the upstart looking at. Guest how we are managing these things, about one in four people have a diagnose diagnosis of a mental or emotional condition. Things that are very easy to treat. Host we have another guest on the line. Caller thank you for taking my call. Something that hasnt been discussed is about medication and antidepressants. The problem is that can be caused, ive been depressed probably since i was a teenager, but was never medicated. In 2000, i developed chronic pain and became pretty hard to deal with. Of course, you know, i was upset, i would cry a lot. My doctor said, oh, you are depressed, and they put me on prozac. Then my doctor put me on another drug. Within two weeks, i developed a panic attack that enough to be put in the hospital. In there, you know, i said to the doctor, i said ive been put on these drugs, cannot be the problem . And they said oh, no. Theyre treatment for me is to put me in a room and call me crazy. Guest can i ask you a question from and im not trying to treat you. The physician to prescribe it, is that a psychiatrist . Caller it was my premedicare doctor. Guest i wont do [inaudible] i understand what the doctors trying to do when someone has chronic pain and it can lead to Serious Problems here. Your brain and your system is getting overwhelmed. But at the level where youre having concerns, it is important to get the right Mental Health treatment. You need to see a psychiatrist. With regard to psychotherapy, been put in a room and told you need to get over that, you need to see someone who is trained in this aspect. If you look at all the ads selling these products, we are looking at some of the possible side effects. Anyone who takes any kind of medication, ensuring that they know what theyre doing. Guest they take a medication, another medication for side effects, and it goes on and on until they take several drugs everyday. People become reliant on them, and then you stop taking them, if you smoke and take them, drink alcohol or take them. It can cause a lot of issues. Host i want to get each of you on how you keep these issues in the minds of your colleagues. Not just in the days after newtown, connecticut, but in the days and weeks coming. Guest hopefully we can get together and work on the administration and we will find out what it will do in bringing all these agencies together to find out how can we work at this level to begin to help people and the funding that is necessary and will be effectively utilized at the local level. We can talk and put all kinds of care at the local level. Being able to have enough information providing more education to people in congress. Guest we need to continue this dialogue with members of congress. We would like to meet with the president and discuss these issues and have an Important National form as what congress can do as well to smack congressman murphy and congresswoman napolitano, thank you so much for being with us two on washington journal tomorrow morning, focus on gun control issues. Tim huelskamp will join us to talk about the latest on negotiations on the socalled fiscal cliff. He was one of four gop members of two committees. They said it was retribution for their voting records. And they look at what options the administration has to tighten guncontrol laws. With or without congressional action. Our guest will be david ingram, the Justice Department correspondent for reuters. Washington journal is live on cspan everyday at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Her First Experience was to come in at different ways than every other family here. It is interesting because after dad was sworn in, we went and p took a picture photo of the family behind the oval office desk. That night, we didnt get to move into the white house. Nixon had left so quickly and unexpectedly, they left their daughter and soninlaw to pack all of their clothes and belongings. It literally took seven or eight days. We had to go back to our little house in alexandria, virginia, suburbia, the neighborhood we were surrounded with the secret service. And i will never forget that night mom was cooking dinner. Literally we are, you know, sitting around the dinner table or a mom is cooking dinner, and she looked over at my dad and said, jerry, something is wrong here. [laughter] she said you just became resident of the United States, and im still cooking. [laughter] growing up in white house on sunday evening at 730 eastern and pacific. It is part of four days of American History tv right through Christmas Day on cspan3. The latest survey on drug abuse shows that drinking and smoking was down among High School Students in 2012. The marijuana use remains high. Also, the use of adderall, a drug used to treat add was also a concern. This briefing is 50 minutes. Good morning, i would like to welcome everyone here. I would like to thank you for being here. Every year, we meet together to talk about drug use in our country among High School Students. Also, about perception. It is through this that we can guide our way of prevention and also evaluate how effective drug use prevention measures have been. We have indicators that are changing, those that are not changing, and those from the other side. I think that we need to Pay Attention in order to be able to continue to relate. Over the past five years, we have seen an increase of use of High School Students. We have significantly higher levels of daily use of marijuana. According to the survey, 6. 5 are using marijuana daily. Yet only 44 perceive daily use is risky. It is this very low perception of regularly use of marijuana is coupled with these increases. We have seen throughout surveys done in health care system, a significant increase in the number of treatment admissions for marijuana abuse, which has increased significantly, as well as increases in emissions for emergency medicine department. Clearly, there is a misuse of marijuana. Another indicator that is worrisome is that of synthetic natures, already abused by 11 in the last year, which is an extremely high number if you think about it. Figuring then you have on one side marijuana increases and on the other, we actually recognize that we are going into an era where [inaudible] i always get asked the question about why worry about marijuana since alcohol is more worrisome. My perspective is that its not necessary. This can have profound and adverse consequences. My question has always been that the more you make the drug available, the number of people that will be exposed to this, and we know from surveys that this perception is actually one of the factors. We also know that the use of marijuana is actually impairing the function of the human brain with respect to the indicators are actually going in the right direction, many of these things are actually decreasing. This is very good news. Alcohol and nicotine continue to go down among teenagers. This is the lowest that the prevalence rate has been since the inception of these measurements. As of now we know that alcohol and nicotine cause a great deal of mortality rates but also identifies success of prevention efforts because of the very aggressive prevention. Respect to indicators that are still worrisome, we are seeing Prescription Medication abuse up throughout the country. The patterns relate to vicodin and other drugs, which have gone down since the high numbers of 10 . Those folks are made stable at 4. 5 for the past year. We are seeing an increase in the use of other medications, which are used for attention Deficit Disorder and adderall, and its also been used as a means to improve cognitive performance and we see significant increases since 2009. 7. 6 of 12th graders have used these for other medical purposes. What do these numbers tell us . I think they identify the areas where we need to Pay Attention and not become complacent. There regardless of our perception and we do recognize that regardless of of this potential, the worse the outcomes. We need to ask if we want to be facing this abuse that we are dealing with. We want to do prevention can avoid this and the consequences. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you, doctor. Until the mention that doctor nora volkow has been the director of National Drug abuse since 2003 and has literally led the effort to ensure that drug addiction is viewed as a chronic brain condition. We really do appreciate the leadership that doctor nora volkow has taken in that respect. The next speaker is doctor howard koh. He served as the assistant secretary of health for the u. S. Department of health and Human Services after being nominated by the senate in 2009. He oversees a number of officers, including the office of the Surgeon General and serves as a Senior Public Health advisor to the secretary of health and Human Services. With that, doctor howard koh. [applause] thank you very much, doctor stein, for inviting me to this very important conference. I would like to express my gratitude to you and doctor nora volkow for her leadership. Thank you all so much for being leaders in this very important part of public health. A special thanks to doctor johnson. It is a great pleasure for me to be here for in examining the results being unveiled today, we should remember that of all these agents, the tobacco remains the leading cause of premature and preventable death in the United States. Smoking kills more than 1200 americans every day. For every tobacco related death, there are two new replacement cigarette smokers under the age of 26. It is tragic these replacement smokers are kids who start when they are not fully ready to make an informed choice. Indeed, you have heard that tobacco use is a pediatric disease. Three out of four teenagers who smoke continued to smoke into adulthood, even though they intend to quit. A typical smoker loses to their lifespan being shortened, 13 or 14 years. Cigarette use is dropping, and that is a very positive news, but it still means that one in five High School Seniors, specifically 71 , are still using cigarettes in the past month. We should remember that kids are not just replacement cigarette users. They also use an array of other deadly Tobacco Products as well. The industry continues to create many Tobacco Products that we find appealing. Some cigarette sized cigars include fruit flavoring like strawberry and grape. Furthermore, kids now have access to the latest smokeless Tobacco Products, which dissolve like mens. So these are appealing to young people. In part because they can be used at school or at home in front of mom and dad and not be detected. Unfortunately, these products, too, cause nicotine addiction and can cause death. The data being announced today suggesting considerable amount of other Tobacco Products. More than a quarter of 12th grade males, 27. 1 , using small cigars. Furthermore, use of other Tobacco Products like hookah, is also high. 18. 2 of High School Seniors reported using this in the past year. In summary, while the decline in cigarette use is encouraging, we must do more overall to help children to be tobacco free. Significant use of other Tobacco Products threatens to offset the gains made in the declines of cigarette use today. So what should we do . We know works. Supporting comprehensive tobacco free and other Tobacco Control policies, fully supporting implementation of the 2009 family smoking prevention and Tobacco Control act. Extending use of the Tobacco Cessation services and using media to encourage people, especially young kids to live tobacco free. Last month the department of health and Human Services unveiled be tobacco free. God. Please visit it. Also, we are very pleased to announce an award of nine contracts for five years to develop a sustainable publichealth campaign to address the publichealth problem of tobacco use in children and kids. We are looking forward to coming back to you in the future to tell you how this campaign will be unveiled, how it will be a message of prevention and how it will be launched. Overall, this survey is so valuable. It reports usage rates not just for tobacco, but all of the drugs and alcohol as