The Council on Children, Adolescents, and Their Families

Abstract

304 Am] Psychiatry 151:2, February 1994 cral, state, and other laws and regulations that serve as barriers to the provision of psychiatric services to nursing facility residents. 4. In conjunction with the American Association of Retired Persons and other APA components, develop, if needed, a model standard for long-term care insurance. At the fall components meeting in I 993, the work group proposed a survey of leading insurance carriers to determine their underwriting practices and screening criteria as a first step in determining whether any formal remedy to allegations ofdiscnimination against psychiatric illness through underwriting practices is required. Once the information is collected from the insurance companies, the work group, the council, or APA may consider sending the results of the survey to the district branches. The Task Force on the White House Conference onAging, Sanford Finkel, M.D., chairperson, has been hampered in its work by the onagain, off-again target date for the next decennial conference. Congress has authorized a White House Conference on Aging in 1994, and it is hoped that there will be renewed efforts in the executive branch to meet that target. The functions of the task force include the following. 1 . Prepare for the White House Conference on Aging by providing the framework for a mini-conference on mental health and the elderly before the White House conference. 2. Prepare recommendations for an APA report to the White House Conference on Aging regarding action on issues affecting the mentally ill elderly and the mental health of the well elderly. 3. Seek outside funding where necessary and appropriate to support the mini-conference. Dr. Finkel, together with council member Donald Hay, M.D., joined with representatives of psychology, social work, and nursing to develop an agenda for a mental health mini-conference to be held before the next White House Conference on Aging. With support from NIMH, representatives of the four disciplines met twice in Washington to review the record of the last White House Conference on Aging (in 1981) and to prepare a paper for NIMH on the progress toward meeting the mental health goals adopted at that conference. This paper was submitted to NIMH in August 1993 and provides guidance for representatives of the mental health care community in developing an agenda for the next White House Conference on Aging. The Jack Weinberg Memorial Award Board, chaired by council vice-chairperson Gabe Maletta, M.D., awarded the Jack Weinberg Memorial Award in Geriatric Psychiatry for I 993 to Jerome Yesavage, M.D. Dr. Yesavage is the immediate past chairperson ofthe council and did much during his tenure to shape the current structure and direction of the council and its components.