Revisiting Health Care Equity
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
Medscape, WebMD, AJPH, Sigma XI, Smithsonian, The Atlantic Magazine, and the Journal of the Academy of Medicine are among the many scientific and medical journals speaking out about the untoward influence of transactional money exchange on health, longevity, and quality of life. Meredith E. Ganser M.D. explores the ICD 11 Gaming Addiction Diagnosis with its implications and surrounding issues including the DSM6-7 pending decision. Karen Dineen Wagner explores the vulnerability of adolescents to cannabis and possible adverse consequences of its legalization in the same September Issue of Psychiatric Times.
In the October issue of Psychiatric Times, Thomas R Kesten M.D. discusses the opioid epidemic in settlement and beneficiary terms indicating the role and function of big money passage in redefining justice and fairness. Allen Frances M.D. speaks to "Dungeons and Back Alleys: The Fate of the Mentally Ill in America." Perhaps the harmful effect of transactional leadership at critical levels on health and longevity, despite rhetoric can no longer be ignored.
The October issue of the American Journal of Public Health devotes itself to racial biases and health disparities..400 years since Jamestown. We note the increased mortality among black women of all ages to breast cancer. The increased mortality of metastatic brain cancer death directly related to late diagnosis of the early disease, and delayed to non-existent follow up on late stage disease.
Again, en passant suicide of black children between 5-12 years of age appears to have doubled in the last 10 years with self poisoning from camphor and rat poisons, and hanging leading the way. Self immolation appears to be a culture item so we don't see too much of that here. Although as Muslim and Hindu groups increase and self isolate, that awful statistic may rise among adults and children.
We are just beginning to understand the relevance of climate change and biodiversity to the preservation of the planet. Governmental agencies that allow the use of certain pesticides produced by big money (oil producing companies) encourage the death of honeybees and the weight loss of songbirds who can no longer sing when they lose weight. Their song is part of eons of reproduction. Again, big money transfer is responsible for episode after episode of "Too Late The Phalarope."
