Suicide Rates Are Growing With Frederick’s Population and Public Funding Can’t Keep Up

by Elizabeth Atwood Comment Closed
By Logan Samuels The Frederick County Board of Health and Mental Hygiene wants to focus on treatment and research for specific health issues, but budgeting for the public health system prevents this. Frederick County Health Officer Dr. Barabara Brookmyer explained that a hot topic issue in Frederick is the suicide rate. For the last 12 years, Frederick County has had a higher suicide death rate than the state. Henry Westray, Jr., the former chair of the Governor’s Commission on Suicide Prevention, said that Governor Martin O’Malley established an executive order to focus on suicide awareness and prevention as a severe health issue in 2009. For three years, the Governor’s Commission on Suicide actively fought to establish services, hotlines, plans, support groups, and advocacy groups for at-risk groups. There are various Maryland based foundations and groups that focus on suicide prevention and intervention like the Mental Health Association of Maryland, the National Alliance on Mental Illness: Maryland and the American Foundation for Suicide: Maryland. O’Malley planned to...
Read More

Sen. Ronald Young Pushes New Lyme disease Bill After Reports of Multiple False Negative Test Results

by CMA 303 Comment Closed
By Logan Samuels The Senate Finance Committee voted in favor of a bill requiring healthcare providers to notify patients of the possibility that their negative Lyme disease report could be false. On March 17, a bill supported by Senator Ronald Young concerning laboratory tests for Lyme disease came to the floor of the Senate Finance Committee. In light of reports of various false negative Lyme disease test results in the past, this bill asked healthcare providers to notify all of their patients of the chance that their test results might not be accurate. When a medical provider decides there is a need for Lyme disease testing, a patient undergoes an initial blood test. If the results of this test are positive, the patient undergoes a second blood test. What this bill brings to focus is the fact that while many patients test negative for the first test, many of those negative results are false. Due to this common occurrence, many patients are already carrying...
Read More