Stepped Care 2.0: A Paradigm Shift in Mental Health, by Dr Peter Cornish, made a compelling argument for why the existing mental health care system has consistently struggled to meet the needs of clients from all walks of life, and laid out key principles and guidelines for how the system could be changed. But what challenges are involved in putting these ideas into practice? Stepped Care 2.0: The Power of Conundrums features essays, interviews, and arguments from a wide range of contributors who have tried to do just that. The Power of Conundrums dives deep into the practical application of the Stepped Care 2.0 model (SC2.0), looking at the ways SC2.0 has succeeded, the difficulties administrators face when implementing it, and how it could be improved. Chapters touch on topics including: the evidence for stepped care, the way SC2.0 can be stymied by the Western cultural values that dominate mental healthcare, implementation science and SC2.0, the risk paradigm and SC2.0, the model’s one-at-a-time approach to therapy, what co-design means in an SC2.0 context, a case study on how implementing SC2.0 can go wrong, the understanding of recovery put forward by the model, and how SC2.0 can work for clients experiencing complex, persistent, or chronic mental health issues. Each chapter is followed by a reflection from Cornish, and the book concludes with a roundtable discussion about how SC2.0 can evolve to meet the challenges it faces. This text brings theory and practice together by including an updated version of Stepped Care 2.0: A Paradigm Shift in Mental Health, as well as the full text of Stepped Care 2.0: The Power of Conundrums.

Look out for David Owen's next book, Where the Water Goes. The Conundrum is a mind-changing manifesto about the environment, efficiency and the real path to sustainability. Hybrid cars, fast trains, compact florescent light bulbs, solar panels, carbon offsets: Everything you've been told about living green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100 mpg car are dangerous fantasies. We are consumers, and we like to consume green and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross purposes to our true goal - living sustainably and caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem. Efforts to improve efficiency and increase sustainable development only exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve, more than negating the environmental gains. We have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption. David Owen's The Conundrum is an elegant nonfiction narrative filled with fascinating information and anecdotes takes you through the history of energy and the quest for efficiency. This is a book about the environment that will change how you look at the world. We should not be waiting for some geniuses to invent our way out of the energy and economic crisis we're in. We already have the technology and knowledge we need to live sustainably. But will we do it? That is the conundrum.

Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.

Essential reading for every American who must navigate the US health care system. Why was the Obama health plan so controversial and difficult to understand? In this readable, entertaining, and substantive book, Stuart Altman—internationally recognized expert in health policy and adviser to five US presidents—and fellow health care specialist David Shactman explain not only the Obama health plan but also many of the intriguing stories in the hundred-year saga leading up to the landmark 2010 legislation. Blending political intrigue, policy substance, and good old-fashioned storytelling, this is the first book to place the Obama health plan within a historical perspective. The authors describe the sometimes haphazard, piece-by-piece construction of the nation’s health care system, from the early efforts of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to the later additions of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. In each case, they examine the factors that led to success or failure, often by illuminating little-known political maneuvers that brought about immense shifts in policy or thwarted herculean efforts at reform. The authors look at key moments in health care history: the Hill–Burton Act in 1946, in which one determined poverty lawyer secured the rights of the uninsured poor to get hospital care; the "three-layer cake" strategy of powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills to enact Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson in 1965; the odd story of how Medicare catastrophic insurance was passed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and then repealed because of public anger in 1989; and the fact that the largest and most expensive expansion of Medicare was enacted by George W. Bush in 2003. President Barack Obama is the protagonist in the climactic chapter, learning from the successes and failures chronicled throughout the narrative. The authors relate how, in the midst of a worldwide financial meltdown, Obama overcame seemingly impossible obstacles to accomplish what other presidents had tried and failed to achieve for nearly one hundred years.

Stepped Care 2.0: A Paradigm Shift in Mental Health, by Dr Peter Cornish, made a compelling argument for why the existing mental health care system has consistently struggled to meet the needs of clients from all walks of life, and laid out key principles and guidelines for how the system could be changed. But what challenges are involved in putting these ideas into practice? Stepped Care 2.0: The Power of Conundrums features essays, interviews, and arguments from a wide range of contributors who have tried to do just that. The Power of Conundrums dives deep into the practical application of the Stepped Care 2.0 model (SC2.0), looking at the ways SC2.0 has succeeded, the difficulties administrators face when implementing it, and how it could be improved. Chapters touch on topics including: the evidence for stepped care, the way SC2.0 can be stymied by the Western cultural values that dominate mental healthcare, implementation science and SC2.0, the risk paradigm and SC2.0, the model’s one-at-a-time approach to therapy, what co-design means in an SC2.0 context, a case study on how implementing SC2.0 can go wrong, the understanding of recovery put forward by the model, and how SC2.0 can work for clients experiencing complex, persistent, or chronic mental health issues. Each chapter is followed by a reflection from Cornish, and the book concludes with a roundtable discussion about how SC2.0 can evolve to meet the challenges it faces. This text brings theory and practice together by including an updated version of Stepped Care 2.0: A Paradigm Shift in Mental Health, as well as the full text of Stepped Care 2.0: The Power of Conundrums.

Over the past seven years I've lived in more places than I can remember. I lived and worked in Shanghai, New York, Berlin, Bangkok, Munich and a few more places, not including the dozens of places I've stayed at for just a few days or weeks.While writing these lines I'm in a small town in Malaysia.I've basically lived out of a backpack for the past seven years. And the longer I'm doing this, the less stuff I need. Right now I carry less than 10 items around with me in a carry on backpack that weighs less than 10kg. I go wherever I want to go. I currently spend less than $800 a month. Including everything. My most precious possession is a $300 Acer laptop.I've started a clothing company in China, for the Chinese market, which failed miserably. I've launched more than 10 websites, some of them made some money, some of them didn't. I shut down all of them. I've written seven books (this is my eighth). None of them was a bestseller. I write a blog where I published more than 500 articles so far. I've more than 100,000 monthly readers spread across multiple platforms.I'm by no means successful. Or rich. But I have more than enough, by all means. I have access to everything I need. And I can buy and afford everything I need.I'm not a minimalist. Or a digital nomad. Or an entrepreneur. Or a blogger. Or an author.I'm mostly trying to just be myself. I'm trying to be myself in a world where it gets harder and harder every single day to just be yourself.It's not always been easy. As a matter of fact it's probably been hard more often than it's been easy. But every day of struggle and doubt has been worth it. Being yourself and creating your own life instead of just living a life is always worth the struggle.This right here is my story. This is what I've learned about life, myself and the world around me.I'm everywhere and nowhere. And I own nothing and everything...