be exempt from testing all their ingredients, for not setting lead or pesticide limits in
supplements, and for a range of other holes and loopholes.
GMPs for dietary supplements don’t guarantee safety. Ingredients can still have side effects and
unknown long-term effects, interact with drugs and be dangerous if you have certain medical
conditions. They have nothing to do with whether a product “works.” And the GMPs do not
change how dietary supplements are labeled. Unlike labels on drugs, those on supplements
still need not list any precautions, contraindications or possible interactions -- another reason
for this outline.
MHA AND CAM
MHA has long advocated a recovery and wellness approach to mental health conditions. In June
of 2007 the National Mental Health Association was renamed Mental Health America (MHA),
reflecting an intention to develop and implement new strategies to engage the general public in
a holistic approach to health, which fully embraces the centrality of mental health to overall
health.
The concept of wellness recognized by the 2007 changes to the MHA mission statement
represents a new policy direction for MHA, which broadens the organization's role to advocacy
of the health promoting measures that American society desperately needs to respond to the
challenges of modern life and its multiple threats to our health and well-being. MHA believes
that the concept of wellness is closely tied to the concept of recovery from mental health
conditions, and that many of the strategies and tactics that are used to maintain good health
also are useful in negotiating recovery from the disability associated with a chronic illness -
including mental health and substance use conditions.
These recovery and wellness approaches are documented in MHA’s policies^27 and form the core
of MHA’s overall effort to reframe mental health as an issue of central concern to all of