The NPR (5/3, Pauly) “Shots” blog reported that under both the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity Act, “health insurance companies are required to provide mental health coverage if they cover physical illnesses.” Not included under ACA or MHPA is travel insurance, however. Linda Kundell, a spokesperson for the United States Travel Insurance Association, pointed out that “travel insurance policies typically only cover common risks in order to keep costs down.” She said, “If insurance companies take on added risk, it raises the cost of premium for consumers.”

Related Links:

— “Don’t Count On Travel Insurance To Cover Mental Health,” Megan Pauly, National Public Radio, May 2, 2014.

The CBS Evening News (5/4, story 6, 2:00, Glor) reported, “A new study based on data from the Centers for Disease Control says hundreds of thousands of kids who say they are the victims of bullying are bringing some kind of weapon to school.” CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann explained, “The report analyzes the detailed survey of 15,000 high-school students who were asked questions about bullying.” The CDC survey revealed not only that one in five high-school students reported being the victim of a bully within the past year, but also that “an estimated 250,000 bullying victims were carrying guns, knives and clubs to school within the last 30 days of the survey being conducted.”

The NBC News (5/5, Briggs) website reported that “bullied students who have endured four types of aggressive clashes at school — being verbally tormented, sustaining a physical assault, suffering personal property theft or damage, and cutting school due to safety concerns — are nearly 49 times more likely to have recently carried a weapon to school and 34 times more likely to have carried a gun within the past 30 days.” Also covering the story are the CBS News (5/5, Strassmann) website and HealthDay (5/5, Preidt).

Related Links:

— “Bullied Students Sneak Thousands of Guns Into Schools,” Bill Briggs, , May 2, 2014.

Reuters (5/4, Kelland) reported that according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and scheduled for presentation this past weekend at the annual meeting of the Pediatrics Academic Societies, environmental factors may be at least as important as genetics when it comes to autism. For the study, researchers analyzed data on two million youngsters born in Sweden between the years 1982 and 2006. Of those children, 14,516 were diagnosed with autism.

HealthDay (5/4) reported that researchers also found that “children with brothers or sisters who had previously been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum had a 10-fold higher risk for being diagnosed with the disorder themselves.”

Related Links:

— “Environment as important as genes in autism, study finds,” Kate Kelland, Reuters, May 3, 2014.

Medscape (5/4, Brooks) reports that according to a study presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, “Instagram, the popular picture-based social media platform with more than 80 million users, contains ‘alarming’ prosuicidal or self-harm images, despite its stated policy against such content.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after having conducted “a search on Instagram using the search term, ‘hashtag suicide’ (#suicide), and analyzed the content of the first 60 images and quotes they found.” Investigators discovered that 27% of the images “had either a prosuicide (15%) or pro-self-harm (12%) theme, and none of them identified mental health resources or help.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (5/2, Dotinga) reports that according to a review published online April 30 in the journal BMJ Open, “overweight teens are likely to feel stigmatized, isolated and even bullied for their size.” After reviewing “30 studies that surveyed teens in the United Kingdom (aged 12 to 18) about weight issues,” researchers concluded that “approaches that merely educate and admonish individuals about lifestyles and being overweight are not only insufficient but also potentially counterproductive.”

Related Links:

— “Overweight Teens Feel Stigmatized, Bullied: Study,” , HealthDay, May 1, 2014.

HealthDay (5/2, Preidt) reports that according to the results of a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and presented at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry’s annual meeting, “health, money and family problems – not depression – are the main factors that trigger thoughts of death and suicide among elderly Americans.” The study, which included “nearly 3,500 New York City residents, aged 65 to 75, found that factors other than depression were responsible for thoughts of death and suicide 75 percent of the time.”

Related Links:

— “When Older Adults Consider Suicide, Depression May Not Be Main Reason,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 1, 2014.

USA Today (5/2, Painter) reports that according to a study published online May 1 in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry, “detailed, high-profile newspaper stories about individual suicides may have played a role in creating suicide clusters among young people, at least in the 1980s and 1990s.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after having collected and then analyzed “information on 48 communities where clusters of suicides in youths ages 13 to 20 occurred between 1988 and 1996.” An editorial accompanying the study suggests that “an obvious next step is looking at whether discussions of suicide in social media might lead to copycat cases.”

Related Links:

— “Newspaper coverage linked with youth suicide clusters,” Kim Painter, USA Today, May 1, 2014.

The Wall Street Journal (5/1, A17, Vilensky, Subscription Publication) reports that an anonymous current student at Princeton University has filed a lawsuit that has broad implications for US colleges dealing with students who attempt suicide. The suit claims that Princeton violated the student’s rights under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and the Americans with Disabilities Act in that the university did not provide reasonable accommodation for his mental illness.

Related Links:

— “Suicide Suit Involving Princeton Is ‘Bellwether’,” Mike Vilensky, Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2014.

On its front page, the Boston Globe (4/28, Matchan) reports on the “emerging — and vocal — movement of suicide-attempt survivors who are stepping out of the shadows and speaking out about their experiences.” In so doing, attempt survivors hope to address the social stigma surrounding suicide and encourage more potentially suicidal people to get help. The Globe profiles several such attempt survivors who are now sharing their stories.

Related Links:

— “Suicide-attempt survivors go public in hope of aiding many at risk,” Linda Matchan, Boston Globe, April 29, 2014.

The Kaiser Health News (4/26, Gillespie) “Capsules” blog reported that “a push for new funding – and the use of existing funds – may soon make more resources available to help identify” veterans needing “help with depression or other mental illness through the National Council for Behavioral Health’s ‘Mental Health First Aid training.’”

NCBH, along with other groups advocating for those with mental illnesses, is “seeking part of the at least $15 million allocated to train first responders, which include police, nurses and college administrators, to identify the warning signs of mental illness among veterans, teaching ‘de-escalation’ techniques and referring people at risk to” mental healthcare professionals.

Related Links:

— “First-Aid Training For Mental Health Could Aid At-Risk Veterans,” Lisa Gillespie, Kaiser Health News, April 26, 2014.