The Hill (3/21, Marcos) “Floor Action” blog reported that the Medical Evaluation Parity for Service Members Act, introduced in the House of Representatives last week, “would require new military recruits to undergo a mental health assessment.” The two sponsors of the measure, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), “said it would help the military identify behavior issues early before they manifest into serious psychological problems like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” Companion legislation has been introduced into the Senate by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA).

Related Links:

— “Bill would require mental health evaluations of new military recruits,”Cristina Marcos, The Hill, March 20, 2015.

The AP (3/20, Warren) reports that across the US, “as police face increased scrutiny for violent encounters…many of which involve people with mental illnesses, law enforcement and advocacy groups are pointing to how the nation treats” people with mental health disorders, noting “a revolving door of emergency room visits and incarceration that they say is ineffective and costly.” While “police crisis intervention efforts and diversion courts are helpful in stemming the violence,” mental health professionals “on the front lines say states need innovative programs and more must be done to” provide preventive “care to curtail explosive moments of crisis.”

Related Links:

— “Police Shootings of Mentally Ill Reveal Gaps in Care,”David Warren, AP, March 19, 2015.

The Los Angeles Times (3/20, Zarembo) “Science Now” blog reports that a study published online March 19 in the journal European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry suggests that “California high school students who have a parent in the military are far more likely than those from civilian families to have recently attempted suicide,” with “11.7%” of those students saying they had tried to commit suicide within the past year. The study’s “findings are based on a survey of ninth and 11th graders at 261 schools across the state” and include data “collected in 2012 and 2013.” The study takes into account only attempted suicides, not completed ones.

Related Links:

— “Military children more likely to have a history of suicide attempts,”Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2015.

HealthDay (3/20, Reinberg) reports that a study published online March 19 in the American Journal of Public Health suggests that “children conceived through assisted reproductive technology [ART], such as in vitro fertilization, are twice as likely to have autism as those conceived without assistance.” Investigators “only found an association, which may be explained by multiple births and other risks, not the infertility treatment itself, experts said.”

Medical Daily (3/20, Dovey) reports, “The study is the largest to date to investigate the relationship between ART and autism, and involved 5,926,251 live births, including 48,865 infants conceived via ART and 32,922 cases of autism diagnosed by the [California] Department of Developmental Services.” The article also points out, “Individuals with autism are categorized with social impairments and behavioral patterns, according to the National Institutes of Health.”

Related Links:

— “IVF Kids May Have Higher Odds of Autism, Study Finds,”Steven Reinberg, HealthDay, March 19, 2015.

The Los Angeles Times (3/20, Kaplan) reports that a study published in the March issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, a publication of the CDC, suggests that “jobless adults under 25 were three times more likely to be depressed than their counterparts with jobs.” About “12% of Americans between ages 18 and 25 were deemed to be depressed based on their answers to eight questions that were part of a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.” However, “within this age group, those who were unemployed were 3.17 times more likely to be depressed than their counterparts with jobs.”

Related Links:

— “For younger adults, unemployment may triple the risk of depression,”Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2015.

Congressional Quarterly (3/18, Attias, Subscription Publication) reported that Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-CT) are both working to revive legislation to “overhaul the mental health system.” Both the senator and congressman are working to address points of contention, such as the “provision in the House bill from the 113th Congress that required a state to have an assisted outpatient treatment law — or a law that allows court-ordered treatment for certain people with serious mental illness while living in a community — to receive money through a block grant for community mental health services.” Both the senator and congressman have the goal of having both the Senate and House bills “introduced together, or at least close to the same time.”

HealthDay (3/19, Preidt) reports that a study published online in the journal Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice suggests that “depression in fathers may be linked to anxiety and bad behavior in toddlers.” After looking at “200 couples with three-year-olds,” researchers “found that depression in either the mother or father during the first years of parenting increased a toddler’s risk of anxiety, sadness, hitting and lying.”

Related Links:

— “Dad’s Depression Affects Toddler’s Behavior, Too,”Robert Preidt, HealthDay, March 18, 2015.

The Los Angeles Times (3/19, Healy) “Science Now” blog reports that a study published online March 18 in the journal Neurology “distills a way for physicians and their patients, in the course of a regular office visit, to measure an individual’s risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, or MCI.” The study found that “in a population of 1,449 Minnesotans 70 to 89 years old, the resulting algorithm helped identify individuals whose scores were in the top 25% and who were more than seven times more likely to develop MCI than those in the bottom quartile of risk.” An accompanying editorial by Alzheimer’s researcher Dr. Timo Grimmer and cognitive neuroscientist Alan B. Zonderman, of the National Institutes of Health, “said the study offers physicians and their patients some key guidance on how to lower risk of dementia, starting in midlife: for women, avoid or stop smoking, and for men, stay trim.”

Related Links:

— “Measuring dementia risk: Now there’s a number for that, too,”Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2015.

Reuters (3/17, Hirschler) reported on a venture capital fund, the Global Dementia Discovery Fund, established to research novel ways to prevent and treat dementia. The fund, which has the backing of the UK government and some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Biogen Idec, has so far raised $100 million. The fund is the first of its kind to support dementia research. The AP (3/18, Johnson) and the Telegraph (UK) (3/18, Roland) also report on the story.

Related Links:

— “Dementia drug research aided by $100 million venture capital fund,”Ben Hirschler, Reuters, March 17, 2015.

The CBS News (3/18, Firger) website reports that a study published online March 16 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine compares “suicide rates in the workplace to those outside the job,” finding that “between 2003 and 2010, 1,719 people in the US committed suicide at work.” In that same time frame, “a total of 207,500 committed suicide outside the workplace.”

Newsweek (3/17, Kutner) reported that investigators “with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used federal occupational injury databases to determine the rate at which people died by suicide while at their places of work, between 2003 and 2010.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide in the workplace: Which professions are high risk?,”Jessica Firger, The CBS News, March 17, 2015.