Stateline (4/9) reports that more than half a million US adults “who said they wanted help with their serious mental conditions last year couldn’t get it because they lacked the resources and weren’t eligible for Medicaid to pay for treatment, a new study finds.” Those “people — an estimated 568,886 adults ages 18 through 64 diagnosed with a serious mental illness, serious psychological stress or substance use disorder at the start of last year — lived in 24 states that didn’t expand Medicaid” under the ACA, according to the study released this week by the American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA).

Related Links:

— “Wanting Mental Health Treatment and Not Getting It,”Michael Ollove, The Pew Charitable Trusts, April 08, 2015.

HealthDay (4/9, Preidt) reports that a study published online April 8 in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that “black women are much less likely to report suffering from depression than white women are.” After culling “responses from more than 1,400 black women and more than 340 white women who took part in a national survey,” researchers found that “only 10 percent of black women reported struggling with the mental health disorder at some point in their lives, compared with 21 percent of white women.”

Related Links:

— “Black Women Less Likely to Struggle With Depression Than Whites: Survey,”Robert Preidt, HealthDay, April 08, 2015.

The Washington Post (4/8, Ingraham) “Wonkblog” reported that a study published online April 8 in the journal Behavioral Sciences and the Law suggests that approximately “22 million Americans – 8.9 percent of the adult population– have impulsive anger issues and easy access to guns.” For purposes of the study, anger is defined as “explosive, uncontrollable rage, as measured by responses to the National Comorbidity Survey Replication in the early 2000s.”

MSNBC (4/9, Richinick) reports that the study authors “are calling for tighter gun-control laws.” Their study is “based on analysis of interviews with 5,000 adults between 2001 and 2003.”

According to the Los Angeles Times (4/9, Healy) “Science Now” blog, “The findings…suggest that measures to reduce gun injuries and deaths should focus less on diagnosed mental illness and more on a history of violent behavior.”

Related Links:

— “Nearly 1 in 10 Americans have severe anger issues and access to guns,”Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post, April 08, 2015.

On its front page, the New York Times (4/9, Shear, Subscription Publication) reports that “President Obama this week will call for an end to…psychiatric therapies aimed at ‘repairing’ gay, lesbian and transgender youth, White House officials said.” The Times adds that “in a statement that was to be posted on Wednesday evening…Mr. Obama condemned the psychiatric practice, sometimes called ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapy, which is supported by some socially conservative organizations and religious” physicians.

The Los Angeles Times (4/9, Parker) reports, “The stance came in response to an online petition with more than 120,000 signatures seeking a ban on such therapy.”

TIME (4/9) reports, “By taking a stance on the practice…the Administration is following the recommendations by a number of major medical institutions.”

The AP (4/9, Pace) reports that “the American Psychiatric Association has long opposed conversion therapy, which the organization says is based on the assumption that homosexuality is a mental disorder.”

Related Links:

— “Obama Calls for End to ‘Conversion’ Therapies for Gay and Transgender Youth,”Michael Shear, The New York Times, April 08, 2015.

In an op-ed for USA Today (4/3, Robbins), James Robbins discusses a study published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, which “disrupts the conventional wisdom” that suicide rates among current and former servicemembers are the result of stress from war. The study, which examined the association between suicide and deployment, determined that “there was no increased risk of suicide among those who had deployed to war zones,” according to Robbins, who added that such an association “appears to be a myth.” After noting CDC figures that the suicide rate for 25 to 34-year-old men out of uniform is higher than that of servicemembers, Robbins concludes that the increase in military suicides is likely part of an increase in suicide rates across demographics.

Related Links:

— “Robbins: Military suicide notions marked by myths,” James S. Robbins, USA Today, April 2, 2015.

Coverage of the Germanwings crash investigation continued, focusing primarily on word from investigators that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz planned in advance to crash the jet and researched suicide and cockpit doors in the days before the crash.

Alex Marquardt reported on ABC World News (4/2, story 5, 1:30, Muir) that Lubitz “may have been planning his deadly flight for days. German investigators revealing a search of the co-pilot’s tablet computer shows that in the week before the crash, he had researched medical treatments, suicide methods, and information on cockpit door security.”

USA Today (4/3, Onyanga-Omara) reports that yesterday, “Germany announced the creation of a task force to examine what went wrong and consider whether changes are needed regarding cockpit doors, how pilots pass medical evaluations and how companies recognize psychological problems in employees.”

Related Links:

— “Co-pilot studied suicide methods, cockpit security,” Jane Onyanga-Omara, USA Today, April 2, 2015.

Employers Face Difficulty Balancing Need For Safety Against Employees’ Privacy Rights. Focusing on patient confidentiality, the CBS Evening News (4/1, story 7, 2:15, Pelley) reported that in the US, “45 states have laws requiring or permitting mental health professionals to disclose if they believe a patient is dangerous.” CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues explained, however that even though “some privacy advocates agree that there are cases where warning law enforcement is necessary…they worry about a chilling effect on patients.” Chad Marlow, of the American Civil Liberties Union, was shown saying, “You might deter people from seeking mental health services in order to avoid disclosing things they want to keep private.” Meanwhile, “here in the US,” according to Pegues, “the Federal Aviation Administration mandates that airline pilots self-report mental health issues,” but “the FAA says it’s too early to discuss whether the protocols will be strengthened.”

In an article on the difficulties of balancing employers’ and the general public’s needs for safety against employees’ privacy rights and ability to work without suffering from the stigma of having a mental health disorder, the Wall Street Journal (4/2, Silverman, Feintzeig, Subscription Publication) reports that forensic psychiatrist Steven Hoge, MD, who chairs the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Psychiatry and the Law, explained that under certain limited circumstances, management can give orders to employees to undergo mental-health evaluations as a condition of keeping their employment.

Related Links:

— “After Airline Tragedy, New Focus on Mental Health at Work,” RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN and RACHEL FEINTZEIG, Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2015.

USA Today (4/2, Zoroya) reports that a “massive study” conducted by the Defense Department’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and published online April 1 in JAMA Psychiatry suggests there is “no link between being deployed in or near a war zone and a high risk of suicide.” Researchers, who focused on “3.9 million US troops who served during the first six years after” the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, “found almost no difference between the suicide rates of those who deployed versus those who did not.”

The New York Times (4/2, A15, Philipps, Subscription Publication) reports that the study “also tracked suicides of military personnel after they left the military, by linking records kept by the Pentagon and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” The authors of the study and other experts “cautioned, however, that the findings do not rule out combat exposure as a reason for the increase in suicides, adding that more information was needed.” Michael Schoenbaum, “a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health who led a 2014 study on suicides in the Army,” said, “You can be deployed without being in combat.” He added, “This data set wasn’t able to sort people by their exposure to the physical acts of war. That is the next step.”

Related Links:

— “Study: No link between suicide and serving in or near war zones,” Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, April 1, 2015.

The Hill (4/1, Carney) reports that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) has introduced a bill “to strengthen veterans’ mental healthcare by making it easier to get help outside of the Department of Veterans Affairs.” The measure “would amend the Veterans’ Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, to allow veterans access to non-VA mental healthcare if they can show the agency is not giving them ‘adequate or timely’ care.” In addition, the proposed legislation would “roll back a requirement that veterans must live more than 40 miles away from a VA facility or have waited longer than 30 days before accessing non-VA mental healthcare.”

Related Links:

— “Ernst offers bill to improve veterans’ access to mental healthcare,” Jordain Carney, The Hill, March 32, 2015.

Medscape (4/1, Johnson) reports that research indicates that “the risk for suicide and accidental death is higher in the first year after a diagnosis of prostate cancer than other cancers.” While “the risk for suicide is not higher overall…it is during the first year, ‘specifically in men who are not treated,’ said investigator Christian Meyer, MD.” The “finding comes from an analysis of diagnosis data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database, presented…at the European Association of Urology 30th Annual Congress.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)