The Washington Post (1/16, Blakemore) reports, “Military members and their families have unique mental health needs,” but research indicates that “up to 35 percent of military recipients don’t have access to adequate psychiatric care despite government insurance that covers such services.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after examining “39,487 U.S. Zip codes with at least one beneficiary of Tricare, the Defense Department health-care program that covers uniformed service members, retirees and their families,” then combining “data from a variety of federal sources with community information.” The findings were published online Jan. 3 in JAMA Network Open.

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

According to Kaiser Health News (1/13, Larson), Montana state “lawmakers from both parties have shown support for a plan to stop the practice of committing people with Alzheimer’s disease, other types of dementia, or traumatic brain injuries” (TBI) “without their consent to the troubled Montana State Hospital and instead direct them to treatment in their communities.” However, “a budget estimate attached to the proposed legislation raises questions about whether Montana communities, many of which are still reeling from past budget cuts and insufficient Medicaid reimbursement rates, will have the capacity to care for them by July 2025, when involuntary commitments would cease under the plan.”

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— “Ending Involuntary Commitments Would Shift Burden of Dementia Care to Strapped Communities ” Keely Larson, Kaiser Health News, January 13, 2023

NPR (1/16, Chatterjee) reports, “The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline received over 1.7 million calls, texts and chats in its first five months,” a figure that is “nearly half a million more than the old 10-digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline fielded during the same period the year before.” According to federal data “the Lifeline responded to 154,585 more contacts – including calls, text messages and chats – in November 2022 than the same month the year before,” and “the average wait time to speak to a counselor also fell – from close to three minutes in November 2021, to 36 seconds last November.”

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— “988 Lifeline sees boost in use and funding in first months “Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, January 16, 2023

HealthIT Security (1/12, McKeon) reports, “Cloud adoption has been on the rise in the healthcare sector for years for good reason as more organizations lean into digital transformation.” However, “despite rapid adoption, cloud technologies are not immune to security threats,” as “data from Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) company Netskope” revealed that “more than 400 distinct cloud applications delivered malware in 2022.” The report noted, “Cloud malware delivery increased in 2022 after having remained constant in 2021, caused by an increase in the total number of apps abused to deliver malware and the quantity of malware downloads coming from the most popular apps.”

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— “Cybersecurity Risks Spike Within Cloud-Based Apps, Report Shows ” Jill McKeon, HealthIT Security , January 12, 2023

mHealth Intelligence (1/12, Melchionna) reports, “Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Fair Health Monthly Telehealth Regional tracker reported that telehealth use fell nationally and in every US census region last October, except usage in the Northeast.” The tracker found that “nationally, telehealth use dropped 3.7 percent, from 5.4 percent of medical claim lines in September to 5.2 percent in October.” Furthermore, “at the national level and in most regions, COVID-19 diagnoses fell,” while “acute respiratory diseases and infections rose in the diagnoses rankings.”

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— “New Data Shows Telehealth Usage Drops by 4% Nationally Mark Melchionna” , mHealth Intelligence, January 12, 2023

Bloomberg (1/11, Pham) reports, “The effects of long COVID tend to resolve within a year of mild infection, with vaccinated people at lower risk of breathing difficulties compared with unvaccinated people, according to a study” in which “researchers examined the health records of almost 2 million people in Israel who tested for COVID-19 over a 19-month period.” More than “70 long COVID conditions were analyzed within a group of infected and matched uninfected members.”

NBC News (1/11, Edwards) reports “symptoms – such as chest pain, cough, muscle aches and hair loss – tended to fade away within a year.” The findings were published in The BMJ.

CNN (1/11, LaMotte) reports, “Only slight differences appeared between men and women in the study, but children had fewer early symptoms than adults, which were mostly gone by year’s end.”

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— “Long Covid Study Shows Symptoms Fading for Mild Infections “Lisa Pham, Bloomberg, January 11, 2023

Psychiatric News (1/11) reports, “Children with a family history of schizophrenia who have early deficits in ‘set shifting,’” that is, “the ability to fluidly move from one cognitive task to another,” may “be at increased risk for psychotic experiences in later childhood compared with children who have similar deficits but no family history of schizophrenia,” researchers concluded in a study that “assessed neurocognition in 449 children aged seven years who were participants in the Danish High Risk and Resilience Study – a prospective cohort study of children who have at least one biological parent with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis, bipolar disorder, or neither diagnosis.” The findings were published online Dec. 22 in the Schizophrenia Bulletin.

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— “Cognitive Deficits in Early Childhood Linked to Later Psychotic Experiences, Psychiatric News, January 11, 2023

Medscape (1/11, Yasgur, Subscription Publication) reports, “Sleep complaints by patients with a major depressive episode (MDE) may be a red flag signaling a higher risk for developing other psychiatric disorders,” investigators concluded after studying “three-year incidence rates of psychiatric disorders in almost 3000 patients experiencing an MDE.” The study revealed that “having a history of difficulty falling asleep, early morning awakening, and hypersomnia increased risk for incident psychiatric disorders.” The findings were published online Dec. 21 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

MedPage Today (1/10, George) reports, “Moderate-to-severe hearing loss was linked with a higher prevalence of dementia,” researchers concluded in “a cross-sectional study of Medicare beneficiaries.” In the 2,413-older adult study, “dementia prevalence among people with moderate-to-severe hearing loss was higher than it was among people with normal hearing.” Additionally, in “people with moderate-to-severe hearing loss…hearing aid use was associated with a lower prevalence of dementia compared with no hearing aid use.” The findings were published online in a research letter in JAMA.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

mHealth Intelligence (1/10, Melchionna) reports a study “found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a significant increase in using telehealth to treat mental health conditions, alongside a decrease in in-person service use.” For the study published online in JAMA Health Forum, investigators “analyzed data on 5.1 million commercially insured adults” from “Jan. 5 and Dec. 21, 2020,” and then “calculated the per-week use of mental health services per 10,000 beneficiaries across five psychiatric diagnostic categories: major depressive disorder (MDD), anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, adjustment disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

Related Links:

— “Telehealth Offset Declines in In-Person Mental Healthcare in 2020 “Mark Melchionna, mHealth Intelligence, January 10, 2023