In an opinion piece in the Arizona Republic (12/7), Gurjot K. Marwah, MD, president-elect of the Arizona Psychiatric Society, a district branch of the American Psychiatric Association, writes that “bipartisan” mental health reform legislation in the House and Senate, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR 2646) and the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015 (S.1945), would benefit Americans with mental illnesses and their families by “ensuring coordination of federal mental health resources, more strongly monitoring and enforcing the existing mental health parity law, establishing a national plan to boost the mental health workforce, and increasing research funding for the National Institute of Mental Health.”

If signed into law, “these provisions and others in the two bills will help patients and families struggling with serious mental illness, but who lack access to needed care.” Dr. Marwah called upon the political leadership in Congress to “seize this rare opportunity” to enact mental health system reform.

Related Links:

— “My Turn: Time for a new mental-health approach,” Gurjot K. Marwah, MD, AZ, Arizona Republic, December 7, 2015.

The Alaska Dispatch News (12/5, Demer) reported, “Alaska’s suicide rate of 23 for every 100,000 people in 2013 was the second highest” in the US, falling behind that of “Montana, according to data reported to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” with “young Alaska Native men” being “particularly vulnerable.” The Dispatch News explained that “a multitude of factors usually contribute to a decision to take one’s own life, not a single bad thing like a lost job or broken relationship, but also mental illness, a lack of jobs and opportunity, alcohol abuse and among Native people, cultural loss.”

Related Links:

— “In rural Alaska, a new approach to fighting suicide emerges,” Lisa Demer, Alaska Dispatch News, December 5, 2015.

In a nearly 1,200-word piece, STAT (12/5, Dolgin) reported that “a small but growing number of surgeons…are pushing to introduce formal screening tools in cosmetic surgery clinics” across the US. They argue that “psychiatric questionnaires offer a way both to protect patients from unwarranted medical treatment and to preemptively defend plastic surgeons from legal and physical attacks.” Estimates indicate that body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) may affect “up to 15 percent of patients in cosmetic surgery clinics.” While BDD “is best managed with antidepressants and talk therapy…around half of all people with BDD” instead seek “appearance-enhancing treatments.” After such treatments, “few are happy with the outcomes.”

Related Links:

— “Plastic surgeons, fearing violence, turn to psychiatry to screen patients,” Ellie Dolgin, STAT, December 4, 2015.

The Washington Times (12/7, Scarborough) reports that a new study conducted by psychologists from the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah concludes that the US military’s suicide rate “is more a generational trait than a wartime offshoot.” Researchers found that 18- to 24-year old veterans are more likely to be products of single-parent homes, have “more adverse childhood experiences,” and have “diminished social integration.”

Related Links:

— “U.S. military’s millennials at greatest risk for suicide,” Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times, December 6, 2015.

HealthDay (12/4, Thompson) reports that “mass shootings and the accompanying carnage” that happen all too often in the US now have some “mental health experts” warning of possible “major consequences for the nation’s psyche.” But, people “struggling to cope with these violent events would do well to remember that it’s still very unlikely that you or yours will become directly involved in a shooting, said” Renee Binder, MD, president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Binder suggested that people “do a reality check and consider that the chances of this happening to someone you love is still very rare.”

Related Links:

— “Making Sense of the Senseless Violence,” Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, December 3, 2015.

USA Today (12/3, Painter) reports that a study published online Dec. 2 in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that “young adults who watch a lot of TV and engage in very little exercise” may encounter problems with thinking in middle age. For the study, researchers “followed more than 3,000 people, starting at an average age of 25 and ending when they took cognitive tests 25 years later.”

The Los Angeles Times (12/3, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog reports that those individuals “who were most likely to get the lowest scores were the ones who watched the most television and the ones who got the least exercise when they were young adults,” with “extreme couch potatoes” having “the greatest risk of intellectual decline.”

Related Links:

— “Study: too much TV, too little exercise might dull young adult brains,” Kim Painter, USA Today, December 2, 2015.

Reuters (11/28, Doyle) reported a study published online Nov. 17 in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggests that Southern California high school students are increasingly using hookahs, e-cigarettes, and other alternative tobacco products, often at the same time. The study showed that around 10 percent of 11th and 12th graders used e-cigarettes or hookahs in the last 30 days.

Related Links:

— “Hookah and e-cigarettes popular with high schoolers,” Kathryn Doyle, Reuters, November 27, 2015.

HealthDay (11/25, Preidt) reported that new research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that reported alcohol consumption in the previous 30 days among women rose from about “45 percent to more than 48 percent, while it fell among men, from slightly more than 57 percent to just over 56 percent.” The investigators analyzed data from 2002 to 2012 and found that “the average number of drinking days in the past month also increased among women, from 6.8 to 7.3 days, but fell among men, from 9.9 to 9.5 days.” The findings were published online Nov. 23 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Related Links:

— “Women starting to match men’s drinking habits,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay via CBS News, November 25, 2015.

Medscape (11/27, Brauser) reports that a study suggests that “not only is major depression common in black patients, it’s also associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events.” The “analysis of more than 3000 participants from the Jackson Heart Study, which is comprised of black individuals from Jackson, Mississippi, showed that those with major depressive symptoms at baseline (22%) had almost twice the hazard of having a stroke or CHD up to 10 years later compared with those without depressive symptoms.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The Washington Examiner (11/25) reports that officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs “spent millions of taxpayer dollars promoting the Affordable Care Act to veterans who didn’t even need the coverage, but have dedicated relatively few resources to helping veterans on the agency’s long waiting list get access to their benefits, internal documents show.” Internal reports obtained by the Washington Examiner show the VA spent $6.125 million on an outreach campaign for the ACA that ended last year. An August documents “indicates the VA sent 2.8 million Affordable Care Act ‘buddy’ letters in Aug. 2013.”

By comparison, in August of this year, “the VA sent just 10,000 letters warning combat veterans that their eligibility for health care benefits was about to expire.” According to the article, many veterans with pending applications for the VA system were never told they needed to turn in their discharge papers as proof of military service.

Related Links:

— “VA spends millions promoting Obamacare, little cutting wait times,” Srah Westwood, Washington Examiner, November 24, 2015.