Reuters (9/24) reports that the American Psychiatric Association recently told regulators that mergers of major health insurers could reduce access to mental healthcare.
Related Links:
— “U.S. insurance mega mergers could hurt care: psychiatric group,” Caroline Humer, Reuters, September 24, 2015.
The Huffington Post (9/24) reports that research suggests that “white men are more likely to face depression associated with stressful life events than black men or women of any race.” The study included nearly 6,000 adults.
Related Links:
— “White Men Have Less Life Stress, But Are More Prone To Depression Because Of It,” Erin Schumaker, Huffington Post, September 23, 2015.
The Chicago Tribune (9/23) and Forbes report that the study, published online in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, used data from the United Kingdom Women’s Cohort Study, following 12,778 women age 37 to 78 over a 12-year period. The women were divided into three groups based on self-assessments of their fidgeting habits: low, middle, or high. Among the women who did not fidget, the researchers “found that women who sat for seven or more hours daily had a 30 percent increased risk of dying from any cause,” compared to those who sat less than five hours a day. Meanwhile, “middle or high fidgeters saw no increased risk.”
Related Links:
— “Fidget While You Work: It May Be Good For Your Health,” Alice G. Walton, Forbes, September 23, 2015.
Medscape (9/22, Brooks) reports that “a ‘sizable’ number of US children with mental disorders who are from low-income households do not receive federal benefits under the Social Security Administration’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.” But, “the number of these children who are receiving SSI funds is growing at a pace consistent with the mental health trends in the general population, the report indicates.”
Related Links:
— Medscape (requires login and subscription)
Reuters (9/21, Harding) reports that a study published online Sept. 21 in Pediatrics found that girls who enter puberty early are far more likely to abuse alcohol as teens if their parents don’t supervise them. Dr. Brett Laursen of Florida Atlantic University in Fort Lauderdale and colleagues followed 957 girls from a Swedish town over a four-year period.
They found that while alcohol abuse increased among all girls as they grew older, the levels of autonomy granted by parents among on-time and late-maturing girls did not correlate with the rates of alcohol abuse. However, for the early-maturing group, the latitude of autonomy was significant.
The study found that early-maturing girls with strict parents had an 84 percent increase in alcohol abuse from seventh to tenth grade, while alcohol abuse increased by 234 percent among girls given the most autonomy.
Related Links:
— “Watchful parents help early-maturing girls avoid alcohol abuse,” Anne Harding, Reuters, September 21, 2015.
The Boston Globe (9/22, Albernaz) reports that a “new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics finds the vast majority of evaluations for AD/HD adhere to best practice guidelines, suggesting kids are, by and large, being carefully diagnosed.”
Rates of AD/HD diagnoses “have risen 5 percent per year since the late 1990s” although “diagnoses involving medication have risen 7 percent since 2007, said Susanna Visser, lead author of the report and an epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.” The Globe reports that approximately 8.8 percent of kids ages 4-17 are currently diagnosed with AD/HD, and “11 percent of kids in that age range have” yet to be diagnosed.
Related Links:
— “Children being carefully evaluated for ADHD, study says,” Ami Albernaz, Boston Globe, September 21, 2015.
In an 1,800-word piece for CNN (9/23, Wallace), Kelly Wallace writes about binge drinking on college campuses. Wallace points out that “nearly 40% of college students” say they binge drank “– defined as five or more drinks at one time – in the past 30 days, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Awareness.”
The piece goes on to discuss NIAAA’s CollegeAIM, “a matrix of 60 alcohol interventions,” which NIAAA Director George Koob hopes may be a tool that is used “like a menu at a restaurant.” Koob adds, “This isn’t for students. This is for administrators who have skills in this area and want to do something about underage drinking to go into this matrix and look at what would fit their campus in particular.”
Related Links:
— “Binge drinking 101: Learning to curb the college trend,” Kelly Wallace, CNN, September 23, 2015.
TIME (9/23, Oaklander) reports that research published in The Lancet Psychiatry suggests that “simply blocking off popular routes to suicide, like erecting a fence around a cliff’s edge, can cut down on suicide deaths enormously.” The “meta-analysis…looked specifically at what the authors call ‘suicide hotspots’: sites accessible to the public and often used as a means to suicide, like bridges, cliffs, tall buildings and railroad tracks.” The researchers “analyzed 18 studies that looked at three interventions to deter suicides at hotspots.”
Related Links:
— “One Simple Way to Reduce Some Suicides by 90%,” Mandy Oaklander, Time, September 22, 2015.
WPost Praises Virginia County’s Plan To Keep Nonviolent Individuals With Mental Illness Out Of Jail.
In an editorial, the Washington Post (9/21) writes that Virginia’s Fairfax County “has a plan to establish a fledgling program, starting Jan. 1, to divert nonviolent people who have mental illness to a county-run crisis center.”
Instead of “jailing them, police officers, trained to detect the signs of mental health crises, would be able to hand them off to a team of professional staff at the center for evaluation and formulation of a treatment plan.” The Post praises such an arrangement, and cites similar models that have been successful across the country.
According to the Post, “The question is whether county officials…have the political will to shake up an entrenched system and whether they will find the dollars to do it.”
Related Links:
— “Treatment, not jail, for mentally ill people,” Washington Post, September 20, 2015.
In a more than 1,300-word article, the Wall Street Journal (9/19, A3, Kesling, Subscription Publication) outlines an independent report reviewing the VA healthcare system that was released Friday and that warns the agency needs to make substantial changes to address a number of serious problems.
According to the Washington Post (9/19, Wax-Thibodeaux) “Federal Eye” blog, the 4,000 page study by the Rand, McKinsey, and MITRE corporations “finds that VA facilities cost twice the norm for public facilities, a claim that will likely re-launch a debate about moving towards privatizing some VA services.”
Related Links: