USA Today (10/3, Szabo) reported that “23 mental health groups,” including the American Psychiatric Association, “are calling on Congress to pass legislation aimed at repairing the USA’s broken mental health system.” Last Thursday, “the groups delivered a letter” to leaders of the House of Representatives “hours before the attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. left 10 people dead.” In the letter, which the APA helped co-author, APA president Renée Binder, MD, asked, “How many more reminders do we need that mental health has to be a high priority?” Dr. Binder added, “This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. This is an American issue.”

Related Links:

— “Groups call on Congress to reform mental health system,” Liz Szabo, USA Today, October 2, 2015.

The Washington Post (10/3, Dennis) “To Your Health” blog wrote that some academics now contend that gun violence should be considered “a public health crisis.” For example, “US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has referred to the problem as a health epidemic.” Last Thursday, following the mass shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR, President Obama “lamented ‘a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.’”

Related Links:

— “Why we should think of gun violence as a disease, and study it accordingly,” Brady Dennis, Washington Post, October 2, 2015.

HealthDay (10/2, Preidt) reports a new study indicates “early exposure to secondhand smoke may lead to behavioral problems in children.” The study by the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris “analyzed data from more than 5,200 primary school students in France and found that those exposed to secondhand smoke while in the womb and/or at a young age were at higher risk for behavioral problems, particularly emotional and conduct disorders.” The study was published online in PLoS One.

Related Links:

— “Secondhand Smoke Linked to Behavior Issues in Kids,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, October 1, 2015.

On the CBS Evening News (10/1, story 6, 1:15, Pelley) in response to yesterday’s shootings at Umpqua College in Roseburg, OR, CBS News chief medical correspondent Jonathan LaPook, MD was shown saying that “when it comes to mental illness, early intervention works.” However, “the big problem in the US and elsewhere is access to care.” A new pilot program started this past May at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC is “training the pediatricians” and “schools to evaluate” troubled “kids via tele-medicine.” As it happens, “only 10 percent of the time do those kids then need to be seen face to face by the psychiatrist.” To date, “there are a total of 17 such programs in the” US, all of which operate under the premise that “early intervention, increased access to care, and maybe treating [kids] earlier will make a big difference.”

Related Links:

— “Mass shootings and the mental health connection,” Jonathan Lapook, CBS News, October 1, 2015.

The New York Times (10/1, A23, Carey, Subscription Publication) reports, “Medical literature has overstated the benefits of talk therapy for depression, in part because studies with poor results have rarely made it into journals,” according to a review published Sept. 30 in PLOS One. For the study, researchers “tracked down all the grants funded by the National Institutes of Health to test talk therapy for depression from 1972 to 2008.”

On its “All Things Considered” program and in its “Shots” blog, NPR (10/1, Hamilton) reports that “results from nearly a quarter of” 55 “trials were never published.” When the review’s authors included those results, they “found that the apparent effectiveness was inflated by publication bias.” That bias “may have led psychiatrists and psychologists to be too optimistic about both talk therapy and drug treatment…says” one of the study’s authors.

Related Links:

— “Effectiveness of Talk Therapy Is Overstated, a Study Says,” Benedict Carey, New York Times, September 30, 2015.

The Fox News (9/30) website reports that whether teenagers “who are allowed to drink alcohol at home go on to have negative involvement with alcohol is dependent on the family structure,” according to the results of a 772-participant study conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions. The study found that adolescents “from intact families that were allowed to drink at home had the lowest levels of alcohol use and problems,” whereas “teens who lived in non-intact family environments, and were allowed to drink at home, had the highest levels of negative alcohol involvement.”

Related Links:

— “Study finds family structure plays role in adolescents’ future alcohol attitudes,” Fox News, September 30, 2015.

HealthDay (10/1, Dotinga) reports that a “report [pdf] released Sept. 30 by the US National Center for Health Statistics compares suicide rates among those aged 18 to 24 in various racial and ethnic groups,” revealing that “young adult Native Americans continue to be at a much higher risk of killing themselves than other racial or ethnic groups in the” US. According to the report’s findings, “Native Americans ranked the highest overall, at 23 suicides per 100,000 people, followed by whites (15), Asians and blacks (about nine), and Hispanics (just over eight).”

Related Links:

— “Younger Native Americans Face High Suicide Rate: Report,” Randy Dotinga, HealthDay, September 30, 2015.

TIME (10/1, Sifferlin) reports that according to a study published online Sept. 30 in JAMA Psychiatry, “people who are depressed and respond strongly to placebo treatments also reap the most benefit when they’re given real antidepressants.” For the study, investigators “focused on the mu-opioid system in the brain,” having “35 people with major depressive disorder take a new depression drug (which was actually a placebo) before taking drugs already proven to treat depression.” The study revealed that people “who reported the greatest improvement in depression symptoms after taking placebo pills also showed the greatest mu-opioid system response in the brain, which was determined through brain scans.”

Related Links:

— “The Fascinating Link Between Placebo and Antidepressants,” Alexandra Sifferlin, Time, September 30, 2015.

The Kaiser Health News (9/30, Andrews) reports that according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Criminal Justice at New York University School of Law, “at least 35 states authorize copayments and other fees for medical services at state prisons or county jails.” Additionally, “the Federal Bureau of Prisons also permits inmates to be charged copayments for medical services.” Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior counsel at the Brennan Center’s justice program, says “the practice is part of a larger trend of charging inmates for prison services.”

Related Links:

— “Prisons And Jails Forcing Inmates To Cover Some Medical Care Costs,” Michelle Andrews, Kaiser Heath News, September 29, 2015.

On its front page, the Washington Post (9/30, A1, Jouvenal) examines the plight of inmates with mental illnesses, who “are being warehoused for weeks, months and, in rare cases, years in jails around the nation, waiting to go to state mental hospitals where experts determine whether they are well enough to stand trial and treat those who aren’t.” The Post notes that advocates “say the delays are leaving vulnerable defendants to languish, sometimes with tragic results.”

Related Links:

— “Man accused of stealing $5 in snacks died in jail as he waited for space at mental hospital,” Justin Jouvenal, Washington Post, September 29, 2015.