Forbes (4/7, Blanding) reports that “a 2013 survey by the American Psychiatric Association found that one-third of working Americans experienced chronic work stress, while only 36 percent reported their employers provided adequate support to manage it.” Meanwhile, “according to the National Institute of Mental Health, some 6.7 percent of American adults experience ‘major depressive disorder.” Some companies are now being “proactive about integrating mental health into their wellness programs alongside physical health,” either through Employee Assistance Programs or by changing corporate culture to integrate “life management programs with mental health.”

Related Links:

— “Will The Germanwings Crash Affect How Employers Approach Mental Health?,”Michael Blanding, Forbes, April 06, 2015.

USA Today (4/7, Zoroya) reports that a RAND survey published online April 6 in the journal Spirituality in Clinical Practice suggests that “chaplains who are part of the Army’s first line of defense against suicide say they need more training in how to prevent soldiers from killing themselves.” After conducting the “online survey of about 4,900 Army chaplains and chaplain assistants and bas[ing] their results on validated responses from about 1,500,” researchers also found that “chaplains and chaplain assistants hold some of the same negative views about therapy that often discourage soldiers from seeing a behavioral health specialist.”

Related Links:

— “Army chaplains need training to help suicidal soldiers,”Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, April 06, 2015.

The Baltimore Sun (4/6) “Maryland Politics” blog reports that Maryland state senators “approved legislation Monday night imposing a moratorium on the sale of powdered alcohol for the next two years.” Health officials have said the product “poses a danger because of its potency and the possibility it could be mixed with alcoholic beverages instead of with water.”

Related Links:

— “Senators approve ban on powdered alcohol sales,”Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun, April 06, 2015.

The New York Times (4/7, D4, Goode, Subscription Publication) reports that in wake of the March 24 Germanwings crash, “studies over the last decades have begun to piece together characteristics that many who carry out such violence seem to share, among them a towering narcissism, a strong sense of grievance and a desire for infamy.” James L. Knoll, MD, director of forensic psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University, said, “People want an easily graspable handle to help understand this, to blame something or scapegoat.” However, “to zero in on depression is ‘a low-yield dead end,’ he said, adding, ‘There’s something fundamentally different here, aside and apart from the depression, and that’s where we need to look.’”

Related Links:

— “The Mind of Those Who Kill, and Kill Themselves,”Erica Goode, The New York Times, April 06, 2015.

The Wall Street Journal (4/7, A4, Armour, Subscription Publication) reports that the Administration has proposed a rule under which Medicaid recipients who receive services from managed care organizations and alternative benefit plans would have access to the same mental health and substance abuse benefits provided by private health plans. The proposed rule wouldn’t change state limits on Medicaid fee-for-service plans.

Related Links:

— “Obama Administration Proposes Rules for Medicaid Mental Health Parity,”Stephanie Armour, The Wall Street Journal, April 06, 2015.

According to Medscape (4/9), “The incidence of healthy elderly patients raising the issue of ‘rational suicide’ is on the rise, and clinicians need to be prepared to address it.” Medscape points out that “at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) 2015 Annual Meeting, a session dedicated to the issue aimed to provide guidance to clinicians who may be faced with elderly patients expressing a desire to die by suicide while they are still relatively healthy and cognitively intact.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

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.