In The Hill (3/30) “Congress Blog,” Andrew Sperling, director of Federal legislative advocacy for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, voiced his concern “about a proposal that would force sudden pharmaceutical changes on low-income Americans already struggling to maintain their health and well-being.” Under a proposed rule change to Medicare Part D benefits, for “beneficiaries whose very limited financial resources make them qualified for federal low-income subsidies or are dually eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, their copayments for brand name drugs would double.”

This could be disastrous for some patients living with a mental illness, Sperling argued, because “the mere switch of a drug from the name brand to generic versions can trigger episodes that represent a huge setback on that patient’s path toward better health and a productive life.” In some cases, there is no suitable substitute generic medication. Sperling urges Congress not to “impose artificial barriers between low-income Americans and the medicines they need.”

Related Links:

— “Mental health matters and consistency counts,” Andrew Sperling, The Hill, March 30, 2015.

USA Today (3/30, Frank) reports according to an NTSB crash report, “at least 44 private pilots in the US have committed suicide in the past 30 years by deliberately crashing their small airplanes.” The NTSB report found that “all of the suicidal pilots were men, and many had recently faced break-ups with wives or girlfriends, or had confronted legal troubles.”

Related Links:

— “Dozens of amateur pilots used airplanes for suicide,” Thomas Frank, USA Today, April 2, 2015.

The Boston Globe (3/27, Schworm, Rocheleau) reports that a statement “by authorities that the copilot of a Germanwings flight deliberately crashed the airliner into the French Alps on Tuesday is renewing questions about whether the aviation industry does enough to screen for mental illness.” Some experts now “argue for a more rigorous system,” given “the enormous stress of the job and the hundreds of lives at stake.”

Most airlines “conduct psychological testing during the hiring process, experts said, and applicants that show signs of instability are quickly weeded out,” but once pilots have been hired, they “undergo yearly medical exams that do not include psychological tests.”

Related Links:

— “US system has scant mental health scrutiny,” Peter Schworm and Matt Rocheleau, Boston Globe, March 26, 2015.

Coverage of the investigation of the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash was once again the dominant international story on the network news broadcasts, with CBS News and NBC News both leading with the story. In all, the networks spent more than eight minutes on coverage that focused primarily on reports that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who deliberately crashed the jet in the French Alps, had been treated as a suicide risk and had been under the care of psychiatrists.

Allen Pizzey reported in the lead story for the CBS Evening News (3/30, lead story, 2:50, Pelley) that according to German prosecutors, Lubitz “had been treated as a suicide risk for an extended period of time before he received a pilot’s license,” but “hid his condition from his employers.”

Alex Marquardt reported on ABC World News (3/30, story 2, 2:15, Muir) that according to German authorities, Lubitz “never exhibited aggression, and his motive is still a mystery.”

Bill Neely reported in the lead story for NBC Nightly News (3/30, lead story, 3:15, Holt) that “there is now pressure in Germany to look again at exactly what pilots can keep confidential, their right to privacy about their medical and mental history against the public’s right to know if lives could be endangered.”

Related Links:

— “Germanwings co-pilot reportedly had other health problems,” Allen Pizzey, CBS News, March 28, 2015.

Alex Marquardt reported on ABC World News (4/1, story 3, 1:55, Muir) that in the wake of revelations that Lufthansa executives are “under fire after admitting Lufthansa hired Andreas Lubitz even after he told them he had suffered a serious depressive episode.” Allen Pizzey reported on the CBS Evening News (4/1, story 6, 1:50, Pelley) that on Wednesday, CEO Carsten Spohr “ducked all questions about the co-pilot.” NBC Nightly News (4/1, story 6, 2:00, Holt) also covered the story.

Reuters (3/28, Lehman) reported that a study (3/30) published online March 2 in the British Journal of Ophthalmology suggests that people with vision loss were often prone to suffer psycho-social issues and were more likely to have suicidal thoughts and make suicide attempts compared to those with normal vision. The study, which included nearly 30,000 adults followed between 2008-2012, also revealed that deteriorating vision was tied to a worsening in quality of life.

Related Links:

— “Vision loss increases risk for thoughts of suicide,” Shereen Lehman, Reuters, March 27, 2015.

On its front page, the New York Times (3/29, A1, Goode, Mouawad, Subscription Publication) reported in continuing coverage that last week’s crash of Germanwings Fight 9525 raises the question of whether or not “regulators are doing enough to detect pilots who are too mentally ill to fly.” Current programs in use “by airlines and regulators on either side of the Atlantic, aviation experts and psychiatrists said, leave much to be desired.” Yearly screening examinations “often merely nod to mental health issues, including only a few questions about depression or other illnesses,” and quite often, such “exams are often conducted by general practitioners with no psychiatric expertise.” The programs also rely on pilots to voluntarily report any problems they are experiencing, and pilots will conceal problems from their airline for fear of stigma or not being allowed to fly. Yearly screenings may fail to detect stress placed on a pilot who has undergone a major life stressor, such as relationship or financial problems.

The Washington Post (3/27, Keating) “Wonkblog” reported that the “relatively new National Violent Death Reporting System [NVDRS] maintained by the” CDC reveals that “more than three-quarters of murder suicides involve a crisis within two weeks of the incident, and more than 70 percent of cases involve problems with intimate partners.” Those two factors “are by far the most closely associated experience with murder suicide.”

Bloomberg News (3/28, Tozzi) reported that even outside the airline industry, employees as well as employers “have incentives to keep discussions of mental health out of the workplace.” Managers are afraid that “learning about an employee’s depression, for example, could open the door to discrimination suits if the employee is later disciplined,” while “workers fear being ostracized, held back from promotions, and even fired.”

Related Links:

— “Germanwings Crash Raises Questions About Shifting Ideas of Pilot Fitness,” Erica Goode and Jad Mouawad, New York Times, March 28, 2015.

The New York Times (3/26, A6, Zimmer, Subscription Publication) reports that researchers “in Iceland have produced an unprecedented snapshot of a nation’s genetic makeup, discovering a host of previously unknown gene mutations that may play roles” in diverse diseases. In four articles published March 25 in the journal Nature Genetics, scientists “at deCODE, an Icelandic genetics firm owned by Amgen, described sequencing the genomes – the complete DNA – of 2,636 Icelanders, the largest collection ever analyzed in a single human population.” From this “genetic information, the scientists were able to accurately infer the genomes of more than 100,000 other Icelanders, or almost a third of the entire country.”

Related Links:

— “In Iceland’s DNA, New Clues to Disease-Causing Genes,”Carl Zimmer, The New York Times, March 25, 2015.

Medscape (3/26, Keller) reports that research presented March 19 at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases suggests that “higher consumption of green tea was associated with a lower risk for dementia or mild cognitive impairment (MCI),” but “black tea or coffee did not show the same effect.” Japanese researchers arrived at that conclusion after conducting “a population-based, prospective study of residents of Nakajima older than age 60 years, starting with participants with normal cognitive function in 2007-2008 as evaluated by using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

USA Today (3/24, Horovitz) reports a new report urges banning the sale of energy drinks to children and adolescents as they can be harmful, citing a study in the April issue of the journal Nutrition Reviews. Children who drink “high-caffeinated energy drinks can suffer negative health, social, emotional and behavioral problems,” the study warns. “The number of hospital emergency-room visits by 12- to 17-year-olds linked to energy drinks increased from 1,145 in 2007 to 1,499 in 2011,” notes the study, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Related Links:

— “Study: Don’t sell energy drinks to kids,”Bruce Horovitz, USA Today, March 24, 2015.