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.

In an op-ed for USA Today (4/3, Robbins), James Robbins discusses a study published online in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, which “disrupts the conventional wisdom” that suicide rates among current and former servicemembers are the result of stress from war. The study, which examined the association between suicide and deployment, determined that “there was no increased risk of suicide among those who had deployed to war zones,” according to Robbins, who added that such an association “appears to be a myth.” After noting CDC figures that the suicide rate for 25 to 34-year-old men out of uniform is higher than that of servicemembers, Robbins concludes that the increase in military suicides is likely part of an increase in suicide rates across demographics.

Related Links:

— “Robbins: Military suicide notions marked by myths,” James S. Robbins, USA Today, April 2, 2015.

Coverage of the Germanwings crash investigation continued, focusing primarily on word from investigators that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz planned in advance to crash the jet and researched suicide and cockpit doors in the days before the crash.

Alex Marquardt reported on ABC World News (4/2, story 5, 1:30, Muir) that Lubitz “may have been planning his deadly flight for days. German investigators revealing a search of the co-pilot’s tablet computer shows that in the week before the crash, he had researched medical treatments, suicide methods, and information on cockpit door security.”

USA Today (4/3, Onyanga-Omara) reports that yesterday, “Germany announced the creation of a task force to examine what went wrong and consider whether changes are needed regarding cockpit doors, how pilots pass medical evaluations and how companies recognize psychological problems in employees.”

Related Links:

— “Co-pilot studied suicide methods, cockpit security,” Jane Onyanga-Omara, USA Today, April 2, 2015.