Medscape (9/26, Brauser) reports that according to a report released by LifeWay Research, even though people “with mental illness often first seek guidance from their church, many pastors do not offer help.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after surveying “1000 senior Protestant pastors, more than 300 individuals with a mental illness diagnosis, and 207 family members of those with an acute psychiatric illness.”

When asked for comment by Medscape, Annelle Primm, MD, MPH, deputy medical director for the American Psychiatric Association (APA), said, “The faith community is an important partner and an important vehicle for people to recognize they have an illness that needs help from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional.”

Dr. Primm, who was not involved in the research, also “noted that, unfortunately, there have been barriers and taboos to mental health–seeking that are ‘being illuminated because of studies like these.’”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Modern Healthcare (9/25, Dickson, Subscription Publication) reports that many community health centers find themselves providing low-cost services to people who purchased “bronze” level health insurance plans through Affordable Care Act exchanges. Low income individuals who hold such bare-bones health plans often find themselves unable to pay the full cost of coverage in the face of bronze plans’ high deductibles and co-pays.

The situation is seen as indicitive of a larger problem in the post-ACA world. “With the Affordable Care Act, while the number of uninsured may be dropping, there’s a new challenge in that there is now a huge cadre of underinsured people,” said Sara Rosenbaum, The George Washington University’s health policy chair.

Related Links:

ACCOUNT REQUIRED — “Underinsured ACA enrollees strain community health centers,” Virgil Dickson, Modern Healthcare, September 25, 2014.

Reuters (9/26, Doyle) reports that according to a study published online Sept. 22 in JAMA Pediatrics, the majority of US children who are on medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) are not undergoing any sort of behavioral counseling.

HealthDay (9/26, Thompson) reports that the findings “raise concerns that doctors may just be prescribing pills for behavior problems, rather than targeting kids’ specific difficulties through judicious use of medication and therapy, said lead author Dr. Walid Gellad, an adjunct scientist at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.”

In arriving at the study’s conclusions, investigators “combed through a commercial insurance claims database to identify more than 300,000 children aged 17 or younger who filled a prescription for AD/HD medication in 2010,” then cross-checked to determine if the youngsters had also gotten any behavioral counseling that year.

Related Links:

— “One in four kids on ADHD meds gets therapy too,” Kathryn Doyle, Reuters, September 25, 2014.

The Connecticut Mirror (9/25, Radelat) introduces the alarming trend of veteran suicide through personal stories. The article goes on to cite 22 national veteran suicides daily, with concerns of under-reporting due to stigmatization. Though Connecticut has one of the lowest rates at 28.8 per 100,000, compared to the national rate of 35.9, its veterans still commit suicide twice as frequently as non-veterans.

The article cites criticisms of VA healthcare, including mental healthcare’s wait times and the cycling of counselors. A VA audit in May found average wait times of four days at West Haven, 28 days at Waterbury, and 33 at Winsted. Maureen Pasko, suicide prevention coordinator with the West Haven VA hospital, said caregivers “only capture 50% of what is going.”

The article closes citing complaints of other suicide victims’ families and calls for overhaul of the VA healthcare system.

Related Links:

— “SUICIDE BY VETERANS REMAINS A DAUNTING PROBLEM AS VA STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE CARE,” Ana Radelat, Connecticut Mirror, September 24, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (9/25, Healy) “Science Now” blog reports that according to a study published online Sept. 24 in the journal Neurology, “after the age of 60, ‘cognitive complainers’ – people who say they have noticed mental slippage – are more likely than those who do not complain of such changes to develop mild cognitive impairment, and to have Alzheimer’s-like plaques and tangles in their brains upon death even when dementia was never diagnosed.”

Related Links:

— “Cognitive complaints in the elderly are often dementia harbingers,” Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2014.

USA Today (9/23, Penzenstadler) reports that police agencies across the country, in embracing the Memphis Model, which “aims to de-escalate and divert people suffering a mental health crisis to services instead of jail,” are now facing “full hospitals and a shortage of psychiatric resources.”

Michele Saunders, the crisis intervention team coordinator for the state of Florida, says that in some ways this is a “good problem” because “a greater number get diverted from jail, and that increases the number into the treatment system.”

Related Links:

— “Police crisis system taxes psychiatric resources,” Nick Penzenstadler, USA Today, September 23, 2014.

NPR (9/22, Neighmond) reports in a radio report and in its “Shots” blog that chronic stress, either from major events or even minor issues such as fretting while stuck in traffic, can be “deadly,” citing a study that followed 1,293 men for years. The study, which is scheduled for publication in the journal Experimental Gerontology, found that the “most stressed-out people have the highest risk of premature death.”

The blog post highlights a couple of solutions for “chronically upset worriers,” pointing out that exercise and meditation could help alleviate stress.

Related Links:

— “Best To Not Sweat The Small Stuff, Because It Could Kill You,” Patti Neighmond, National Public Radio, September 22, 2014.

On its website, CBS News (9/22, Firger, Augenbraun) reported on the experiences of mothers whose children have severe mental illnesses. One of the mothers interviewed believes that “the mental health care system must move away from a symptom-based approach to treating mental illness often results in a wrong diagnosis or a succession of inadequate treatment efforts,” which is a “view…shared by Dr. Tom Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), who explains that ‘symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment.’”

In his blog on NIMH’s website, Dr. Insel wrote that the healthcare “system must get better at diagnosing and treating mental illness based on the latest research into its underlying biological causes.”

Related Links:

— ““Every mom’s worst nightmare”: Coping with a child’s mental illness,” Jessica Firger and Eliene Augenbraun, CBS News, September 22, 2014.

The Hill (9/23, Viebeck) reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced $100 million in grant funding for “mental health services for young people, nearly two years after a school shooting in Newtown, Conn. prompted a national debate on the issue.” Burwell noted the funds will be used for several related purposes, saying, “The administration is committed to increasing access to mental health services to protect the health of children and communities.”

Related Links:

— “New mental health grants announced post-Newtown,” Elise Viebeck, The Hill, September 22, 2014.

The Fox News (9/22) reported that a study published online Sept. 22 in the American Journal of Epidemiology “examined the relationship between maternal iron intake and having a child with autism-spectrum disorder.” Researchers “found a five-fold greater risk of autism…associated with low iron intake – by way of supplements – if the mother was age 35 or older at the time of the child’s birth, or if she suffered from metabolic conditions such as obesity, hypertension or diabetes.”

HealthDay (9/23, Gray) points out that the study, which “included 520 pairs of mothers and children with autism and 346 pairs of mothers and typically developing children,” merely “showed an association between low iron intake and the development of autism spectrum disorder,” but “it didn’t prove cause and effect.”

Related Links:

— “Could Low Iron Intake During Pregnancy Raise Autism Risk?,” Barbara Bronson Gray, HealthDay, September 22, 2014.