On its website, WUSA-TV Washington (6/27, Brikman) reports, “An event entitled ‘Visible Honor for Invisible Wounds’ will be taking place in Upper Senate Park on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, June 27th. The idea is to recognize how post traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries, severe depression, and survivor’s guilt can wound our veterans as much as roadside bombs or a sniper’s fire.” During the event, there will be “an ‘open mike’ portion of the event in which any active duty service member or veteran can share his or her story, all in an effort to further chip away at the stigma of PTSD and to seek mental health help.”

Related Links:

— “Visible Honor For Invisible Wounds, “Anita Brikman, WUSA9, June 26, 2012.

The Washington Post (6/27, Vozzela) reports that in Virginia, “a shortage of group homes and other community-based housing for the mentally ill keeps many patients hospitalized far longer than needed — at significant state expense and possibly in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to a report that will be presented to legislators Thursday.” Specifically, “it costs $214,000 a year, on average, to keep a patient in a state psychiatric hospital, compared with $44,000 a year for community-based housing, according to the report, prepared by the inspector general’s office for the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.” Currently, “with at least 70 ‘discharge-ready’ patients stuck in state hospitals, the report says, Virginia is spending about $12 million a year on unnecessary psychiatric hospitalizations.”

Related Links:

— “Space in Va. group homes scarce, some mentally ill languish in state care, “Laura Vozzella , The Washington Post, June 26, 2012.

The Fresno Bee (6/26, Anderson) reports, “Hispanics in the central San Joaquin Valley and the state are not getting the mental-health services they need, a UC Davis report released Monday said.”

In a front-page story, the Sacramento (CA) Bee (6/26, 1A, Craft) reports, “According to Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, the study’s lead author and director of the health disparities center, up to 75 percent of Latinos who do seek mental health services opt not to return for a second appointment.” The study, “based on input from more than 550 Latinos, including some in Sacramento, found that the current workforce of psychologists and psychiatrists is ill-equipped to penetrate the disparities and bridge the cultural gulf.” While “the law says mental health services must be provided in native languages of major immigrant groups, the study’s authors found Spanish-speaking professionals few and far between within Latino communities.”

Related Links:

— “UC Davis study: Hispanics shorted on mental-health care, “Barbara Anderson, The Fresno Bee, June 25, 2012.

Bloomberg News (6/26, Ostrow) reports, “Taking prescription painkillers without a medical need increased 75 percent from 2002 to 2010, and most users were men, according to the first study to look at who is likely to abuse the drugs and how often it occurs.” A research letter published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that men and people between the ages 26 and 49 experienced the greatest increase in prescription medicine abuse, and that over 15,500 people died from overdosing on medicines such as oxycodone — more than twice the number recorded in 2002.

MedPage Today (6/26, Walsh) reports, “To see if this skyrocketing rate of fatal overdoses was accompanied by an overall increase in nonmedical use of these painkillers,” researchers “analyzed data from the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health. … The analysis showed no increase in the number of people reporting any nonmedical use of prescription painkillers, or use on 1 to 200 days in the past year. But the total number of days of use rose by 35% to 612,829,084 in 2010 from 451,031,411 in 2002.”

According to Medscape (6/26, Fox), the study’s lead author “reports that during the study period, the rate of chronic (at least 200 days per year) nonmedical use of the drugs increased significantly (P < .05), although the overall number of people using these drugs for nonmedical purposes did not change." WebMD (6/26) reports that the "study shows the number of people who abused prescription pain killers for more than 200 days in the last year rose by nearly 75% between 2002-03 and 2009-10." However, "estimates for overall past-year abuse have stayed about the same since 2002." Related Links:

— “Prescription Painkiller Abuse Surged In U.S., Study Finds, “Nicole Ostrow , Bloomberg News, June 25, 2012.

HealthDay (6/23, Holohan) reported, “Teens who engaged in more moderate-to-vigorous outdoor activity reported better health and social functioning than their peers who spent hours in front of television and computer screens,” according to a study published in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics. Of the 1,216 teens studied, those “who had the highest perceived health in the study spent an average of 2.5 hours more per day playing sports or doing other high-intensity activity than their least-active counterparts.” What’s more, “youths in the study overall spent an average of 3.3 hours a day playing video games, watching television or doing other sedentary activities, compared with only 2.1 hours in physical activity.”

Related Links:

— “Active, Outdoor Teens Are Happier Teens: Study, “Ellin Holohan, HealthDay, June 22, 2012.

In a lengthy piece in its magazine section, the New York Times (6/24, MM24, Interlandi, Subscription Publication) reported, “Deinstitutionalization, the systematic closure of state psychiatric hospitals, was codified by the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 and supported by patients’ rights laws secured state by state. Chief among those laws were strict new standards: only people who posed an imminent danger to themselves or someone else could be committed to a psychiatric hospital or treated against their will.” However, “in the decades since, the sickest patients have begun turning up in jails and homeless shelters with a frequency that mirrors that of the late 1800s.” Such patients also end up in the emergency department. The article detailed the story of Joseph Interlandi, the article author’s father and a patient with bipolar disorder who was bounced around between the ED, jail cells, and short-term psychiatric hospitals before finally receiving long-term psychiatric help through a community mental-health center.

Related Links:

— “When My Crazy Father Actually Lost His Mind, “Jeneen Interlandi, , June 22 , 2012.

Reuters (6/21, Norton) reported that according to a data analysis published online May 15 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, report that clinical trials of schizophrenia medications reveal that increasing numbers of participants appear to be responding to the comparison placebos which contain no active medication whatsoever. Researchers at the US Food and Drug Administration arrived at that conclusion after examining 32 clinical trials of pharmaceutical company data submitted to FDA during the years 1991 to 2008. Review author Thomas P. Laughren, MD, pointed out the importance of discovering the reasons why responses to placebo are increasing. The failure likelihood of clinical studies with bigger placebo responses is increased and may discourage pharmaceutical makers from development of new medications for schizophrenia.

Related Links:

— “Rising placebo response seen in schizophrenia trials, “Amy Norton, Reuters, June 21, 2012.

On its front page, the Boston Globe (6/21, A1, Kowalczyk) reports that shared electronic mental health records within Partners HealthCare system has raised privacy issues. According to Dr. David Blumenthal, Partners’ chief health information and innovation officer, “It’s one thing to give your psychiatrist the right to share your information [with certain doctors], it’s another to enter your data into a system that makes it available with relative ease to an unknown number of physicians who may be involved in your care … There are groups who are very uncomfortable with their records being shared with people they have not specifically designated.” Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said the new health information exchange will share patient records online across clinicians, “but only with patients’ permission.”

Related Links:

— “As records go online, clash over mental care privacy, “Liz Kowalczyk, The Boston Globe, June 21, 2012.

The AP (6/21, Freking) reports, “The Veterans Affairs Department hopes to reduce the risk of suicide among veterans by making greater use of video conferences between patients and doctors and by gradually integrating its electronic health records with those maintained by the Defense Department, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told mental health professionals” who attended a suicide prevention held Wednesday in Washington, DC. Shinseki “oversees a department that members of Congress have criticized heavily in recent months for overstating how frequently patients are able to see a doctor or other mental health professional.” But, according to the AP, “as many as two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are not enrolled” in VA healthcare. As Shinseki put it during his Wednesday conference remarks, VA “can’t influence and help those we don’t see.”

Stars And Stripes (6/21, Shane) points out that during Wednesday’s conference, Shinseki “called for a national commitment to end military suicides, ‘not just controlling, reducing or managing those at risk.'” The “official theme of the conference this year is ‘back to basics,’ a call by officials to ensure that all caregivers are equipped with fundamental suicide prevention principles. But after the first day, the unofficial theme could have been ‘frustration despite progress,’ as mental health officials lamented lingering difficulty stopping suicide even after years of focusing on the issue.”

The American Forces Press Service (6/21, Parrish) notes, “The ongoing battle against service member and veteran suicide requires community, commitment, and attention to three critical areas, a senior Defense Department official said” on Wednesday. Addressing “attendees at the annual DOD and Department of Veterans Affairs suicide prevention conference, Dr. Jonathan Woodson,” assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, “said employing vigilance, reducing stigma and sharing success stories are essential to the struggle to end suicide.” The conference, which began Wednesday and “ends June 22, drew hundreds of health care [professionals], researchers, and others from what Woodson called a broad community of people from government and private industry working to understand and defeat the occurrence of suicide in the ranks and among the nation’s military veterans..”

USAF Monitoring Social Media Sites For Potential Suicides. The Washington Times (6/21) reports that the US Air Force (USAF) “plans to increase its monitoring of its airmen on Facebook and other social media sites for signs of personal distress.” That is according to Air Force Maj. Michael McCarthy, who on Wednesday “spoke at a suicide prevention conference sponsored” by VA and the DOD.

Related Links:

— “VA looking to technology to reduce suicide risks,”Kevin Freking, Associated Press, June 20, 2012.

HealthDay (6/21, Esposito) reports, “Lingering symptoms from combat-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) — even ‘mild’ cases — may persist for years,” according to a study presented at the American Headache Society’s annual meeting. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after looking “at 500 veterans who underwent general health and depression screenings between 2008 and 2011 at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center and were found to have symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome.” Notably, “whether the injury had occurred two years or eight years earlier made no significant difference in frequency or intensity of symptoms. And the type of injury made no difference.”

Related Links:

— “For Combat Vets, Brain Injury Symptoms Can Last Years, “Lisa Esposito, HealthDay, June 20, 2012.