According to the Washington Post (3/16, Jaffe), the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has “reversed its decision to deny a life insurance claim to a Marine who committed suicide in 2010 following a long and largely hidden struggle” with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Marine Maj. Jeff Hackett “was the subject of a front-page story last month in The Washington Post that chronicled his troubles and the VA’s decision to deny the $400,000 claim to his widow and four sons.” In an interview, Hackett’s widow “said she was overwhelmed by the news, and grateful that the VA was able to ‘actually look at a problem and try to fix it.'”

Related Links:

— “Widow of Marine who committed suicide to receive life insurance claim, “Greg Jaffe , The Washington Post, March 15, 2012.

The Los Angeles Times (3/16, Roan) “Booster Shots” blog reports, “Abuse in childhood appears to be a particularly strong risk factor for developing alcohol addiction later in life,” according to a study published online March 15 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. “Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse surveyed 196 men and women who were inpatients being treated for alcohol dependence.” Notably, nearly “one-quarter of men and 33% of women reported a history of childhood physical abuse, while rates of sexual abuse were 12% for men and 49% for women.”

HealthDay (3/16, Preidt) points out, “Previous studies have found that alcoholics have higher self-reported rates of physical and sexual abuse in childhood than people in the general population, Markus Heilig, clinical director at the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a journal news release.”

Related Links:

— “Abuse in childhood common among alcohol addicts, study finds,”Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times , March 15, 2012.

The WUSF-TV Tampa, FL (3/15, O’Brien) website notes that Florida lawmakers have passed a bill that “authorizes each judicial circuit to set up a Veterans’ Court or program to handle the cases of veterans with psychological problems,” like substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, “or traumatic brain injury as a result of their military service.” WUSF adds, “Four Veterans Courts are already operating in Florida and will serve as a blueprint for other jurisdictions that have seen an increase of military veterans involved in the justice system.”

Related Links:

— “Florida Lawmakers Authorize Veterans’ Courts, “Bobbie O’Brien, wusf, March 14, 2012.

CQ (3/15, Bristol, Subscription Publication) reports, “Health and Human Services officials haven’t issued final regulations for mental health parity because they want the requirements for such coverage to be part of the health care law implementation, the agency’s Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation Sherry Glied said Wednesday.” Glied said, “I don’t think it’s a hold-up around parity. Implementing the health care law includes ‘the challenge of building this regulatory infrastructure around the insurance industry that should incorporate [mental health benefits].'” She added, “Mental health should no longer stand out there as a separate thing. It should be part of the fabric of what we do.”

In continuing coverage, the Los Angeles Times (3/15, Gorman) reports that “California will receive funds to expand emergency psychiatric care, part of a national push to get mentally ill patients out of hospital emergency rooms and into psychiatric facilities, the federal government announced this week.” The Times quotes Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as saying that “treating psychiatric patients in ERs is not an ‘efficient use of healthcare dollars, and may be detrimental to vulnerable patients.'”

The Bangor Daily News (3/15, Cuda) reports that “the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced that 11 states — including Maine — and the District of Columbia will participate in the Medicaid Emergency Psychiatric Demonstration.” The Daily News quotes Tavenner as saying that “this new demonstration will help ensure patients receive appropriate, high quality care when they need it most and save states money.”

MedPage Today (3/15, Walker) reports that “the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced a new demonstration project aimed at Medicaid beneficiaries who experience psychiatric emergencies.” The story adds that the new program is part of the Affordable Care Act and “will test whether Medicaid beneficiaries receive faster, more appropriate care when psychiatric institutions receive Medicaid reimbursement.”

Related Links:

— “California to get funds for emergency psychiatric care, “Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2012.

In continuing coverage, the Atlantic (3/10, Entin) reported, “A follow-up study to 2004 research, which had noted an increased risk of suicide among people taking certain antidepressants, particularly children and adolescents, has now reached a different conclusion. Contrary to earlier results, the new study,” published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, “found that when the antidepressant prescribed is a good fit for the individual, there’s a lower risk of suicide. The new study’s results were especially strong for adults and the elderly. Though there was no decrease in suicide risk among children and adolescents, there was also no increase.”

Related Links:

— “Can Antidepressants Actually Make Us More Likely to Commit Suicide? The Atlantic, March 9, 2012.

Bloomberg News (3/11, Ratnam, Cortez) reported, “Some in the military have questioned whether the name ‘post-traumatic stress disorder,’ designated by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980, carries its own stigma that discourages service members from seeking help and brands them as unstable.” Now, “as an alternative to changing the name, the psychiatric association is considering creating a separate category for PTSD that results from combat stress, said John Oldham, the group’s president and chief of staff at the Menninger Clinic in Houston. The new combat category may be included next year in the fifth edition of the association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).”

Related Links:

— “Pentagon tries Walmart therapy to combat PTSD, “Gopal Ratnam, The Bulletin, March 11, 2012.

In continuing coverage, CNN Newsroom (3/11, 6:23 p.m. ET) broadcast, “Lawmakers are putting pressure on…VA to improve” its mental healthcare services for veterans like Paul Raines, who returned from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Raines told CNN that he is getting more help from VA now than he did after first learning he had PTSD. At that time, according to Raines, he only received medication and had to wait more than two weeks to see a specialist. CNN showed footage of US Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) saying, “When a veteran has the courage to stand up and ask for help, VA must be there with not only timely access to care but also the right type of care.” CNN added, “VA says it’s reviewing mental health services at all its facilities.”

MedWire (3/14, Cowen) reports, “Around one-third of patients with bipolar disorder stop taking their medications against doctors’ advice within 1 year of starting treatment,” according to a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders. Researchers “studied 275 patients (65.1% women), aged an average of 39 years, with bipolar I or II disorder who received maintenance treatment” and “found that dropout rates at 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after starting treatment were 10.9%, 20.4%, 24.7%, 33.8%, 44.0%, and 50.2%, respectively, with rates increasing rapidly over the first 3 months. … The most common reasons for dropout were “denial of therapeutic need” (34.8%), “lack of treatment efficacy” (23.2%), and “adverse drug events” (13.0%).”

Related Links:

— “Treatment dropout rates high in bipolar disorder patients,”Mark Cowen, MedWire News, March 14, 2012.

Though the identity of the US soldier suspected of killing at least 16 Afghan civilians has yet to be disclosed, many news outlets provided what details are available in efforts to provide a “portrait” of the shooter in efforts to determine a possible motive for the killing. For example, NBC Nightly News (3/12, lead story, 3:40, Williams) briefly broadcast that the US military is looking into whether a brain injury the suspect “suffered while in Iraq” may have contributed to his actions.

ABC World News (3/12, story 2, 2:40, Sawyer) broadcast that the suspect was stationed “at a troubled army base” in Washington State, the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and had “four deployments to war zones” since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The soldier had reportedly passed multiple health and mental screenings and “suffered a mild brain injury after hitting his head, but was treated successfully.”

The CBS Evening News (3/12, story 3, 2:20, Pelley) aired an in-depth look at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington, and said, “Troops from that base have been involved in other unjustified attacks recently.” CBS News detailed the troubling incidents related to the base and noted, “Since 2010, 26 Lewis-McChord soldiers have committed suicide.” The network cited a veteran soldier who suggested the toll of multiple tours in combat was too much for soldiers to endure, arguing, “They’re finally going to just hit the wall and explode.”

The Time (3/13, Thompson) “Battleland” blog reports, “The homeland of the Taliban, where Sunday’s apparent civilian massacre took place, is a ‘pressure cooker'” for US soldiers “assigned there. Their nearly daily contact with bloodshed could push an unstable soldier to lash out by killing innocent Afghans, says an Army psychiatrist just back from an assignment near where the killings took place. The Army psychiatrist, who declined to be named, spoke of the 38-year old US Army staff sergeant from Washington state’s Fort Lewis who allegedly left his base and killed 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children, early Sunday outside Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.”

The AP (3/13, Vogt, Khan) notes, “There was no available indication about the extent” of the suspect’s brain injury, or whether that “injury could be linked to any abnormal behavior afterward.”

The suspect’s brain injury is also mentioned by the Wall Street Journal (3/13, A7, Trofimov, Entous, Millman, Subscription Publication), which takes note of troubles at the Lewis-McChord base and says the non-profit group GI Voice has called for a congressional investigation into “systemic failures.”

Army Investigating Claims Madigan Psychiatrists Failed To Diagnose PTSD In Soldiers. The AP (3/13, Johnson) reports in a related story, “In the past five years, about 300 patients at Madigan Army Medical Center at the base had their PTSD diagnoses reversed by a forensic psychiatry team, The Seattle Times reported this month.” According to the AP, the “Army is reviewing whether those doctors were influenced by how much a PTSD diagnosis can cost, in terms of a pension and other benefits.”

The Los Angeles Times (3/13, Murphy, Parsons) notes, “GI Voice, a local anti-war veterans support group outside Lewis-McChord that has campaigned for better mental health services, on Sunday called for a congressional investigation into the ‘multiple crises coming from this rogue base.’ ‘In 10 years of war, JBLM has produced a Kill Team, suicide epidemic, denials of PTSD treatment, denials of human rights in the brig, spousal abuse and a waterboarded daughter, murders of civilians (including a park ranger), increased sex crimes, substance abuse… and much more,'” said a statement from “GI Voice’s executive director, Jorge Gonzalez, an Iraq war veteran from Lewis-McChord.”

The Seattle Times (3/13, Doughton) notes that the 32-year-old Gonzalez was “diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after he returned home” from serving in Iraq. Gonzalez “said he was surprised that the shooter gunned down women and children, but that the incident itself was not a shock. ‘This is what happens when you have 10 years of war,’ he said.”

The Washington Times (3/13, Waterman) reports, “The soldier suspected in a shooting rampage in Afghanistan was deployed from a US base where medical personnel are being investigated for misdiagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” Now, “the Army is investigating claims that psychiatrists at the Madigan Medical Center on the Joint Base Lewis-McChord military base near Tacoma, Wash., failed to diagnose PTSD in hundreds of soldiers.” Approximately “1,500 cases have been reviewed, and 285 of the soldiers will be offered re-evaluations, according to the Western Regional Medical Command, which runs Madigan — the largest military hospital on the West Coast.”

The Huffington Post (3/13, Wood) reports, “The link between combat stress and outbursts of violence was well documented even before troops began routinely serving three, four or more combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.” However, “PTSD and violence among veterans has become more prevalent. A study conducted at the Puget Sound Veterans Affairs hospital in Washington, for instance, demonstrated high levels of anger and hostility among returning combat veterans screening positive” for PTSD.

The CBS News (3/13, Tracy) website reports that it is “unknown what, if any, role PTSD played in the actions” of the Sunday killings in Afghanistan.

In a separate story, the CBS News (3/13, Tracy) website notes, “Members of Congress are now looking into allegations of how PTSD cases were handled” at Lewis-McChord. Reuters (3/13, Alexander) also covers the story.

Studies: Mental Illness Growing Problem For US Military Members In Afghanistan. The Los Angeles Times (3/13, Alpert) “World Now” blog reports that “mental illness has been a persistent and growing problem for members of the military in Afghanistan, according to several recent studies.” A study last year found that “psychological problems recently reached a five-year high among Marines in Afghanistan,” with “nearly 20% of the Marines surveyed in Afghanistan [reporting] psychological problems such as severe stress and depression in 2010, twice the rate as in 2005.” Yet “another recent study found that mental disorders and suicide rates in the military surged up between 2004 and 2008. Mental illness rates nearly doubled after troops were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army Public Health Command found.”

Related Links:

— “Battlefield Stress Could Have Triggered Afghan Massacre,”Mark Thompson, TIME U.S., March 12, 2012.