In a opinion piece for Forbes (6/8), psychiatrist Sally Satel, MD, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, makes the case for a clear “distinction between mental health, mental illness, and severe mental illness.” Such a distinction “is crucial, because it leads us to different clinical and policy prescriptions,” Dr. Satel explains.

She cites as problematic that “the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is geared toward the mildly to moderately ill at the expense of the more seriously debilitated.” Dr. Satel concludes that instead of “focusing on combating homelessness, the crying need for more hospital beds, or reducing incarceration among people with serious mental illness,” SAMSHA “concentrates federal and state efforts on delivering amorphous ‘behavioral health’ to everyone else.”

Related Links:

— “Mental Health Reform Desperately Needed To Pass House And Senate,” Sally Satel, Forbes, June 8, 2016.

The AP (6/8, Cheng) reports, “Scientists say most antidepressants don’t work for children or teenagers with major depression, some may be unsafe, and the quality of evidence about these” medicines “is so bad the researchers cannot be sure if any are truly effective or safe.”

TIME (6/8, Park) reports that in order to find out “how effective” antidepressants “are in treating depression among younger people,” researchers from Oxford University “conducted an analysis of 34 trials of antidepressants involving more than 5,000 children or teens taking 14 different antidepressants.” In a meta-analysis published online June 8 in The Lancet, investigators found that “ratings of the depression before and after taking the medications did not change significantly.” Just one medication, fluoxetine, which is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children and adolescents, “improved their depression.”

Related Links:

— “Teen Depression Treatment Is an Increasingly Thorny Issue,” Alice Park, Time, June 8, 2016.

Reuters (6/7, Taylor) reports that about a third of children between the ages of three and four growing up in developing countries “are failing to meet basic mental development milestones, which could adversely affect their health, success in adulthood, and education levels,” research conducted by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Grand Challenges Canada. Researchers arrived at this conclusion after analyzing data from UNICEF and the US Agency for International Development.

Related Links:

— “A third of children in poor nations fail to meet mental development milestones: research,” Lin Taylor, Reuters, June 7, 2016.

The Washington Post (6/7, Johnson) “Wonkblog” reports that even though “people with mental illness were more likely to be arrested for violent crime than the general population over the study period, from 2002 to 2011,” a study published in the June issue of Health Affairs “found they actually had a slightly lower arrest rate for gun-related crimes.” Researchers arrived at this conclusion after following some “81,704 adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression who were receiving treatment through the public behavioral health systems in two Florida counties.”

The Atlantic (6/7, Beck) points out that the study also “emphasizes that suicide, not homicide, is the major public health problem for” people with mental health disorders who possess firearms.

Related Links:

— “The problem with trying to solve gun violence by going after the mentally ill,” Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, June 7, 2016.

In a greater than 2,300-word story, the Washington Post (6/7, Morse) reports that “in 25 states surveyed this year by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center based in Arlington, Va., 1,956 inmates were in local jails waiting for psychiatric hospital slots, leaving them in facilities that were not designed to meet their needs at what can be triple the cost of tending to other inmates.”

One factor behind long waits for psychiatric beds, “say corrections officials and the Treatment Advocacy Center, is that more people with profound mental illness are being arrested and booked into jails, while the number of beds at state hospitals is not growing.” Meanwhile, “patients in the hospitals…are more acutely sick and more dangerous than in years past, which extends their stays.”

Related Links:

— “Mental-health crisis ensnares inmates, judges, jailers and hospitals,” Dan Morse, Washington Post, June 7, 2016.