The Imperial Valley (CA) News (9/29, Trinidad) reports that “a multi-institutional team of researchers studying schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [BD] has been awarded a $16 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to create the most extensive genetic resource to date for these two devastating psychiatric disorders, using data assembled by the University of Southern California (USC).”

The “four-year award…will help fund a project titled: ‘Whole Genome Sequencing of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder in the Genomic Psychiatry Cohort (GPC).’” The goal of the study is to “sequence total genomic DNA from 10,000 or more ethnically diverse individuals from the GPC, split evenly among schizophrenia cases, bipolar disorder cases and psychiatrically normal controls.”

Related Links:

— “National research team awarded $16M NIH grant to study genetics of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” Alison Trinidad, Imperial Valley News, September 28, 2014.

HealthDay (9/27, Norton) reported that according to a paper published online Sept. 26 in The Lancet Psychiatry, researchers reviewed 101 clinical studies and found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be the “better first option” for the treatment of social phobia in teens instead of antidepressant medications. The piece also noted that “an estimated 15 million US adults have social anxiety disorder, according to the US National Institutes of Health.” TIME (9/27, Oaklander) also covered the story.

Related Links:

— “Behavioral Therapy Deemed Best for Social Phobia,” Amy Norton, HealthDay, September 26, 2014.

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.