In an opinion piece in USA Today (2/5), former US Surgeon General David Satcher, MD, PhD, director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and former US Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-RI), founder of the Kennedy Forum, announce “a partnership between the Kennedy Forum and Morehouse School of Medicine that will fulfill President Kennedy’s vision of ensuring the best possible mental well-being for every American.” First, Satcher and Kennedy call for complete implementation of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Second, they call for increased “focus on greater innovation to expand research and further our knowledge of the brain.” Third, they seek improved access to “high quality” mental healthcare not only by increasing the number of mental healthcare professionals, but also by asking primary care physicians to “make mental health part of their charge.” Fourth, Kennedy and Satcher call for “better integration to bring mental health into the mainstream” of US medicine.

Related Links:

— “Satcher-Kennedy: How to fix mental health system,” David Satcher and Patrick J. Kennedy, USA Today, February 4, 2015.

The New York Times (2/5, A17, Schwarz, Subscription Publication) reports that a “survey of more than 150,000” US college students, called “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2014” and conducted by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California-Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, reveals that “9.5 percent of respondents had frequently ‘felt depressed’ during the past year, a significant rise over the 6.1 percent reported five years ago.” During that same time, “those who ‘felt overwhelmed’ by schoolwork and other commitments rose to 34.6 percent from 27.1 percent.”

Related Links:

— “

The Wall Street Journal (2/2, Ward, Subscription Publication) reports that a study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology suggests that making a charitable donation may result in an improvement in the emotional and physical well-being of the donor. The study was conducted by Baris K. Yörük, an associate professor of economics at the University at Albany-SUNY, and colleagues.

Related Links:

— “Does Charitable Giving Lead to Better Health?,” Lisa Ward, Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2015.

In continuing coverage, Modern Healthcare (1/31, Johnson, Subscription Publication) reported that “behavioral health stakeholders are…uniting behind a bill first introduced in 2013 by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), a psychologist who spent more than a year holding hearings on mental illness after the Sandy Hook shootings.” But, even though “many professional and patient-advocacy groups back the measure, others fear the proposal will shift the focus away from relying on community-based mental healthcare” professionals “and undermine the years put into deinstitutionalizing” Americans with mental illnesses. HR 3717 would also “earmark $40 million for the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative, which seeks to identify the molecular pathways of mental illness and dementia.”

Related Links:

— “Mental healthcare legislation gives boost to inpatient care,” Steven Ross Johnson, Modern Healthcare, January 31, 2015.