The Sacramento (CA) Bee (8/25) “Sacto911” blog reported that “thousands of law enforcement officers around the country…have been trained in techniques to help officers defuse potentially violent encounters with” people with mental illnesses, and such “Crisis Intervention Team training has helped reduce use-of-force incidents involving mentally unstable people.” A study recently “published in a journal of the American Psychiatric Association concluded that officers who took [crisis intervention] courses were more likely to refer people to mental health services than arrest them.”

Related Links:

— “Police say violent encounters with mentally ill people on rise,” Cynthia Hubert, Sacramento Bee, August 25, 2014.

USA Today (8/26, Wagner) reported that in a phone interview with a reporter from the Arizona Republic, Ira Katz, MD, acting director of mental health operations of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, along with “Caitlin Thompson, deputy director for suicide prevention, said veterans’ mental-health care is a national success story that merits a B+ if graded on a curve against other programs.” Katz pointed out that “recent data indicate the suicide rate is increasing among men in the general US population, but is stable among VA patients.”

However, “the positive evaluations come despite VA findings that the number of veteran suicides began rising in 2007” and also appear “to clash with criticism from Congress, watchdog organizations and whistle-blowers who say VA mental-health programs are beleaguered by delays in care, dishonest record-keeping and staffing shortages.”

Related Links:

— “VA touts progress on suicides; data tell another story,” Dennis Wagner, USA Today, August 25, 2014.

USA Today (8/25, Healy) reports that according to a new policy statement issued today and published online in the journal Pediatrics, the American Academy of Pediatrics “says delaying the start of high school and middle school classes to 8:30 a.m. or later is ‘an effective countermeasure to chronic sleep loss’ and the ‘epidemic’ of delayed, insufficient, and erratic sleep patterns among the nation’s teens.” Notably, “other major health organizations, including the American Medical Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have all highlighted insufficient sleep in adolescents as a serious health risk, as has US Education Secretary Arne Duncan,” explained Terra Ziporyn Snider, executive director of the group Start School Later.

The AP (8/25, Tanner) points out that research has “found that most US students in middle school and high school don’t get the recommended amount of sleep – 8 1/2 to 9 1/2 hours on school nights; and that most high school seniors get an average of less than seven hours.” The “evidence on potential dangers for teens who get too little sleep is ‘extremely compelling’ and includes depression, suicidal thoughts, obesity, poor performance in school and on standardized tests and car accidents from drowsy driving, said Dr. Judith Owens, the policy’s lead author and director of sleep medicine at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC.”

Related Links:

— “Docs urge delayed school start times for teens,” Michelle Healy, USA Today, August 25, 2014.

The New York Times (8/24, BU4, Korkki, Subscription Publication) reports that a new study in The American Sociological Review “aimed to see whether the stress of work-life conflicts could be eased if employees had more control over their schedules, including being able to work from home,” finding that “compared with another group that did not have the same flexibility, employees interviewed by the researchers said they felt happier and less stressed, had more energy and were using their time more effectively.”

Study author Erin Kelley “emphasized that for programs like these to be successful, they must be applied department wide and have the full support of managers.” The study was “financed by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Related Links:

— “Yes, Flexible Hours Ease Stress. But Is Everyone on Board?,” Phyllis Korkki, New York Times, August 23, 2014.

In an opinion piece in the Indianapolis Star (8/22), Richard Gunderman, MD, chancellor’s professor at Indiana University, and Mark Mutz, an attorney and consultant, wrote in wake of comedian Robin Williams’ suicide and lifelong struggle against substance abuse, “the president of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Paul Summergrad, was quoted as saying that we must ‘stop seeing these illnesses as faults and blames, and instead see them for what they are: medical conditions, genetic conditions and brain disorders.’”

But, according to Gunderman and Mutz, “it would be a mistake to say that disorders such as depression, substance abuse and suicidal thoughts are simply a reflection of biochemical imbalances and nothing more,” when certain “other factors, such as life experiences, are clearly important.”

Related Links:

— “Factors that lead to suicide are complex, as is life itself,” Richard Gunderman and Mark Mutz, Indianapolis Star, August 22, 2014.