MedPage Today (2/8, Hartman) reported that late last year, “to mark the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, Vice President Joe Biden announced the executive branch would invest $100 million in the nation’s mental health system,” with the funds being “used to expand mental health services at community health centers and in rural America.” The Vice President’s “announcement was welcome news since the American Psychiatric Association estimates that in 2015 the nation will face a shortage of 22,000 child psychiatrists and 2,900 geriatric psychiatrists, and many of them are aging out of the profession according to the National Institute of Mental Health website (2/10), which notes that 55% of all psychiatrists are older than 55.”

Related Links:

— “Mental Health: Parity Yes, Providers No
, ” Ben Hartman, MD, MedPage Today, February 7, 2014.

MedPage Today (2/7, Neale) reports that research offers “support for depression as a treatable cause of coronary heart disease.” In one study, “which relied on repeat measures of depressive symptoms over 2 decades of follow-up,” researchers “demonstrated dose-response relationships between depression and both coronary death and nonfatal myocardial infarction, but not stroke.” The study was published online in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. In a separate study, which was “a post hoc analysis of a randomized trial,” researchers found “that an intervention to treat depression in older adults reduced the risk of hard cardiovascular events, but only in those who did not have pre-existing cardiovascular disease at baseline.” The study was published in Psychosomatic Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Treat Depression to Prevent CVD?, ” Todd Neale, MedPage Today, February 7, 2014.

The Daily Caller (2/7, Callahan) reports that according to the results of the four-year Marine Resiliency Study published in the February issue of JAMA Psychiatry, “soldiers who experience brain trauma in combat are more likely to experience symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” The study of 1,648 Marines revealed that “moderate to severe brain trauma raised PTSD symptom scores by 71 percent.” The study authors concluded, “Probability of PTSD was highest for participants with severe pre-deployment symptoms, high combat intensity, and deployment-related” traumatic brain injuries.

Related Links:

— “What causes PTSD? Researchers come closer to finding out, “Katie Callahan, The Daily Caller, February 7, 2014.

In the “Blog” for the Huffington Post (2/6), Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, observes, “Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) put forth a proposed rule that would make unprecedented changes to the six classes of medication that are specifically protected under Part D.” According to Dean, “Patients suffering from mental illness are likely to suffer the consequences of this rule more than any other populations.” He asserts, “The proposed rule would make significant changes to the availability of antidepressants and antipsychotics.” Such changes, made to reduce costs, would have the unintended consequence of making some mental illnesses even more difficult to manage and may result in more lengthy periods of disability for some patients.

Related Links:

— “Containing Health Costs Is Good But Not at the Expense of the Mentally Ill, “Howard Dean, The Huffington Post, February 5, 2014.

HealthDay (2/6) reports that according to research published in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Sleep, “too much or too little sleep can increase the risk of depression.” One study, which involved some 1,700 adult twins, found that “inappropriate amounts of sleep may activate depression-related genes.” The second study, which involved some 4,100 children ranging in age from 11 to 17, revealed that “sleeping six hours or less per night increased their risk for major depression, which in turn increased their risk for too little sleep.”

Related Links:

— “Risk of Depression May Rise With Too Much or Too Little Sleep, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, February 5, 2014.