In an opinion piece for Bloomberg News (12/22, Satel), psychiatrist Sally Satel, MD, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, lauded the recently proposed “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013,” which “addresses a long list of inadequacies in services for people who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar illness, major depression and other severe conditions.” After calling the bill, which was introduced by clinical psychologist Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), “the most ambitious mental-health legislation since the Community Mental Health Act of 1963,” Dr. Satel concluded that passage of the measure would allow the Federal government to begin “major repairs to our flawed mental-health system.”

Related Links:

— “A Law to Fix Mental-Health Care, ” Sally Satel, Bloomberg News, December 22, 2013.

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times (12/21, A18, Subscription Publication), psychiatrist Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, president of the American Psychiatric Association, wrote in response to an article titled “Fewer Psychiatrists Seen Taking Health Insurance” that “patients with access must deal with discriminatory and often illegal barriers to mental health and addiction services by” health insurers, while psychiatrists themselves are putting up with “discriminatory actions of insurers” when it comes to reimbursement practices. Dr. Lieberman concluded, “The American Psychiatric Association is hopeful that the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act will bring equality in treatment coverage, but we will continue monitoring for enforcement.”

Related Links:

— “An Insurance Trap for Psychiatrists and Patients, The New York Times, December 20, 2013.

MedPage Today (12/20, Boyles) reports that research published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association indicated that “having a history of heart attack without stroke doubled the threat of mild cognitive impairment and dementia, adding to the evidence linking heart disease and mental decline in older women.” Researchers found that “women in the study who had experienced myocardial infarctions (MIs) had twice the risk for cognitive decline as women with no MI history over a median of 8.4 years of follow up.” The study also indicated that “older, postmenopausal women with cardiovascular disease (CVD) were also 29% more likely than women without CVD to experience cognitive declines (HR 1.29; 95% CI 1.00-1.67), and hypertension and diabetes increased the risk for cognitive decline in women without CVD (HR 1.25; 95% CI 1.00-1.57 and HR 1.83, 95% CI 1.24-2.70, respectively).”

Related Links:

— “Dementia Risk Spikes in Older Women after MI, “Salynn Boyles, MedPage Today, December 19, 2013.

In “The Blog” for the Huffington Post (12/18, Jaffe), D.J. Jaffe, executive director of the Mental Illness Policy Org., observed that the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis” Act would “reorient the mental health system away from its focus on serving the largest numbers of the highest functioning and back towards providing treatment for the most seriously mentally ill.” The proposed legislation “reforms the bureaucracy, eliminates programs that don’t help or are harmful, and invests the savings in programs known to reduce incarceration, homelessness, suicide and hospitalization in the most seriously ill.” Jaffe called the measure “a novel, thoughtful proposal that warrants serious consideration.”

Related Links:

— “New Bill Decreases Mental Health Funding, Increases Mental Illness Funding, “DJ Jaffe, The Huffington Post, December 18, 2013.

In continuing coverage, MedPage Today (12/19, Pittman) reports that last Thursday at a sparsely attended press conference, clinical psychologist Rep. Tim Murphy, PhD (R-PA), a “leading voice on mental health reform in Congress, unveiled…his 135-page Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act [pdf],” HR 3717 (pdf), which “was the result of a year-long investigation into the nation’s mental health system” in the wake of the Newtown, CT school shootings. In the year since the Newtown tragedy, no mental healthcare bill has been passed, and last week’s poorly attended “press conference was a microcosm of the attention the issue has not gotten on Capitol Hill.”

Related Links:

— “Pay and Practice: Mental Health Reform Gets Lost, “David Pittman, MedPage Today, December 18, 2013.