According to The Hill (1/17, Dress), starting Jan. 17, “veterans who are in a suicidal crisis can now seek emergency care at any medical facility at no cost to them.” Effective that date, they “will have free access to inpatient care or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days, the Department of Veterans Affairs” (VA) “said in a” Jan. 13 press release.

Related Links:

— “Veterans in suicidal crisis can now seek care at no cost “Brad Dress, The Hill, January 17, 2023

MedPage Today (1/17, Firth) reports, “Changes to Medicare policy that lowered out-of-pocket costs for outpatient mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) care, to achieve parity with typical cost-sharing under Medicare, were associated with uneven improvements in the use of these services across racial and ethnic groups,” researchers concluded in a study that “included 286,276 traditional Medicare beneficiaries with the cost-sharing reduction who had incomes at 100% to 135% of the federal poverty level…and 734,280 beneficiaries who received free care in 2008 who had incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level.” The study revealed that “improvements in access to care” were “largely only significant for white beneficiaries.” The findings were published in the January issue of the journal Health Affairs.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Psychiatric News (1/17) reports investigators sought to find out what US religious “leaders believe about the cause and treatment of depression,” focusing “specifically on the data obtained from the 890 primary leaders of religious congregations who predominantly completed the survey online between February 2019 and June 2020.” The study revealed that “most of the religious leaders indicated that they would be moderately or very likely to encourage a congregant with depression to seek help from a mental health professional (90%) and take prescribed medications (87%).” The study authors concluded, “These results suggest that medical professionals should view the vast majority of religious leaders as allies in identifying and properly treating depression.” The findings were published online Jan. 11 in a brief report in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Most U.S. Religious Leaders Endorse Medical Understanding of Depression, Survey Finds, Psychiatric News, January 17, 2023

The Washington Post (1/16, Blakemore) reports, “Military members and their families have unique mental health needs,” but research indicates that “up to 35 percent of military recipients don’t have access to adequate psychiatric care despite government insurance that covers such services.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after examining “39,487 U.S. Zip codes with at least one beneficiary of Tricare, the Defense Department health-care program that covers uniformed service members, retirees and their families,” then combining “data from a variety of federal sources with community information.” The findings were published online Jan. 3 in JAMA Network Open.

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

According to Kaiser Health News (1/13, Larson), Montana state “lawmakers from both parties have shown support for a plan to stop the practice of committing people with Alzheimer’s disease, other types of dementia, or traumatic brain injuries” (TBI) “without their consent to the troubled Montana State Hospital and instead direct them to treatment in their communities.” However, “a budget estimate attached to the proposed legislation raises questions about whether Montana communities, many of which are still reeling from past budget cuts and insufficient Medicaid reimbursement rates, will have the capacity to care for them by July 2025, when involuntary commitments would cease under the plan.”

Related Links:

— “Ending Involuntary Commitments Would Shift Burden of Dementia Care to Strapped Communities ” Keely Larson, Kaiser Health News, January 13, 2023