The New York Times (4/28, Abelson) reports, “Every year, tens of thousands of people enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans are denied necessary care that should be covered under the program, federal investigators concluded in a report published on Thursday.” The investigators, from HHS’ Office of the Inspector General, “urged Medicare officials to strengthen oversight of these private insurance plans, which provide benefits to 28 million older Americans, and called for increased enforcement against plans with a pattern of inappropriate denials.” AMA President-Elect Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., “said the plans’ denials had become widespread.” The AMA “has been aggressively lobbying lawmakers to impose stricter rules.”

Related Links:

— “Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds “Reed Abelson, The New York Times, April 28, 2022

HealthDay (4/27, Preidt) reports, “Witnessing violence between your parents is traumatic when it happens, but” research indicates that “trauma can raise your risk of depression and other mental health problems.” Included in the study were “more than 17,700 Canadian adults,” 326 of whom “said they witnessed parental domestic violence more than 10 times before age 16, which was defined as chronic.” Among participants “exposed to chronic parental domestic violence during childhood, 22.5% had major depression at some point in their life, 15% had an anxiety disorder and nearly 27% had a substance abuse disorder,” compared to “rates among people with no history of violence between their parents” of “9%, 7% and 19%, respectively.” The findings were published online April 12 in the Journal of Family Violence.

Related Links:

— “Kids Who Witness Domestic Violence May Suffer Mentally for Decades ” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, April 27, 2022

According to NPR (4/26, Hamilton), “brain scan studies have yet to offer much insight into the underpinnings of traits like intelligence, or mental health conditions like anxiety and depression,” investigators concluded after analyzing “nearly 1,000 brain scans,” then checking “their work, using 1,000 different scans.” One “key reason is that these studies need to include scans of thousands of brains, instead of the dozens typically used, a team reported” in findings (PDF) published online March 16 in the journal Nature.

Related Links:

— “Brain scans may reveal a lot about mental illness, but not until studies get bigger “Jon Hamilton, NPR, April 26, 2022

MedPage Today (4/26, Firth) reports, “American adults experiencing depression, substance use problems, or both are turning to cigarettes less often,” investigators concluded.

Psychiatric News (4/26) reports, “The percentage of adults with major depression and/or substance use disorder [SUD] who reported smoking cigarettes declined between 2006 and 2019,” investigators concluded in a study that “analyzed data from adults 18 years and older who participated in the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health…between 2006 and 2019,” focusing specifically on “data on past-month cigarette use from 558,960 adult participants.” The findings were published April 26 in JAMA.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

CNN (4/25, Holcombe) reports family members of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with COVID-19 often “come away from the experience with symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder], according to a” survey study. The findings – published in JAMA Internal Medicine – “found that of the families that responded to the survey, 201 out of 316 (about 63%) had significant symptoms of PTSD.”

Related Links:

— “Family members of Covid-19 ICU patients may emerge with a different condition, study says “Madeline Holcombe, CNN, April 25, 2022