- Two organizations that manage behavioral health services for people with Medicaid and for some uninsured people in different areas of North Carolina have agreed to merge into a single entity that will serve more than 100,000 people across 21 counties. Eastpointe, an organization that coordinates care for low-income residents in 10 eastern counties, on Thursday said it intends to consolidate with the Sandhills Center, which operates in 11 southwestern counties. Read more here.
- When I was a graduate student, my colleagues and I studied how losing one night of sleep affects a person’s ability to manage their emotions. That research project, and many that have followed since, demonstrated a strong and intimate link between better sleep and emotional health. In healthy individuals, good-quality sleep is linked with a more positive mood—and it takes just one night of sleep deprivation to trigger a robust spike in anxiety and depression the following morning. Read more here.
- While the surge in prescriptions for ADHD drugs during the pandemic has often been attributed to expanded telehealth access, new research finds there has been little difference in prescribing rates for in-person or virtual care at large health centers since 2020. Why it matters: There's been an ongoing debate about whether the explosion in telehealth enabled over-prescribing of ADHD medications like Adderall amid a prolonged drug shortage that's disrupted patient care. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- Back-to-school season is full of anticipation for both kids and parents. New teachers, new routines and new friends are all exciting but can also provoke anxiety for everyone involved. HuffPost asked therapists who work with parents about what issues they tend to bring up this time of year. Here’s what they said: Though few pandemic-related educational shifts were positive, one potentially helpful development was that when students learned at home, parents got a chance to see what was going on in their classrooms and how well their particular academic needs were being served. Read more here.
- Sebastian Ponder-Freeman is a rising senior in Chicago Public Schools with plans to go to a small liberal arts college next year. His future seemed more tentative a couple of years ago, when all his interactions with his teachers, counselors and classmates were virtual. Three and a half years after the pandemic halted in-classroom education, scrambling the worlds of students throughout the country, parents are seeing a rebound in their children’s mental health. As the new school year starts, parents are reporting that their kids are improving academically, too. Read more here.
- Three influential groups of pediatricians and emergency medicine providers are pleading for more support and resources as the number of children and teenagers with mental health concerns overwhelm emergency departments nationwide. Saidinejad is the lead author of a joint policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the Emergency Nurses Association released Wednesday. The groups are calling for local communities to increase access to mental health services before emergency care is needed. Read more here.
- Latino children living in states with more anti-immigrant laws and policies — and the resulting inequities in access — were linked to higher odds of chronic physical or mental health conditions, according to a study published Tuesday in the medical journal Pediatrics. Researchers analyzed data from the National Survey of Children’s Health from 2016 to 2020. They measured 17,855 Latino children participants from 3 to 17 years old; almost 30% lived below the federal poverty level and a little over half were from an immigrant family. Read more here.
- Children exposed to physical assault were at higher risk of a mental illness diagnosis over subsequent years, with the greatest risk seen in the year after the assault, a large population-based study from Ontario, Canada found. In the age-matched cohort study, children seen for physical assault in an acute care setting were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness over a median follow-up of nearly 7 years when compared with children who were not assaulted (adjusted HR 1.96, 95% CI 1.85-2.08), reported Natasha Ruth Saunders, MD, MSc, of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and colleagues. Read more here.
Older Adults and Mental Health
- Many Americans who serve as caregivers are consumed by the immense cost of tending to ailing or aging family members. And as the baby boomer generation ages, more Americans are in for a rude awakening as to just how expensive caring for older adults has become. The price of nursing home care increased by an average of 2.4 percent each year between 2012 and 2019, for a cumulative increase of 20.7 percent, according to data from the health research group Altarum Institute. Read more here.
- While I recognize that my mother’s clinical course and family situation is fairly unique, it’s also pretty typical of an emerging trend: As the boomer generation ages, responsibility for many aspects of their care fall onto their children. The parents of Generation Z children, most in their 40s and 50s now, are also not far behind. In the United States and much of the West, many of us not only live in a different home from our aging parents but often in another time zone. Read more here.
- Before Beck Bright-Samarzia gets down to work, she suits up: back brace, gloves, N-95 mask. Inching through one of her clients’ living rooms, between stacks of boxes and bins, she explains she used to wear an industrial-grade mask here — before they got the dust under control. “It might look like not a lot has happened,” she said, “but so much has happened.” Through her Wichita business, Paper Shift ICT, Bright-Samarzia helps people deal with their stuff — mostly when there’s way too much of it. Read more here.
- The pandemic drew a lot of attention to young people's mental health. But older people have suffered, too. Many are struggling with loneliness, anxiety, or substance abuse. Fewer than half of older adults who need mental health care get it, according to the National Council on Aging. "One reason is that professionals are under-trained to treat the mental health needs of older adults," says Regina Koepp, a clinical psychologist based in Vermont, and the founder of the Center for Mental Health and Aging. "Many professionals feel quite incompetent and will say that they just don't treat older adults." Read more here.
- Age bias doesn’t show up only as blatant discrimination (“We want someone younger for that job.”) or snarky birthday cards. One of the most potent sources of ageism comes from older people themselves, and like other forms of ageism, the self-inflicted kind is associated with lower levels of emotional and physical health and can slash years off people’s lives. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues
- A new KFF poll assessing the broad reach of the nation’s opioids crisis on families across the United States reveals that three-in-ten adults (29%) say they or someone in their family have ever been addicted to opioids, including prescription painkillers and illegal drugs like heroin. Rural residents (42%) and White adults (33%) are among the groups hardest hit. The poll also showed that the opioid crisis is part of a much larger picture of addiction affecting American families. Read more here.
- In 2015, the Sackler family was the richest newcomer to Forbes list of America’s Richest Families, with a fortune conservatively estimated at $14 billion. Their wealth had been built from creating a controlled-release version of a World War I painkiller that their company Purdue Pharma began selling in 1996 under the brand name OxyContin. Marketed aggressively as an addiction-proof remedy for a wide variety of aches and pains, OxyContin sales soared, as did addiction rates and overdose deaths among its users. Read more here.
- Two big opioid cases suggest the U.S. bankruptcy process is unjustly providing relief for some while inflicting pain unnecessarily on others. The first involves Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, which may be headed for insolvency a second time. Between 2006 and 2014, it manufactured roughly 30 billion opioid pills. When states, Native American tribal governments and thousands of localities started suing all involved in the addictive medicine’s supply chain, from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) to CVS Health (CVS.N), creditors decided the drugmaker would be better off resuscitated than sold off for parts. Read more here.
- More than half of young adults in the U.S. see even moderate drinking — one or two drinks a day — as unhealthy, new Gallup polling found. Why it matters: Views on alcohol and drugs are shifting rapidly, especially among millennials and Gen Z. Americans overall now see booze as more harmful than marijuana. By the numbers: A record-high 39% of Americans believe moderate drinking is detrimental to health, up 11 points since 2018. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, there was an 18-point jump — the biggest among any age group. Read more here.
- Big Medicaid-managed care plans that serve the majority of the program's beneficiaries are seeing membership slip as more states redetermine program eligibility — a trend that could eat into some of the insurers' bottom lines, according to Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families. Why it matters: If the remaining Medicaid enrollees as a group are sicker overall, plans may have to eat some of the higher cost of care unless states adjust their payment rates upward. Read more here.
- As millions of Medicaid recipients face the potential loss of health coverage for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, state call centers are getting inundated with questions from people needing help. In some cases, federal officials say, it’s taking too long to get answers. Nearly one-third of the states have received warnings from federal Medicaid officials that their lengthy call center wait times may be causing people to hang up — and give up — as they attempt to renew Medicaid coverage amid a massive nationwide effort to clean up the rolls of the government health insurance program for lower-income residents. Read more here.
State Bans on Gender-Affirming Care and LGBTQ Issues
- Transgender youth in North Carolina will face more restrictions accessing health care, participating in sports and exploring gender identities at school after Republican state lawmakers overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of three bills Wednesday. After about six weeks of inactivity, state lawmakers returned to Raleigh to take the override votes, which passed mostly along party lines in the House and the Senate, with two Democrats voting with Republicans on two out of three of the bills. Read more here.
- For members of the greater LGBTQIA+ community, the medical system can be difficult to navigate. Oftentimes, structural barriers, biases, and discrimination against queer people in the healthcare system can prevent them from not only getting the care they need but inflicting trauma as well. Recently, Healthgrades, the leading online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals, and LGBTQIA+ health equity resource OutCare Health partnered on a joint study. Read more here.
- A new proposal from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services addresses this often-lamented failure to support family, friends, and neighbors who care for frail, ill, and disabled older adults. For the first time, it would authorize Medicare payments to health care professionals to train informal caregivers who manage medications, assist loved ones with activities such as toileting and dressing, and oversee the use of medical equipment. Read more here.
- Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent four years trying to overhaul how counties pay for mental health care, betting his reputation on making a dent on homelessness, substance abuse and mental health problems. Now, he is making concessions amid concerns he’s going too far, POLITICO has learned. By channeling more funds into housing and treatment for the state’s most seriously ill and homeless residents, his proposed changes threw into doubt the fate of mental health programs for youth and other preventive services. Read more here.
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