Week of July 15–19, 2024

General Mental Health Articles

• As many as one in four U.S. adults with depression and anxiety can't pay their medical bills — a situation that could be limiting their ability to get timely psychiatric care, Johns Hopkins researchers found. Fewer than half of all U.S. adults with mental health disorders receive treatment, and the findings show those with common behavioral disorders face high out-of-pocket costs because many psychiatrists don't participate in insurance networks. Read more here.
• The 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that just over one-fifth of Hispanic adults reported having a mental illness, defined in the report as a diagnosed mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder, that may have interfered with their lives. Read more here.
• Texas is in the midst of a mental health workforce shortage. However, where is the state short? Today, 246 of Texas’ 254 counties are wholly or partly designated by the federal government as “mental health professional shortage areas,” and that’s in a state where roughly five million people do not have health insurance. This has had a particularly dire effect in rural, border, and frontier counties in Texas, as some regions might have only one mental health professional or none. Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, affects roughly three percent of adults around the world. However, many of those with the condition remain undiagnosed, especially women. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, men are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than women, but roughly 75 percent of women with the condition are undiagnosed. Read more here.

988 Hotline

• Two years in, big questions remain about whether America's revamped 988 suicide hotline is working as envisioned and how funding has been dispersed. We checked in with Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use for the Health and Human Services Department, about what's next. Read more here.
• Many Americans still don't know about 988, the revamped national suicide hotline, according to new polling from Ipsos on behalf of the National Alliance of Mental Illness. 988 launched two years ago, and while 67% of U.S. adults say they've heard of the hotline, only 23% say they're at least somewhat familiar with it. That's slightly higher than last June, when just 17% of adults reported being familiar. Read more here.

Medicaid Coverage

• Nearly one of every five uninsured working-age adults between 19 and 64 across the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are, according to a new analysis, stuck in a health care limbo known as a “coverage gap.” That means they earn too much money to receive Medicaid but not enough to qualify for financial help to purchase their own plan on the healthcare.gov marketplace, according to the analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Read more here.

Gender-Affirming Care and LGBTQ Issues

• A federal appeals court panel ruled 2-1 that Tennessee does not unconstitutionally discriminate against transgender people by not allowing them to change the sex designation on their birth certificates. “There is no fundamental right to a birth certificate recording gender identity instead of biological sex,” Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote. Read more here.
• A federal judge’s order blocking a Biden administration rule for protecting LGBTQ students from discrimination applies to hundreds of schools and colleges across the U.S., and a group challenging it hopes to extend it further to many major cities. U.S. District Judge John Broomes’ decision touched off a new legal dispute between the Biden administration and critics of the rule, over how broadly the order should apply. Read more here.
• When he ran for office in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump focused heavily on abortion, vowing to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade — which he did as president. However, this year the 2024 GOP presidential nominee and the Republican Party have a new health-related social issue: transgender care. Read more here.

Federal Policy

• For the first time, Medicare is proposing to reimburse doctors for digital mental health therapies, like apps and software, to treat mental health conditions. The move could be a boost for digital therapeutics that have been slow to gain adoption because there aren't consistent reimbursement and coverage pathways. Read more here.