General Mental Health Issues
- To increase access to behavioral health and wellness support for students and staff at tribal schools nationwide, the Bureau of Indian Education launched a 24/7 support line for schools and programs funded by the bureau. “BIE schools play a critical role in student’s lives that extends beyond the classroom and into their communities and the tribal nations that they are part of,” said Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in a press release. Read more here.
- Meditation changed Gwyneth Paltrow’s life. She started doing it in the ’90s, at the end of her yoga practice. Years later, she began studying transcendental meditation, or TM, though she admits, “I was very sporadic with that over the years. I was very much like, ‘Ah, I don’t have time,’ which I think is quite a common refrain for people. Especially if you have little kids. It’s really hard.” Paltrow found her way back to the practice in the early days of COVID, “when everything slowed down quite a lot.” Read more here.
- Arab and Muslim Americans face significantly higher rates of mental illness, studies from major medical journals show, including suicide rates that are more than double those of other religious groups. In addition, data obtained by Capital & Main show that hundreds of members of the community have overdosed on opioids in recent years, and overdose death rates among young people there are up to four times the national average. In recognition of troubling trends, the White House announced in November the first-ever national strategy to combat Islamophobia. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues
- The Biden administration launched an initiative that it describes as a nationwide call to increase training on and access to life-saving opioid overdose reversal medications, dubbed the Challenge to Save Lives from Overdose. Naloxone is a medication that can rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Studies have shown that people are easily able to administer the life-saving drug in its nasal spray form without the need for any medical expertise and minimal training. Read more here.
- It’s been six years since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared opioid misuse a national epidemic and a decade since opiates were prescribed freely and by the bottle. However, the same horrific overdose stories that marked the early aughts are still playing out. In fact, for women, the situation is worse. The opioid epidemic has been steadily snowballing for women in recent years. From 1999 to 2021, overdoses in women grew 1,608%, compared with 1,076% for men. Read more here.
Gender-Affirming Care and Related Issues
- The attorneys general from 15 states are wading into a controversial policy debate in Maine over access to gender-affirming care, vowing to fight a proposal that they contend would violate the U.S. Constitution. In a highly unusual move, the attorneys general called a bill under consideration by the Maine Legislature "constitutionally defective" in a strongly worded letter that highlights the ongoing culture war over transgender rights in the country. The bill in question, LD 227, would protect transgender individuals who receive gender-affirming care in Maine — regardless of what state they live in — as well as the medical professionals who provide that care. Read more here.
Federal and State Policy
- President Biden’s reelection campaign launched an effort in battleground states this week to hit former President Trump over his threats to Social Security and Medicare, the campaign first told The Hill. The campaign will hold more than 13 press conferences through Friday across key swing states with local elected officials and seniors, all focused on protecting entitlement programs. Read more here.
- A New Hampshire House committee is recommending passage of a bill that would add people who are involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities or found incompetent to stand trial to the FBI’s gun background check database. New Hampshire is one of just a handful of states that does not share similar data with the FBI. The measure, which cleared the criminal justice committee with an 18-2 recommendation, was prompted by the killing of security guard and former Franklin Police Chief Bradley Haas inside of New Hampshire Hospital last November. John Madore, the gunman, had previously been an inpatient at the facility. Read more here.
- The New York State Senate and Assembly proposed record-high Medicaid rate increases in their one-house budget bills this week, rebuffing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s efforts to tamp down the program’s ballooning cost in the upcoming fiscal year. Both houses called for a 3% rate increase and supplementary hikes for hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities. Read more here.
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