General Mental Health Articles
- The Biden administration is pushing insurers and state regulators to improve mental health care coverage. The move comes as overdose deaths rise and youth mental health problems grow more rampant, disproportionately affecting communities of color. Inflation and a shortage of mental health care providers, including psychiatrists and specialists who treat adolescents, further hinder access to care. The federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, enacted in 2008, doesn’t require insurance plans to offer mental health coverage, but if they do, the benefits must be equal with coverage for other health conditions. Read more here.
- When it comes to reducing stigma around suicide, not treating it as the elephant in the room is helpful, say mental health experts. However, it’s not just talking about it that matters. It’s what you say and how you say it, which is why some have moved away from saying “committed suicide” and other phrases that can have harmful consequences. Urszula Klich, a clinical psychologist in Atlanta, says that social stigma around suicide can amplify shame for people experiencing suicidality, which includes suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts, making seeking help or talking about it more difficult. Read more here.
- People who die by suicide sometimes get branded as selfish, depressed, or attention-seeking. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), such myths contribute to the stigma that can prevent those who are suicidal from seeking the help they need and falsify understanding of the motivations behind suicide. Suicide is a leading cause of death among children and adults. In 2020, there were 1.2 million attempts globally, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says. Read more here.
- A trio of new studies paints a grim picture of how overdose deaths, depression, and barriers to care are weighing heaviest on disadvantaged and minority groups and are aligning to widen health disparities as the U.S. emerges from the pandemic. While behavioral health issues seep into nearly every corner of American life, many experts say interventions have to be built around "precision psychology" that factors social determinants and can predict which subgroups benefit the most. The studies reveal just how much the behavioral health crisis is leaving deep faults along racial, educational, and generational lines. Read more here.
- Between federal COVID relief funds and the $1.4 billion sign-on bonus North Carolina received for expanding Medicaid, state lawmakers were able to make significant investments in mental health services in the latest state budget. Though state budget negotiations are done almost entirely behind the closed doors of the majority party in the General Assembly, currently the Republicans, health leaders in the House and Senate said they took care to listen to patients, families, and providers while creating their mental health spending plan. They also worked closely with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley. Read more here.
- The issue of mental health is "fundamentally impacting the fabric of society," U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said during an event hosted ahead of World Mental Health Day. Political divisiveness, climate change, COVID, gun violence, and social media are among stressors taking a simultaneous toll on mental health, which in turn fuels more harmful behaviors. "We have become professionals at putting masks on and walking around society ... like everything is going fine," Murthy said during the second-ever gathering of all living former and current U.S. surgeons general at Dartmouth. Read more here.
- We are in a technological revolution: the development of generative Artificial Intelligence. The recent evolution of chatbots through programs such as ChatGPT and Google Bard offer problem-solving tools with numerous potential applications. One of the most promising uses of AI lies in the field of mental health medicine. However, due to the unknown effects of AI implementation and the vulnerable status of mental health patients, there are serious concerns about chatbot therapy. Read more here.
- Assaults accounted for more than 1.3 million, or roughly 6%, of all injuries treated in emergency departments in 2020, according to new figures from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. The data, which doesn't include sexual assaults, provides a snapshot of the burden violence-related injuries place on the health system. Non-fatal injuries cost the U.S. about $2 trillion in 2019. The government set a goal of reducing the rate of assault injuries to about 278 per 100,000 as part of its federal Healthy People 2030 objectives. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- Today’s high school seniors have lived through a deadly pandemic, increasing rates of climate disaster, and an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, all before getting their driver’s licenses. Contentious national politics, global crises, social isolation, and the personal and academic pressures of high school have fueled what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called the “crisis of our time,” a national mental health emergency among young people. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, noting that COVID-19 exacerbated a decade-long trend of worsening mental health and suicidality. Read more here.
- Being a U.S. teenager in 2023 is both the same as it ever was, and astoundingly different from even a generation ago. “The main domains are the same: school, home, family, and peers,” says Dr. Asha Patton-Smith, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente in Virginia. “But the stressors that emerge within those domains have changed tremendously in a world where the internet and real life have largely blurred into one, with everything from school to social interaction now happening at least partially online and a fire hose of bad news always only a swipe away.” Read more here.
- Utah filed a lawsuit against TikTok, claiming the company is "baiting" children and teens into harmful social media habits. The lawsuit accuses TikTok of luring young users with its "highly powerful algorithms and manipulative design features," creating addictive and unhealthy habits among consumers. Utah claims that the company misrepresents the app's safety, and deceptively portrays itself as independent of ByteDance, its Chinese parent company. The lawsuit is the latest attempt by lawmakers to regulate and hold social media companies accountable for their content and protection of users’ private data. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues
- Excessive drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to skyrocketing rates of alcohol-associated liver disease to the point of needing transplants, according to doctors. Transplant centers across the United States are reporting more patients needing a new liver than ever before, sometimes seeing double the number compared to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, alcohol-related liver disease has surpassed other conditions as the number one reason for liver transplants. The demographics have also changed. Historically, patients needing liver transplants were men in their 60s. Now, patients are often in their 20s and 30s, with more female patients as well. Read more here.
- Drugmaker Mallinckrodt (MCD0.F) won court approval for a bankruptcy plan that cuts $1 billion from what it must pay opioid crisis victims, cancels existing equity shares, and trims nearly $2 billion in other debt. The Ireland-based company reached a relatively swift conclusion to its second Chapter 11, which began on Aug. 28, just 14 months after its previous bankruptcy concluded. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved the restructuring plan at a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware. Read more here.
- D.C.'s harm-reduction vending machines have pumped out at least 2,800 distributions of Narcan, Fentanyl tests, and other protective items since a pilot program launched last spring. With opioid overdoses at an all-time high, more communities are investing in innovative and low-cost intervention efforts to help save lives. Vending machines are placed at Fire and EMS stations and clinics in neighborhoods with high opioid overdose rates. Anyone can call numbers listed on vending machines at any time and get a one-time access code for free supplies, and FMCS is also providing access cards for those without mobile devices. Read more here.
- When she was a baby, Anastasia Shevtsova had a laugh that sounded like silver bells. More than a year after Anastasia died of an opioid overdose at the age of 15, her mother, Olga Shevtsova, still thinks of that laugh, her daughter’s singing voice, and the way she painted a card decorated with tomatoes for her grandparents who love gardening. Looking at her daughter’s artwork brings comfort, but Olga said it’s also tremendously painful. Anastasia is one of about 1,000 Minnesotans that now die each year from opioid overdoses. Read more here.
- An alert shared in Boulder warned of a powdered form of fentanyl, with its texture like drywall plaster, and its color pink or tan. Boulder law enforcement officers found it near a dead body. They told the county health department, which released the public health alert five days later. The University of Colorado posted the alert on its website and Facebook, warning students to beware of the deadly powder. For two years, parents have pushed CU and the rest of the state’s universities and colleges to do more to protect students from fentanyl poisoning. Read more here.
- More than four months after the Food and Drug Administration approved the overdose reversal medication Opvee, the manufacturer, Indivior, has started shipping the life-saving drug to first responders and pharmacies. Opvee, a nasal spray version of the drug nalmefene, works by blocking opioid receptors in the brain to quickly reverse the effects of an overdose. The rescue medication is approved for people 12 and older and requires a prescription. The antidote arrives in a crowded market of overdose reversal drugs. Read more here.
- Five Los Angeles County public libraries will host free naloxone clinics at select locations, made possible with a partnership with the County Department of Public Health and California Department of Health Care Services. The clinics run through Nov. 9. The free doses do not require proof of identification, insurance, or payment. Those receiving the doses need to watch an on-site training video of how to administer the medication. The doses are limited to one per customer while supplies last. Read more here.
- Fentanyl is a potent drug that can kill in the smallest of doses, but what is it, how is it made, and what's being done to track people smuggling it into our area? CBS New York investigative reporter Tim McNicholas went inside a Drug Enforcement Administration laboratory for the answers. After the undercover surveillance and DEA raids, seized drugs are tested at the DEA's northeast regional laboratory in Manhattan. When McNicholas visited, lab director Tom Blackwell said the lab had about 30,000 tablets containing fentanyl. "This is like a daily occurrence for us, really," Blackwell said. Read more here.
- Over the past 15 months, the phones at Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin have not stopped ringing. The center, which runs the 988-crisis hotline for the state, worked hard to expand its mental health services following the hotline's national relaunch. Shelly Missall, the organization's 988 program manager, told ABC News that like many centers across the country, they have experienced surging demand that has outpaced anything experienced prior. That level of surging demand has led Missall to make tough decisions. She says among them is limiting services provided to frequent users of the line. Read more here.
Climate Change and Mental Health
- Climate change can play a major role in affecting young people’s mental health, according to a new report from the American Psychological Association. Written in collaboration with the climate advocacy organization ecoAmerica, the report documents how environmental events linked to climate change, including weather disasters, extreme heat, and poor air quality, can trigger or exacerbate mental health issues for kids and teens. Natural disasters can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder in these groups, the report says, and can increase the risks of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, aggression, cognitive impairment, and more. Read more here.
- More than 427,000 Arkansas residents were dropped from Medicaid in the past six months, as the state became among the first nationally to complete a post-pandemic eligibility review of the government-funded health care program for lower-income residents. The state ended coverage for over half of those whose cases were reviewed, a removal rate that raised concerns among some health care advocates. “Arkansas has distinguished itself by moving very rapidly to kick families off coverage, regardless of whether they are still eligible,” said Joan Alker, Executive Director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. Read more here.
- Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is trying to fend off a potential class-action lawsuit that alleges the state has not provided adequate information to Medicaid beneficiaries before dropping them. Attorneys for the state Agency for Health Care Administration and the Department of Children and Families filed court documents arguing that a federal judge should reject requests to issue a preliminary injunction and to make the lawsuit a class action. The lawsuit stems from a process that the state started this spring to determine whether more than five million people enrolled in Medicaid remained eligible for benefits. Read more here.
- Two national LGBTQ rights groups, a North Carolina doctor, and a family with a transgender child are challenging a new North Carolina law preventing transgender minors from receiving gender-affirming health care. The coalition argues in a federal lawsuit that the law discriminates based on gender identity and infringes on the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children. North Carolina’s House Bill 808, which went into effect Oct. 1, prohibits health care providers in the state from administering gender-affirming medical care, including hormones, puberty blockers, and certain surgical procedures, to transgender youths under 18. Read more here.
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