Week of April 10–14, 2023

Week of April 10–14, 2023

General Mental Health Issues

• In the wake of Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman entering treatment for severe depression, four Democratic colleagues in Congress exclusively sat down with ABC News to share their support for him and his recovery while applauding his courage on the stigma-clouded topic, which has historically been associated with great political risk. The four lawmakers -- Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York -- also spoke candidly about their own mental health battles, ranging from clinical depression to post-traumatic stress disorder, in the occasionally emotional interview. Read more here. 
• A newspaper finds that the insurance company that manages medical care for many Georgia children has denied or partially denied more than 6,500 requests for psychotherapy between 2019 and mid-2022. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that many of the requests denied by Amerigroup, a unit of insurance giant Elevance Health, were for children in state-run foster care. Child advocates tell the newspaper that the Department of Community Health, which is supposed to oversee the contract, isn’t holding Amerigroup accountable. Read more here. 
• People 45 and older who have elevated stress levels have been found to be 37 percent more likely to have cognitive problems, including memory and thinking issues, than those who are not stressed, according to research published in the journal JAMA Network Open. For more than a decade, the study followed 24,448 people who also are participants in a long-term, ongoing study on brain health. Read more here. (A free account is required to read this story.)

Youth Mental Health

• I believe that many children, especially Black children, become institutionalized, whether in a hospital or in a juvenile detention facility, because the medical system has failed them. And we can, and must, do better. Black children are more likely to be diagnosed with disruptive mood disorders, such as oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), than white children with similar behaviors, who are more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Read more here. (Access to this article requires a free account.) 
• The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that would create a $15 million “Innovation Grant” program designed to expand access to mental health services for children and families statewide. Senate Bill 26, filed by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, will offer grants to health care providers and nonprofit groups who offer mental health treatment, especially those that work with children and their family members. The program would be overseen by Texas Health and Human Services. Read more here. 

Gun Violence

• On 18 May 2019, a 37-year-old man died of a heroin overdose in Colorado. Austin Eubanks had struggled with addiction since 1999, when he was shot and witnessed his best friend killed in the Columbine high school library. A doctor prescribed the 17-year-old opioids to help deal with the pain from the bullet wounds in his hand and his knee, but the teenager found the drugs more helpful for his emotional wounds, the ones he did not know how to talk about. Read more here. 
• The shooting in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank on Monday is the latest workplace-related mass shooting to take place in the United States over the last 60 years, according to gun violence data. The Violence Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that's funded by the National Institute of Justice, has found the current or former workplaces of perpetrators were the most common sites for mass shootings, which the organization defines as four or more people killed by a firearm. Read more here. 

The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues

• Mary O’Donnell thinks that a way to bring down the number of deaths related to alcohol or substance use is to make it easier to call for help. That’s what she’s been advocating for since Sean died. “Young people do not want to risk getting arrested,” O’Donnell said. “That gets put on their record, and it impacts their ability to get into college, get jobs, etc.” O’Donnell has been walking the halls of the Legislative Building, talking to lawmakers about Senate Bill 458, which would strengthen the state’s Good Samaritan law. Read more here. 
• A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at war with the cartels.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords even without that nation’s permission. And lawmakers in both chambers have filed legislation to label some cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move supported by GOP presidential aspirants. Read more here. 
• Members of Congress and advocates worry a proposed rule from the Biden administration will make it harder for people to access a medication commonly used to treat opioid use disorder. The Drug Enforcement Administration is proposing limiting telehealth prescriptions for buprenorphine to an initial 30-day supply until the patient can be seen in person by a physician. The proposal follows a three-year period during the public health emergency where the DEA allowed providers to prescribe buprenorphine through telehealth without requiring an in-person visit — part of an effort to maintain access to care during the pandemic. Read more here. 
• A lifesaving drug that can reverse an opioid overdose will be available on pharmacy shelves without a prescription this summer, a regulatory relaxation that experts herald as an important step in managing the U.S. opioid epidemic. Currently, naloxone is officially classified as prescription-only but is also available from pharmacists in states with a standing order—a directive designed to increase access to public health interventions such as annual flu shots—or a similar protocol. Read more here. 
• When you receive a scary diagnosis — for cancer, heart disease or other serious illness — one of your first calls is probably to a doctor who can offer the full range of evidence-based care. But if your diagnosis were for opioid addiction and you came to see me, an addiction specialist, federal regulations written half a century ago would bar me from prescribing the most effective treatment: methadone. Read more here. 
• Colorado is working with the federal Medicaid department on a five-year, $4.6 million program to provide better services for pregnant women who are addicted to opioids. Also, only 8.2% of pregnant people received a prenatal screening for depression, according to 2020 Medicaid data. That’s an undercount, however, because many patients likely received a screening for depression but it was not captured in the system because doctors’ offices often don’t bill for that as a separate service, Medicaid officials said. Read more here. 

Health Insurance and Health Care Costs

• These are three of an estimated 100 million Americans who have amassed nearly $200 billion in collective medical debt — almost the size of Greece’s economy — according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Now lawmakers in at least a dozen states and the U.S. Congress have pushed legislation to curtail the financial burden that’s pushed many into untenable situations: forgoing needed care for fear of added debt, taking a second mortgage to pay for cancer treatment or slashing grocery budgets to keep up with payments. Read more here.