Week of Dec. 26, 2022–Jan. 6, 2023

Key topics covered during this period focus primarily on general mental health issues, youth mental health, climate change and social determinants, the opioid crisis, and policy issues.

General Articles

• The heightened stress of having a spouse battling cancer may manifest in a clinical diagnosis of a new psychiatric disorder, a population-based cohort study found. Looking at over 3 million people living in Denmark and Sweden, there was a higher incidence of first-onset psychiatric disorders among spouses of patients with cancer when compared with the spouses of patients without cancer (6.9% vs 5.6%), reported Qianwei Liu, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues. Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• Nearly half of 18- to 25-year-olds experienced any mental illness or a substance use disorder in 2021, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health's latest report. While the national rate of mental illness was 22.8% for adults overall in the second year of the pandemic, that proportion reached 33% among young adults, according to a survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Read more here.
• A survey of nearly 45,000 college students in France reveals a high prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 15 months after the COVID-19 pandemic began. A team led by a researcher from the Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de Lille fielded the third of three online mental health surveys among 44,898 university students at 82 French universities from Jul 21 to Aug 31, 2021. Read more here.
• Physical activity can help alleviate depressive symptoms in teens, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. Engaging in physical activity significantly helped to reduce depressive symptoms, with a modest corrected effect size compared with controls (g= -0.29, 95% CI -0.47 to -0.10, P=0.004), found Parco M. Siu, PhD, of the University of Hong Kong, and colleagues. Across all the studies, the benefits of physical activity in reducing depressive symptoms resulted in a number needed to treat of six, the group reported in JAMA Pediatrics. Read more here.
• There is a mental health crisis on college campuses across Connecticut. In Connecticut during the fall of 2020, 39% of college students reported symptoms of depression and anxiety.  In addition, 83% of students believe their mental health has negatively impacted their academic performance. As in the sad case of my friend, an untreated mental health crisis can lead to suicidal ideation. Research has shown  that about 12% of undergraduate students experienced suicidal ideation in 2019 and more than 5% made a suicide plan. Read more here.
• Rates of emergency department visits among kids with mental health problems increased by 8% annually from 2015 to 2020 and 13% of patients revisited within 6 months. (JAMA Pediatrics). Read more here.

Climate Change and Mental Health

• We’re doomed. Or at least this is the sentiment surrounding climate change and global warming that infiltrates news and social media outlets — so much so that “doomism” is now a coined term. It describes the belief that we are past the point of no return with respect to addressing the environmental crisis earth finds itself in. Doomism has implications for environmental health, but also mental health as this mentality is seen to unsurprisingly increase levels of eco-anxiety, particularly in children. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis

• In 2018, responding to a wave of overdose deaths, Congress passed legislation requiring Medicare to pay for services at opioid treatment programs for the first time. But two years after Medicare began covering those programs, which use methadone and other medications to help reduce opioid use and overdose deaths, providers say their efforts are being hindered by Medicare Advantage — private insurance companies that administer benefits to about half of the Medicare population Read more here.

Health Insurance and Mental Health

• Many Americans, particularly women, are having difficulty paying for their required health care services — especially dental and mental health care needs — despite having health insurance through their employers. That's according to a recent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The researchers also found that the number women who were unable to afford mental health care in the last few years tripled from around 2% to more than 6%. Read more here.

Social Determinants

• In October 2021, the American Public Health Association declared noise a public health hazard. Decades of research links noise pollution with not only sleep disruption, but also a host of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cognitive impairment, depression, and anxiety. “Despite the breadth and seriousness of its health impacts, noise has not been prioritized as a public health problem for decades,” the declaration says. “The magnitude and seriousness of noise as a public health hazard warrant action.” Read more here.

Federal and State Policy

• What kind of healthcare reforms can we expect from the 118th Congress? At long last, Congress will likely turn its attention to things other than COVID-19. But if lawmakers are interested in actually improving the nation's healthcare system, there are several reforms that can command bipartisan support. Let's start with expanded access to telehealth. One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic was the embrace of telemedicine by patients, providers, and payers alike. Read more here.
• Health insurance companies have to begin reporting to the Georgia state Insurance Department how they provide mental health coverage for children, adolescents and adults under House Bill 1013, a state effort to make sure insurers follow federal law requiring that they cover mental health care in the same way they pay for physical health care. Read more here.
• The United States started 2023 as, yet again, one of the few wealthy nations without any national paid family leave or paid sick leave program. And with Congress divided, advocates are turning to the states to bolster benefits for workers and families — pointing to the nationwide rollback of abortion access and a “tripledemic” of COVID-19, RSV and seasonal flu that swept the nation as proof of the urgency of these measures.  Read more here.
• Medicare and its enrollees were unable to realize millions in savings because of gaps in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' oversight of the Part B program, according to a federal watchdog report released Tuesday. Driving the news: The federal health department's Office of the Inspector General looked at oversight of manufacturer-reported data on average sales prices (ASP). When that data is inaccurate, Medicare may make inappropriate payments, the report said. Read more here.
• For years, state Sen. Phil Berger says, there was nobody in North Carolina who opposed Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act more vehemently than he did. That’s why Berger’s recent conversion from opponent to proponent has shot North Carolina to the top of the list of the states that are most likely to break ranks with the other 10 that have refused to expand Medicaid. Read more here.