Key topics covered during this period include general mental health issues, youth mental health, impact of the pandemic, gun violence, the opioid crisis, military mental health, health care spending, and policy issues.
General Articles
- New York City’s latest plan to keep mentally ill people from languishing in public is billed as a common-sense strategy to get them help. By encouraging police officers and city medics to take more psychologically disturbed people to hospitals, even if they refuse care, Mayor Eric Adams says he’s humanely tackling a problem instead of looking away. But his policy will have to navigate a legal challenge and a cool reception from some city lawmakers. In emergency rooms, psychiatrists must determine whether such patients need hospitalization, perhaps against their will. It’s no simple decision. Read more here.
- Suicide is a leading cause of death among children and adults, but spotting risk factors and warning signs isn’t easy. Nearly 46,000 people in the United States died by suicide in 2020, which is about one death every 11 minutes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers still haven’t nailed down how to better predict who’s at risk for attempting suicide, and whether or when vulnerable people will do it, said Justin Baker, clinical director of The Suicide and Trauma Reduction Initiative for Veterans at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Read more here.
- The holiday season can be a time for community and family gatherings. But for some, it can be a season of more complicated feelings, including increased loneliness and isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused many people to physically distance from family members and loved ones for the last three years. Many may be choosing to keep their distance again this year during the “tridemic” of flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. A 2021 study from Morning Consult found that 58 percent of Americans are lonely. Loneliness and isolation are often associated with their effects on mental and emotional health. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- Educators and parents surveyed in a new national poll focused on school mental health services expressed concern that the U.S. is in the midst of a growing youth mental health crisis — and that schools may not be prepared to deal with it. Ninety percent of school administrators and 60 percent of parents said they believe there is such a crisis, according to the poll conducted by Effective School Solutions (ESS). Read more here.
- Expect a lot of debate over how California should respond to the state’s mounting fentanyl epidemic when state lawmakers return to Sacramento early next year. Bills dealing with the super-powerful synthetic opioid are already piling up, many of them focused on youth in the wake of a stunning analysis that found fentanyl was responsible for 1 in 5 deaths among 15- to 24-year-old Californians in 2021. Read more here.
- A study of adolescents admitted to eight children's hospitals for mental illness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals a steep increase in the monthly proportion of hospitalizations tied to psychological issues after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States but not in France. Harvard Medical School researchers led the study of 9,696 US and French 11- to 17-year-olds hospitalized for at least one mental health condition before the pandemic (Feb 1, 2019, to Mar 31, 2020) and 11,101 admitted after it began (Apr 1, 2020, to Apr 30, 2021). Read more here.
Impact of the Pandemic
- Chronic disease is omnipresent in the United States. Trillions of dollars are devoted to and hundreds of thousands of lives are taken by chronic conditions each year. So why does it feel like we are going backward, with falling life expectancy, and higher prevalence of chronic diseases? A panel of experts convened at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit in Washington to discuss the many problems and shortcomings of chronic disease care, and how making changes upstream could improve the health of the population. Top of FormRead more here.
- Covid-19 vaccines have kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives, a new study says — and that estimate is most likely a conservative one, the researchers say. To determine exactly how much the shots have helped, researchers from the Commonwealth Fund and Yale School of Public Health created a computer model of disease transmission that incorporated demographic information, people’s risk factors, the dynamics of infection and general information about vaccination. Read more here.
- The intelligence community was not prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and did not move quickly enough to gather information about the spread of the virus, according to a report released by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. The report looks at the intelligence community’s response to Covid-19, particularly in the early days of 2020. The intelligence agencies’ clandestine collectors largely focused on analyzing data about the virus that was already being discussed openly by public health officials and experts across the world, the report said, arguing that they moved too slowly to collect clandestine information. Read more here.
Gun Violence and Mental Health
- There were a million things running through James Slaugh’s mind as an ambulance rushed him to a nearby hospital after the deadly rampage in Club Q, in Colorado Springs, last month. Among them: what kind of bills he would be facing. “My first night in the ER, that was in the back of my mind: ‘I’m being whisked away to a hospital, and I’m not sure how much this is going to cost,” he said. “You just went through a shooting, you just got shot, but that’s where my brain went to.” Read more here.
- It’s been 10 years since a gunman took 26 innocent lives at Sandy Hook Elementary — the lives of children and educators. And while this anniversary is difficult, it offers us an opportunity to reflect on gun violence policy in our state and nation. On Monday I was honored to moderate a panel “How Sandy Hook Changed the Legal Environment,” to discuss the legal changes that have been made since Sandy Hook and to consider ways to further prevent gun injury in our state. In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, federal legislative reform has been slow. Read more here.
- Marking a decade since the Sandy Hook school massacre, President Joe Biden said the United States must do more to tackle the nation's gun violence epidemic and people should have "societal guilt" for taking too long to address it. Biden said in a statement that 10 years ago, on Dec. 14, 2012, "the unthinkable happened," when 20 young children and six educators were killed at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Read more here.
- They would have been 16 or 17 this year. High school juniors. The children killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012 should have spent this year thinking about college, taking their SATs and getting their driver’s licenses. Maybe attending their first prom. Instead, the families of the 20 students and six educators slain in the mass shooting will mark a decade without them Wednesday. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis
- The rate of drug overdose deaths has slowed from record-high levels, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimated that there have been 107,735 predicted overdose deaths in the 12-month period that ended in July 2022. If the numbers are confirmed, this would be the ninth month in a row that the rate of increasing overdose deaths has slowed, and the fourth month in a row that there has been a decrease in 12-month rolling totals, the White House said in a statement. Read more here. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overdose-deaths-slow-from-record-highs-cdc-data/
- Landen Hausman, a high school sophomore, died in January after buying fentanyl-laced Percocet through a dealer on social media. His family found him collapsed on the bathroom floor and tried to revive him with CPR, but it was too late. "Sometimes with fentanyl you don't get a second chance," his father Marc Hausman told CBS News. Sadly, Landen's story is all too common. Last year, more than 100,000 Americans died from fentanyl — more deaths than there were of Americans killed in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Deaths among teens have more than tripled since 2019. Read more here.
- Addiction treatment got easier during the Covid-19 pandemic — and the Biden administration wants to keep it that way. Federal regulators announced a proposal to take the emergency policies enacted in 2020, in response to the emerging pandemic, and make them permanent. In particular, the changes would preserve patients’ expanded access to two key medications used to treat opioid addiction: methadone and buprenorphine. Read more here.
- It isn't every day that a patient pulls out their phone to show me pictures of their floors. Jason, whom I had just met during a busy Friday afternoon on addiction medicine consults, did just that. "It's not real hardwood, but it's something," Jason said proudly, with tears in his eyes. Why was he getting so emotional over floors? Jason had been homeless, living outside in a tent in San Francisco, for the past 5 years. Read more here.
- CVS and Walgreens have agreed to pay state and local governments a combined total of more than $10 billion to settle lawsuits over the toll of opioids and now want to know by Dec. 31 whether states are accepting the deals. States announced final details Monday of settlements that the two largest pharmacy chains in the U.S. offered last month. The deals are among the largest in a wave of proposed and finalized settlements over opioids in recent years totaling more than $50 billion. Read more here.
- Even in this easygoing, subtropical city, the onset of winter and the stress of the holidays can test the mettle of anyone trying to quit opioids. Collins — who has been in recovery from drug use for 27 years — or another peer support specialist is on duty in the hospital’s emergency department around the clock, seven days a week, and the hospital stocks the addiction medications methadone and buprenorphine to stabilize patients in withdrawal from opioid use. In addition, emergency physicians can write short-term prescriptions for buprenorphine to tide over patients until they can find addiction treatment. Read more here.
- Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high. Those losses reverberate deeply in rural Pamlico County, a tightknit community of 12,000 on the state’s eastern shore. Over the past decade, it’s had the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in North Carolina. Now, the county is receiving money from national settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors to address the crisis. But by the time those billions of dollars are divided among states and localities, using formulas partially based on population, what trickles down to hard-hit places like Pamlico County can be a trifling sum. Read more here.
- New Hampshire will receive $15.5 million from Walmart over the next year to fund recovery services and treatment for people living with opioid use disorder. The agreement is part of a national settlement with the supermarket and pharmacy chain that alleges Walmart contributed to the opioid crisis by not properly overseeing the dispensing of the medications at its pharmacies. The settlement also requires Walmart to improve how its pharmacies handle opioids by complying with new measures to prevent fraudulent prescriptions and flag ones that seem suspicious. Read more here.
Military Mental Health
- Though military suicide has been a problem for decades, critics say the Pentagon hasn’t come to terms with the fact that anyone can potentially be at risk. At Cornerstone Equine Therapy Center outside San Diego, Judy Beckett has been working with the Navy for more than a decade. These days, most of her calls are from Navy commanders searching for new ideas to increase resiliency among sailors. She said horses have almost a meditative power with sailors working through PTSD or military sexual trauma. Read more here.
Health Care Spending
- Americans’ out-of-pocket health spending rose 10.4% in 2021, a growth rate not seen since 1985 that was driven in part by demand for dental services, eyeglasses and medical supplies, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ annual National Health Expenditures report. The big picture: Overall health spending grew by only 2.7%, a much smaller rate than the 10.3% bump seen in 2020. But the decline of special pandemic and public health-related federal funding is a huge factor in the 2021 results and masks a sharper spike in other areas. Read more here.
- In an environment of high inflation, health insurance costs are doing the opposite: They’ve begun to deflate, and are poised to continue dropping each month until fall 2023, economists predict. Health insurance prices fell by 4% in October and 4.3% in November, according to the consumer price index, a key measure of inflation. By comparison, the average price for all U.S. goods and services rose 0.4% and 0.1% in October and November, respectively. The health data reflects factors such as consumers’ insurance premiums and benefits paid by insurers. Read more here
Federal and State Policy
- MedPAC wants Congress to increase hospitals and clinicians' 2024 Medicare payment rates. Why it matters: If Congress opts not to follow the recommendations, CMS has to make payment updates according to current law — setting up another year of providers running to lawmakers for relief from Medicare cuts after the fact. Commissioners hashed out draft payment recommendations for providers in a marathon two-day meeting last week. Read more here.
- A major civil rights crisis is sneaking up on America. Many observers expect the Biden administration to end the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency in April or July 2023. Whenever that happens, Medicaid will begin terminating families' health care for the first time since February 2020. Disaster is likely to strike, as state Medicaid agencies struggle to reevaluate the eligibility of more than 82 million people. Federal researchers project that Medicaid will terminate 15 million people—seven times the largest previous annual loss of Medicaid coverage. Read more here.
- Virginia needs a major new investment in funding for behavioral health care services, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a speech Wednesday, pledging to spend the rest of his time in office working to transform a system he said faces a “crisis” of people in need. The governor is set to unveil his full budget proposal to the politically divided General Assembly on Thursday. He said the budget would include over $230 million in new funding for mental health services. Read more here.
Manage Cookie Preferences