Week of Jan. 23–27, 2023

General Articles

• In a cross-sectional study of a nationally representative sample of 890 primary leaders of religious congregations, the leaders overwhelmingly embraced a medical understanding of the causes and treatment of depression. When clergy endorsed religious causes and treatment, those religious views mainly supplemented rather than replaced a medical view, although a nontrivial minority endorsed only religious interpretations. Most of the leaders endorsed views about the etiology and appropriate treatment of depression in line with contemporary medical models, which should encourage further collaboration between medical professionals and religious leaders to address mental health difficulties in communities. Read more here. 
  

Youth Mental Health

• The nation continues to grapple with a youth mental health crisis. But what is the appropriate role of schools in fostering well-being among our young people? No doubt, it begins with a strong collaboration between parents, teachers, and school administrators. The question is: How do we do that? A new national survey commissioned by Mental Health First Aid USA (MHFA) provides some answers. Read more here. 
• “Remember the time Ariana Grande gave her fans $5 million of free therapy? It felt like a fevered dream. A Grammy-winning artist was offering free and accessible mental health support before my school and healthcare provider. Like many students in college, I was burned out from back-to-back finals at the time and curious to see whether the singer of “Just keep breathin’” could actually help me breathe. Through weekly live video chats, my counselor and I were able to pin and deconstruct the sources of my daily stress and anxiety.” Read more here. 
• A recent study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, notes that “suicide bereavement in young people often has distinct features, including feelings of stigma, maladaptive coping strategies (e.g. alcohol misuse), and traumatic guilt.” Studies such as these point to the need for other ways to identify and support young people who may have lost friends or classmates. The need is urgent. Suicide among people ages 15–34 is one of the three leading causes of death and drug overdose–related mortality, and it continues to rise in the United States, particularly worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more here. 

Impact of the Pandemic

• It’s been 3 years since the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in the United States, on Jan. 20, 2020. In the time since, nearly 1.1 million Americans have died from the coronavirus; the United States has reported 102 million COVID cases, more than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both figures, many health officials believe, are likely to have been undercounted. Read more here. 

Gun Violence

• Yet another community is stricken with grief in the wake of the horrific shooting at Monterey Park, California, on Jan. 21, 2023, that left 11 people dead and 9 more wounded. Families and friends of the victims, as well as those who were injured, are no doubt gripped with grief, anguish and despair. In addition to those who are experiencing direct loss, such events also take a toll on others, including those who witnessed the shooting, first responders, people who were nearby, and those who hear about it through the media. Read more here.
• As with all mass shootings in the United States, all of this news was predictably followed by public calls—from activists and politicians alike—for gun control legislation that could curb future gun violence. Salon spoke to researchers who study gun violence and regulation to stop such violence. In turn, the researchers explained what kinds of laws seem more or less effective at stopping gun violence, according to research papers. Read more here. 
• The deadly mass shooting in Monterey Park is raising discussion about mental health care and the stigmas and pressures embedded in Asian American Pacific Islander cultures. “The assumption is they don't need help when, in fact, they do,” said Cirian Villavicencio, commissioner with the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs. Read more here. 
• The perpetrators and victims of gun violence cross barriers of age, race, and social background. But as the CNN commentator Andrew McCabe, a former deputy director of the F.B.I., pointed out, there is one thing that ties many of the most deadly mass shootings together: the ready availability of highly deadly weapons, such as the semi-automatic pistol that police say was used in the massacre in Monterey Park, California. It is this commonality that distinguishes the United States from most other advanced countries, where mass shootings are rare. Read more here. 
• Experts said although there is not a lot of research on isolation, there appears to be a link between loneliness and violence. “Clearly isolation and loneliness are at play in a lot of violence,” Dr. Edwin Fisher, a psychologist and professor in the department of health behavior at Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina, told ABC News. “They may be important red flags for us to recognize and trying to help people who are prone to violence.” Read more here. 

The Opioid Crisis

• The addiction crisis is increasingly eroding health systems' finances, with the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) costing hospitals more than $95 billion a year, new data from Premier Inc. AI Applied Sciences shows. That's 7.86% of all hospital expenditures, according to the data, which was released first to Axios. The big picture: The opioid epidemic has had an enormous human toll, and solving the crisis is critical for patients and for society. But fixing the epidemic can also improve hospital finances, Premier researchers wrote in a blog post. Read more here. 
• A new study shows that reducing restrictions on buprenorphine did not lead to an increase in overdose deaths involving the treatment. The findings may help allay concerns that making buprenorphine more widely available could lead to more overdose deaths. Buprenorphine and similar medications, like methadone and Suboxone, are opioid agonists that reduce withdrawal symptoms and cravings. Compared to methadone, buprenorphine has a lower potential for misuse and overdose, making it the most accessible of all the options, but it remains "substantially underused," the study says. Read more here. 
• Doctors sent patients home with opioids after emergency department visits about 8% of the time in 2019–2020, down from about 12% in 2017–2018, according to figures released recently by the CDC. Why it matters: It continues a downward trend line from about 21.5% of emergency department discharges in 2010–2011 that resulted in an opioid prescription and a signal that efforts to educate doctors and reduce the use of opioids have gained traction. Read more here. 
• Kentucky communities can apply for certification through a program that evaluates the services being offered to residents seeking help for drug or alcohol addiction, Gov. Andy Beshear said. The governor announced the creation of the Recovery Ready Communities program last year. Since then, the Office of Drug Control Policy, the Advisory Council for Recovery Ready Communities and Volunteers of America Mid-States have created a certification program for communities statewide. The certification measures a community’s services in three different categories: prevention, treatment and recovery support, the governor’s office said. Read more here. 

Veterans’ Mental Health Issues

• Starting Jan. 17, veterans in acute suicidal crisis will be able to go to any VA or non-VA health care facility for emergency health care at no cost—including inpatient or crisis residential care for up to 30 days and outpatient care for up to 90 days. Veterans do not need to be enrolled in the VA system to use this benefit. This expansion of care will help prevent veteran suicide by guaranteeing no cost, world-class care to veterans in times of crisis. It will also increase access to acute suicide care for up to 9 million veterans who are not currently enrolled in VA. Read more here. 

988 Hotline 

• When Jamieson Brill answers a crisis call from a Spanish speaker on the newly launched national 988 mental health helpline, he rarely mentions the word suicide, or “suicidio.” Brill, whose family hails from Puerto Rico, knows that just discussing the term in some Spanish-speaking cultures is so frowned upon that many callers are too scared to even admit that they’re calling for themselves. “However strong stigma around mental health concerns is in English-speaking cultures, in Spanish-speaking cultures it is triple that,” said Brill. Read more here. 

Research

• What if you could look at all the things you do daily and know which ones will best help or hurt your brain? A new study attempted to answer that question by strapping activity monitors to the thighs of nearly 4,500 people in the United Kingdom and tracking their 24-hour movements for 7 days. Researchers then examined how participants’ behavior affected their short-term memory, problem-solving, and processing skills. Read more here. 

Federal and State Policy

• Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Thursday that House Republicans will not target Medicare or Social Security in their negotiations over the debt ceiling. “We won’t touch Medicare or Social Security,” he told Donald Trump Jr. in an interview in the Speaker’s office for Trump Jr.’s “Triggered” podcast. The remark comes as some House Republicans have been eyeing entitlement programs as a potential target for trimming down federal spending, after vowing to tie an increase in the debt limit to spending cuts. Read more here. 
• The special Medicaid measure known as “continuous enrollment” will end on March 31, 2023, no matter what. It was part of the budget bill Congress passed in December 2022. Even if the public health emergency is renewed in April, states will begin to make people on Medicaid sign up again to renew their coverage. And that means between 5 and 14 million Americans could lose their Medicaid coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the nonpartisan health policy organization. Read more here. 
• More than 16.3 million people enrolled in a health plan through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) during the most recent open enrollment period, marking the highest number of enrollees since the program was signed into law 10 years ago. This record amount of enrollments occurred between Nov. 1 and Jan. 15 and represented nearly 2 million more people than the number that enrolled the previous year. All enrollees in the Affordable Care Act receive an essential benefits package that includes mental and substance use coverage. Read more here.
• Civil rights groups are challenging California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new court program for people with severe mental illness. Three groups — Disability Rights California, Western Center on Law & Poverty, and The Public Interest Law Project — filed a petition to the California Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the CARE Courts program, which Newsom designed, championed, and signed into law last year. The program allows a family member, first responder, or county behavioral health professional to seek court-ordered services for someone with severe mental illness. Read more here.