Week of May 27–31, 2024

General Mental Health Articles

• Eating disorders have among the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness, and remission rates among patients with eating disorders are, by some estimates, as low as 29%. New treatment modalities are urgently needed to improve outcomes, especially for people with severe and enduring eating disorders, industry insiders told Behavioral Health Business. Despite this, funding for eating disorder research remains low. Federal support for eating disorder research equated to $0.73 per affected person in 2015. Read more here.
• Jason Szybka became a probation/parole officer in Duplin County, North Carolina in October 2020. In the role, he crossed paths frequently with people with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He saw how their mental health affected their lives in the community and their ability to meet supervision requirements. Encounters such as these are common for the state’s approximately 2,000 probation/parole officers, who supervise close to 76,000 people living in communities across North Carolina. Read more here.
• Amid what many Americans are calling a mental health crisis, an increasing number of states are trying to address the problem by empowering social workers to practice across state lines. Under the Social Work Licensure Compact, social workers can get a multistate license, which clears them to care for patients in a participating state, even if they don’t live there. Social workers must abide by the laws of the state where the patient resides. Missouri was the first state to approve compact legislation in July 2023. Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• Value-based care has become a buzzword in the behavioral health industry. Still, few providers have implemented it due to the laundry list of challenges, including parity issues, difficulties associated with determining a system of measurements, and limitations to care access. For grassroots providers building relationships with payers from the ground up, even the meaning of value-based care can be obscured by the noise of news stories, LinkedIn conversations, and industry conferences. Read more here.
• During his state budget address last year, Gov. Tony Evers declared 2023 the “Year of Mental Health.” His biennial budget proposal included a $500 million boost to spending for overall mental health, including $270 million to expand services in schools. Much of that funding was slashed during the legislative budget process. Still, for years, Wisconsin has increased spending for youth mental health services. Read more here.

Veterans Mental Health

• American veterans are estimated to die by suicide at a rate 57% higher than their civilian counterparts. The specific lived experiences of veterans and their families come with peculiar stressors, and while the data on veteran behavioral health is mixed, the elevated prevalence of suicide among veterans is undeniable. Several behavioral health organizations have or plan on creating specific services for veterans to meet an apparent need. Read more here.
• Department of Veterans Affairs beneficiaries won't have to pay copays for their first three mental health appointments of each year thanks to a new exemption. Meanwhile, patients who paid copays starting in the latter half of 2023 will receive automatic refunds. Backdated to June 27, 2023 -- when the first refunds will kick in -- the benefit also comes with an end date of Dec. 29, 2027. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis

• Everyone knows the country's addiction crisis is bad, but even the direst headlines just barely scratch the surface. We spend a lot of time talking about drug overdose deaths, which each year are nearly double the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. But overdose deaths are only one measure of the drug epidemic's severity — and even the formal toll doesn't capture the true extent of drugs' lethal power, experts say. Read more here.

Research

• In a study based on 2022 data, approximately 1 in 9 U.S. children had ever received an ADHD diagnosis (11.4%, 7.1 million children) and 10.5% (6.5 million) had current ADHD. Among children with current ADHD, 58.1% had moderate or severe ADHD, 77.9% had at least one co-occurring disorder, 53.6% received ADHD medication, 44.4% had received behavioral treatment in the past year; and 30.1% did not receive any ADHD-specific treatment. Read more here.
• When you’re trying to address mental health symptoms, simply the belief that you can be helped may be an important factor. Symptoms of nine mental health disorders substantially improved under placebo treatment, according to a new review of 90 randomized controlled trials — known as a meta-analysis — totaling 9,985 adult participants largely in their 30s and 40s. The disorders in the review, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, included major depressive disorder, mania, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and social phobia. Read more here.

Gender-Affirming Care and LGBTQ Issues

• Tennessee's governor has approved legislation designed to block adults from helping minors receive gender-affirming care or get an abortion without parental consent, proposals that are both likely to face immediate legal challenges when they go into effect later this year. Republican Gov. Bill Lee quietly signed the bills without comment. However, the governor's actions weren't unexpected. During his time in office, Lee has enacted sweeping restrictions on gender-affirming care for young people. Read more here.
• A state investigation of the Washington University Transgender Center in St. Louis expanded to include therapists and social workers across the state who work with minors seeking gender-affirming care. Documents made public as part of various lawsuits show that Attorney General Andrew Bailey has obtained a collection of unredacted and loosely redacted records of transgender children, including a list of patients that received care at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Read more here.