Posted on February 17, 2019
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Reports that Arkansans who rely on Medicaid are struggling to get mental health care because of changes that state officials made to billing which has forced some providers to turn away patients and offer fewer services. The Department of Human Services is enforcing a litany of Medicaid-billing changes, causing long waits to get service, frequent changes in therapists and difficulties in scheduling appointments to get care.
READ MOREPosted on February 15, 2019
SELF
According to Dr. Ken Duckworth, Medical Director, NAMI when it comes to choosing a therapist, people should be open with their insurance companies and spell out exactly what is needed.
READ MOREPosted on February 11, 2019
CNN
Reports on a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics. The researchers analyzed data from the 2016 National Survey of Children's Health, a nationwide survey administered to parents of children and teens. Of the 46.6 million children ages 6 through 18 whose parents completed the survey, 7.7 million had at least one mental health condition, such as depression, anxiety or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and only half received treatment or counseling from a mental health provider in the 12 months prior to the survey.
READ MOREPosted on February 9, 2019
Associated Press
Reports on the Youth Aware of Mental health program developed by researchers at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Columbia University in New York. But also notes that it’s just one of the programs used to teach teens about mental health. The article mentions NAMI’s Ending the Silence program and includes the stats that it has reached almost 450,000 kids in 41 states since it was offered nationally in 2014.
READ MOREPosted on February 7, 2019
CBS Boston
Reports that up to 40,000 Americans die from firearms every year and mental illness is often blamed, but a new study from the University of Texas says don’t blame mental illness, blame access to guns. They surveyed more than 600 young adults and found that the majority of the mental health symptoms examined were not related to gun violence. Instead, they found that people who simply had access to a gun were 18 times more likely to have threatened someone with a firearm compared to people who had no such access.
READ MOREPosted on February 7, 2019
Medscape
Reports that Schizophrenia and Related Disorders Alliance of America (SRDAA) has spearheaded a new initiative to reclassify schizophrenia as a neurologic, rather than a psychiatric, disease. The action is designed to reduce stigma and ultimately obtain more research funding from the CDC. The article states that TAC and NAMI are on board with the initiative while the American Psychiatric Association is reluctant to support its reclassification as a neurologic disorder.
READ MOREPosted on February 4, 2019
Forbes Health
The study in Nature Microbiology combined data from the microbiomes of 1,054 people enrolled in the Flemish Gut Flora project with self-reported and physician-diagnosed depression data. Using bioinformatics analyses, the researchers were able to identify certain groups of bacteria, which were either positively or negatively correlated with mental health. Two groups of bacteria in particular, Coprococcus and Dialister, were consistently found to be at low numbers in people with depression.
READ MOREPosted on February 3, 2019
NPR
In 2007, Ashoor Rasho and 12,000 other inmates with mental illness sued the Illinois Department of Corrections, alleging that the agency punishes inmates with mental illness instead of properly treating them. A settlement was reached in 2016, when the state agreed to revamp mental health care and provide better treatment. But a federal judge has ruled that care remains "grossly insufficient" and "extremely poor." The agency has not hired enough mental health staff to provide care to everyone who needs it.
READ MOREPosted on January 29, 2019
The New York Times
Reports on the use of music to cope with mental illness. Ronald Braunstein, who has bipolar disorder formed the Me2/Orchestra, which is comprised of musicians and supporters that have been touched by mental illness.
READ MOREPosted on January 8, 2019
Mother Jones
Chicago’s Cook County Jail is the biggest single-site jail in the United States. It’s also one of the biggest mental health care providers in the country. About a third of the jail’s 6,000 or so inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness, and many of them were sent to the facility after the state reduced funding for hospitals and community caseworkers during the economic recession.
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NAMI HelpLine is available M-F, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET. Call 800-950-6264,
text “helpline” to 62640, or chat online. In a crisis, call or text 988 (24/7).
