Congressman and Senator Come Together to Discuss Forthcoming MH Legislation

A congressman and a senator working on parallel tracks for comprehensive mental health care reform made their bipartisan case in a Washington discussion today.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said he plans to reintroduce his bipartisan Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act in March.

“We are going line by line, tweaking the bill now,” said Murphy, a psychologist, in a presentation organized by The Hill, a newspaper that covers national politics. “The legislation could move this year.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) praised his House counterpart for the expertise and attention he has brought to a complicated issue and said he is working on a “substantially similar” bill in the Senate. (The two men are not related, they pointed out.)

Expanding the mental health workforce, reducing barriers to accessing care, increasing the number of inpatient psychiatric beds, integrating primary and mental health care, and solving reimbursement problems were all critical components of a comprehensive bill, both legislators agreed.

“We can pass comprehensive mental health reform,” said Sen. Murphy, whose home state was the site of the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. “I hope we don’t have another tragedy before we make common-sense changes in the mental health system.”

They expressed a willingness to work with both Democratic and Republican colleagues.

“There is no party loyalty on this issue,” said Rep. Murphy. “This is all about helping people and bringing the system into the 21^st century.”

For more in Psychiatric News about the progress of mental health legislation, see "Author of House Mental Health Bill Addresses APA Assembly."

Medical Groups Urge Steps to Cut Gun Violence

APA and seven other medical societies yesterday joined with the American Bar Association in a statement published in Annals of Internal Medicine that calls for a reduction in “the health and public health consequences of firearms.”

“Across the United States, physicians have firsthand experience with the effects of firearm-related injuries and deaths and the impact of such events on the lives of their patients,” said the statement. None of the recommendations contravened the Second Amendment, according to the American Bar Association.

In addition to APA, the other signatories were the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Public Health Association.

The organizations specifically cautioned against the indiscriminate inclusion of “all persons with any mental or substance use disorder in a category of persons prohibited from purchasing firearms,” while supporting greater access to mental health treatment.

The statement also calls for more research into firearm violence and unintentional injury and elimination of laws that prohibit physicians from discussing gun ownership with patients.

"We believe that multidisciplinary, interprofessional collaboration is critical to bringing about meaningful changes to reduce the burden of firearm-related injuries and death on persons, families, communities, and society in general," the authors concluded.

For information in Psychiatric News about the APA Board of Trustees's recent statement on firearms, see "APA Board Urges Public-Health Approach to Gun Violence."

(Shutterstock/Monkey Business Images)

Brief CBT Appears Effective in Reducing Suicide Risk in Military With Suicidal Ideation

Brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be effective in preventing follow-up suicide attempts among active-duty military service members with current suicidal ideation and/or a recent suicide attempt, according to the report "Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Effects on Post-Treatment Suicide Attempts in a Military Sample: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial With 2-Year Follow-Up" in AJP in Advance.

The study was conducted by M. David Rudd, Ph.D., of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Memphis, and colleagues. The subjects were active-duty Army soldiers at Fort Carson, Colo., who had either attempted suicide or experienced suicidal ideation; they were randomly assigned to treatment as usual (N=76) or treatment as usual plus brief CBT (N=76).

Assessment of incidence of suicide attempts during the two-year follow-up period was conducted with the Suicide Attempt Self-Injury Interview. Statistical analysis was used to determine treatment efficacy with regard to incidence and time to suicide attempt, and differences in psychiatric symptoms were evaluated over time.

Thirty-one suicide attempts were made by 26 participants across both groups during the two-year follow-up, including two deaths by suicide (one in the brief CBT group and one in the treatment-as-usual group). Eight participants in brief CBT and 18 participants in treatment as usual made at least one suicide attempt during the two-year follow-up , which suggests that soldiers in brief CBT were approximately 60 percent less likely to make a suicide attempt during the follow-up period than soldiers in treatment as usual. There were no between-group differences in severity of psychiatric symptoms.

“It is noteworthy that the observed reduction in suicide attempts occurred despite minimal differences in symptom severity between groups over time, a finding that mirrors previous outcomes from dialectical-behavior therapy and cognitive therapy,” the researchers stated. “Given that the primary goal of brief CBT is emotion regulation and problem-solving-skills development as opposed to symptom reduction, this finding is not surprising and supports the assertion that suicidal thoughts and behaviors should be targeted as a unique treatment goal separate from psychiatric diagnosis and symptom severity.”

For more on this subject, see the Psychiatric News article “Army Learning Complex Factors Associated With Soldier Suicides.”

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IOM Proposes New Name, Diagnostic Criteria for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report has proposed new diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), as well as a new name that reinforces that this illness is a physiological, not psychological, problem.

The recommended new name is systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID); the IOM committee that prepared the report believes this designation more accurately captures the central characteristics of this illness, which affects up to 2.5 million people but is frequently misdiagnosed or overlooked.

These central symptoms noted by the committee as diagnostic criteria are a substantial and persistent impairment in the ability to engage in pre-illness activity levels, unrefreshing sleep, and post-exertion malaise, where the effort of even a mild activity can trigger a collapse that can last for days. Besides these three characteristics, a patient must also have cognitive impairment and/or orthostatic intolerance for an SEID diagnosis.

The 15-member IOM expert committee developed the new report--Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Redefining an Illness--after a comprehensive literature review and input from patient, advocacy, and research communities.

To read about other recent IOM reports of relevance to the psychiatric community, see the Psychiatric News articles “Mixed Reviews Follow IOM Report on Future of GME Financing” and “IOM Report Critical of Substance Abuse Care for Troops.”

(IOM)

Treating Neuropsychiatric Symptoms Could Delay Dementia, Study Suggests

Neuropsychiatric symptoms in the presence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), including depression, appear to significantly increase the risk of conversion to dementia—either amnestic or Alzheimer’s type-dementia—according to a study released today by AJP in Advance.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and in the United Kingdom searched electronic databases and references for longitudinal studies reporting potentially modifiable risk factors for incident dementia after mild cognitive impairment. There were 76 eligible articles comprising epidemiologic and clinical studies.

Diabetes and prediabetes increased risk of conversion from amnestic MCI to Alzheimer’s dementia and from any-type or nonamnestic MCI to all-cause dementia. But the researchers also found that the presence of neuropsychiatric symptoms predicted conversion to all-cause dementia, and depressive symptoms predicted conversion from any-type MCI to all-cause dementia in epidemiological but not clinical studies.

“A third to three-quarters of people with MCI have neuropsychiatric symptoms, most commonly depression, anxiety, apathy, and irritability,” the researchers stated. “Neuropsychiatric symptoms predicted conversion from any-type MCI to all-cause dementia. Neuropsychiatric symptoms may be etiologic for dementia, for example through neuroendocrine axis activation, or they may interact synergistically with a biological factor, such as genetic predisposition. Either of these putative relationships suggests that treating neuropsychiatric symptoms could theoretically delay dementia.”

For more on this subject see the Psychiatric News article “Dementia Risk Rises With Comorbid Diabetes, Depression.”

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Use of Mental Health Courts Reduces Risk of Later Violence

Participation by felony defendants in a mental health court reduced perpetration of violence over the following 12 months, according to a report today in Psychiatric Services in Advance.

In the early days of the mental health court movement, cases were largely confined to nonviolent misdemeanors but more courts have begun accepting felony cases in recent years. However, there has been little prospective research on whether involvement of felony defendants in mental health courts can affect later risk of violence.

So researchers led by Dale McNeil, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, compared 88 mental health court enrollees with 81 matched jail detainees who received treatment as usual. About 72 percent of each cohort had been arrested on felony charges.

Using both self-report and arrest records, they found that 25 percent of the court participants perpetrated violence in the follow-up year, compared with 42 percent of the comparison group (odds ratio = 0.39). A history of violence in the six months prior to entry was strongly associated with the likelihood of violence (odds ratio = 3.52).

“Targeting intensive services to the needs of offenders at higher risk of recidivism yields more demonstrably effective interventions in reducing recidivism,” concluded McNeil and colleagues. “[Mental health courts] considering inclusion of higher-risk individuals need to ensure availability of services to address their needs.”

For more in Psychiatric News about mental health courts, see “Program Prepares Defendants for Return to the Community.”

--aml (Image: Shutterstock.com)

APA Announces Results of 2015 Election

APA's Committee of Tellers met today and approved the following results for APA's 2015 national election. Please note that these results are considered public but not official until approved by the Board of Trustees at its meeting on March 14 and 15 in Arlington, Va.

President-Elect
Maria A. Oquendo, M.D.

Secretary
Altha J. Stewart, M.D.

Early Career Psychiatrist Trustee
Lama Bazzi, M.D.

Minority/Underrepresented Trustee
Gail Erlick Robinson, M.D., D.Psych., F.R.C.P.C.

Area 1 Trustee
Jeffrey L. Geller, M.D., M.P.H.

Area 4 Trustee
Ronald M. Burd, M.D.

Area 7 Trustee
Jeffrey Akaka, M.D.

Resident-Fellow Member Trustee-Elect
Stella Cai, M.D.

Complete results of the election will be reported in the March 6 issue of Psychiatric News.