Mental Health News and Research

Latest Mental Health News and Research

States struggle with insurance cost and coverage in Ohio, Rhode Island and Nebraska

The Columbus Dispatch reports that a health-insurance co-operative founded by Tom Rose, a retired businessman from Marietta, Ohio, "hopes to give people who feel alone in the health-care market that power-in-numbers feeling. ... Benefits Unlimited Inc. started in 2007 and started accepting dues-paying members across the nation last month. ... Annual dues range from $25 for an individual or household to $1,500 for employers or associations with 500 or more people.

17 Feb 2010

Scienta Health signs agreement with Partners HealthCare to provide advanced acute care to its clients

Scienta Health today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Boston-based Partners HealthCare, the leading academic medical network in the U.S. Partners HealthCare includes major teaching hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School: the Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, McLean Hospital, a treatment and research leader in mental illness, chemical dependency and learning disabilities; and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, a top-ranked rehabilitation facility.

17 Feb 2010

Budget cuts hit health care services in Minnesota, Oklahoma and California

Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposal to cut a net of $347 million from programs for sick, aged, disabled and jobless people is akin to the advice an ailing George Washington got from his doctors 210 years ago, one critic said Monday: Bleed him, in hope of a cure. Pawlenty would eliminate the General Assistance program in which about 20,000 disabled and very-low-income people receive an average of $175 a month.

16 Feb 2010

Fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 results announced by Vanda Pharmaceuticals

Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of clinical-stage products for central nervous system disorders, today announced financial and operational results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2009.

16 Feb 2010

Merck announces global sales of $27.4 billion for full-year 2009

Merck & Co., Inc. today announced financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2009 which include the results of legacy Schering-Plough operations from the close of the merger on Nov. 3, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2009.

16 Feb 2010

Aegis Living opens new senior living community in Bellevue

The heart of Bellevue now boasts a new senior living community that is perfectly suited to the needs and desires for residents of the Eastside. Aegis Living, a national leader in senior, assisted living and memory care communities, recently opened its 34th community to a crowd of hundreds, as new and prospective residents and families came to celebrate the grand opening event.

16 Feb 2010

SimMan 3G robotic patient helps pharmacy students practice diagnostic skills

A robot that can be programmed to have a range of medical conditions, from heart disease to constipation, is being used by Pharmacy students at the University of Bath to help practise diagnostic skills and treating patients.

16 Feb 2010

Nascent symptoms of autism in infants emerge during latter part of first year of life

A study of the development of autism in infants, comparing the behavior of the siblings of children diagnosed with autism to that of babies developing normally, has found that the nascent symptoms of the condition - a lack of shared eye contact, smiling and communicative babbling - are not present at 6 months, but emerge gradually and only become apparent during the latter part of the first year of life.

16 Feb 2010

Allele-specific DNA methylation a widespread phenomenon, reveals IoP study

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King's College London, have identified numerous novel regions of the genome where the chemical modifications involved in controlling gene expression are influenced by either genetic variation or the parental origin of that particular stretch of DNA. This contradicts previous assumptions that epigenetic signals are generally equal across both copies of a given region of the genome, except at a small number of known imprinted genes.

15 Feb 2010

Negative life experiences can harm developing capacity for love

Do you make the same mistakes in love over and over again? For example, do you always seem to pick the wrong partner or always experience the same negative romantic outcome? If so, you need to understand your developmental history of love and break the pattern, according to Dr. Mark Beitel, a licensed clinical psychologist and psychotherapist at Greenwich Hospital's Center for Integrative Medicine in Cos Cob, CT.

15 Feb 2010

Research roundup: Bundled payments, PTSD incidence, cost of treating immigrants

This paper examines the spending for health care of adult naturalized citizens and immigrant noncitizens (including some undocumented immigrants) compared to U.S. natives, as documented in data from the 1999-2006 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys (MEPS): "inflation and age-adjusted health care expenditures among noncitizen immigrants were consistently … lower than those of naturalized citizens and U.S. natives during 1999-2006."

15 Feb 2010

Limited number of free tickets available for Nashville Fearless Caregiver Conference

Today's Caregiver magazine and Caregiver.com announce that a limited number of free tickets are still available for the Nashville Fearless Caregiver Conference on March 10th, 2010 being held at the Radisson Opryland Hotel. Tickets are sponsored by the Greater Nashville Regional Council.

15 Feb 2010

VR technology plays important role in treating patients with PTSD

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) threatens to overload healthcare and social support systems worldwide as the number of cases rises and existing treatments are not sufficiently effective.

12 Feb 2010

Measures to tackle school avoidance in children

Children and adolescents who refuse to attend school should not be given doctors' sick notes. In the current issue of Deutsches -rzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[4]), child and adolescent psychiatrist Martin Knollmann and colleagues explain the causes of school avoidance and describe measures to tackle the problem.

12 Feb 2010

New York's detained youth lack coordinated mental health care

The New York Times: "The State of New York does not have a single full-time staff psychiatrist charged with overseeing the treatment of the 800 or so young people who are detained in state facilities at any given time." The Times reports that all 17 psychiatrists at the detention facilities in the state's juvenile justice system are working either on contract and part time.

12 Feb 2010

Medicaid and other state programs face questions about fraud, other difficulties

The state's Medicaid Fraud Division said two state agencies, the Health Department and Human Services Department that administer the Medicaid program, "'filtered' and 'sanitized' information and documents requested by investigators, hindering numerous investigations." The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services wil investigate the allegations (Furlow, 2/10).

12 Feb 2010

Calif. budget cuts will hit adult day care centers, prison health care; Texas and Kansas weigh Medicaid cuts

Under the most recent cost-saving budget proposals, 327 adult day healthcare centers throughout California would be eliminated. Cuts could save the state $135 million in fiscal 2011, state projections show.

11 Feb 2010

PHC announces second-quarter fiscal 2010 results

PHC, Inc., d/b/a Pioneer Behavioral Health, “Pioneer” or (the “Company”), a leading provider of inpatient and outpatient behavioral health services, reported financial results for the Company's 2010 second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2009. The results exclude the operations of the Company`s research division, Pivotal Research Centers, Inc. ("Pivotal"), which was sold during the 2009 third fiscal quarter and was accounted for as a discontinued operation.

11 Feb 2010

MHQP: Massachusetts primary care physicians achieve measurable improvements in health care quality

Massachusetts primary care physicians continue to achieve measurable improvements in important aspects of health care quality as reported by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP). Today, the organization released its sixth annual Quality Insights: Clinical Quality in Primary Care report, comparing the performance of more than 150 medical groups across the state.

11 Feb 2010

Eczema in early childhood may influence behavior and mental health later in life

Eczema in early childhood may influence behavior and mental health later in life. This is a key finding of a prospective birth cohort study to which scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum München contributed.

11 Feb 2010