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Sports psychologist Angel Brutus noticed one of her student-athlete clients motioning for her to come over during a post-practice team huddle. The team had just concluded a great practice, during which the athlete, dominant and focused, received praises for performance from teammates.

But upon reaching the athlete, Brutus immediately recognized there was a problem. “The athlete was having a panic attack,” Brutus explained. “They had arousal levels so high that, from the coach’s perspective, they were on point. But because the athlete and I had been working with each other and they understood my role with the team, they were able to pull me to the side. They couldn’t talk. I had to intervene in getting their arousal levels low enough so they can articulate what was going on with them.”

This is only one example of the countless situations Brutus and other health professionals have encountered while working with student-athletes. In a two-day session at the Black Student-Athlete Summit in Austin, Texas, a number of health professionals educated and engaged attendees in discussions focusing largely on the mental health and well-being of student-athletes.

In 2014, a survey conducted by the American College Health Association found that about 30 percent of the 195,000 respondents reported feeling depressed in 12 months, and 50 percent reported feeling overwhelming anxiety during the same period. There was also a correlation between anxiety and depression, and poor athletic performance, low grades, substance abuse and suicide.

A nine-year analysis of the NCAA resolutions database showed that suicide was the third-leading cause of death among college-age individuals and the second-leading cause of death among college students.

Caroline Brackette, an associate professor of counseling at Mercer University who works closely with student-athletes, found that one of the issues that might deter college athletes from seeking help is the lack of willingness to express themselves, which may stem from the idea that seeking help and dealing with mental health issues are taboo, especially in the black community. Brackette believes one way for counseling and therapy to become the norm is if people, especially student-athletes, view mental health the same way they view their physical health.

Read more on TheUndefeated.com.

Mental health has long been taboo from a social perspective, and access to care (especially in rural areas) is often sporadic. Health tech can address this problem

The immediate need for quality mental healthcare in America is huge – 43.8 million adult Americans experience mental illness every year. But of those people, an estimated 60% do not seek out mental health services, largely because of the stigma around mental illness and the difficulty of accessing care. The good news is that digital health tools can help tackle both the stigma and the lack of accessibility around mental healthcare. The most obvious and clear solution comes with the pervasiveness of mobile technology: 68% of Americans own a smartphone, and 45% own a tablet, making mobile technology an easily accessible tool for improving care. It also provides those who struggle with the stigma of mental illness a sense of security and empowerment: they can learn more about their symptoms and understand that they’re not alone in their suffering.

Connecting with peers via digital health solutions can help people get past the first, often debilitating, step of outreach, allowing them to seek help more confidently when it feels right. Mobile technology also increases accessibility to mental health specialists across the country. Many therapists have started using video chatting tools for appointments, increasing access to care for all people, whether they’re in rural areas or homebound for other health reasons. Additionally, therapists often use simple phone conversations, SMS and email to provide support between in-person sessions.

With many of today’s mental health apps, people can track their own behaviors, symptoms, and moods, and report that back to their therapist, making in-person sessions more efficient and improving the quality of dialogue between patient and therapist. The first wave of digital mental healthcare solutions is focused on informing and empowering people, most commonly around conditions like anxiety, depression, and insomnia. While each works with different topics and populations, most provide education about risk signs and symptoms, as well as positive and negative coping mechanisms. They also include built-in support systems, allowing for peer-to-peer contact and access to professional resources. Most of these applications also have tools for getting immediate help in the case of an emergency.

Read more on Information-Age.com.

Across the country, health and human service providers have shown a growing interest in using yoga as an option for treating people who experience mental health problems. But a recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that while there are some promising benefits to using yoga, there isn’t yet enough evidence to support the practice as a standalone solution for improving mental health and well-being.

“I really wanted to know if yoga is something we should be suggesting to people who have post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression, or anxiety or various traumas. What does the evidence really say?,” said Rebecca Macy, a researcher who works with violence and trauma survivors who headed up the study at the UNC School of Social Work.

For their study, Macy and her colleagues analyzed 13 literature reviews to conduct a meta-review of 185 articles published between 2000 and 2013. Overall, the researchers found that yoga holds potential promise for helping improve anxiety, depression, PTSD and/or the psychological consequences of trauma at least in the short term.

The study, published recently in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, also suggested that clinicians and service providers consider recommending yoga as an intervention in addition to other “evidence-based and well-established treatments,” including psychotherapy and medication.

Read more on ScienceDaily.com. Read the abstract of the study.

In a bid to improve mental health screening of Latino children from immigrant families, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report they have identified a culturally sensitive set of tools that are freely available to pediatricians, take less than 10 minutes to use, are in easy-to-read Spanish, and assess a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems.

In a summary of their work, published on Nov. 22 in Clinical Pediatrics, the investigators encourage primary care pediatricians who would like to screen patients for mental health symptoms, such as anxiety, depression or aggression, to consider utilizing any of four specific mental health symptom screening tools. These four screening tools are available in Spanish, and one includes pictorial cues. The four are the Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC)-17-question version, the PSC-35-question version, the pictorial PSC-35, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, which consists of 25 questions.

To identify ideal mental health screening tools, she says, the research team first combed published scientific literature in English and Spanish for screening tools supported by Bright Futures, an initiative by the American Academy of Pediatrics to support primary care physicians in providing holistic well-child and adolescent care. The team examined all studies published between 2005 and 2015 that explicitly included and reported the results of mental health screening with a Latino or Spanish-speaking sample. Overall, out of total of seven screening instruments they assessed, they identified four that fit their criteria for breaking down barriers to understanding.

Read more on EurekAlert.org. Read the abstract of the study.

U.S. teens who age out of the foster care system face health care access issues as adults, putting them at risk for lifelong health problems, a new report shows.

“Fostering Health: The Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Youth Transitioning from Foster Care,” released Oct. 18 by the National Center for Children in Poverty, explores the reasons for the inconsistent health coverage that many former foster youth receive after aging out of the foster care system.

The Affordable Care Act mandates that all children in foster care receive Medicaid until they transition out of the child care system on their 18th birthday, after which they can request continued health coverage from their state until age 26. In 2014, an estimated 180,000 youth aged out of the foster care system and qualified for continued health care coverage. However, the report found that 37 states did not grant coverage to people who were seeking it in a different state from which they were in foster care, enrolled in Medicaid or both.

States that deny Medicaid coverage to former foster youth could face higher medical costs in the future, as such youth are more vulnerable to illnesses and hospitalization than their peers, the report said. States that did not expand eligibility for Medicaid to residents with lower incomes faced an increase in health care costs of 6.9 percent, almost double that of states that did expand, according to a 2015 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation cited in the report.

The report also noted that children in foster care are particularly vulnerable to disease. In 2012, 35 to 60 percent of such children had a chronic or acute illness that required long-term care. In 2008, 50 to 75 percent exhibited psychological problems requiring mental health treatment, according to Congressional Research Service and Children and Youth Services Review studies cited in the report. Girls in foster care are also more than twice as likely to become pregnant by 19 as their peers, according to a 2009 study by Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

Read more on TheNationsHealth.org.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is pleased to be offering its seventh annual training for community-based organizations, NNEDLearn 2017, an opportunity for NNED members to learn and implement evidence-based, adapted, and culturally-specific behavioral health practices. This training model includes an on-site training and follow-up virtual coaching sessions. The on-site training will be held March 26–29, 2017 at the Tamaya Hyatt in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.

The application period for NNEDLearn 2017 is now open. You can learn more about each training track and apply online on the NNEDLearn page. The deadline to apply is 6:00 PM ET on January 19, 2017.

NNED membership is required for NNEDLearn participation. Not a NNED member? Sign up now, no cost!

Read more about NNEDLearn 2017.