News

Mental and substance use disorders take an enormous toll on Americans’ health, longevity and productivity. Collectively, depression, anxiety and mood disorders have the greatest impact on Americans’ health of any condition, according to claims data from more than 40 million Blue Cross Blue Shield members. Substance use disorders have the fifth greatest impact, while hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol are also in the top five.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index shows, through interactive maps, the effects that mental health has on our overall health. We can see these effects not only at the national level, but also at the county and state levels. Moody’s Analytics found that counties with higher mental health scores on the index also had higher personal income, greater economic growth and lower unemployment. The strength of our economy and the livelihood of our communities depend on the health of our people. Behavioral health has the greatest influence of all, according to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index.

Studies like this show that entire communities benefit from access to high quality evidence-based services for mental or substance use disorders or both. As more people acknowledge and understand the impact of behavioral health conditions, we’ve helped to close the gaps in the resources devoted to treating them. However, there is more work to do.

It is critical for us to continue improving service delivery to mitigate the impact of behavioral health conditions on overall health. The 21st Century Cures Act, recently passed by Congress, offers new opportunities for policy and practice improvement. The law funds a new National Mental Health and Substance Use Policy Laboratory to promote evidence-based practices and service delivery models through implementation grants and evaluation. It also supports the sharing of information about evidence-based programs and practices for states, communities, nonprofit organizations, and other stakeholders, building on existing resources like the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices.

Read the full blog post on SAMHSA.gov.

A Central Texas nonprofit is opening the region’s first transgender care clinic in Austin. The nonprofit Kind Clinic, in a medical complex near 30th Street and Interstate 35, will provide free services such as hormone therapy specifically for people who are transgender, gender nonconforming or nonbinary. The services expand on the HIV-prevention work that the Texas Health Action nonprofit has been doing at the site since May 2015.

Joe McAdams, executive director of Texas Health Action, said the transgender-specific services were a logical extension of the organization’s larger mission, a product of growing recognition of the LGBTQ community’s needs. The Austin clinic is intended partly to offer transgender people, particularly low-income ones, a place they can feel comfortable seeking medical services, managers and community activists said.

“Competent and knowledgeable medical care is extremely important, and extremely hard to find in Texas” for transgender people, said Meghan Stabler, a transgender board member of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates on various lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer issues.

Stabler said the standard medical path is often unavailable to low-income people who don’t identify with their birth sex. Patients often need counseling on gender identification, referrals to medical specialists when seeking hormone therapy, periodic checkups to ensure the hormones are working properly, and sometimes surgery.

Read more on MyStatesman.com.

Suicide rates in the United States increased steadily between 1999 and 2015, but the rates for less urban counties climbed faster than those for cities, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The gap in rates between less urban and more urban areas widened over time, and rates in medium metro, small metro, and non-metro areas increased at a more rapid pace beginning in 2007–2008,” wrote Scott Kegler, Ph.D., of the CDC’s Division of Analysis, Research, and Practice Integration, and two colleagues in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Overall rates rose from an average of 12.6 per 100,000 in 1999-2007 to an average of 14.4 per 100,000 in 2008-2015. However, rates jumped from about 15/100,000 in rural areas in 1999 to about 22/100,000 in 2015. In large central metropolitan areas, the rate went from about 11/100,000 to 12/100,000.

Kegler and colleagues suggested that some of the factors associated with the disparity were shortages of clinicians in less urban areas, as well as limited access to mental health care, social isolation, and the effects of the opioid overdose epidemic and the 2007-2009 economic recession (which struck rural areas especially hard).

“There is a growing need for comprehensive suicide prevention employing a broad public health approach,” they concluded. Besides general anti-suicide strategies, additional help for rural areas might include increasing the number of health care providers through incentives, expanding the use of telepsychiatry, and promoting social connectedness.

Read more on PsychNews.org.

The National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) invites health professionals as well as health professional students to submit a Hispanic Health Research or Community Service Poster Abstract for the NHMA 2017 Conference: Trabajando Juntos – Integrated Healthcare for Hispanics. The conference objectives are to:

• Describe how health care innovations are influencing health care reform’s access to care, quality, and population health strategies.
• Review patient-engaged and health services research that focuses on knowledge and policy strategies that show promise of eliminating health disparities.
• Explain new treatment modalities and strategies to educate Hispanic patients with diabetes, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, sarcopenia, Alzheimer’s disease, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis-C, and aging in order to decrease morbidity and mortality in their medical practices or in their organization.
• Identify cultural competence, literacy, and language services programs for medical education and health care delivery.
• Describe how leadership skills can be used to improve the health of Hispanic patients in public health, health care organizations and corporations.

Read more about the call for abstracts on NHMAMD.org.

The American Psychological Association has relaunched a collaboration with Microsoft to hold a series of lessons that will bring psychologists into elementary and secondary school classrooms via Skype. APA’s “Let’s Talk about Mental Health” initiative is part of the Skype in the Classroom program, a platform used by educators to learn from each other through the online world.

APA also has made supplemental resources available to teachers who may be looking to use materials to prepare students for a Skype session or to expand on mental health education outside of the lesson.

Skype in the Classroom is a free educational program that aims to remove geographic and economic boundaries to education through the innovative use of technology in a classroom environment. The APA program allows students to interact with psychologists to learn about mental health issues and overcome any stigma they may associate with seeking mental health care. The APA program first began in 2014 and over 220 individual lessons were held during the initial year.

Approximately 20 APA members have volunteered as presenters for the program. The psychologists and teachers work together to schedule 50-minute presentations about anger and anxiety, depression, and resilience. During the scheduled lesson, the psychologist guest speaker presents to the classroom via Skype using materials provided by APA. Each lesson includes time for Q&A with students. All presenters are licensed psychologists and are experienced clinicians actively participating in programs to educate the public about mental health issues.

Read more on HealthCanal.com.

To behavioral health organizations and providers: what are your behavioral health business goals this year, and what educational opportunities do you need to achieve them? BHbusiness can help.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) offers self-paced, online business courses to behavioral health organizations and providers through its BHbusiness program. BHbusiness offers 12 courses to help you improve and expand your business opportunities and thrive in the changing health care marketplace. These courses are available at no cost. You can learn at your own pace and also earn continuing education credits.

What’s the key to being strategic in business? Data, of course. BHbusiness now offers Data Driven Decision Making as a self-paced, online course on understanding the importance of effective data collection, and how to use data to take advantage of service opportunities with multiple funders.

In addition to Data Driven Decision Making, take advantage of these online courses:

• New Business Planning teaches the basic steps needed for planning, funding, implementing and evaluating a new clinical service.
• Effectively Marketing Your Services offers strategies for developing and executing a marketing plan to communicate the value of your organization’s clinical services to the community you serve.
• Costing Out Your Services provides the necessary tools and methods to effectively cost out your clinical services, and improve your decision-making potential and revenue forecasting.

These and other courses are available at no cost. You can also earn continuing education credit hours from the Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC) for completing any of the self-paced courses.

Learn more on BHbusiness.org. Questions? Contact info@bhbusiness.org.