News

You’re invited to attend an introduction to data webinar. This opportunity intends to provide technical assistance to National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED) members and minority-serving and under-resourced community-based organizations (CBOs).

After attending this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Understand data terminologies
• Describe the difference between qualitative and quantitative data
• Identify appropriate usage of qualitative and quantitative methods

Speaker:

Marlon Daniel, MHA, MPH

“Elevate CBOs” is an overarching policy-driven initiative at SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity (OBHE) to build capacity, increase the visibility, and highlight the unique role of CBOs serving under-resourced communities in behavioral health.

The event was also shared on Facebook Live at fb.com/nned.net and closed captioning was available through Zoom.

Rates of suicide among American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) veterans have risen sharply in recent years, reports a study in the April issue of Medical Care.

Age-adjusted suicide rates among AI/AN veterans receiving care in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) system increased by nearly 150% over the previous two decades, according to the new research by Nathaniel Mohatt, Ph.D., of Veteran’s Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center for Suicide Prevention, Aurora, Colo., and colleagues. “Our results suggest a compelling need to review and strengthen suicide prevention efforts for AI/AN veterans,” the researchers write.

The researchers analyzed suicide rates among AI/AN veterans who received health care services provided or paid for by the VHA between 2002 and 2014, with follow-up through 2018. The analysis included veterans classified as single-race (about two-thirds) or multi-race AI/AN, regardless of their place of residence (including tribal or non-tribal communities).

During the period studied, suicide rates among AI/AN veterans more than doubled: from 19.1 to 47.0 per 100,000 person-years, after adjustment for age. Suicide rate was highest in the youngest age group, aged 18 to 39 years: 66.0 per 100,000 person-years. That compared to rates of 36.9 per 100,000 in among AI/AN veterans aged 40 to 59 years and 27.3 per 100,000 in those aged 60 or older.

The youngest age group also had the fastest growth in suicides: from less than 10 deaths between 2004 and 2008 to 52 deaths between 2014 to 2018. The most frequently used lethal means was firearms, accounting for nearly 60% of suicide deaths. Older AI/AN veterans were most likely to die by firearm.

Compared to other Veteran’s Affairs (VA) data, the findings suggest that suicide rates may have increased more rapidly among AI/AN veterans over a similar time period, compared to the general population of veterans: by 146 versus 32%. The rising suicide rate among younger AI/AN veterans is consistent with trends among all veterans, as well as in the general AI/AN population.

Read more at MedicalXpress.com.

Black women experience a higher prevalence of maternal mental health conditions, particularly postpartum depression and anxiety, relative to the US population as a whole. In addition, maternal mental health issues among Black women are largely underreported, and symptoms often go unaddressed.

Structural and social determinants are increasingly recognized as contributing factors to mental health; social and economic disasters exacerbate inequities in mental health outcomes and well-being and have implications for pregnant and postpartum populations. Identifying racism, sexism, classism, and other systems of oppression shifts the narrative of blame from individual-level behaviors and focuses interventions at the systems level. This increased recognition and acknowledgment have spurred advocacy for upstream interventions that address the root causes of mental illnesses.

Black birthing people encounter societal and system barriers when seeking and receiving health and social support services. Lack of universal mental health education and screening, particularly during pregnancy, creates missed opportunities to counsel patients on symptoms and management of depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders and to inform them about resources available to them in clinical care and community settings. In addition, limited community resources and structured-referral provider networks lead to higher rates of inpatient hospital-based care, as opposed to care in community-based settings, for Black birthing populations.

The perspectives and experiences of Black birthing people in maternal mental health research are key to identifying practice and treatment solutions.

Read more at HealthAffairs.org.

Hundreds of thousands of kids have lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID-19 and need support services, mental health experts say, with communities of color particularly devastated.

“Some families lost several people within a span of a few months, and just having one loss after another—that kind of accumulation of more grief—we see higher levels of distress in some of the kiddos we’re seeing,” said Cecilia Segura-Paz, a licensed professional counselor-supervisor at the Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas.

Because of the pandemic, some children didn’t get to attend a funeral or bereavement services. Others didn’t get a chance to say their last goodbyes. For some youth in underserved communities in South Texas, Segura-Paz said, existing economic hardships, food and housing insecurity, and disruptions to education have deepened and complicated their grief.

Through local partnerships and school-based programming, Segura-Paz said, her center was able to provide more counseling services and peer support groups for children, but high counselor caseloads, provider shortages and conflicts with class time during in-school sessions may have hindered children from getting the help they need.

From January 2020 to November 2021, more than 167,000 children under 18 lost a parent or in-home caregiver to COVID-19, according to a December report titled “Hidden Pain” by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Nemours Children’s Health and the COVID Collaborative. The report found that Black and Hispanic children lost caregivers at more than double the rate of White children, while American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander children lost caregivers at nearly four times the rate of White children.

Read more at PennCapital-Star.com.

Alarming stats from the USO show suicide rates among active military are at an all-time high since the group started keeping records after 9/11. Discussions around this data come as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the creation of an independent panel to review suicide prevention programs and suggest improvements.

Men and women of the armed forces fight battles to protect our freedom. But sometimes, their biggest battles are the ones they face when they return home. Jacksonville City Councilman Nick Howland is executive director of The Fire Watch, which aims to prevent veteran suicide through connectedness.

“We lose over 6,000 US military veterans to suicide each year,” Howland said. “And in context, we’re losing veterans at a rate of one and a half to two times higher than civilians.”

The group has served more than 1.5 million veterans in 67 counties. According to its website, it has 1,848 Watch Standers. Watch Standers are individuals trained to know the warning signs, which Howland said aren’t that different from what is observed in civilians. The goal is to identify the issue and act quickly.

“It could be undiagnosed or diagnosed mental illness, it could be marital or other relationship issues, it could be financial distress,” Howland said. “So, for us, the process of healing begins with addressing those early symptoms.”

Howland said one of the highest risk groups is veterans between 18 and 34 years old.

“That, also, is the age group getting out of the military most every day,” Howland said. “So that means we have a problem now that’s only going to get bigger if we don’t address it now.”

Read more at News4Jax.com.

As the war in Syria has uprooted lives by the millions, humanitarian organizations have worked to supply food, shelter, and medical relief. These services are a lifeline for millions, and it’s a herculean task to fulfill them on the scale that refugee crises demand. But humanitarian workers are also now doing more to address the mental and emotional health of refugees, particularly children.

It’s a need that until recently has been largely overlooked. Research reveals that the traumatic experiences of many refugees can affect their health in wide-ranging ways that can last a lifetime — social anxiety, depression, addiction, cardiovascular disease, and more. Children and youth are most vulnerable. A mounting body of evidence demonstrates that repeated traumatic events early in life, if unbuffered by adults who can restore a child’s sense of calm, interfere with healthy brain development. This physiological response is known as “toxic stress.”

But the damage is not irreparable if treated in time.

Alexandra Chen, a child trauma specialist affiliated with Harvard who works with refugee families around the world, said humanitarian intervention has not done nearly enough to build resilience in children who face circumstances unimaginable to those who have never been forced to leave their homes for safety; and programs that have been designed to provide psychosocial support have been insufficient in their reach and inadequate in their quality.

“We need to act in a strategically different way,” she said. That includes exploring the potential for intervention procedures that haven’t previously fallen into the psychosocial services category “but that may in fact be more effective” in providing psychosocial support.

Rasha Al-Masry, who fled Syria in 2014, may be part of this shift in the community in Jordan where she now lives. Ms. Al-Masry, 30, is an “ambassador” for We Love Reading, a local organization that trains adults to read aloud to children in dedicated public spaces and provides books written specifically for the context they’re going to be read in, with messages and images that the children can relate to. “It’s through these stories that kids learn to deal with their challenges,” from gender inequality to migration, said Rana Dajani, the founder of We Love Reading.

Read more at NYTimes.com.