General, Articles
Hearing raises issue of parity, insurance rates
By Catherine Robertson Souter
As required by state law, the New Hampshire Insurance Department (NHID) hosts a public hearing each year to talk about health care costs and trends. The 2019 hearing, held in October, focused on the number of residents covered by insurance and the state’s progress on mental health parity. Eireann Sibley NHID communications director noted that the hearings are for the public and regular attendees include insurance company representatives, providers, academics, health care advocates, and legislators. According to published reports culled from data submitted by health insurance companies, the uninsured rate in New Hampshire did not change drastically in 2018 from [More]
Second coerced suicide case adds urgency to Conrad’s Law passage
By Phyllis Hanlon
Two recent cases of “coerced” suicide in Massachusetts prompted legislators to file a bill that would criminalize intimidating behavior and strong-arm tactics that cause another to commit suicide. In 2014, Michelle Carter encouraged her boyfriend Conrad Roy to take his own life. More recently, Inyoung You allegedly pressured Boston College student Alexander Urtula to kill himself. In July 2019, state representative Natalie M. Higgins, (D-Worcester’s 4th district) and Senator Barry R. Finegold (D-Second Essex and Middlesex) filed the bill, known as Conrad’s Law, as the judicial committee was wrapping up its session. “We want to make clear to the community [More]
Spotting the lie: Study finds a more accurate measure of honesty
By Margarita Tartakovsky, MS
One of the first patients August Price, M.A., saw at his practicum at the Boston VA was deemed a malingerer by an outside neuropsychologist because he’d failed validity testing. However, after Price conducted an extensive assessment, it turned out that the man actually had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. “This made me realize that the field could be doing better in screening for effort in geriatric populations,” said Price, a fifth-year clinical psychology student at William James College in Newton, Mass. This experience inspired Price to focus his doctoral research on a more accurate way to measure malingering—by monitoring electrical activity in [More]
Giving back to the community
By John Grohol, Psy.D.
Few psychologists get into the profession for the enormous paycheck. Over the years, my colleagues have shared a range of reasons why they decided to become a psychologist. Not once has someone mentioned money. Many of us already give back to the community in some way. Whether it’s through volunteer work for a favorite charity, stepping up to help out with a local sports team, or helping out at school or the library, there are a multitude of volunteer opportunities from which to choose. Psychologists can give back more in one way—that is, by doing work for people who might [More]
Feds investigate data breach at Maine’s Sweetser
By Janine Weisman
Hacking incidents on rise in health care in 2019 A week went by before anyone noticed some unusual activity in the email system of a Saco, Maine-based community mental health care agency last June. By the time email accounts were secured and a digital forensics investigation launched, the sensitive personal health information of 22,000 clients at Sweetser may have been accessed by hackers. The patient data breach Sweetser detected June 24, 2019, was limited to information transmitted via email and did not affect the system storing electronic health records, ac-cording to the agency’s spokeswoman, Susan Pierter. But the information may [More]
Navigating layers of change
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
One day last fall, my colleague Martin asked if I had seen what had become of the hospital where we used to work. Martin is the hospital’s memory, and his passion for history and the natural world makes him someone I take very seriously. So, when he told me that they had turned the place into luxury condos, I had to go and see for myself. Later that same afternoon, I turned off the main street onto the hospital road and into a landscape that bore little resemblance to the grounds I had walked with my patients for nearly two [More]