Leading Stories, Articles
Massachusetts bans conversion therapy for minors
By Eileen Weber
Massachusetts became the 16th state to ban conversion therapy, a method attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity by treating it as if it’s a mental illness. Sometimes referred to as “reparative therapy,” tactics range from shaming the person to using painful physical stimulation like electric shocks. In early April, Governor Charlie Baker signed into law a bill banning licensed health care professionals from providing this practice to anyone under 18. Fifteen other states and Washington D.C. have already banned conversion therapy, with California being the first in 2012. Massachusetts joins Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and [More]
Tags: Massachusetts, conversion therapy, ban, reparative therapy, shaming, electric shock, Casey Pick, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, mistreatment, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
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Vermont’s medication assisted treatment program shows encouraging results
By Catherine Robertson Souter
For the first time since 1918 during WWI when a flu pandemic swept the nation, life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped for each of the last three years. Suicide and drug overdose are edging the country downward. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 72,000 drug overdoses in 2017, up from 63,000 in 2016. New England has seen its fair share of the crisis, with New Hampshire among the worst in the county with a rate of 34 deaths per 100,000 in 2017, more than double the national average of 14.6. Vermont saw a rate of 20 [More]
Tags: opioid addiction, Vermont, mental health services, drug overdoses, Hub and Spoke System of Care, medication-assisted treatment
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R.I. bill to mandate suicide prevention training for school staff faces quiet hurdles
By Janine Weisman
On the first day of spring, they came to the Rhode Island Statehouse. Many were students from Portsmouth High School who formed the suicide prevention group Every Student Initiative. They were there to support a bill before the House Committee of Health, Education and Welfare. The bill was called The Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act. Bruno, 15, a Portsmouth High School sophomore, died on Feb. 7, 2018. Flatt died on July 16, 1997, at age 16 in Nashville, Tennessee. The proposed legislation that bears their names would establish mandatory youth suicide awareness and prevention training for all public school [More]
Tags: Rhode Island, suicide prevention training, Every Student Initiative, Nathan Bruno and Jason Flatt Act, Rep. Terri Cortvriend, Nathan Bruno, ostracized, bullied
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CT bill supporting prescriptive authority fails; to be re-submitted
By Margarita Tartakovsky, MS
David Greenfield’s office manager called 19 psychiatrists before she found one to return her call. This situation is not uncommon, according to Greenfield, Ph.D, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and founder and medical director for The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction in West Hartford. “We see this every day,” said Greenfield, whose practice receives daily calls from individuals looking for a prescriber. Connecticut, like many states, has a shortage of psychiatric medication prescribers. That shortfall means that people often have to wait weeks or even months for an appointment, Greenfield [More]
Tags: Connecticut, prescriptive authority, psychiatric meds, Sen. Mary Abrams, SB966, mental health practitioners
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Psychologists find inpatient autism treatment complex, challenging
By Phyllis Hanlon
Growing awareness, mandatory early screening and changes to the diagnostic criteria have collectively contributed to an increase in the number of autism diagnoses. For the most part, patients with a diagnosis on the autism spectrum are managed on an outpatient basis. But, in some cases, hospitalization is necessary. Barbara Tylenda, Ph.D, ABPP, chief psychologist to Bradley Hospital’s Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities (CADD), said that individuals with autism who need hospitalization are “…just like their neurotypical counterparts…” but can no longer be home or in school because of aggressive, self-injurious, or some other maladjusted behavior. Tylenda is also a [More]
Tags: inpatient, autism treatment, challenges, Applied Behavior Analysis, psychiatric diagnoses, autism spectrum disorder, comorbid conditions
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Butler Hospital research seeks to identify people in pre-clinical stage of Alzheimer’s
By Margarita Tartakovsky, MS
Currently, 5.8 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease. By 2050, that total is expected to increase to nearly 14 million. Between 2000 and 2017, deaths from heart disease decreased by nine percent; deaths from Alzheimer’s increased by 145 percent.Butler Hospital in Rhode Island is among the institutions working to shrink those statistics. Butler has been researching dementia for 25 years. In the last several years, research at Butler Hospital Memory & Aging Program (MAP) has shifted to identifying people in the pre-clinical stage of dementia, even individuals who are at risk but haven’t developed symptoms yet, said Athene Lee, [More]
Tags: research, dementia, alzheimer's, Butler Hospital, memory loss research, biomarkers
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Telepsychology: Is it the future of treatment?
By Catherine Robertson Souter
Technology has become an integral part of our daily world. We ask Alexa about the weather, tell Siri to place a phone call and use voice recognition software to write emails. How far a step is it, then, to reach out to a therapist via technology? Telepsychology, or telehealth, the practice of providing psychological services over telecommunication equipment, is not exactly a new facet of the profession. Since video conferencing equipment was first developed in the 1990s, there has been a slow, but steady, expansion of therapists who offer the option. Insurance coverage has been a bit slow to follow, [More]
Tags: therapy, treatment, technology, Relationship, Telepsychology, telehealth, computer
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Study finds lack of data a barrier to systems-level research on patient safety
By Janine Weisman
Morgan Shields admits she was naive in the summer of 2017 when she first submitted an online public records request for all substantiated complaints against inpatient psychiatric facilities in Massachusetts. The paralegal from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) who called her told her it would cost more than $100,000 to provide the records. “I thought what he was saying was it would cost the state that much money to redact all of the information, just go through all the files,” recalled Shields, a Ph.D. candidate and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism fellow at the Institute for [More]
Tags: patient safety, complaints, online public records, research study, monitoring system, inpatient psychiatry, patient outcomes, accountability
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United Behavioral Health case shines light on parity violations
By Catherine Robertson Souter
While an attempt by the Senate Finance Committee to unmask secretive drug industry pricing has been in the news lately, another case that could have far-reaching results for insurance company procedure was recently decided in a federal court in California. In March, a federal judge issued a ruling in a class-action case brought by several patients against United Behavioral Health (UBH), a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. Judge Spero of the U.S. District Court of Northern California sided with the plaintiffs in their allegations that they were denied mental health care benefits improperly. The plaintiffs said that the insurance company did [More]
Tags: mental health care, UBH, insurance company procedure, United Behavioral Health, denied benefits, for-profit companies, mental health coverage, substance abuse coveraage
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Study attempts to identify at-risk babies for autism treatment
By Susan Gonsalves
Babies who are at risk of developing autism have better outcomes if they are identified early and given intensive treatment. That’s the premise of the Infant Sibling Project, spearheaded by Rebecca MacDonald, Ph.D., BCBA-D, director of that initiative at The New England Center for Children in Southborough, Mass. MacDonald explained that her work attempts to replicate and expand research by Graupner and Sallows of the Wisconsin Early Autism Project in 2017. That project identified 60 siblings of children who already had an autism diagnosis. Researchers studied the babies, who were up to six months old, and conducted bi-weekly developmental screenings, [More]
Tags: Applied Behavior Analysis, autism in babies, autism in infants, Infant Sibling Project, eye contact, autism in children, ABA, Carolina Curriculum, Early Start Denver Model.
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