Leading Stories, Articles
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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Gen Z’s worries highlighted in annual stress survey
By Susan Gonsalves
Generation Z, individuals ages 15 to 21, feel stressed out about ripped-from-the- headlines topics like school and mass shootings, sexual assault, and immigration according to the annual Stress in America™ survey by the American Psychological Association. The Harris Poll was conducted last summer online among 3,458 adults and 300 15 to 17-year-olds in all 50 states. Although 75 percent of Gen Z members found mass shootings `significantly’ stressful and 72 percent felt that way about school shootings, those kids of voting age were least likely to vote at 54 percent. The overall average had seven in 10 adults expecting to [More]
Tags: Mental health, school shooting, anxiety, Generation Z, stress, Stress in America survey, migrant families
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Setting boundaries: an essential practice for psychologists
By Catherine Robertson Souter
We live in a time where boundaries, between people, between cultures, between sexes, are crashing down all around us. Boundaries are the walls that keep us from fulfilling our destiny or getting close to another human or limit freedom of speech and exchange of ideas and information. In the world of therapy, however, setting boundaries plays a different role. From protecting clients from being preyed upon to protecting the therapist from allegations of misconduct, strong boundaries can be crucial both ethically and legally. While it may be obvious that setting boundaries with and for patients benefits both client and therapist, [More]
Tags: therapy, psychologist, clinical practice, boundaries, client, ethical standards
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Draft of 10-year mental health plan release
By Catherine Robertson Souter
New Hampshire may soon see a major overhaul geared toward bringing the state’s mental health care system back to its former glory. For a system that has gone from being second in the country in 1990 as rated by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), to earning a D in a revised rating system in 2006, the announcement of a 10-year mental health plan was received with bated breath by stakeholders across the state. With input from residents, professionals, and focus groups, workgroups, and public sessions, the draft plan introduced in November begins by outlining the challenges faced [More]
Tags: New Hampshire, legislation, Medicaid, mental health crisis, mental health plan, draft, policymakers
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