News: Youth suicide epidemic worries lawmakers

News: Mental health advocate is Aussie "man of year"

News: FDA cautions Zyprexa for teens

News: New depression studies raise questions

News: Psychiatric Solutions: pay raise, lawsuits and a new military contract
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc., a national chain of psychiatric hospitals plagued with state and federal investigations and share-holder lawsuits has received a military contract for serving vets in eight hospitals.. . .
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News: Teen drug use fluctuates, says NIDA

News: Juvenile detention centers, jails, hospitals fail New Yorkers

Track Legislation: Preventing Indian youth suicide (S 1635)
Suicide rates among Native Americans range from 3 1/2 to 10 times greater (depending on the state) than for other youth in America, said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND). The Indian Affairs Committee heard testimony on behalf of the "7th Generation Promise: Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Act of 2009 (S 1635)" discussing the epidemic of suicide pointing to the mental health needs of the Indian Health Service. Dr. Yvette Roubideaux explained services are inadequate and fragmented, stitching together a combination of...
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Did You Know: Twice as many adolescents who drink live with fathers who have alcohol disorders.
Read more about this study from SAMHSA....
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News: Bipolar diagnosis mixed bag in youth
With the hike in diagnosing bipolar disorder, and prescribing drugs for kids, researchers wanted to know the circumstances in which these decisions were made. Researchers reviewed 1.3 million insurance claims for youth under the age of 17. . .
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News: Safety of atypical antipsychotics
Atypical antipsychotic drugs are used widely beyond the original group of mental disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which they were initially approved.
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News: June in the journals

Commentary: A little money helps a lot of kids
Numbers do not tell the story about real lives affected by budget cuts. Carla Lisio, clinical director at MHA of Westchester (New York) describes a low-cost, high-impact program for kids which was eliminated when budget cuts were imposed on this New York agency.
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Did You Know: 200,000 teens were enrolled in residential treatment programs, wilderness camps, and boot camps in 2004.
Read more and download the GAO (Government Accounting Office) report at Teen Advocates USA....
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News: Study of trauma, PTSD, and suicide
Not all assaultive trauma results in PTSD, but when it does, research indicates, there are greater risks for suicide. Results (n=1698) of a study of youth who were enrolled in a study when they entered first grade 15 years earlier indicated females made more suicide attempts than males. The youth came from Baltimore and the sample was nearly half male and 71 percent African-American. Suicide ranks as the third leading cause of death for people 15 to 24 years old,...
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News: Preventing child abuse in residential treatment
Abuses in wilderness camps, therapeutic communities, and other residential treatment programs have fallen between the law and regulation. For lack of success in other treatment setting, parents of out-of-control adolescents with mental health, addiction, or behavior problems have turned to unlicensed programs. After hearings and law-suits detailed abuses such as the withholding of food, sex abuse, unlicensed treatment providers, and, in some instances, death, Rep. George Miller (D-Cal) re-introduced a bill (H.R. 911) to establish enforceable standards. Update (23 Feb....
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News: TV and depression
Of the many aspects of adolescent mental health, it appears watching television and depression go together. A study in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry describes a national, heterogeneous sample of students, grades 7 to 12, for whom depression increased with each additional hour of television viewing. Seven years after the study began, by 7.4 percent met criteria for depression. This is slightly higher than the 5 percent estimate for teen depression given by the American Academy of...
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News: Black youth and suicide
After the on-line suicide of a 19-year-old from Florida, Newsweek online spoke with University of Michigan expert, Dr. Sean Joe. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for black men. Joe noted that stigma influences "the ways in which men perceive what it means to seek help for mental-health issues."...
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News: Web site helps New Zealand teens
Text messaging by teens is par for the course. But messages sent by teens to a website for depression is an indication of seeking and getting help. The Auckland-based site has been visited by nearly 100,000 people since it was launched in 2007 reports a New Zealand paper....
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News: Suicide risks for adolescents
Research assessing suicide attempts for 10-18 year olds (n=210) who ended up in an emergency room concludes that risk factors included "romantic breakups, exposure to suicide/suicide attempts, and pregnancy in self or partner." Untreated depression also figured for males. The study was conducted in two emergency rooms, and gathered information from questionnaires about treatment history, environmental factors, and sociodemographic characteristics to determine the risks. It is published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child...
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News: Evaluating residential treatment for teens
A check list of questions, designed to help parents evaluate services at a private residential treatment program for teens, was released by the Federal Trade Commission. Congress has been looking into these programs which often reside in states having no regulations for accountability....
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News: Focusing on young adult needs
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR, picture) and Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) led their respective chambers in drafting legislation to protect young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 with a serious mental health disorder. The goal for an estimated 2.4 million people living in the community is to help them build "the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to ensure their healthy transition to successful adult roles and responsibilities." Last week a Government Accounting Office (GAO) report, Young Adults with...
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Track Legislation: S 3195
"A bill to provide assistance to adolescents and young adults with serious mental health disorders as they transition to adulthood," was introduced by Sen. Gordon Smith on June 25, 2008.
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Track Legislation: H.R. 5876
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) introduced the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008 on April 22, 2008: “To require certain standards and enforcement provisions to prevent child abuse and neglect in residential programs, and for other purposes.”
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News: Improving research designs
The May issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry includes editorials critical of standard research design for drug studies and those undertaken with insufficient attention to racial differences. “What is the meaning of the incremental cost of an active treatment compared with placebo when substantial costs attributed to the placebo exist only because of the research design?” asks one editorial, commenting on a drug study treating adolescents and depression. Another editorial laments that "'monocultural ethnocentrism" continues to pervade "good science"...
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News: Adolescent depression therapies
Research evaluating three treatment options for adolescents (n=439) with major depression disorder appeared in the April issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. Adolescents were selected from 13 centers between 1998 and 2004 and were evaluated three times for interventions including talk therapy, drug therapy and a combination....
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News: Drinking, drugs and depression: SAMHSA's study
Roughly one in ten youngsters between 12 and 17 years old have a depressive episode each year, SAMHSA administrator, Dr. Terry Cline, told a House subcommittee on Weds. "[T]these young people are twice as likely to take their first drink or use drugs for the first time as those who did not experience depression.” Help, should they become addicted, is not readily available. Cline said that slightly more than 10 percent of the 23.6 million needing treatment for drug or...
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News: Depression risk factor for black teens
A study of teen pregnancy (n=269), with mothers 12 to 17, calls race plus depression a “double jeopardy” risk factor. The authors believe their study of adolescent mothers, published in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, is the first to show that “depressive symptoms precede subsequent pregnancy and may be a determinant of this adverse outcome.”...
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News: Depresson studies
A study of adolescents in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests switching medicine and adding CBT helps teens for whom an earlier medicine didn't work. Men between 71-89 years old who scored high for elderly depression also had lower concentrations of testosterone. The community study (n=3987) took place in Australia, and findings are reported in the March edition of Archives of General Psychiatry (subscription required). Stroke victims: The American Academy of Neurology published a British study indicating...
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News: Paradoxical priorities for youth
With the release of new reports about the devastating effects of poverty on the growth of infant brains, a study from The National Center for Children in Poverty is particularly disturbing. Towards Better Behavioral Health for Children, Youth and their Families suggests that despite record funding for children and adolescents, it is disproportionately spent on residential treatment and psychiatric hospitals instead of the community-based interventions for families and children that could help avert later mental health problems....
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News: Marijuana withdrawal
Cannabis withdrawal was observed in a pilot study of adolescents (n=21) voluntarily attending a substance abuse program. An article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry reports that during the month of observation, the 13-19 year olds displayed clinical symptoms of withdrawal including twitching, irritability and cravings....
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News: Helping youth go forward
Older adolescents and younger adults -- men and women between 16 and 25 with mental health needs -- have not fit into established systems in New York State. Chance for Change, a report from the Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies, assesses what makes for a successful transition, and how to make it happen for an under-served age group. Special focus on adolescents aging out of foster care, those with special education needs, or those who have been involved in the...
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News: Risk factors and prevention
The January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry (subscription required) has published two different articles addressing the predictive value of risk factors for psychiatric or substance abuse disorders. One article, a follow-up (n=591) study of young adults in Zurich, showed the specificity of manic symptoms in Bipolar II for predicting co-occurring substance use and addiction. A second articles discusses how combinations of five factors can predict the onset of full-blown psychosis in youth. The study was based on a sample...
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News: Sex assault a risk factor for teen suicide
Authors of a survey of New York City teens (N=8,080) report that "recent dating violence among females and lifetime history of sexual assault among males were significantly associated with suicide attempts." Suicide is the third leading cause of death among adolescents, after accidents and homicide. The study appeared in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine....
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