Good morning! ☀️

First and foremost, a big thank you to Sarah, our new volunteer who helped us to find some of the interesting data in this newsletter 🙏

Last week, we covered the topic of supervised safe injection sites. This week, California Gov. Newsom vetoed a measure that would have “allowed Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to develop safe-use clinics in a pilot program that would have operated during the next five years.

In a public message explaining his veto, Newsom, a Democrat, suggested the clinics might actually encourage illegal drug use. ‘Worsening drug consumption challenges ... is not a risk we can take,’ Newsom wrote.”

Question: The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008 is a federal law that required group plans and health insurances to ensure equal coverage of treatment for mental illness and addiction. Prior to this, mental health treatment was typically covered at far lower levels in health insurance policies than physical illness. How have claims with behavioral diagnoses changed since the law was passed? (I.e. Have they increased, stayed the same, or decreased?)

News

Warning signs of mass violence

Although some mass shootings are committed by people with a diagnosed mental illness, a NYT article highlights that a better predictor may be a "life crisis”.

For example, in the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting, a 15-year old freshmen student shot five other students and ended up fatally shooting himself. The perpetrator did not have a history of mental illness. Furthermore, he appeared to be well adjusted to society. He was a great athelete, had been homecoming prince, and embraced his Native American traditions. And although a motive was never discovered, his behavior does appear to have been triggered by a fight with a girlfriend - to him, a crisis.

Most perpetrators of mass violence are similar in that they have not been diagnosed with a serious psychiatric disorder. Furthermore, we must remember that the link between mental health illness and violence is tenuous. About “half of all Americans will experience mental health issues at some point”, yet the vast majority will not kill.

Instead of using mental illness as a scapegoat for mass murders, some experts claim that we should instead focus on warning signs including “marked changes in behavior, demeanor, or appearance, uncharacteristic fights or arguments, and telling others of plans for violence, a phenomenon known as ‘leakage’”.

Furthermore, other factors may drive the behavior of perpetrators including a desire for fame, radicalization, and childhood trauma. Potential interventions may include mentorship, substance abuse treatment, and support for the parents such as transportatioon or child care. Dr. Peterson, who founded the Violence Project, a comprehensive mass shooter database, has “framed perpetrators not as monstrous outsiders but members - and product - of their communities who are often signaling that they need help”.

Other social work-related news

• Jails and prisons house many of our mentally ill. Yet these are punitive settings that are not effective in providing treatment. Instead, we must invest in housing, mobile crisis response teams, crisis stabilization centers, secture hospital beds, and other services “that enable people and communities to succeed and thrive at a fraction of the cost of incarceration.”

• Rates of anxiety and depression have decreased since first year of the pandemic but there still aren’t enough therapists

Reads on research

• A new model of sponsoring refugees suggests a combination of community and private sponsorship could transform the future of refugee resettlement in the US. This includes programs such as Sponsor Circles and Uniting for Ukraine, which help refugees to resettle effectively through private sponsorships

• In what researchers are calling the first published randomized trial to examine the effects of psilocybin on any type of addiction, people who underwent two psychedelic mushroom "trips" with the help of a psychotherapist reduced their days of heavy drinking by 83% over eight months

Reads on policy

• On Wednesday, President Biden announced his plan to address student loan debt. The new plan applies to federal student loan borrowers and will:

  • Allow for $10,000 of federal student loan debt forgiveness to individual borrowers who make less than $125,000 yearly and married couples or heads of households who make less than $250,000 yearly

  • Provide another $10,000 of loan debt foregiveness for borrowers who received a Pell Grant, a program which awards grants to students who display exceptional financial need

Tech, social work, and cool opportunities 😎

• How one social worker transitioned from social work to making a significant impact through business

• Alma raised $130M in Series D Funding to advance its mission to simplify access to high quality, affordable mental health care

• Motivo Health has obtained $14 million in series A funding to meet the rising demand for mental health professionals by streamlining licensure. The company connects those who have received their degree with licensed therapists to complete the required two to four years of consultation hours. To date, the platform has aided over 2,500 therapists in obtaining licensure.

• Clinical Content Writer Digital Mental Health at ChatOwl, Inc. (“We’re looking for a full or part-time therapist to help us develop evidence-based therapy plans and other clinical content for a digital mental health app”)

Answer: Claims with behavioral health diagnoses increased by a total of 108 percent during the ten-year time period between 2007 and 2017.

Of all of the age groups, young adults, aged 0 to 22 had the largest increase in behavioral health claims.