General Mental Health Issues
- In many ways, it was the usual protest scene. Dozens of striking mental health care workers chanted and marched outside a Kaiser Permanente medical center on a busy strip of Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. However, a few of the striking workers sat quietly under a tent, conserving their energy and mixing electrolyte drinks — their only planned sustenance for five days. Frustrated and feeling unheard after nearly six months of a strike to demand more pay and benefits, these eight therapists were taking their protest to the next level with a five-day hunger strike. Read more here.
- Her mom, K, is 65 and has been homeless in Missoula, Montana for the last eight years. Because of schizoaffective disorder, she experiences severe mood swings and delusions. Another symptom is anosognosia, which means she doesn't understand that she has a mental health condition, and because of that often refuses treatment. Her daughter, L, asked NPR to only identify them by their first initials because of the stigma of severe mental illness — and to protect K's ability to get housing. In late 2023, L uprooted her life in Colorado to move back home to Missoula. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- The question of when children should get smartphones and whether these devices are harmful has sparked debate for years, but new research from the University of South Florida challenges some long-held assumptions. Leading up to the study, researchers expected to find negative outcomes tied to smartphone use among children. Instead, they found the devices may not be as damaging to kids’ mental health as some believe and could, in fact, be beneficial. Read more here.
- Brian Monday remembers his oldest child, Eric, as a kid who loved wrestling but was himself wrestling with a greater private battle – depression. At age 21, Eric lost that battle. Since Eric’s death in 2009, his father has been on a mission to help youth confront the stigma and silence about mental health struggles by training coaches to offer more support along the way. In 2019 in Vienna, Virginia, he established the Eric Monday Foundation to raise awareness about the stigma around mental health in sports. Read more here.
Suicide Prevention
- A large majority of patients who die by suicide have visited a primary care provider in the prior year, with almost half having done so in the prior month. Clearly, primary care providers are positioned to play a pivotal role in reducing suicide rates—but they must be properly supported in order to identify and address suicide risk. Read more here.
Transgender Issues
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is urging states to not use Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care for minors, specifically gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments. “As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the recently confirmed agency head, said in a statement. “Medicaid dollars are not to be used for gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments in minors—procedures that can cause permanent, irreversible harm, including sterilization,” he continued. Read more here.
- The Trump administration is seeking to limit coverage of gender-affirming care for adults and minors in Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance plans beginning next year. The rule, if finalized, would not ban marketplace plans from covering gender-affirming care services. However, it could raise out-of-pocket costs for patients, add administrative burdens for insurance companies, and inject confusion into state operations, health policy experts say. Read more here.
Federal and State Policy
- On March 27, 2025, the federal government announced major cuts to the department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Average Americans could be impacted by these changes through reduced access to early education, family planning and health care, natural disaster response, and more. However, the reality of these cuts, which deserves far more attention than it has received, is the disproportionate impact they could have on older adults. Read more here.
- Three GOP-led states are moving to strip unhealthy items from their food stamp programs that help low-income Americans afford groceries. Arkansas became the first state to submit a waiver to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) asking for permission to change its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to ban soda and candy. Read more here.
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