Week of May 5–9, 2025

General Mental Health

• When it comes to providing mental health supports and services, farmers can be notoriously hard to reach. An innovative new therapy promotes farmers’ mental health by using their connection to their own land. Read more here.

Youth Mental Health

• Foster children are prescribed psychotropic medications far more often than other children in the U.S., several studies have shown. Lisa Cohen Bennett, a Berkeley, California-based psychologist who has worked with foster youth for almost five decades, views the drugs as essentially “chemical handcuffs” that are “disproportionately used to treat foster youth of color.” Read more here.
• Rising rates of poor mental health among youth have been called a national crisis. While this is often linked to factors like the COVID-19 pandemic or poverty, some officials, like former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, name social media as a major threat to teenagers. Our latest survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 and their parents finds that parents are generally more worried than their children about the mental health of teenagers today. Read more here.

Research

• In this economic evaluation of Medicare parity, implementation of Medicare parity, coupled with routine adult depression screening, was associated with significant increases in outpatient mental health service use among Medicare beneficiaries with depression. These findings suggest that parity policies alone may not be sufficient to effectively address multiple barriers to mental health care, but in tandem with physician screening, diagnosis, and referral practices, they may increase the accessibility of mental health services. Read more here.

Transgender Rights

• The Colorado Senate could soon vote on a Democratic bill aimed at increasing protections for transgender Coloradans; however, the measure faces concerns from both members of the LGTBQ community and the governor. After an emotional, 10-hour hearing in the Senate Judiciary committee, the panel agreed to strike the bill’s most controversial provision. Backers have named House Bill 1312 the Kelly Loving Act, after a trans woman was killed in the Club Q shooting. She was known for being authentic and unapologetic but also struggled with substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of low self-worth. Read more here.

Medicaid

• As House Speaker Mike Johnson tries to sell massive Medicaid cuts, he is leaning on a messaging strategy straight from the White House playbook: a policy in the name of protecting women. However, while the Republican lawmaker claims he’s targeting men who are allegedly freeloading off of the program, the changes could be detrimental to the very people he says he wants to protect. Read more here.
• House Republican leadership’s decision to step back from two pathways to major Medicaid cost savings has fueled contempt among hardline conservatives, raising questions about the future of a reconciliation package that faces a key markup. The proposals would’ve cut federal Medicaid spending by billions of dollars, but they could not gain enough support from a key group of more moderate GOP lawmakers. Read more here.
• Millions of people would lose health insurance coverage under various Republican options to cut Medicaid spending to pay for President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, according to an analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Read more here.
• Ten states and Washington, D.C., could face a $468 billion shortfall over the next decade if Congress reduces the amount it guarantees states to run their Medicaid programs, according to a report from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Read more here.

Federal Policy

• U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motto is “Make America Healthy Again,” but government cuts could make it harder to know if that’s happening. The Associated Press examined draft and final budget proposals and spoke to more than a dozen current and former federal employees to determine the scope of the cuts to programs tracking basic facts about Americans’ health. Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence, and youth smoking, the AP found. Read more here.