Week of October 13–17, 2025

General Mental Health

• The Lucy Daniels Center is breaking ground on an expansion that will nearly triple the number of children the nonprofit can serve. The $4.1 million project will add 18 offices to the Cary-based center, which provides psychiatric and therapeutic services every year to about 500 children younger than 12 years old. The expansion will allow the center to reach more than 1,500 children annually and add speech therapy, occupational therapy, and onsite psychological testing, said psychologist Emily Odjaghian, clinical and executive director of the center. Read more here.

Veterans’ Mental Health

• By 2022, suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for nearly 50,000 deaths. Recent studies have found that military veterans who served after the 9/11 attacks had higher suicide rates compared to the general U.S. adult population, particularly veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Suicide rates among veterans with and without TBI rose greatly from 2006 to 2020. In this retrospective cohort study, published in a JAMA Open Network Research Letter, investigators analyzed data through 2022 to see whether those trends changed after 2020. Read more here.

The Opioid Crisis

• Overdose deaths continued to rise in some communities across the U.S. even as they declined nationally in 2024, according to an exclusive data analysis by the Guardian, which found wide geographical disparities in fatalities linked to the public health crisis. The revelation comes just months after public health officials heralded a 27% drop in overdose deaths, a feat that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attributed to factors including expanded access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, substance-use treatment, and shifts in the drug supply. Read more here.
• Among U.S. counties containing the nation’s 10 largest cities, Cook county, Illinois – where Chicago is located – has seen the largest reduction in overdose deaths since the national peak of the crisis in 2023, by 37%, according to an exclusive Guardian analysis. Chicago has one of the most robust drug supply surveillance and overdose prevention response systems in the nation. Jenny Hua, medical director for the Chicago department of public health, hesitated to take full credit for the progress, explaining that many factors influencing overdose deaths are beyond any one health department’s control. Read more here.
• The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported a significant drop in drug-related fatalities last year across the state. According to the data, total drug-related deaths in 2024 decreased by 14% statewide. The sharpest reductions were seen in opioid-related fatalities, with opioid-caused deaths dropping 32% and fentanyl-caused deaths decreasing by 35%. Read more here.

Government Shutdown – ACA Enhanced Premium Subsidies

• Time is quickly running out to shield Obamacare customers from explosive sticker shock. State insurance officials are warning that the longer Congress waits to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which help low- and middle-income people afford premiums, the more difficult it will be to update rates before consumers start shopping for 2026 coverage on Nov. 1. Read more here.
• The ongoing debate over soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies has reopened an old wound for Republicans: What should they do about the health care law they have railed against for more than a decade that has now taken root with their own constituents? While some GOP hard-liners are again embracing repeal-and-replace rhetoric, the scars from the party’s failed attempt to undo the ACA in 2017 have left a broader swath of Republicans extremely wary of trying to rip out the law — even as they continue to criticize it. Read more here.

Research

• Early heart rate changes after starting intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) for major depressive disorder (MDD) could help serve as a predictor of treatment response, a quadruple-blind crossover trial indicated. Among 75 patients, those with greater heart rate deceleration within the first 45 seconds of iTBS -- as measured via electrocardiogram -- had significantly greater improvement in Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) scores six weeks after active treatment (r=0.27, P=0.021), reported Roberto Goya-Maldonado, MD, of the University Medical Center Göttingen in Germany, and colleagues. Read more here.