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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not accept the application of Lykos Therapeutics for MDMA as a treatment for post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a letter dated Aug. 9 and released by Lykos Therapeutics, the for‐profit arm of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the company stated that it is disappointed in the FDA response, but that it intends to pursue the goal of approval. This announcement was followed by the retraction of three peer‐reviewed studies on Aug. 9 as well. The FDA did not completely reject the idea of ever approving MDMA, but asked Lykos for more information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of Shatterproof, describes his 15‐year‐old son Brian's 2011 death as "losing him to addiction" and also to suicide. Afterward, he struggled with two questions: "What could I have done differently as a father?" and "Whatever it was, how could I spare others from this tragedy?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informing culturally sensitive, responsive, and effective messaging development to help individuals access the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in times of crisis is just one of the major aims of a new project borne out of a collaborative partnership that includes the Ad Council Research Institute, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, with support by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a span of less than two years, addiction treatment titan Caron Treatment Centers has seen the resignation of both its longtime CEO and, more recently, the young leader chosen as his successor. This extent of turnover at the highest level would likely cause many organizations to teeter, but at Caron, it simply triggered more planned steps in a leadership development process that has been years in the making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three members of Congress have introduced legislation designed to help close a gap in access to mental health services for Latino communities. The Mental Health for Latinos Act would direct the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a strategy to broaden community awareness around mental illness and encourage a public health approach to promoting behavioral health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to earlier research that found individuals who struggle with mental health issues tend to turn to their loved ones and others close to them to seek support through the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, two organizations have partnered on follow‐up research and a tool kit that provides specific messaging strategies tailored for these "trusted messengers." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Last week, the Biden administration announced plans to make marijuana legal. This is a huge change, and will likely increase everything from the stock value of companies to employment opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of adequate treatment for mental illness has been highlighted by the COVID‐19 pandemic, but addiction treatment providers have always recognized that the needs of patients go beyond merely treating the substance use disorder (SUD), and certainly go beyond achieving abstinence. A decade or so ago, the concept of trauma as a precipitating cause of SUDs emerged, with the realization that unless that trauma was treated, the addiction treatment wouldn't hold. Even before then, there were important concepts of self‐medication, in which patients who did not understand why they were addicted eventually learned—if they were fortunate enough to have helpful providers—that their problems were not just about using alcohol or drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An end‐of‐term ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that did not receive the national attention that accompanied higher‐profile issues could nonetheless have a significant impact on the outcomes of cases involving doctors accused of unauthorized distribution of controlled substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Colorado pilot program seeks to ease a system logjam that occurs when an accused offender with mental health needs is deemed not competent to stand trial but has no viable alternative to a long hold in jail. Launched last July, the initiative uses an education program designed to expedite an individual's restoration to competency, an effort that in many cases has shortened defendants' court‐mandated stay in psychiatric care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American Psychiatric Association is holding The APA 2024 Mental Health Services Conference Sept. 26–28 in Baltimore. For more information, visit https://www.xpressreg.net/register/MHSC0924/landing.asp?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA's) 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will run five months of paid awareness ads with select audiences that will consist of a research‐informed paid media buy with national reach in the summer/fall 2024, a SAMHSA news release stated. The effort is an initial step towards creating a larger and more comprehensive campaign in the future, officials stated. As SAMHSA continually works to improve awareness of 988 across the United States, the 988 Lifeline will begin running ads designed to reach communities that are disproportionately affected by suicide. The initial paid SAMHSA ads will run on digital communications platforms and channels from June through October 2024 and will reach five audiences during these months: the LGBTQI+, Black population, and American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) teens and LGBTQI+ and AI/AN young adults. Vibrant Emotional Health, the 988 Lifeline administrator, is expected to launch advertising to additional audiences starting late summer into early fall. Details will be shared when available, SAMHSA officials stated. The multimedia ads will appear on a variety of sites and on platforms and channels such as Hulu, YouTube, social media (including Meta, Snapchat, Reddit), iHeart Media, Indian Country Media, video games, apps and podcasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stigmatizing comments from a loved one about methadone or buprenorphine treatment, based on prevalent misinformation, can deeply sting for a person with opioid use disorder (OUD) who is relying on one of the medications as a component of recovery. As a new study featuring data from interviews with 52 treatment patients suggests, these comments often have harmful consequences for treatment, derailing disclosers' progress and placing them at serious risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The police chief of Newtown, Ohio credits the open minds of all four "pillars" involved in fighting the opioid crisis in a 16% reduction of overdose deaths last year. In an exclusive interview with ADAW this month, Chief Thomas W. Synan Jr. attributed the success to a robust community coalition that in the past few years has "connected all the pieces and built a continuing care model." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Biden administration last week announced an award of $206 million in grants designed to expand access to community‐ and school‐based mental health services for youths. Coinciding with the Sept. 25 funding announcement, the state of Virginia received confirmation that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has approved its proposed expansion of Medicaid funding availability for school‐based health services in the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States are overcoming a variety of structural and financial barriers to make inroads in meeting the mental health needs of persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a new report suggests. No one model has emerged as the ideal approach, though in all cases there has been a need to improve coordination of effort across multiple organizational silos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observing that Hispanic adults in Texas are struggling with mental health issues and are less likely to receive treatment compared with other ethnic groups, Texas A&M University‐Corpus Christi (TAMUCC) has launched a new online graduate degree program for counselors to work with Hispanic populations and address these barriers. The online master of science in professional counseling‐Hispanic mental health counseling program will commence in fall 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owls play important cultural, ecological, and indicator roles throughout the world. Yet owls' cryptic behavior has led to uncertainties about their basic ecology, including foraging, communication, and functional roles within the community, and potentially hindered the implementation of effective conservation measures. Here we demonstrate the potential for next‐generation GPS tags capable of recording high‐precision, minute‐by‐minute locations paired with other technologies to resolve some of these uncertainties. We combined high‐precision GPS tagging data with infrared (IR) video recorded by arboreally‐mounted cameras at 5 spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) nest sites in the Sierra Nevada, USA to provide a uniquely detailed examination of owl foraging patterns. Our approach allowed us to identify the precise time and location of 54 predation events and prey identity. We also used high‐precision GPS tags with on‐board audio recorders to map the vocal activity of 8 individuals by matching the time of vocalizations in the audio data to GPS locations recorded at one‐minute intervals. The combined spatial and acoustic data revealed that nonbreeding males had the most widespread territorial vocal activity (i.e., producing 4‐note territorial calls), while females provisioning fledglings displayed extensive nonterritorial vocal activity (i.e., producing many contact calls). Thus, the GPS‐tag technologies we employed can provide opportunities to better understand owl foraging, communication, territoriality, and population dynamics. The methods we describe are time‐ and resource‐intensive but can be paired with techniques that are more applicable at landscape scales, such as stable isotope analyses, LiDAR‐based habitat analyses, and passive acoustic monitoring to link local processes to broad‐scale ecological patterns. Therefore, our approach could be applied to many species whose behavior inhibits direct observation. © 2021 The Wildlife Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In about eight months, a new national three‐digit number to connect individuals to suicide prevention and mental health crisis counselors is set to launch, yet a staggering 80% of Americans have never heard about this number. A mere 1% are familiar with it, according to new survey results released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Words matter" is the refrain of anti‐stigma proponents in the United States, who state that person‐first language will improve attitudes toward drug users. But a recent study conducted in the U.K. has found that portraying people as having adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) does far more to reduce stigma than changing language, which does nothing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 crisis has no doubt disrupted the lives of many, and the impact is being felt by mental health providers and front‐line staff who have had to get accustomed to different ways of delivering services. Behavioral health care leaders in the field, in interviews with MHW, are reminding providers to take care of themselves emotionally and physically as they care for patients with mental health and substance use needs during this pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wash hands thoroughly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data collection that will guide national advocacy organization Shatterproof's pilot effort to offer consumers relevant information about addiction treatment centers' use of evidence‐based practices (see "Shatterproof continues 'report card' project," https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.32225, ADAW, Jan. 14, 2019; and "Shatterproof on its rating pilot for SUD treatment programs," https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.32248, ADAW, Feb. 4, 2019) is about to be completed. Starting this summer, users of the initial information covering treatment facilities in six states will be able to conduct some comparisons between centers, but the analysis will not attach a composite quality score to each participating facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging field of digital medicine explores the potential benefit of using technologies as tools for measurement and intervention in health care delivery, say researchers of a new study published in Population Health Management. Digital tools can assist physician– patient relationships, which may potentially help improve treatment outcomes, the study found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although New Jersey providers of mental health services are working to support community members through telehealth and some return to in‐person services, there is a dearth of licensed social workers and licensed clinical workers to meet the demands across the state. Fueling the problem are delays, lack of communication and unclear processes regarding licensure, according to the National Association of Social Workers in New Jersey (NASW‐NJ), which says the long delays are causing a mental health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The elimination of the x‐waiver for buprenorphine prescribing, which may take place based on stakeholder (insurance, treatment, Congress) forces, will likely result in a spectrum of prescribers, from "dabblers" to full‐time addiction treatment providers, according to a recent commentary by top researchers. And in fact, that is how the x‐waiver has been operating, with many certified prescribers choosing to prescribe for way under their "cap" of 30, 100 or 250; ostensibly because they are choosing to treat only their own patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving school‐based mental health, enhancing crisis services and improving the capacity of the 988 Lifeline, reducing veteran suicide and expanding access to peer support, including mental health services for veterans, are among the goals outlined in President Biden's Fact Sheet, released Feb. 7, ahead of his State of the Union (SOTU) address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters in political campaigns generally vote against a candidate rather than for one. The same is true in a union election. The employer should give voters a variety of reasons and arguments for voting against the union, by emphasizing the costs, risks, and obligations employees would face with union representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The kind of collaboration between generalist physicians and specialty treatment that has become second nature in addressing chronic conditions such as diabetes remains largely absent in the health care community's response to opioid use disorders. The result, say behavioral health experts interviewed by ADAW, often can be incomplete or inappropriate care in the office‐based practices that national leaders increasingly see as the focus of the treatment response to the opioid crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With overdoses and overdose deaths related to illicit fentanyl very much on the forefront of public health authorities' minds, harm reduction and how it can interface with treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) is a key topic. There is a tendency for harm reduction organizations to take a hard line against treatment, assuming that people who go to treatment will have to stop using drugs. Drug users don't want to stop, and therefore may shun treatment. This is well known in alcohol use disorders, as the work of Katie Witkiewicz, Ph.D. has shown (see Moderation vs. abstinence when it comes to well‐being in recovery: A continuum; ADAW Jan. 31; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.33328), in which patients avoid treatment because they don't want to stop drinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anxiety and depression are impacting one‐quarter of young adults who say they have considered suicide in the past month due to COVID‐19, according to researchers of a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released Aug. 14. Similar mental health conditions are also disproportionately affecting specific populations, including Hispanic persons, Black persons, essential workers and unpaid caregivers for adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication gaps continue to complicate the effort to provide federal relief funding to behavioral health and other health care providers that have been adversely affected by the COVID‐19 crisis. It remained unclear last week as to whether recent outreach efforts to providers would result in a flurry of applications for the latest round of Provider Relief Fund money before the Aug. 3 application deadline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Recovery" is widely considered the main brand of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and every September for 30 years, recovery from addiction has been celebrated, with gradually increasing input from the recovery field. But communication, hasn't been SAMHSA's strong point, at least with the recovery community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although widely known statistics indicate that one in five employees will experience a mental health condition each year, five in five employees can benefit from a supportive and psychologically safe workplace. This is the impetus behind a new national workplace mental health certification, according to Mental Health America (MHA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the country, lucky patients who got their treatment paid for thanks to grants from the federal government – and never really knew how long that grant would last – are angrily asking why they now have to pay, or be kicked out of treatment, ADAW has learned. It's a communications problem, and a problem of not knowing for sure when and where any more money will be available. We were able to talk to one program which has been handling this situation the right way – but even that is difficult due to lack of guidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do American Charismatic Evangelicals imagine human difference? Ethnographic fieldwork with the Vineyard, a Southern California originated but now nation-wide Charismatic Evangelical movement, suggests that for many lay American Charismatic Evangelicals, difference is conceptualized in three different modes, involving potentialities, relations, and boundedness. Much like a grammar shapes communication without imposing a single meaning, these forms of conceiving human difference mandate no single intrinsic political position, but do affect the way that American Charismatic evangelicals express and contest notions of human difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All the number‐crunching and logistics around plans to combine two provider organizations can result in losing sight of how staff members are processing the news — and the inevitable rumors that surface. As they moved toward announcing plans to combine operations with those of Community Psychiatric Clinic by this fall, leaders at the King County, Washington–based mental health organization Sound shaped a communication effort for its workforce both for the day of the announcement and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many marketing and communications offices aren't always in the position to create a new position or fill a vacated spot on the team. Despite a smaller staff, work does not decrease. Sometimes this means projects are put on hold or take longer than anticipated. When it comes to content‐related efforts, a freelance writer could make a great, temporary addition to your team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New research shows that so‐called social donors—those who give to charity through event‐based and peer‐to‐peer fundraising—don't typically have a deep level of commitment or engagement with the organizations they support, and therefore pose a challenge to nonprofits looking to expand their support beyond their initial donations. But with proper follow‐up outreach and targeted communications, they hold promise to become among your most loyal donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One‐third of Americans say social media does more harm than good to their mental health, according to a new poll released by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Nearly half said that social media has hurt society at large, and 42% said it has hurt political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Stringer, former single state authority of Missouri and former president of the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD), has some key advice for public officials involved in the substance use disorder (SUD) arena: Be better at explaining what addiction is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EDITOR'S SUMMARY Social math presents numerical data as a compelling story about a social issue to inspire an active audience response. The approach simplifies complex statistics by reframing them within more familiar contexts. Visual images reinforce the comparison and message, surpassing simple data presentation to offer a meaningful and informative story. Organizations seeking to stimulate response to social problems by citing powerful statistics often turn to social math. The impact of social math is strengthened by reference to numbers that are familiar, understandable and small and by alluding to dramatic events. Examples illustrate social math being used effectively and ways to improve the presentations. Key guidelines for social math include clearly defining the issue and specific focus, using reliable data, customizing the comparison to the audience, having a clear visualization and a strong call to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]