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Recovery Update features the most recent articles from throughout the field of psychiatric rehabilitation. Stay up to date on all the latest mental health news through this weekly newsletter.
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North Carolina's three state-run psychiatric hospitals — Cherry, Central Regional and Broughton — serve about 570 patients each day. But hundreds more who need inpatient treatment wait weeks — even months — for a bed to open.
As artificial intelligence chatbots become better at mimicking human conversations, the potential for damage has grown, particularly for people who turn to them for mental health advice and to discuss plans to harm themselves. State lawmakers and Gov. Bob Ferguson are seeking to add mental health safeguards to AI chatbots through new legislation. House Bill 2225 and Senate Bill 5984 would require companion chatbots to notify users they are interacting with AI and not a human at the beginning of the interaction and every three hours.
Despite the announcement of a drawdown in federal immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota, tensions remain high in the Twin Cities. Some communities say they've seen little change in the numbers of arrests or sightings of federal officers. As special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, the crackdown has affected nearly every aspect of daily life, including the health of many residents.
Two months after an Idaho Medicaid contractor cut critical mental health services, officials say the fallout that mental health providers warned about is becoming real. Two patients died, and crisis centers and jails are strained after patients lost access to a program that brings mobile, specialized mental health care directly to people with severe illness, mental health providers say.
Children in need of mental health care are being locked up in detention facilities across the country, even when they have not been charged with a crime, according to a new report from Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff's office. The report is the result of a nearly year-long investigation, which found that one of the contributing issues is a lack of places for children to get proper mental health care in the community.
The U.S. Department of Labor said recently it has settled with Kaiser Foundation Health Plan to resolve multiple investigations into the company's practices on mental health and substance use disorder services. The agreement resolves allegations that Kaiser failed to maintain adequate provider networks for mental health and substance use disorder care, and improperly used patient responses to questionnaires to deny care, the Labor Department said in its statement.
Aerobic exercise such as running, swimming or dancing can be considered a frontline treatment for mild depression and anxiety, according to research that suggests working out with others brings the most benefits. Scientists analysed published reviews on exercise and mental health and found that some of the greatest improvements were observed in young adults and new mothers – groups that are considered particularly vulnerable to mental health problems.
The widespread "boarding" of children and adolescents in emergency departments while awaiting psychiatric beds is not merely a logistical failure but a profound ethical one — and evidence that the U.S. has allowed its continuum of mental health care to collapse — according to a commentary by LDI Senior Fellow Dominic Sisti, PhD, MBE in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
A new report from Congress has raised the alarm about children with mental health conditions being held in juvenile detention, rather than getting treatment. "Prolonged Incarceration of Children Due to Mental Health Care Shortages," released recently by the staff of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, is based on a survey sent to administrators of public juvenile detention facilities around the country.
Mental health is sometimes understood as merely the absence of mental illness and sometimes more expansively as inclusive of a broader and more complete mental well-being. We present conceptual, empirical, and causal evidence for a distinction between the absence of mental illness and positive mental well-being. We discuss the implications for assessment, national tracking, research, policy, and mental healthcare.
Lucid dreaming (LD) is one of the most fascinating parts of human consciousness, where you realize you are actually dreaming while you're still asleep and, in some situations, can decide what happens next.
New research following U.S. adolescents aged 11–12 shows that problematic use of mobile phones, social media, and video games was associated with higher risks of mental health problems, sleep disturbance, and suicidal behaviors one year later.
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