Medicaid and Mental Health Facilities

Lawmakers and mental health advocates agreed during a Senate hearing Wednesday that Medicaid should pay for short-term stays at residential mental health facilities as part of the broader goal of improving access to such services.
At a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, mental health professionals praised efforts to allow Medicaid to cover these services and otherwise increasing resources for patients with severe mental illness

CDC: 1-in-5 Kids Have Mental Disorder

Millions of American children suffer from depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorders and an array of other mental health issues, and the prevalence of such conditions is rising, a new study shows.
Roughly one in five children experience a mental disorder in a given year, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The costs for health care, special education, juvenile justice and other services for people under age 24 with mental disorders total nearly $250 billion each year, the report shows.

Our Sons Are Not Future Killers

From The New York Times' Motherlode blog, a post by Emily Willingham is science editor at the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism, manages the Double X Science blog, and blogs at Forbes.
 
The Asperger’s stereotype before the shootings in Newtown, Conn., was relatively harmless if inaccurate – that of a quirky, brilliant male unable to read subtle social cues or navigate the world of non-autistic people. Think Sheldon on “The Big Bang Theory” or Abed on “Community.”
The reality, like any reality disconnected from network television, is quite different. People with Asperger’s have a highly variable set of skills and capacities, most of them unrelated to brilliance or prepossessing eccentricities. Average intelligence, very real struggles with social navigation, and joblessness are far more prevalent among those with Asperger’s  than cute personality quirks like wearing unmatched socks or exhibiting an endless fascination with trains.

Autism and the Hypothetical Child

From Huffingtonn Post's Todd Drezner.

Given how many autistic people there are in the world, it's odd how much of the conversation about autism revolves around children who don't exist. The most common such child is the one who is "indistinguishable from his peers." This is the child who will supposedly emerge after successful therapies or treatments for autism leave the child essentially "normal."
This hypothetical normal child is closely related to another, younger one--the 1- or 2-year-old who was typically developing before the signs of autism became apparent. These two types of hypothetical children are linked by the assumption that their autism obscures their "real" selves. The hope for parents is that if the autism can somehow be removed, the real child will re-emerge.

French Film Takes Issue with the Psychoanalytical Approach to Autism

PARIS — “Le Mur,” or “The Wall,” a small documentary film about autism released online last year, might normally not have attracted much attention.
But an effort by French psychoanalysts to keep it from public eyes has helped to make it into a minor cause and shone a spotlight on the way children in France are treated for mental health problems.

Study: Environment May be Just as Important as Genes in Autism

This story keeps providing more hope for families who have a young or adult child on the spectrum. Realize I posted something yesterday, but this warrants additional mentions. Let us know your thoughts.

Autism is undeniably influenced by genes, but a new study suggests that environmental factors may also contribute significantly — more than researchers previously thought — to the developmental disorder. In fact, environmental factors may play at least as big a role as genes in causing autism.
Dr. Joachim Hallmayer, a psychiatrist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and his team report online in the Archives of General Psychiatry that shared environmental influences may account for as much as 55% of autism risk, while less than 40% can be attributed to genes.
The study modeled risk, but did not specify which environmental factors were at play. But other research has implicated increasing maternal and paternal age, low birth weight, multiple pregnancies and any medications or infections to which an expectant mom is exposed during pregnancy.

New Clues to Genetic Root of Autism

Random changes in genes, rather than changes handed down from parents, may be responsible for some cases of autism, say scientists who report in three new papers a major breakthrough in understanding where those genetic changes may lie.
The findings suggest that autism is a genetically complex disorder, involving perhaps hundreds of spontaneous changes in genes. The discoveries should help researchers gain a better understanding of the biology of the disorder and find targets for better treatments. It's latest in a steady stream of good news from autism researchers recently, who have reported on innovative ways to diagnose the disorder earlier and on new genes that contribute to it.