Studies in the News is a very current compilation of items significant to the Legislature and Governor's Office. It is created weekly by the State Library's Research Bureau to supplement the public policy debate in California’s Capitol. To help share the latest information with state policymakers, these reading lists are now being made accessible through the State Library’s website. This week's list of current articles in various public policy areas is presented below.

Service to State Employees:

• When available, the URL for the full text of each item is provided.

• California State Employees may contact the State Information & Reference Center (916-654-0206; cslsirc@library.ca.gov) with the SITN issue number and the item number [S#].

• All other interested individuals should contact their local library - the items may be available there, or may be borrowed by your local library on your behalf.

HEALTH

MENTAL HEALTH

Improving the Delivery of Health Care that Supports Young Children’s Healthy Mental Development. By Neva Kaye, National Academy for State Health Policy. (The Academy, Portland, Maine) 2006. 48p.

Full Text at: www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=367138

[“Many young children could benefit from improved delivery of services that support healthy mental development. The authors maintain that states and society at-large could also benefit from improved delivery of preventive and early intervention services that promote school readiness and prevent the need for more costly interventions at a later date. The important role that Medicaid and other state agencies can play in improving the delivery of services that support young children’s social and emotional development is confirmed by the experiences of the five states that are participating in the Assuring Better Child Health and Development (ABCD) II Consortium. Even though these five states are only halfway through their three-year projects, they have already accomplished much and learned key lessons. This report examines their early experiences to provide helpful information to other states interested in working to ensure young children’s healthy mental development.”]

[Request #S10766]

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Providing Language Services in State and Local Health-Related Benefits Offices: Examples from the Field. By Mara Youdelman, National Health Law Program, and others. (The Commonwealth Fund, New York) January 2007. 178p.

Full Text at: www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=444660

[“Changing demographics, along with federal and state policies, have increased the need for effective models of providing language services to people with limited English proficiency. Many benefits offices, which help people apply for Medicaid and other public programs, lack knowledge and resources, creating barriers to access and care. To assess this environment, the National Health Law Program visited benefits offices and conducted telephone interviews and surveys. Certain strategies emerged as promising practices, defined as creative, effective methods replicable by others. These include written language access plans; recruiting bilingual staff for dual roles (e.g., front desk and interpreter positions); interpreter competency testing; training for interpreter staff; telephone language lines; community resources such as universities, local advocates, legal aid organizations, and refugee resettlement organizations; and tapping into underused funding sources. The authors include an eight-step plan to help benefit offices develop a strategy to meet the needs of clients.”]

[Request #S10768]

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

A Blueprint for Change: Improving the System Response to Youth with Mental Health Needs Involved with the Juvenile Justice System. By Kathleen Skowyra and Joseph J. Cocozza, Policy Research Associates. (National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, Delmar, New York) June 2006. 12 p.

Full Text at: www.ncmhjj.com/Blueprint/pdfs/ProgramBrief_06_06.pdf

[“Over 2.3 million youth are arrested each year. Approximately 600,000 of these youth are processed through juvenile detention centers and more than 100,000 are placed in secure juvenile correctional facilities. Until the last decade, there was a lack of data and information available documenting the degree to which youth involved with the juvenile justice system were experiencing mental illness. New research, conducted over the last ten years, has expanded our collective understanding of the nature and prevalence of mental disorders among the juvenile justice population and has provided the field with a more precise assessment of the problem. In fact, it is now well established that the majority of youth involved with the juvenile justice system have mental health disorders. For example, we now know that youth in the juvenile justice system experience substantially higher rates of mental disorder than youth in the general population….As a result of this pressure and attention, significant energy has been directed to the development of new tools, policies and strategies to help the field better identify and respond to the mental health needs of these youth.

This research brief discusses a Model designed to capture the current of activity of the field and present it in such a way that examines the juvenile justice system as a continuum, identifying the best ways to respond to youth with mental disorders at key points of contact and providing recommendations, guidelines and examples for how best to do this.”]

[Request #S10774]

Return to the Table of Contents

Building Bridges: Consumers and Representatives of the Mental Health and Criminal Justice Systems in Dialogue. By the Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (The Center, Rockville, Maryland) 2005. 48p.

Full Text at: download.ncadi.samhsa.gov/ken/pdf/SMA05-4067/Criminal_Justice.pdf

[“On July 26-27, 2004, the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) sponsored a dialogue among invited consumers of mental health services who have had contact with the criminal justice system and representatives of various sectors of the criminal justice and mental health systems, including service providers, advocates, and policymakers. In an effort to develop improved mutual understanding, respect, and partnerships, the two dozen participants: Identified issues involving mental health consumers in contact with the criminal justice system, including diversion from incarceration, prevention prior to consumer entry into jails and prisons, and community reentry efforts; Identified factors at both the person level and the system level that promote or hinder recovery from mental illnesses; and Developed recommendations regarding systems transformation that can foster recovery and community integration. The participants’ findings and recommendations are summarized in this publication.”]

[Request #S10775]

Return to the Table of Contents

Enhancing Collaboration between Primary and Subspecialty Care Providers for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs. By Richard C. Antonelli, Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, and others. (The Center, Washington, DC) Summer 2005. 78 p.

Full Text at: gucchd.georgetown.edu/files/products_publications/PrimarySpecialityCollaboration.pdf

[“Policy makers have emphasized the importance of collaboration among all providers of care in the past several years. In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics, (AAP) identified it as a central principle of care coordination. More recently, the AAP has identified this collaboration as one of 10 services central to providing a Medical Home for children with special health care needs (CSHCN). In its report, Crossing the Quality Chasm, which dealt more broadly with the quality of health care for children and adults, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) noted, “Although good coordination and communication are essential for all care, they are especially important for chronic care.”

Furthermore, this IOM report made the case that the only way to significantly reduce the frequency of errors occurring in the health care system is to fundamentally change the way care is delivered at the system and community levels. Most recently, the IOM report Priority Areas for National Action clearly articulated that a central focus for improving the quality of health care delivery needs to be on the provision of care coordination services, especially for patients with chronic illnesses. A fundamental component underpinning care coordination is effective communication. There has been much debate about the respective roles of primary care and subspecialty care physicians in providing a Medical Home to CYSHCN. By way of functional definition for this guide, primary care is the point of access to the health care system for all new needs and problems. It provides person-focused (not disease-specific) care over time, provides care for all but very uncommon or unusual conditions, and coordinates care provided by others in the system.”]

[Request #S10776]

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

“Sex Differences in Clinical Predictors of Suicidal Acts after Major Depression: A Prospective Study.” By Maria A. Oquendo, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and others. IN: The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 164 (January 2007) pp. 134-141.

Full Text at: ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/164/1/134

[“Whether sex differences exist in clinical risk factors associated with suicidal behavior is unknown. The authors postulated that among men with a major depressive episode, aggression, hostility, and history of substance misuse increase risk for future suicidal behavior, while depressive symptoms, childhood history of abuse, fewer reasons for living, and borderline personality disorder do so in depressed women. Patients with DSM-III-R major depression or bipolar disorder seeking treatment for a major depressive episode (N=314) were followed for 2 years. Putative predictors were tested with Cox proportional hazards regression analysis.

During follow-up, 16.6% of the patients attempted or committed suicide. Family history of suicidal acts, past drug use, cigarette smoking, borderline personality disorder, and early parental separation each more than tripled the risk of future suicidal acts in men. For women, the risk for future suicidal acts was six-fold greater for prior suicide attempters; each past attempt increased future risk threefold. Suicidal ideation, lethality of past attempts, hostility, subjective depressive symptoms, fewer reasons for living, co-morbid borderline personality disorder, and cigarette smoking also increased the risk of future suicidal acts for women. These findings suggest that the importance of risk factors for suicidal acts differs in depressed men and women. This knowledge may improve suicide risk evaluation and guide future research on suicide assessment and prevention.”]

[Request #S10778]

Return to the Table of Contents

“Childhood Antecedents of Exposure to Traumatic Events and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.” By Carla L. Storr, Johns Hopkins University and others. IN: The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 164 (January 2007) pp. 119-125.

Full Text at: ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/164/1/119

[“The authors prospectively examined childhood antecedents of exposure to traumatic events to estimate the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among those exposed to trauma. Two consecutive cohorts of children entering first grade of a public school system in a large mid-Atlantic city in the mid-1980s were followed into young adulthood (mean age=21). Exposure to traumatic events and PTSD were assessed in 75% of the original cohort (N=1,698). Childhood assessments, conducted upon entry into the first grade, included standardized measures of reading readiness, teacher ratings of behavioral problems, and child self-reports about depression and anxiety. Family characteristics were assessed by parental report.

Results showed that young adults who had been rated by their first grade teacher as having aggressive/disruptive behavior problems were more likely to experience traumatic violence events (e.g., being mugged/threatened with a weapon, badly beaten-up) (relative risk=2.6) but not PTSD following trauma exposure. Youths with high levels of self-rated depressive and anxious feelings in first grade were more likely to experience PTSD once exposed to trauma (relative risk=1.5). Youths who scored in the highest quartile on a reading test in the first grade were at lower risk for exposure to violence traumas. Conclusions reached were that childhood behavioral and depressive/anxious problems may influence the risk for PTSD directly by increasing the vulnerability to the PTSD effects of trauma exposure, and indirectly by increasing the likelihood of exposure to assaults and violence.”]

[Request #S10779]

Return to the Table of Contents

“Identifying Infants and Young Children with Developmental Disorders in the Medical Home: An Algorithm for Developmental Surveillance and Screening.” Prepared by the Council on Children with Disabilities, Section on Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, Bright Futures Steering Committee and Medical Home Initiatives. IN: Pediatrics, vol.118, no. 1 (July 2006) pp. 405-420.

Full Text at: www.cmwf.org/usr_doc/ScreeningStatement.pdf

[“Early identification of developmental disorders is critical to the well-being of children and their families. It is an integral function of the primary care medical home and an appropriate responsibility of all pediatric health care professionals. This statement provides an algorithm as a strategy to support health care professionals in developing a pattern and practice for addressing developmental concerns in children from birth through 3 years of age.

The authors recommend that developmental surveillance be incorporated at every well-child preventive care visit. Any concerns raised during surveillance should be promptly addressed with standardized developmental screening tests. In addition, screening tests should be administered regularly at the 9-, 18-, and 30-month visits. The early identification of developmental problems should lead to further developmental and medical evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment, including early developmental intervention. Children diagnosed with developmental disorders should be identified as children with special health care needs, and chronic-condition management should be initiated. Identification of a developmental disorder and its underlying etiology may also drive a range of treatment planning, from medical treatment of the child to family planning for parents.”]

[Request #S10780]

Return to the Table of Contents

Return to the Table of Contents

[The following studies, reports, and documents have been ordered or requested, but have not yet arrived. Requests may be placed, and copies will be provided when the material arrives..]

“Bullying, Depression, and Suicidality in Adolescents.” By Anat Brunstein Klomek, Columbia University, and others. IN: Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, vol. 46, no. 1 (January 2007) pp. 40-49.

[“The article cites a study that assesses the bullying behavior, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among adolescents. The result shows that 9 percent of the sample are victims of bullying and have an increased risk of developing depression and suicidality especially among teenage girls. It further examines the relationship between bullying and depression. The findings show that bullying behavior marks the suicidal attempts of adolescents.”]

[Request #S10765]

Return to the Table of Contents