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    <recommendedItem id="20100101_19_369"
                     title="Administration Issues Mental Health Parity Rule"
                     score="0.011"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/GeneralPsychiatry/tb/18258?impressionId=1265814350921"
                     
      &lt;p&gt;WASHINGTON  --  Under a proposed rule released by the Obama administration, patients in a group insurance plan who are being treated for mental illness or substance abuse may no longer be charged more than if they were receiving medical or surgical care.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), the Department of Labor, and the Internal Revenue Service issued an interim rule last week containing specific language necessary to enforce the bipartisan &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/GeneralPsychiatry/11169&quot; mce_href=&quot;http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/GeneralPsychiatry/11169&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; title=&quot;Financial&amp;#8200;Bailout&amp;#8200;Carries&amp;#8200;Mental&amp;#8200;Health&amp;#8200;Parity&amp;#8200;Bill&amp;#8200;Through&amp;#8200;Congress&quot;&gt;mental health parity law passed by Congress in 2008&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The law  --  called the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act  --  states that if a group health plan covers the treatment of mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse, the limits and financial requirements for these services can be &quot;no more restrictive&quot; than those that apply to medical and surgical benefits.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That means an insurance plan cannot charge higher copayments, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses for mental health services than for treatment of physical illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Companies with fewer than 50 employees in their group insurance plans are excluded from the law.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&quot;The rules we are issuing today will, for the first time, help assure that those diagnosed with these debilitating and sometimes life-threatening disorders will not suffer needless or arbitrary limits on their care,&quot; said Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of HHS.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The American Psychiatric Association (APA) issued a statement applauding the regulations.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mental health parity was a major advance for the APA and for our patients living with mental illnesses,&quot; according to the group&apos;s president, Alan F. Schatzberg, MD. &quot;The APA will continue to work hard and submit the important feedback to the administration that is necessary to make sure our patients receive the care they need.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The statement also drew attention to some shortcomings in the regulations, which did not address provider networks and formulary development.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The APA intends to submit recommendations for these and other topics during the 90-day comment period.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The American Psychological Association also welcomed the regulations.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;&quot;We are delighted that under these regulations consumers are protected from insurance discrimination to the greatest extent possible,&quot; according to its executive director for professional practice, Katherine Nordal, PhD, in a prepared statement.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The rule also requires a single deductible for mental health and medical/surgical coverage. Patients who are being treated for a mental condition at the same time as somatic condition often have to pay separate deductibles which can &quot;prevent access to mental health treatment,&quot; according to the psychologists&apos; group.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is particularly significant that the regulation will ban health plans from imposing separate deductibles or setting separate out-of-pocket caps for mental health and medical/surgical services,&quot; the statement said. &quot;This is a big win for anyone seeking mental health treatment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The 2008 law expanded greatly on the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, which required parity only in lifetime and annual dollar limits. In practice, crtics say, insurers got around that prohibition by charging higher copayments for mental health services and by &quot;cherry-picking&quot; services that would and would not be covered.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The 1996 law also specifically excluded coverage parity for substance abuse treatment.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;p&gt;The new rule will take effect April 5, 2010.

    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20090101_19_651"
                     title="Alcohol In Films and Ads Increases Youth Drinking"
                     score="-0.005"
                     href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/tb/13109?impressionId=1265814350921"
                     
      NIJMEGEN, The Netherlands, March 3 -- Seeing alcohol in a movie or TV commercial may cause an immediate increase in young people&apos;s alcohol consumption, researchers found. 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Young men reached for an average of 1.5 more drinks over the course of an hour when the movie and commercials they watched portrayed alcohol, Rutger C.M.E. Engels, Ph.D., of Radboud University Nijmegen, and colleagues reported online in &lt;em&gt;Alcohol &amp; Alcoholism&lt;/em&gt;.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;The experimental study was the first to show a causal link to acute alcohol consumption. 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Until now, scientists believed that most of the influence of advertisements, TV shows, or movies that subtly promote alcohol has been gradual and long term, the researchers said.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Even though the linkage they discovered may be modest, they said, &quot;direct influence from television may illustrate the persuasive power of exposure to alcohol images, and, moreover, direct consumption resulting from effects of alcohol exposure on television may be harmful in itself, when it leads to higher drinking levels.&quot;
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;The researchers noted that drinking levels were already high in the college students who participated in the study.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Among the 80 men ages 18 to 29 recruited at the Dutch university, weekly consumption averaged 21.05 drinks, with more than a third of participants reporting heavy drinking once or twice a week.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;For the experiment, they watched a movie in pairs with a friend at a student lounge in the lab. The room was set up like a home cinema, with a comfortable couch, big screen TV, free nuts or chips, and a refrigerator stocked with beer, wine, and soda. 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;The students were randomly shown either &lt;em&gt;American Pie 2&lt;/em&gt;, in which characters drank 18 times and alcohol was portrayed an additional 23 times, or &lt;em&gt;40 Days and 40 Nights&lt;/em&gt;, in which alcohol was less prominent, with on-screen appearances 15 times and consumption three times. 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;During the movie, which was interspersed with commercials randomized to include alcohol or not, participants drank the most when they saw an alcohol-heavy movie with some alcohol-related commercials. They drank the least when the movie and commercials had little alcohol content (average 2.98 versus 1.69 drinks). 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Both movie and commercial alcohol-related content independently affected drinking after adjustment for participants&apos; average weekly alcohol consumption (both &lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;&lt;0.05). 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Although statistical sufficiency was limited for further analyses, Dr. Engel&apos;s group noted that seeing alcohol on screen appeared to change drinking preferences during the course of the movie.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;The percentage of participants who switched from soda at the beginning of the movie to alcohol later in the movie was:
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;ul&gt;
                &lt;li&gt;25% for those who saw alcohol portrayed many times in both the movie and commercials 
                &lt;li&gt;25% for those who saw alcohol in commercials but few times in the movie 
                &lt;li&gt;0% for those who saw alcohol in the movie but not the commercials
                &lt;li&gt;5% for those who watched a movie with few alcohol portrayals and nonalcohol commercials.
              &lt;/ul&gt;
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;However, the difference between groups for beverage switching was not significant (&lt;em&gt;P&lt;/em&gt;=0.616).
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;The researchers noted that alcohol commercials on TV and in movie theatres are still allowed. &quot;Although we obviously do not argue for ban of alcohol portrayals in movies, it might be an idea to explicitly warn people, and especially parents, that movies contain alcohol portrayals and that these alcohol portrayals affect drinking directly,&quot; they concluded.
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;&lt;table cellspacing=&quot;0&quot; hspace=&quot;1&quot; style=&quot;border-style:solid; border-width:1px; border-color:#8dabbc; font-family:arial; font-size:12px; background-color:#DBE9F2; padding:5px 5px 5px 5px;&quot;&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt; The study was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
              Research and by STAP, a private organization against alcohol misuse and its consequences. 
              &lt;p&gt; 
              &lt;p&gt;Dr. Engel reported support of a fellowship of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
    </recommendedItem>
    <recommendedItem id="20090101_1_566"
                     title="Peyote Bends But Doesn&apos;t Alter Minds"
                     score="-0.005"
                     href="