Legislative

As key details of the health system overhaul are negotiated in Congress, The Commonwealth Fund has published a new report comparing the health insurance provisions of the separate bills passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as new updates of two earlier Fund reports examining the proposals and their potential impact. Full Story

Issues & Events

Join SAMHSA and the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center on February 10, 2010 (1pm ET, 90 min.) for a webinar, "Addressing barriers to delivering tobacco dependence interventions across mental health care settings."  Daryl Sharp, PhD, APRN, BC, and Susan Blaakman, MS, APRN, BC, faculty members at the University of Rochester, School of Nursing, will discuss strategies for working through barriers clinicians often face when addressing tobacco dependence among persons with mental illnesses.  This webinar will move beyond making the case for the importance and need for tobacco dependence interventions in this population.  Participants will be encouraged to share ideas and strategize about how to work through tobacco dependence treatment challenges at the staff and systems level.  Please tune in to this interactive educational session. Dr. Sharp and Ms. Blaakman are also co-chairs of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association’s Tobacco Dependence Council, a partner of the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center.  The Council has established a position statement to mobilize psychiatric nurses as champions for smoking cessation with a clear message of "action equals hope" but "failure to act equals harm." Click here to register now for this free webinar.

The EMDRIA Foundation is offering up to three $5,000 doctoral dissertation awards in 2010 for studies related to the effectiveness of EMDR in the area of combat trauma, depression, or children & adolescents. For more information, please click here

Nominal health spending in the United States grew 4.4% in 2008, to $2.3 trillion or $7,681 per person. This was the slowest rate of growth since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services started officially tracking expenditures in 1960. Despite slower growth, however, health care spending continued to outpace overall nominal economic growth, which grew by 2.6% in 2008 as measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The findings are included in a report by CMS' Office of the Actuary, released in the health policy journal Health Affairs. Full Story

Policy

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study questioning the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs. The drugs are useful in cases of severe depression, it said. But for most patients, those with mild to moderate cases, the most commonly used antidepressants are generally no better than a placebo. For the millions of people who take these drugs, and the doctors who prescribe them, this provocative claim had to be confusing, if not alarming, reported the New York Times on the Web. It contradicted literally hundreds of well-designed trials, not to mention considerable clinical experience, showing antidepressants to be effective for a wide array of depressed patients. But on close inspection, the new study does not stand up to that mountain of earlier evidence. To understand why, it helps to look at the way it was conducted. Full Story

Overall, only about half of Americans diagnosed with major depression in a given year receive treatment for it, and even fewer, about one fifth, receive treatment consistent with current practice guidelines, according to data from nationally representative surveys supported by NIMH. Among the ethnic/racial groups surveyed, African Americans and Mexican Americans had the lowest rates of use of depression care; all groups reported higher use of past-year psychotherapy vs. medication for depression. Full Story

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reclassify electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) devices as Class II devices based on the strong evidence of ECT’s safety and efficacy. ECT is a medical treatment administered by physicians and generally used with severely mentally ill patients when other forms of treatment have not been effective. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is mandated by law to reclassify a number of medical devices, including devices for ECT. The FDA is seeking information to evaluate the risk-level of ECT devices and determine if the devices should be maintained in Class III, requiring submission of a premarket approval application, or reclassified into Class I or II. Full Story (PDF file)

APNA Highlights

APNA 2010 Call for Reviewers & Call for Abstracts
Ever wonder who reads and reviews the abstracts submitted for the Annual Conference? It's the Scholarly Review Committee, and you could be a part of it! Click here to learn more about the Call for Reviewers and to download an application. And, don't forget to submit an abstract for the APNA 24th Annual Conference. Your presentation proposals determine what sessions we have at the conference, and we want to learn about your work/theories/research, etc! Click here for the Call for Abstracts.

2010 APNF Research Grant Application
The American Psychiatric Nursing Foundation (APNF) is pleased to continue the research grants program to enhance scientific contributions advancing the knowledge and practice of psychiatric-mental health nursing. APNF will award up to five (5) individual grants of up to $5,000 per award. Applicants are required to submit a complete application form. Only complete applications will be considered and incomplete materials will not be reviewed. All application materials must be received by APNF by Monday, February 15, 2010 to be considered. Click here for more information.

APNA 2010 Elections - Call for Nominations
APNA is starting our 2010 Election process! If you're interested in nominating yourself or someone else, please send your contact information to Nicholas Croce Jr., APNA Executive Director, at ncroce@apna.org by Monday, March 15th. Click here for more information.

Haiti Information
The APNA website has launched a page which provides a summary of informational tools and resources relating to the situation in Haiti. Click here to view the page.

Get to know your 2009 APNA Annual Award Winners!
As we begin the new year, let's take a moment to recognize the accomplishments of the 10 APNA Award Recipients from 2009. Their stories are your stories! Click here to check it out.