SAE Behavioral Health Consulting

01/06/2025

SO IMPORTANT to SHARE 🎙️ from the U.S. Surgeon General IG acct:

NEW: Today, I’m releasing a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the causal link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk. Alcohol is the 3rd leading preventable cause of cancer in the U.S., contributing to about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths each year.

Consuming any type of alcohol – beer, wine, or spirits – increases the risk for at least seven types of cancer, including cancers of the breast for women, colorectum, esophagus, liver, mouth, throat, and voice box (larynx).

Higher alcohol consumption increases alcohol-related cancer risk, yet only 45% of American adults are aware that consuming alcohol increases their risk of developing cancer.

To help increase awareness of this link and reduce the risk of alcohol-related cancer cases and deaths, my advisory includes several recommendations:

Congress should authorize an update to the Surgeon General’s warning label on alcohol-containing beverages to include a cancer risk warning. The advisory also calls for a reassessment & revision of the guideline limits for alcohol consumption to account for increased cancer risk.

Public health professionals, community groups, and organizations can also help by strengthening and expanding education efforts to increase general awareness. Health care providers can also inform their patients and promote the use of alcohol screening and treatments.

For individuals, be aware that cancer risk increases as you drink more alcohol. As you consider whether or how much to drink, keep in mind that less is better when it comes to cancer risk.

Learn more at surgeongeneral.gov/alcohol-cancer

05/22/2023

"People with mental health conditions can experience recovery and live full, whole, meaningful lives, and we can all play active roles in caring for our mental health: practicing self care, asking for help when needed, and checking in with ourselves and people around us all can make a difference."

Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, Ph.D., Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use

🌐 🎥 Hear her full message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOEnQ42e4HM&t=2s

02/09/2023

We couldn't agree more!

This quote was captured during one of our no-cost and consultations, and speaks to a noticeable paradigm shift around the importance of language - in this case, the perceptual value of language even when it comes through a "business" framework and mindset.

Ending stigma is something we can all do. How wonderful to be reminded that we can all locate room for change in the implicit (and often subconscious) bias of the words we choose to use.

02/06/2023

RAND researchers found that the more than 50% decline in in-person mental health care utilization among patients that occurred when COVID-19 struck was entirely offset by a 16- to 20-fold increase in telemental service utilization.

“Telehealth for behavioral health care has not declined in use over the course of the pandemic,” said Whaley. “This is in contrast to many other services, which saw an increase in telehealth care in the first few months of the pandemic, but then a rebound of in-person care. For behavioral health, telehealth has been sticky and use has remained constant.”

🌐 https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/telemental-health-services-rode-rescue-when-covid-struck-study

What RAND researchers describe as “a remarkable transition in the U.S. | In-person care for mental health services crashed in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, that gap was more than made up for in a 16- to 20-fold increase in the use of telehealth, according to RAND researchers.

02/06/2023

As of Monday at 8:00 a.m. ET, the unofficial toll in the U.S. reached 102,592,201 cases and 1,111,495 deaths, increases of 308,615 cases and 3,849 deaths since this time a week ago. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

01/30/2023

This is a tough read.

“The court effectively eroded any ground mental health and advocates gained from the initial Wit v. United Behavioral Health ruling, denying the argument that the [ERISA] mandates consistency with generally accepted standards of care,” Alison Kavanagh, marketing vice president for behavioral health technology services provider Sunwave Health Inc., said in an email. “And by dismantling large portions of the original ruling, the 9th Circuit opens the door to policies and practices that could harm millions and perpetuate our nation’s and crisis.”

We need real solutions, and given that behavioral health care is not quantifiable in the same way that primary care can be, any steps backward from a legal and legislative standpoint end up putting the onus of working against stigma around addiction and mental health back onto the persons most in need of care, deepening the pain points.

The appeals court has handed down a ruling in Wit v. United Behavioral Health, a key case that addresses parity in behavioral health