November  2013 Contact: HHS Press Office: (202) 690-6343; Dept. of Labor: (202) 693-4676; Dept. of Treasury: (202) 622-2960 Administration issues final mental health and substance use disorder parity rule     Final rules break down financial barriers and provide consumer protections The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury today jointly issued a final rule increasing parity between mental health/substance use disorder benefits and medical/surgical benefits in group and individual health plans. The final rule issued today implements the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, and ensures that health plans features like co-pays, deductibles and visit limits are generally not more…

Treatment alongside medication found to improve illness more than drugs alone By Fiona Macrae PUBLISHED: 18:59 EST, 24 September 2013 | UPDATED: 03:17 EST, 25 September 2013   Acupuncture can help lift people out of depression, research suggests. A British study found that people who had acupuncture alongside their anti-depressants improved more after three months than those who simply took drugs. They also did as well as those who had counselling alongside their normal treatment.    York University researchers said the finding is important because many patients with depression are interested in alternatives to drugs   The York University researchers said the finding is important because many patients with depression…

    by Anastasia Stephens, SMH It's a piece of advice yogis have given for thousands of years: take a deep breath and relax. Watch the tension melt from your muscles and all your niggling worries vanish. Somehow we all know that relaxation is good for us. Now the hard science has caught up: a comprehensive scientific study showing that deep relaxation changes our bodies on a genetic level has just been published. What researchers at Harvard Medical School discovered is that, in long-term practitioners of relaxation methods such as yoga and meditation, far more ''disease-fighting genes'' were active, compared to those who practised no form of relaxation. In particular,…

  By Steven Reinberg   THURSDAY, Aug. 29 (HealthDay News) — About 4 percent of American adults — more than 8.5 million people — have used a prescription sleep aid in the past month, and the use increases with age, U.S. health officials reported Thursday. In addition, more women (5 percent) than men (3.1 percent) over the age of 20 take these drugs, and those with higher education levels are more likely to use them, the researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. “This is the first time we have a national estimate on how many people are taking prescription medications for sleep,” said report coauthor…

  June 26, 2013 — UC Berkeley researchers have found that a lack of sleep, which is common in anxiety disorders, may play a key role in ramping up the brain regions that contribute to excessive worrying. Neuroscientists have found that sleep deprivation amplifies anticipatory anxiety by firing up the brain's amygdala and insular cortex, regions associated with emotional processing. The resulting pattern mimics the abnormal neural activity seen in anxiety disorders. Furthermore, their research suggests that innate worriers — those who are naturally more anxious and therefore more likely to develop a full-blown anxiety disorder — are acutely vulnerable to the impact of insufficient sleep. "These findings help us…

  HEALTH > HEALTH NEWS     Thu Jun 6 07:30:00 2013 Kimberly Gillan                               Image: Getty Images   Just looking at emails is enough to increase blood pressure and stress hormone levels, which can increase the risk of heart disease. Researchers from Loughborough University in the UK tracked 30 government office workers and found that when they were reading and sending emails their blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels all increased. Cortisol is released by the adrenal gland when we're stressed. Study leader Professor Tom Jackson also analysed written diaries from the participants and…