Healio (11/27, Gramigna) reported, “Physicians who screen positive for depressive symptoms have an increased risk for medical errors,” investigators concluded in an 11-study, 21,517-physician “systematic review and meta-analysis published” online Nov. 27 in JAMA Network Open.

Providing similar coverage were MedPage Today (11/27, Hlavinka) and Medscape (11/27, Anderson, Subscription Publication).

Related Links:

— “Physicians with depression more likely to self-report medical errors, “Joe Gramigna, Healio, November 27, 2019

Newsweek (12/2, Gander) reports “suicide attempts linked to some non-opioid medications replacing [opioid prescriptions] have risen,” in the face of falling opioid prescriptions, research indicates. In a study examining gabapentin and baclofen, “over the period the drugs were studied, suicides attempts after people took just gabapentin rose by 80.5 percent, and by 43 percent for baclofen.” The study was published in Clinical Toxicology.

Related Links:

— “Drugs Used To Replace Opioids Linked With Increase In Suicide Attempts Across U.S., “Kashmira Gander, Newsweek, December 2, 2019

CNN (11/26, Kounang) reports, “From 2000 to 2017, the rate of exposures to natural psychoactive substances such as marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms increased by nearly 75% in the” US, researchers concluded after analyzing “67,369 calls to Poison Control Centers of people inhaling or ingesting natural psychoactive substances.” The findings were published online in the journal Clinical Toxicology.

Related Links:

— “Calls to Poison Control for psychoactive drug exposure on the rise, “Nadia Kounang, CNN, November 26, 2019

NBC News (11/26, Carroll) reports on its website a study suggests “binge drinking rates are on the rise for nearly all groups of Americans.” The research showed “from 2006 to 2018, the rate of binge drinking in women with children rose at about the same pace as women without children.” Another findings is that “binge drinking among men 18 to 29 who had children actually declined during the 12-year period, the only group to do so,” dropping below the rate of binge drinking reported in childless women in that age bracket. The findingswere published in PLOS Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Moms are binge drinking more, but so are all women, study finds, “Linda Carroll, NBC News, November 26, 2019

The New York Times (11/26, A1, Kolata, Tavernise) reports a study published in JAMA found that life expectancy in the US “has declined over a period of three years.” While “the focus has been on the plight of white Americans in rural areas who were dying from so-called deaths of despair: drug overdoses, alcoholism and suicide,” the study found “that death rates increased for middle-aged people of all racial and ethnic groups.” Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, the study’s lead author, said, “The whole country is at a health disadvantage compared to other wealthy nations. We are losing people in the most productive period of their lives. Children are losing parents. Employers have a sicker work force.”

The Washington Post (11/26, A1, Achenbach) reports the researchers examined “the past six decades of mortality data” and found that in recent years, the US has experienced “increasing mortality and falling life expectancy for people ages 25 to 64…while other wealthy nations have generally experienced continued progress in extending longevity.” The study found that “by age group, the highest relative jump in death rates from 2010 to 2017 – 29 percent – has been among people ages 25 to 34.” The article suggests that “the findings are sure to fuel political debate about causes and potential solutions, because the geography of rising death rates overlaps to a significant extent with states and regions that are hotly contested in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.”

USA Today (11/26, Ortiz) reports “the study paints a bleak picture of a workforce plagued by drug overdoses, suicides and organ-system diseases while grappling with economic stresses.” According to the study, the US “has the worst midlife mortality rate among 17 high-income countries despite leading the world in per-capita spending on health care.” While life expectancy continued to increase in many other industrialized countries, in the US, it decreased “from a peak of 78.9 years in 2014 to 78.6 in 2017, the last year covered by the report.”

The Los Angeles Times (11/26, Healy) reports the study’s authors “suggest that the nation’s lifespan reversal is being driven by diseases linked to social and economic privation, a healthcare system with glaring gaps and blind spots, and profound psychological distress.”

Reuters (11/26, Carroll) reports the researchers also found that midlife mortality rates varied widely across the US. While life expectancy “increased or plateaued in some” states in the West, “the largest relative increases in midlife mortality rates occurred in New Hampshire, 23.3%, West Virginia, 23.0%, Ohio, 21.6%, Maine, 20.7%, Vermont, 19.9%, Indiana, 14,8% and Kentucky, 14.7%.”

The Hill (11/26, Coleman) reports the study concluded that there were at least 33,000 “excess deaths” in the US between 2010 and 2017, and one-third of those occurred in just four states: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Additional coverage is provided by: CNN (11/26, Christensen), Newsweek (11/26, Gander), Medscape(11/26, Frellick, Subscription Publication), and HealthDay (11/26, Thompson).

Related Links:

— “It’s Not Just Poor White People Driving a Decline in Life Expectancy, “Gina Kolata and Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times, November 26, 2019