By Jeff Barker, The Baltimore Sun
Updated August 13, 2013

A University of Maryland commission released its report today on how the school can best transition into the Big Ten. I wrote two stories on this.

One is on how Maryland believes the time is not right to restore any of the seven previously dropped athletic teams. The school is facing a $21 million operating deficit — much of it because the ACC continues to withhold millions of dollars in shared conference revenues as part of its dispute with the school over exit fees. The other story is on a new capital campaign to fund a long-anticipated indoor practice facility.

There’s another item that caught my attention. President Wallace Loh said in a letter to the university community that he was redirecting $500,000 per year in athletic department monies “to fund expanded mental health counseling services for all students.”

It’s unusual, although certainly not unprecedented, for athletic departments to fund non-athletic programs.

This particular funding comes from Pepsi’s deal that allows the soft drink maker broad access to campus venues. Loh decided to move some of the proceeds from the deal to mental health counseling.

I had a feeling that Loh’s interest in counseling was influenced by the horrific February incident in which a university student shot two other students, one fatally, before killing himself.

At a vigil following the shooting, Loh had become emotional.

“Each of us is asking, what do we need to change to prevent or mitigate the chances of something like this happening?” he had said.

When I asked about the new funding this week, Loh mentioned the shooting without prompting.

“You remember we had this tragedy last winter,” he said. “Mental health issues is the number one issue among students across this whole country. Everybody is scrambling to increase mental health resources. So here’s an opportunity.

“I talked to Kevin Anderson. He is an athletic director, but he is a university statesperson. He sees the interest of the university as a whole, not just athletics. And he said. ‘Look, I’m willing to let you have some of my money because you have an emergency need. I don’t want to have another student shot and killed.’ ”

The funding will be effective immediately.

During President Obama’s Saturday address of the Disabled American Veterans annual meeting, he announced aid efforts for veterans with PTSD and brain injuries. The Washington Post (8/11, Goldfarb) led its report with the President’s announcement of “an initiative to help treat veterans with brain injuries and mental-health conditions,” consisting of “a $100 million grant to research centers, led by the University of Texas at San Antonio and Virginia Commonwealth University, dedicated to treating brain injuries and mental-health issues, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder,” along with “an effort to share research among the numerous federal agencies studying and providing treatment to veterans with neurological problems.”

Related Links:

— “Obama announces aid initiative to help wounded veterans, ” Zachary A. Goldfarb, The Washington Post, August 10, 2013.

The New York Times (8/12, Saint Louis) “Well” blog reports that according to a study published in the September issue of Pediatrics, youngsters “with chronic stomach pains are at high risk for anxiety disorders in adolescence and young adulthood.”

On its website, NBC News (8/12, Carroll) reports that of those adults who had suffered from “abdominal pain as children, 51 percent had experienced an anxiety disorder during their lives, compared to 20 percent of those who didn’t experience” stomach pain in childhood. What’s more, “as adults, a full 30 percent of the childhood abdominal pain sufferers were still coping with some kind of anxiety disorder, compared to 12 percent” of those who had experienced no abdominal pain during childhood.

Related Links:

— “Risk of Adult Anxiety Seen in Children’s Stomachaches, “Catherine Saint Louis, The New York Times, August 12, 2013.

On its front page, the Wall Street Journal (8/12, A1, Lagnado, Subscription Publication) reports that the office of the inspector general at the US Department of Health and Human Services has launched an investigation into the use of antipsychotic medications in youngsters within the Medicaid system. In addition, HHS agencies are now asking officials in each state to clamp down on prescription oversight of these medications in kids and teens on Medicaid. Currently, youngsters on Medicaid receive prescriptions for antipsychotic medications at a rate four times that of children with private health insurance. Some newer antipsychotics, which have received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of autism-associated irritability and bipolar disorder in youngsters, as well as schizophrenia, are being inappropriately used to treat behavioral problems in troubled kids, according to some physicians and policy analysts.

Related Links:

— “U.S. Probes Use of Antipsychotic Drugs on Children, The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2013.

The Kansas City (MO) Star (8/10) reported that recently, “the American Psychiatric Association…recommended further research into a condition it labeled Internet Gaming Disorder.” In the fifth edition of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), “the group pointed to warning signs in Asia, where too much gaming has landed kids in hospitals.” However, the “mental health community is far from sold that the Web itself is fueling addiction.” After all, pornography and gambling have been problematic long before the Internet existed.

Related Links:

— “Digital addiction: Is it real or a symptom of other problems?, “Rick Montgomery, The Kansas City Star, August 10, 2013.

On its website, NBC News (8/6, Linn) reports that according to a study published online Aug. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some mothers “reacted to the recession that ran from 2007 to 2009 by yelling at their kids more, and perhaps even doing more physically aggressive things like grabbing or spanking their children.” Interestingly, harsh parenting was not limited to those mothers who had been personally affected by the recession. Instead, the study found that overall, certain “moms became harsher parents once the general economy started to deteriorate.”

Related Links:

— “The Great Recession made some moms scream at their kids more, “Allison Linn, NBC News, August 5, 2013.

Reuters (8/6, Seaman) reports that children who were born into families with an inherent cigarette smoking culture, are more likely to take up smoking themselves during pre-adolescence or adolescence, according to a study published online Aug. 5 in the journal Pediatrics. The researchers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, analyzed 23 years of smoking pattern data and found that 23 percent of the children whose parents had smoked as adolescents became smokers themselves, regardless of whether their parents ultimately quit or reduced their smoking habits.

On its website, CBS News (8/6, Castillo) adds that the study also found that among families in which the “oldest child smoked, younger siblings were six times more likely” to take up smoking; and the older siblings were “15 times more likely to smoke if they were in a household where one of their parents smoked compared to a home where no parent smoked.”

Related Links:

— “Parental smoking tied to kids’ risk of lighting up, “Andrew M. Seaman, Reuters, August 5, 2013.

Medwire (8/9, Lyford) reports that according to a study published online Aug. 5 in the journal Bipolar Disorders, adversity in childhood may be “associated with an increased risk for psychopathology in the offspring of people with bipolar disorder [BD] or major depressive disorder (MDD).” After studying “320 parents with mood disorders (bipolar I disorder, bipolar II disorder, or MDD) and their 679 children, of whom…125 had MDD” and 35 had BD, researchers also found that “for every 10 years of earlier onset of mood disorder in the parent, there was a 29% increase in the risk for transmission of a mood disorder to the child.”

Related Links:

— “Childhood adversity raises psychopathology risk, “Joanna Lyford, Medwire News, August 9, 2013.

Medscape (8/9, Cassels) reports that a study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has suggested that certain risk factors may identify adolescents “at greatest risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following potentially traumatic experiences (PTE).” The study, which “included data on 6,483 adolescent-parent pairs aged 13 to 17 years,” found that “the strongest vulnerability factors for PTSD included female sex, events involving interpersonal violence, and pre-existing anxiety and mood disorders before exposure to the worst traumatic stressor.”

HealthDay (8/9, Preidt) reports that a “simple test” may help predict hospital patients at risk for delirium, according to a study published online Aug. 7 in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. In a study involving 374 hospital patients over the age of 50, researchers tested a new tool “called AWOL, which stands for age (A), unable to spell ‘world’ backward (W), not fully oriented to place (O), and moderate to severe illness (L).” Those patients whose AWOL scores were higher had a higher likelihood of developing delirium. The study suggested that patients with higher AWOL scores could “receive specialized care” to prevent them from becoming delirious.

Related Links:

— “Quick Test May Help Prevent Hospital Delirium, Researchers Say, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay , August 8, 2013.