The Baltimore Sun (3/10, Walker) reports that Maryland legislators are considering a bill that would “make it easier to medicate mental hospital patients against their will, while examining the idea of court-ordered therapy for mentally ill people who aren’t hospitalized.” The proposal has drawn the ire of some patient advocates. One of the bill’s sponsors notes the tension between “necessary treatment and having high respect for people’s individual rights.”

Related Links:

— “Legislation pushes involuntary mental health treatment,” Andrea K. Walker, Baltimore Sun, March 10, 2014.

HealthDay (3/11, Reinberg) reports that according to the results of a three-year study published in the March/April issue of the journal Annals of Family Medicine, “only about 20 percent of people who experience ‘senior moments’ of forgetfulness, memory lapses and poor judgment will go on to development serious brain-related disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.” After collecting “data on more than 350 people aged 75 and older who had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment but didn’t have dementia,” researchers found that “42 percent returned to normal mental function, 36 percent retained their mild impairment and only 22 percent developed dementia.”

Related Links:

— “‘Senior Moments’ Don’t Seem to Lead to Dementia for Most,” Steven Reinberg, HealthDay, March 10, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (3/11, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog reports that according to a review published online March 10 in JAMA Pediatrics, “victims of bullying were more than twice as likely as other kids to contemplate suicide and about 2.5 times as likely to try to kill themselves.” The review “identified 34 reliable studies that addressed the issues of peer victimization and suicidal ideation,” studies which “included data on 284,375 people ages 9 to 21” from countries around the world.

Related Links:

— “Teens taunted by bullies are more likely to consider, attempt suicide,” Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2014.

The Scranton (PA) Times Tribune (3/8) editorialized, “The Pennsylvania Medical Society and the American College of Emergency Physicians recently reported that one of the biggest problems faced by hospital emergency rooms is finding beds for psychiatric patients,” which leads to some of these patients ending up in jail.

The Times Tribune argues that “the Legislature and the administration should examine the entire mental health system to determine what role the” state’s mental “hospitals can play in alleviating the pressing need for outpatient or sporadic care.”

According to the paper, individuals “suffering from mental illness would benefit from increased access to care; taxpayers would benefit from diminishing prisons’ roles as de facto mental health centers.”

Related Links:

— “Explore uses for mental hospitals,” Scranton Times-Tribune, March 7, 2014.

The Wall Street Journal (3/6, Subscription Publication) reported that Pfizer Inc. recalled three lots of Effexor (venlafaxine HCl), an antidepressant, after a report a pharmacist found one capsule of another medicine in a bottle of Effexor. The company is recalling the three lots as a precautionary measure, although it didn’t receive any other such reports.

The news was also covered by the AP (3/6) and Reuters (3/7).

Related Links:

— “Pfizer Recalls Some Lots of Antidepressant Effexor,” John Kell, Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2014.

HealthDay (3/7, Doheny) reports that according to a study published online March 6 in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, “hearing loss is associated with depression among American adults, especially women and those younger than age 70.” After examining data on some 18,000 adults over the age of 18 and taking into account self-reported participant information on hearing status and depression, researchers found that “as hearing declined, the percentage of depressed adults increased – from about five percent in those who had no hearing problems to more than 11 percent in those who did.” Study author Chuan-Ming Li, MD, PhD, a researcher at the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, stated, “We found a significant association between hearing impairment and moderate to severe depression.”

Related Links:

— “Hearing Loss Tied to Depression in Study,” Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay, March 6, 2014.

One major television network, two television websites, two national newspapers, one major wire source and several consumer medical websites cover a new study indicating that Alzheimer’s deaths are seriously undercounted due to inaccurate information entered on death certificates. Currently, Alzheimer’s is listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the sixth-leading cause of death. The new study, however, calculates that it may actually be the third-leading cause of death.

In a segment on the NBC Nightly News (3/5, story 6, 2:40, Williams), chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman, MD, reported that according to a study (3/5) issued by the Rush University Medical Center, “the actual number of deaths each year from Alzheimer’s disease may be as many as half a million,” a figure “six times more than the 83,000 currently reported.” The discrepancy may arise because “death certificates are notoriously inaccurate, focusing only on the immediate cause of death.”

Bloomberg News (3/6, Cortez) focuses on the study’s methodology, pointing out that researchers “tracked two groups of people who enrolled in long-term studies and agreed to donate their brains after death,” noting “who developed Alzheimer’s and who didn’t, and then compar[ing] death rates among the two groups.” None of the 2,566 older adults tracked had dementia at the start of the study. Eventually, investigators “calculated the number of deaths that could be ascribed to Alzheimer’s by comparing the number of expected deaths based on those without the disease to the number of people who actually did die after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.”

Related Links:

— “Alzheimer’s Estimated to Be No. 3 Killer Disease in U.S.,” Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg News, March 5, 2014.

The AP (3/4, Sherman) reports that a majority of Supreme Court justices on Monday indicated “that states should look beyond an intelligence test score in borderline cases of mental disability to determine whether a death row inmate is eligible to be executed.” The court “heard arguments about how states evaluate claims of mental disability that, if substantiated, protect inmates from being put to death,” and five justices “pointed repeatedly to the margin of error inherent in IQ and other standardized tests” and “voiced skepticism about the practice in Florida and certain other states of barring an inmate from claiming mental disability when his IQ score is just above 70.”

USA Today (3/4, Wolf) reports that the key issue in the case at bar “is whether states such as Florida can apply a rigid test score cutoff without including the ‘standard error of measurement’ relied on by the tests’ designers and endorsed by two key clinical groups.” The court’s decision in the Florida case “will mark the first time it has returned to its landmark 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia that said executing people with intellectual disabilities violates their 8th Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.”

Related Links:

— “Justices lean toward defendant in mental disability case
,” Richard Wolf, USA Today, March 3, 2014.

USA Today (3/4, Zoroya) reports that the largest study ever conducted on suicide in the military has found that suicide rates “soared among soldiers who went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and those who never left the United States.” The ongoing, $65 million study, “scanned records from nearly a million soldiers,” and “produced three separate research papers published online Monday by The Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry.” The study found that “while suicide rates for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2009 to more than 30-per-100,000, the trend among those who never deployed nearly tripled to between 25- and 30-per-100,000.”

The New York Times (3/4, Carey, Subscription Publication) reports that the research found that “most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had them before they enlisted, and that those at highest risk of making an attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger.” According to the study, “about one in 10 soldiers qualified for a diagnosis of ‘intermittent explosive disorder,’ as it is known to psychiatrists – more than five times the rate found in the general population.”

Related Links:

— “Study: High suicide rates for soldiers in, out of war,” Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, March 3, 2014.

Medscape (3/1, Brauser) reported that “depression should join the ranks of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and smoking as an official heart disease risk factor, according to an expert panel convened by the American Heart Association (AHA).” This “recommendation is based on an extensive literature review examining the risks for depression conducted by the panel.” According to Medscape, “The AHA Scientific Statement notes that the combined findings support the call to formally “elevate depression to the status of a risk factor” for adverse outcomes, such as all-cause and cardiac mortality, in patients who have acute coronary syndrome (ACS).”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)