The Fox News (11/25) website reports that according to a study by University of Michigan School of Nursing and published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, adolescents “prescribed sleep and anti-anxiety [medications] may be up to 12 times more likely to abuse them compared to teens who have never received these prescriptions.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after surveying “more than 2,700 middle and high school students online from the Detroit area twice annually from 2009 to 2012.” The study authors suggested that “substance abuse assessments, in addition to strict limitations on prescription refills, may help reduce the number of teens that abuse prescription” medicines. The piece also points out that a 2011 survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that three percent of US teens abuse sleep and anti-anxiety medicines.

Related Links:

— “Abuse of sleep, anti-anxiety drugs a growing issue among teenagers, study shows,” Fox News, November 24, 2014.

Huffington Post (11/25, Gregoire) reports that a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine examined the growing rate of diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) “in five countries where AD/HD diagnosis and treatment rates increased dramatically – the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil.” The study suggested that “while AD/HD has been medicalized in the US since the 1960s, other countries have been slower to medicalize the condition.” However, “it wasn’t until the 1990s…that AD/HD diagnosis and treatment migrated from North America to be increasingly applied internationally.”

Related Links:

— “Worldwide ADHD Rates Are Higher Than Ever, And It Might Be America’s Fault,” Carolyn Gregoire, Huffington Post, November 24, 2014.

Bloomberg News (11/24, Cortez) reports that according to a study published Nov. 23 in The Lancet Psychiatry, “a handful of counseling sessions for people who tried to kill themselves significantly reduced the chances they would make another attempt.” After analyzing data on some 65,000 Danes who tried to commit suicide during the 1992 to 2010 time frame, researchers “found six to 10 sessions of talk therapy reduced suicide attempts by 27 percent and deaths by 38 percent in just one year.” What’s more, “the benefits lasted as long as two decades, they found.” BBC News (11/24) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “Counseling Shown to Reduce Repeat Attempts at Suicide,” Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg News, November 24, 2014.

The Dallas Morning News (11/24, Yasmin) reports on the rise and fall of suicide rates as they relate to the economy, saying that “suicide rates have spiked during every recession since the Great Depression and have dropped during times of economic growth.” Additionally, several studies have indicated a “relationship between a bad economy and higher rates of suicide, especially among men.” For example, for every rise of one percent in unemployment between 2008 and 2010, “there was a one percent increase in the suicide rate. The state with the strongest correlation between unemployment and suicide was Texas.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide rates rise and fall with economy, especially in Texas,” Seema Yasmin, Dallas Morning News, November 23, 2014.

MedPage Today (11/22, Johnson) reported that according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting, patients with gout may “face a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared with people without gout.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after using “data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical records database representative of the UK general population,” to identify “59,224 individuals with gout (70.8% male, mean age 65.3 years) and matched them to 238,805 controls without gout (71.1% male, mean age 65.3 years) based on age, sex, body mass index, date of study entry, and year of enrollment.” After adjustment for confounding factors, “the multivariate hazard ratio of AD among those with gout was 0.76 (95% CI 0.66 to 0.87), translating to a 24% lower risk of AD among people with a history of gout compared to those without.”

Related Links:

— “Gout May Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease,” Kate Johnson, MedPage Today, November 21, 2014.

The Washington Post (11/21, Holley, Larimer) “Post Nation” blog reported that in wake of Thursday morning’s shooting at the Florida State University library, experts are once again debating the fairness of the connection between gun violence and serious mental illness. Earlier this year, in a piece run by Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas Insel, MD, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, discussed that very issue in a keynote address at a workshop on mental health and violence conducted by the Institute of Medicine, putting the issue in perspective and reiterating that the vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, nor are most violent acts perpetrated by people with mental illnesses.

Related Links:

— “In wake of Florida State shooting, spotlight returns to mental health issues and violence,” Peter Holley and Sarah Larimer, Washington Post, November 21, 2014.

Pew Charitable Trusts (11/19) reports on a new Federal rule that “will require states to ensure that long-term care alternatives to nursing homes work with residents and their families to develop individual care plans specifying the services and setting each resident wants,” with the goal of creating a “home-like atmosphere” within assisted living facilities. However, “the rule could make it difficult for [physicians] to fulfill increasing demand for long-term care outside of nursing homes,” and “could limit the availability of services for elders,” while bringing unintended consequences, according to Pew. For example, patients with dementia who are not likely to wander off should not face constraints such as locked doors under the new rule, but this guideline becomes complicated when multiple dementia patients share living space and some are at risk for wandering and some are not.

Related Links:

— “New Medicaid Rule Could Challenge State Shift Away From Nursing Homes,” Christine Vestal, Pew Charitable Trusts, November 19, 2014.

HealthDay (11/21, Preidt) reports that according to a report issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and based on the agency’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “nearly one in five American adults – 43.8 million people – had a diagnosable mental illness in 2013.” In addition, the report revealed “10 million adults had a serious mental illness, 15.7 million had major depressive episodes, 9.3 million had serious thoughts of suicide, 2.7 million made suicide plans and 1.3 million attempted suicide.” In a news release, SAMHSA Administrator Pamela Hyde said, “It is a serious issue that millions of Americans are needlessly affected by mental illness when they can get effective treatment to restore their well-being.” Hyde emphasized the importance of seeking help.

Related Links:

— “1 in 5 U.S. Adults Dealt With a Mental Illness in 2013,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, November 20, 2014.

The New York Times (11/21, Parker-Pope) “Well” blog reports that according to a report released Nov. 20 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease journal, the majority of “people who drink to get drunk are not alcoholics.” The conclusions of “a government survey of 138,100 adults counters the conventional wisdom that every ‘falling-down drunk’” has an addiction to alcohol. Rather, “the results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show that nine out of 10 people who drink too much are not addicts, and can change their behavior with a little – or perhaps a lot of – prompting.”

Related Links:

— “Most Heavy Drinkers Are Not Alcoholics,” Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times, November 20, 2014.

Medscape (11/20, Cassels) reports that according to a study published online Nov. 19 in JAMA Psychiatry, “collaborative care delivered via telemedicine may offer a viable and effective way of treating veterans with severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who live in rural and remote areas.” The “results of a multisite, randomized effectiveness trial” including 265 veterans with PTSD “showed that Telemedicine Outreach for PTSD (TOP), an off-site intervention in which a multidisciplinary PTSD care team uses telemedicine tools, such as telephone calls, interactive videos, and shared electronic medical records, to support on-site [healthcare professionals] significantly improved clinical outcomes in veterans compared with usual care.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)