NBC News (4/18, Lovelace) reports, “More students from middle school to high school are misusing” medications prescribed for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), “amid an increasing number of children being diagnosed with the condition in the” US, research indicates. In fact, “at some schools, as many as one in four students reported misusing” AD/HD medications “in the previous year – meaning they used the medications without a” physician’s “prescription or for nonmedical reasons, according to the” findings published online April 18 in JAMA Network Open.

CNN (4/18, LaMotte) reports, “The study analyzed data collected between 2005 and 2020 by Monitoring the Future, a federal survey that has measured drug and alcohol use among secondary school students nationwide each year since 1975.” In this study’s data set, “questionnaires were given to more than 230,000 teens in eighth, 10th and 12th grades in a nationally representative sample of 3,284 secondary schools.” Study lead author Sean Esteban McCabe, director of the Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, stated, “This study is a major wake-up call.”

Related Links:

— “Up to 1 in 4 students misuse ADHD drugs, study finds “Berkeley Lovelace Jr., NBC News, April 18, 2023

MedPage Today (4/17, Monaco) reports, “Based on over a quarter of a million patients, those who kept more than half of their hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) measures under 9% saw a significantly lower risk for dementia compared with those who had the majority of measurements over this threshold,” investigators concluded in findings published online in JAMA Neurology. The study revealed that “patients who had more than half of HbA1c measures between 9% to just under 10% saw a 31% increased risk for dementia than those with less than half of their measures in this range.” Meanwhile, patients “who had more than half of their HbA1c readings over 10% had a 74% higher risk for dementia than those with less than half of their measures in this category.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

HCPlive (4/17, Walter) reports, “By expanding the eligibility of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), states have reduced the rates of food insecurity, which ultimately may further decrease the rates of mental illness and suicidality among adults,” according to an “ecological cross-sectional study” that “used data on adults in the US from the National Vital Statistics Systems between 2014-2017 and data on adults in the US from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health…State-Level Small Area Estimates between 2015-2019.” The study, published online April 14 in JAMA Network Open, revealed that “state adoption of…SNAP eligibility policies” in which “the state eliminates the asset test and increases the income limit resulted in decreases in the rates of past-year major depressive episodes, mental illness, serious mental illness, and suicidal ideation.”

Related Links:

— “SNAP Program Leads to Less Food Insecurity, Mental Illness Rates “Kenny Walter, HCPlive , April 17, 2023

HealthDay (4/17, Murez) reports, “Consistently good sleep is…particularly important for patients with schizophrenia,” researchers concluded in a study that “used wrist monitors to measure activity and rest in 250 people, including 150 patients with schizophrenia, in both outpatient settings and in psychiatric hospitals.” The study revealed that patients with schizophrenia “had erratic sleep patterns, dysregulated transitions between sleep and wake cycles, and excessively rigid daily routines that were predictive of worse symptoms.” Researchers also found that “both inpatient and outpatient” patients with schizophrenia “tended to have fewer active hours during the day and spent more time sleeping or passively resting than the study’s healthy controls.” The findings were published online April 14 in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Regular Sleep May Be Crucial for People Living With Schizophrenia “Cara Murez, HealthDay, April 17, 2023

CNN (4/17, McPhillips) reports, “As more communities reel from deadly mass shootings…there’s evidence that the trauma of gun violence in the United States is taking a collective toll on” mental health in the US. In fact, “research published” online Feb. 8 in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance “suggests that the negative effects that mass shootings can have on mental health may extend beyond the survivors and community directly affected to a much broader population.” To date this year, there have been “at least 162” mass shootings in the US.

Related Links:

— “As gun violence reaches record levels in the US, an underlying trauma may be building up ” Deidre McPhillips, CNN, April 17, 2023

The Washington Post (4/14, McMahan) reported on growing concern among physicians about body dysmorphia in boys and men being “fueled by the rise of social media and a lucrative, unregulated supplements industry.” Exercise or food choices for adolescents and young men may “lead to preoccupations or obsessions with appearance, body size, weight or exercise in a way that worsens their quality of life.”

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

According to HealthDay (4/14, Mann), research suggests that “folks who are experiencing hearing loss and don’t use a hearing aid may have a higher risk of developing dementia than people who use hearing aids and those without hearing loss.” Included in the study were “slightly more than 437,700 people in the UK Biobank” who “were asked about hearing loss and whether they used a hearing aid.” The findings were published online in The Lancet Public Health.

Related Links:

— “Hearing Aids Might Help Lower Risk for Dementia “Denise Mann, HealthDay, April 14, 2023

Healio (4/14, VanDewater) reported, “Adults with childhood trauma had greater bodily stress dysregulation, which made them more susceptible to psychopathological and somatic disorders,” researchers concluded in the findings of a 2,981-participant study presented in a poster at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America Conference.

Related Links:

— “Childhood trauma may contribute to adult stress dysregulation, anxiety, depression “Kalie VanDewater, Healio, April 14, 2023

Healio (4/14, Schaffer) reported, “Adults who survived an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and developed depression or anxiety within one year were 1.4 times more likely to die during follow-up compared with those without a mental health diagnosis, researchers reported” in findings published online April 12 in JAMA Network Open.

According to Psychiatric News (4/14), investigators examined “data from the claims records of 2,373 adults…who were hospitalized after cardiac arrest between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2015, and who survived for at least one year.”

Related Links:

— “Mortality risk grows with depression, anxiety after surviving cardiac arrest “Regina Schaffer, Healio , April , 2023

The AP (4/13, Miller) reports President Biden “announced Thursday that hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children will now be able to apply for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges.” His decision “will allow participants in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, to access government-funded health insurance programs.”

The Washington Post (4/13, Goldstein) reports the move, “which the White House says would benefit up to 580,000 people brought to the United States as children, would broaden the definition of who qualifies for those two insurance programs and one other.”

The New York Times (4/13, Kanno-Youngs) a “White House statement said it expected ‘to get this done by the end of the month.’”

Related Links:

— “Biden says he’s expanding some migrants’ health care access “Zeke Miller, Amanda Seitz and Michael Balsamo , AP, April 13, 2023