Healio (12/5, Downey) reports, “Patients with PTSD who were diagnosed with COVID-19 were more likely to be hospitalized or die, compared with those without a psychiatric disorder, researchers reported” in a “retrospective cohort study that examined the associations of PTSD and other psychiatric disorders with risk for hospitalization and death in the 60 days following a COVID-19 infection.” For the study published online Nov. 22 in Translational Psychiatry, the team “identified a total of 228,367 patients…from the VA who tested positive for COVID-19 between February 2020 and August 2021.”

Related Links:

— “Patients with PTSD at an increased risk for hospitalization, death from COVID-19 “Ken Downey Jr., Healio, December 5, 2022

MedPage Today (12/2, Lou) reported, “In recent years, methamphetamine-associated heart failure (MethHF) ensnared more people across sociodemographic groups without showing signs of relenting,” and even though “reliable estimates are lacking, the prevalence of MethHF is likely increasing in step with rising methamphetamine use worldwide,” investigators concluded in the findings of a 21-study systematic review published online in the journal Heart.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

EHR Intelligence (12/2, Nelson) reported, “Female and Hispanic healthcare providers are more vulnerable to clinician burnout than other physicians, according to” a “cross-sectional study” that “extracted approximately 1.5 million inbasket messages for 609 physicians from multiple specialties.” These findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Hispanic, Female Healthcare Providers More Likely to Report Clinician Burnout “Hannah Nelson, EHR Intelligence,December 2, 2022

Psychiatric News (12/2) reported, “Older men may be more vulnerable to the negative effects of stress on cognition compared with older women,” researchers concluded after analyzing “data from 274 community-dwelling adults aged 52 to 91 years…who participated in the UCSF Memory and Aging Center’s Longitudinal Brain Aging Study.” The study team posited that “the higher risk in older men may be because they experience greater increases in the inflammatory biomarker interleukin-6 (IL-6) in response to prolonged stress compared with older women.” The findings were published online Nov. 23 ahead of print in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Prolonged Stress Linked to Cognitive Decline in Older Men, But Not Older Women, Psychiatric News,December 2, 2022

The New York Times (12/2, Friedman) reported, “Americans are five times more likely to say their stress level increases rather than decreases during the holidays,” And while such “higher stress levels aren’t only caused by a lack of physical activity, the lethargy certainly doesn’t help, said” Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD, “President of the American Psychiatric Association and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School.” Because “exercise can be a key way to combat the stress of the season,” the article provided “easy fitness strategies” to help people keep their spirits up.

Related Links:

— “Stressed During the Holidays? There’s an Exercise for That. “Danielle Friedman, The New York Times, December 2, 2022

According to the Washington Post (12/5, A1, St. George, Strauss), across the US, “adolescent depression and anxiety – already at crisis levels before the pandemic – have surged amid the isolation, disruption and hardship of” the COVID-19 pandemic. However, “even as federal coronavirus relief money has helped schools step up their efforts to aid students, they also have come up short,” and it still remains “unclear how much money is going to mental health, how long efforts will last or if they truly reach those who struggle most.”

Related Links:

— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

Healio (12/1, Downey) reports, “Childhood poverty was associated with increases in externalizing problems,” such as “aggression and hyperactivity,” but “not internalizing” (i.e., depression, anxiety), “over time in early adolescence,” investigators concluded in a study that included 7,569 children, 1,042 of whom “lived below the poverty threshold.” The findings were published online in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Poverty linked to externalizing problems in early adolescence “Ken Downey Jr., Healio, December 1, 2022

The Washington Post (12/1, Reynolds Lewis) reports, “The stress of pandemic lockdowns prematurely aged the brains of teenagers by at least three years and in ways similar to changes observed in children who have faced chronic stress and adversity,” according to a study published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science. Researchers compared “MRI scans of a group of 128 children, half taken before and half at the end of the first year of the pandemic” and “found growth in the hippocampus and amygdala, brain areas that respectively control access to some memories and help regulate fear, stress and other emotions.” Researchers “also found thinning of the tissues in the cortex, which is involved in executive functioning.”

Related Links:

— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

Medscape (7/6, Subscription Publication) reported, “High use of telemental health services by patients with serious mental illness (SMI) who live in nonmetropolitan US counties is associated with improvements in key outcomes, including greater post-hospitalization follow-up, new research suggests.” In this “nationwide study, researchers drew on Medicare data from nearly 3000 counties covering the period from 2000 to 2018.” The “results show that counties in which there was greater use of telemental health services reported higher increases of clinical visits and better follow-up after hospitalization among patients with bipolar 1 disorder and schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders.” The findings were published online June 27 in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Medscape (10/21, Swift Yasgur, Subscription Publication) reported, “Menopause appears to be an independent risk factor for relapse in women with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs),” investigators concluded after having “studied a cohort of close to 62,000 people with SSDs, stratifying individuals by sex and age.” The study revealed that beginning “between the ages of 45 and 50 years – when the menopausal transition is underway – women were more frequently hospitalized for psychosis compared with men and women younger than 45 years.” What’s more, the “protective effect of antipsychotic medication was highest in women younger than 45 years and lowest in women aged 45 years or older, even at higher doses.” The findings were published online Oct. 5 in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)