The New York Times (4/28, Abelson) reports, “Every year, tens of thousands of people enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans are denied necessary care that should be covered under the program, federal investigators concluded in a report published on Thursday.” The investigators, from HHS’ Office of the Inspector General, “urged Medicare officials to strengthen oversight of these private insurance plans, which provide benefits to 28 million older Americans, and called for increased enforcement against plans with a pattern of inappropriate denials.” AMA President-Elect Jack Resneck Jr., M.D., “said the plans’ denials had become widespread.” The AMA “has been aggressively lobbying lawmakers to impose stricter rules.”

Related Links:

— “Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds “Reed Abelson, The New York Times, April 28, 2022

HealthDay (4/27, Preidt) reports, “Witnessing violence between your parents is traumatic when it happens, but” research indicates that “trauma can raise your risk of depression and other mental health problems.” Included in the study were “more than 17,700 Canadian adults,” 326 of whom “said they witnessed parental domestic violence more than 10 times before age 16, which was defined as chronic.” Among participants “exposed to chronic parental domestic violence during childhood, 22.5% had major depression at some point in their life, 15% had an anxiety disorder and nearly 27% had a substance abuse disorder,” compared to “rates among people with no history of violence between their parents” of “9%, 7% and 19%, respectively.” The findings were published online April 12 in the Journal of Family Violence.

Related Links:

— “Kids Who Witness Domestic Violence May Suffer Mentally for Decades ” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, April 27, 2022

According to NPR (4/26, Hamilton), “brain scan studies have yet to offer much insight into the underpinnings of traits like intelligence, or mental health conditions like anxiety and depression,” investigators concluded after analyzing “nearly 1,000 brain scans,” then checking “their work, using 1,000 different scans.” One “key reason is that these studies need to include scans of thousands of brains, instead of the dozens typically used, a team reported” in findings (PDF) published online March 16 in the journal Nature.

Related Links:

— “Brain scans may reveal a lot about mental illness, but not until studies get bigger “Jon Hamilton, NPR, April 26, 2022

MedPage Today (4/26, Firth) reports, “American adults experiencing depression, substance use problems, or both are turning to cigarettes less often,” investigators concluded.

Psychiatric News (4/26) reports, “The percentage of adults with major depression and/or substance use disorder [SUD] who reported smoking cigarettes declined between 2006 and 2019,” investigators concluded in a study that “analyzed data from adults 18 years and older who participated in the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health…between 2006 and 2019,” focusing specifically on “data on past-month cigarette use from 558,960 adult participants.” The findings were published April 26 in JAMA.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

CNN (4/25, Holcombe) reports family members of patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with COVID-19 often “come away from the experience with symptoms of anxiety, depression and PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder], according to a” survey study. The findings – published in JAMA Internal Medicine – “found that of the families that responded to the survey, 201 out of 316 (about 63%) had significant symptoms of PTSD.”

Related Links:

— “Family members of Covid-19 ICU patients may emerge with a different condition, study says “Madeline Holcombe, CNN, April 25, 2022

CNN (4/25, Rogers) reports, “The number of suicides among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 increased in five states during the pandemic, according to research looking at 14 states.” In addition, “data from Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Virginia and California…showed an increase in the proportion of adolescent deaths by suicide relative to suicides by people of all ages.”

MedPage Today (4/25, Walker) reports, “Adolescent suicides made up a larger share of suicides at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to prepandemic years, according to data from 14 states,” data which “comprised 32% of all U.S. residents and about a third of all adolescents.” The study revealed that “in 2020, individuals ages 10-19 comprised a significantly higher proportion of total suicides versus the prepandemic period of 2015-2019 (6.5% vs 5.9%, respectively), a relative 10% increase,” but even though “there was also an increase in the absolute number of adolescent suicides in 2020, at 903 versus 835.6 on average in the prepandemic years, it was not statistically significant, the authors stated.” The findings were published online in an April 25 research letter in JAMA Pediatrics.

Related Links:

— “Adolescent suicides increased in 5 US states during the pandemic. Why parents should be concerned “Kristen Rogers, CNN, April 25, 2022

The Washington Post (4/24, Searing) reports, “Already known to help ease depression, regular exercise may also help prevent it, with people who exercised just half the recommended weekly amount lowering their risk for depression by 18 percent,” investigators concluded after analyzing “data from 15 studies, involving 191,130 adults who were tracked for at least three years.” Researchers also found that people “who were more active, meeting at least the minimum recommended physical activity level, reduced their risk for depression by 25 percent, compared with inactive people.” The findings of the systematic review and meta-analysis were published online April 13 in JAMA Psychiatry.

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

In a front-page feature story, the New York Times (4/24, A1, Richtel, Flanagan) reports that American adolescents are facing a new public health threat, that is, “soaring rates of mental health disorders.” For example, in 2019, 13 percent of adolescent Americans “reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007.” Additionally, “emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm.” Further, suicide rates for people ages 10 to 24, “stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018,” according to the CDC.

NPR (4/24, Rascoe, Narro) interviews Kathleen Ethier, PhD, who “leads the Division of Adolescent and School Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which this month published a survey” indicating “the extent to which the pandemic has been incredibly disruptive for young people and their families.”

Related Links:

— “‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens ” Matt Richtel, The New York Times, April 24, 2022

A Washington Post (4/21, Bump) analysis says research “from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) quantifies the effects of [COVID-19] vaccination.” The Post adds, “Since June 2021, the point at which every American adult had access to coronavirus vaccines, they estimate that just over 234,000 unvaccinated Americans died who could have lived had they been immunized against the virus,” which is “nearly a quarter of the total death toll from the pandemic.”

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

Healio (4/21, Downey) reports, “The COVID-19 pandemic, in combination with systemic racism in the U.S., is associated with elevated levels of postpartum anxiety and depression among Black mothers,” investigators concluded in a study that “followed up with a total of 151 Black participants after their pregnancies between April 17, 2020, and July 8, 2020.” The findings were published online April 13 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Pandemic, racism linked to postpartum anxiety, depression in Black mothers “Ken Downey Jr., Healio, April 21, 2022