MedPage Today (8/5, Firth) reports six in ten physicians “say they often experience feelings of burnout, a 20% jump from pre-pandemic levels reported in 2018, according to The Physicians Foundation’s 2021 Survey of America’s Physicians released on Thursday.” Additionally, a “total of 46% of physicians said they have isolated or withdrawn from other people in the last year, more than one in three said they felt hopeless or without a purpose, and 57% reported experiencing ‘inappropriate episodes of anger, tearfulness, or anxiety.’” Further, “only 14% of physicians sought medical attention for their mental health concern.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (8/5, Gramigna) reports, “People with preexisting mood disorders had increased risk for COVID-19 hospitalization and death,” investigators concluded in a systematic review and meta-analysis that “included 21 primary research articles involving more than 91 million individuals that featured quantitative COVID-19 outcome data from people with mood disorders compared with people without mood disorders of any age, sex and nationality.” The authors suggested that these people “should be categorized as an at-risk group on the basis of a preexisting condition.” The findings were published online July 28 in JAMA Psychiatry.

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— “Mood disorders should be considered preexisting condition for increased COVID-19 risks “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 5, 2021

The Hill (8/4, Choi) reports a study by Imperial College London was released on Wednesday that “found that fully vaccinated people are three times less likely to test positive for the coronavirus compared to unvaccinated people.” The findings “are based on swab tests taken by nearly 100,000 people in England between June 24 and July 12. Of the tests taken, 0.63 percent tested positive.” Researchers “estimated that fully vaccinated people were 50 to 60 percent less likely to become infected with the Delta variant than unvaccinated people, including asymptomatic cases.”

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— “Both vaccine doses reduce risk of delta variant infection by up to 60 percent: study “Joseph Cho, The Hill, August 4, 2021

Psychiatric News (8/4) reports, “Between 1998 and 2018, medical aid in dying…under Oregon state’s Death With Dignity Act was the most common form (52.7%) of self-initiated death among women over 65,” whereas “firearm suicides were the most common form (65.7%) of self-initiated death among men in the state, followed by deaths caused by lethal medication under the Death With Dignity Act.” Investigators arrived at these conclusions after analyzing “data from the Public Health Division of the Oregon Health Authority on deaths attributed to the Death With Dignity Act and from the CDC on unassisted suicide by sex and age for the 1998−2018 period.” The findings were published online June 11 ahead of print in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

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— “Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act Impacts Older Women, Men Differently, Study Suggests, Psychiatric News, August 4, 2021

HCPlive (8/3, Walter) reports researchers have conducted a study in which they “analyzed data from the Global Aging & Geriatric Experiments in Bipolar Disorder Database…to assess older-age bipolar disorder associations among age, bipolar disorder [BD] symptoms, comorbidities, and functioning.” For the study, the team “identified harmonized, baseline, cross-sectional data from 19 international studies involving 1377 participants with a mean age of 60.8 years old.” The study revealed that “depressive symptom severity was strongly associated with worse functioning in older individuals, underscoring the need for effective treatments of BD depression in older people.” The study also revealed that “higher depressive and manic symptoms were associated with lower” Global Assessment of Functioning, “most strongly among the older participants.” The findings were published online July 27 in the journal Bipolar Disorders.

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— “New Research Addresses Symptoms of Older-Age Bipolar Disorder “Kenny Walter, HCPlive, August 3, 2021

Healio (8/3, Miller) reports, “Patients who had their opioids tapered after receiving stable, long-term, higher-dose opioid therapy were at a significantly increased risk for overdose and mental health crisis than those who did not have reduced doses,” investigators concluded in a “retrospective cohort study” that analyzed data on a “total of 113,618 hospital and” emergency department “patients with demographic and geographically diverse characteristics and 203,920 stable baseline periods.” The findings were published in JAMA.

Psychiatric News (8/3) reports investigators found that “post-tapering periods were associated with an adjusted incidence rate of 9.3 overdose events per 100 person-years compared with 5.5 events per 100 person-years in non-tapered periods.” In addition, tapering appeared to be tied to “an adjusted incidence rate of 7.6 mental health crisis events per 100 person-years compared with 3.3 events per 100 person-years in non-tapered periods.”

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— “Opioid tapering significantly increases risk for overdose, mental health crisis “Janel Miller, Healio, August 3, 2021

MedPage Today (8/2, Kneisel) reports, “Daily treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) had no effect on stroke survivors’ risk of depression, which decreased on its own by 6 months, a secondary analysis of the AFFINITY trial found.” Further, “among study participants who had experienced a recent stroke, fluoxetine (Prozac) use did not reduce clinically significant symptoms of depression, which at baseline affected 18.9% of the fluoxetine group and 18.5% of the placebo group and dropped at 26 weeks to 7.0% and 8.2% (P=0.41), respectively, according to the study published in JAMA Neurology.” The cumulative prevalence of clinically significant symptoms “during the study was 20.2% of the fluoxetine group and 21.1% of the placebo group (P=0.70), reported Osvaldo Almeida, PhD, of University of Western Australia in Perth, and colleagues.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (8/2, Miller) reports that in a recent study, “the age that women reached menopause and the type of menopause experienced appeared to impact their cognition as they grew older.” Researchers for the study “assessed memory, executive function, attention, visuospatial function, processing speed and nonverbal reasoning of 243 women in the cohort.” The researchers “reported that later menopause was linked to better cognitive performance at an older age, while surgical menopause was linked to worse cognitive performance.” The reasons for the associations are not “fully explained” by childhood cognition and other lifetime events, according to the researchers.

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— “Menopause age, type may be linked to cognitive performance “Janel Miller, Healio, August 2, 2021

Priya E. Mammen M.D., M.P.H., an emergency physician and public health specialist, and J. Corey Feist, chief executive officer of the University of Virginia Physicians Group, wrote at Fox News (7/30), “It sometimes takes a professional athlete to bring attention to a lesser-known cause and make it relevant to the nation. Simone Biles’ courageous decision…to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics has brought the mental health of athletes to the world’s center stage.” They continued, “It is about time we eliminate the stigma of admitting our mental health needs,” arguing that “emergency physicians, in particular, don’t often ask for help. We are trained and taught to push through any barrier or limitation for the sake of our patients.” But “mental health and wellness are fundamental to each of us doing our jobs to the best of our abilities.”

Related Links:

— “Dr. Mammen, Feist: Simone Biles’ courageous actions will have lasting effect on medical profession, more ” Dr. Priya E. Mammen, MPH , J. Corey Feist, Fox News, July 30, 2021

According to Psychiatric News (7/30), on July 29, “the U.S. House of Representatives approved significant funding increases for key mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) programs included in the FY 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies and the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bills.” This “legislation increases funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) by $3.16 billion, an increase of nearly 50% over FY 2021, to $9.16 billion.” In response, the American Psychiatric Association “issued a statement thanking House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and the committee for leading the effort to provide the funding in the legislation.” APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, MD, MPA, said, “This week’s action by the House is step one in an appropriations process that needs to go through the legislative process.” Dr. Levin added, “But the best way to position funding for psychiatry and mental health, including substance use, for success is for the APA administration and our members to be aggressive advocates at every step in the process. So spread the word. Our advocacy matters and is making a difference.”

Related Links:

— “House Passes Bills to Boost Funding for Mental Health, Substance Use Programs, Psychiatric News, July 30, 2021