The New York Times (4/19, Ndugga, Frakt) reports, “American deaths from misuse of substances, including alcohol, have increased over the past two decades, but not uniformly across various demographic groups.” For example, “overall rates of alcohol abuse and related deaths have consistently and significantly increased for white non-Hispanic Americans, while Black Americans have experienced a much slower and less significant incline, and some other groups have had declines.”

Related Links:

— “What’s Behind the Growth in Alcohol Consumption? ” Nambi Ndugga and Austin Frakt, The New York Times, April 19, 2021

Modern Healthcare (4/16, Tepper, Subscription Publication) reported, “As members of Congress decide how to expand access to telehealth after the pandemic, one of the biggest questions has centered around how much Medicare” healthcare professionals “should be paid for virtual care.” And “while the rates Medicare pays for telehealth and in-person services are currently the same, that arrangement – along with several other CMS telehealth waivers – expires at the end of the public health emergency absent Congressional action,” so healthcare professionals are now “pressuring Congress and CMS to keep payment parity – or something close to it – after the pandemic ends.”

Related Links:

— “Modern Healthcare (requires login and subscription)

Healio (4/16, Weller) reported, “Even with health insurance, people with opioid use disorder [OUD] receive lower quality preventive and chronic care as well as lower quality care coordination,” investigators concluded after conducting “a cross-sectional study using deidentified data from 125,973 people (55.1% women; 62.1% white; mean age, 59 years).” The study “evaluated quality of care by matching the outpatient data of 79,372 adults with OUD who had commercial or Medicare Advantage insurance with 46,601 comparators across preventive care, chronic illness care and care coordination.” The findings were published online April 8 in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “ “Madison Weller, Healio, April 16, 2021

According to the Washington Post (4/16, Chesler), across the US, poison control centers are reporting “a spike in the number of children who have ingested THC after eating their parents’ edibles, rising from just 19 cases in 2010, before recreational pot was legalized in any state, to 554 cases last year.” Some officials at the centers “attribute the rise in large part to a growing number of states having legalized marijuana.” Now, there are “36 that allow marijuana for medical use – and 18 of them now allow adult recreational use or have recently approved laws to do so – with a number of others moving in that direction.”

Related Links:

— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (4/15, Preidt) reports researchers at the University of Minnesota found that “Americans’ eating habits have changed for the worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, including an increase in eating disorders.” The findings were published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Related Links:

— “Bingeing, Stress Snacking: How the Pandemic Is Changing Eating Habits ” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, April 15, 2021

Psychiatric News (4/15) reports, “Outpatient psycho-oncology services, including pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, significantly reduced distress in cancer survivors up to two years after their diagnosis,” researchers concluded in a study that “recruited 243 patients who had received a cancer diagnosis and were referred to psycho-oncology services.” The findings were published online April 1 in the journal Psycho-Oncology.

Related Links:

— “Psycho-oncology Services May Reduce Distress, Depression in Cancer Survivors, Psychiatric News, April 15, 2021

The New York Times (4/15, Rabin) reports data indicate that for the second year in a row, the number of suicides in the US declined in 2020 by 5%. However, “while the number of suicides may have declined over all, preliminary studies of local communities in states like Illinois, Maryland and Connecticut found a rise in suicides among Black Americans and other people of color when compared with previous years.”

Related Links:

— “U.S. Suicides Declined Over All in 2020 but May Have Risen Among People of Color “Roni Caryn Rabin, The New York Times, April 15, 2021

Healio (4/14, Weller) reports research indicates that “one in three women who were hospitalized for obstetric complications during pregnancy had clinical levels of depression or anxiety.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after conducting “a systematic review of 39 cross-sectional, cohort, case-control, quasi-experimental and randomized controlled studies, 18 of which were further examined during a meta-analysis.” The findings were published online April 8 in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Related Links:

— “1 in 3 women with obstetric complications report depression, anxiety “Madison Weller, Healio, April 14, 2021

Healio (4/14, Gramigna) reports, “Nurses in the United States had a significantly increased risk for suicide compared with the general population,” investigators concluded after using “the National Violent Death Reporting System to analyze U.S. data of 159,372 suicides between 2007 and 2018.” Next, the researchers “created sex-specific suicide incidence estimates for nurses, physicians and the general population of those aged 30 years or older using workforce denominators.”

HealthDay (4/14) reports the study “determined that the suicide incidence among nurses was 17.1 per 100,000, compared to 8.6 per 100,000 among women in the general public, a doubling of risk.” The findingswere published online April 14 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Nurses at significantly increased suicide risk compared with general U.S. population “Joe Gramigna, Healio, April 14, 2021

The New York Times (4/14, Goodnough) reports that more than 87,000 Americans “died of drug overdoses over the 12-month period that ended in September, according to preliminary federal data, eclipsing the toll from any year since the opioid epidemic began in the 1990s.” The surge “represents an increasingly urgent public health crisis, one that has drawn less attention and fewer resources while the nation has battled the coronavirus pandemic.” The pandemic “unquestionably exacerbated the trend, which grew much worse last spring: The biggest jump in overdose deaths took place in April and May, when fear and stress were rampant, job losses were multiplying and the strictest lockdown measures were in effect.” The data were published in a Vital Statistics Rapid Release document from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Related Links:

— “Overdose Deaths Have Surged During the Pandemic, C.D.C. Data Shows “Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, April 14, 2021