The AP (8/20, Fingerhut, Anderson) reported, “Anxiety in the United States over COVID-19 is at its highest level since winter, a new poll shows, as the delta variant rages, more states and school districts adopt mask and vaccination requirements and the nation’s hospitals once again fill to capacity.” The poll (PDF) published by Associated Press-NORC Center shows that “41% [of 1,729 adults] are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ worried about themselves or their family becoming infected with the virus. That is up from 21% in June, and about the same as in January, during the country’s last major surge, when 43% were extremely or very worried.”

HealthDay (8/20, Preidt) reported the poll also found that “nearly six in 10 favor requiring full vaccination for people to travel on airplanes or attend crowded public events, while roughly one-quarter oppose such measures.” The Hill (8/20, Vakil) also reported on the poll.

Related Links:

— “COVID anxiety rising amid delta surge, AP-NORC poll finds “James Anderson and Hannah Fingerhut, AP, August 20, 2021

HealthDay (8/19, Thompson) reports research indicates that “some key brain functions can improve in people as they age, researchers” concluded after examining “three components of mental ability in a group of more than 700 Taiwanese people between 58 and 98 years of age,” including “alerting, the enhanced vigilance that triggers one’s attention to incoming information; orienting, the ability to shift brain resources to a particular location in our environment,” and “executive inhibition, the ability to ignore distractions to focus on what’s important.” The study revealed that with “increasing age, many people appear to get better at focusing on important matters and ignoring distractions – tasks that support other critical brain functions like memory, decision making and self-control.” The findings were published online in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Related Links:

— “Neuro Surprise: Some Brain Skills Might Improve With Age “Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, August 19, 2021

MedPage Today (8/19, Grant) reports, “Nearly half of emergency medicine (EM) residents in the U.S (45.1%) reported being exposed to some form of mistreatment,” ranging “from discrimination based on race or gender to verbal and physical abuse,” according to findings from “a large survey study” published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers “also found a significant association between the frequency of mistreatment and reports of suicidal thoughts among EM trainees.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (8/19, Gramigna) reports, “Co-occurrence of multiple abuse subtypes across childhood and adulthood was linked to higher psycho-social risk and suicide attempt history among military service members hospitalized due to suicide risk,” investigators concluded in a “latent class analysis” that sought “to elucidate how these abuse subtypes co-occur during childhood and adulthood among a high-risk sample of 115 military service members and adult beneficiaries who underwent psychiatric hospitalization after a suicide-related crisis.” The findings were published online ahead of print in the October issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
“ Three latent classes were identified: Multiple and Persistent Abuse (Class One: 29.6%), Childhood Physical and Persistent Emotional Abuse (Class Two: 27.0%), and Minimal Abuse (Class Three: 43.5%). Females were more likely than males to report a history of Multiple and Persistent Abuse. After controlling for gender, the Multiple and Persistent Abuse Class had higher scores of depressive symptoms and hazardous drinking, poorer sleep quality, and increased social stress than the Minimal Abuse Class. Moreover, the Multiple and Persistent Abuse Class was associated with increased likelihood of lifetime” suicide attempts.

Related Links:

— “Abuse subtypes affect suicide risk among military psychiatric inpatients “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 19, 2021

Healio (8/18, Gramigna) reports, “Patients hospitalized with serious mental illness had a cardiometabolic profile that conferred increased risk for diabetes and hypertension-related mortality,” researchers concluded in a study that “used a form of propensity score matching called entropy balancing to compare cardiometabolic health of a sample of the general population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey…datasets with that of inpatients hospitalized in an urban psychiatric hospital in Texas.” The study team “analyzed data via independent linear regression models, with outcome variables including blood pressure, blood glucose, triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein…ratio, total cholesterol and BMI.” The findings of the “observational study” were published online ahead of print in the October issue of the journal Psychiatry Research.

Related Links:

— “Inpatients with severe mental illness at increased risk for diabetes, hypertension “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 18, 2021

Healio (8/17, Gramigna) reports, “Austedo [deutetrabenazine] treatment appeared to improve involuntary movements and quality of life [QoL] among older adults with tardive dyskinesia,” researchers concluded in “a post hoc analysis of a long-term open-label extension study” that enrolled “a total of 337 participants.” The study revealed that “a total of 67% of younger and 76% of older participants, as well as 64% of younger and 63% of older participants, achieved treatment success,” and “both groups generally well tolerated deutetrabenazine.” The findings were published online Aug. 15 ahead of print in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Austedo improves quality of life in older adults with tardive dyskinesia “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 17, 2021

MedPage Today (8/17, George) reports research indicates that patients with Parkinson’s disease “using pimavanserin (Nuplazid), a novel antipsychotic used to help manage Parkinson’s hallucinations and delusions, had an increased risk of 30-day hospitalization and higher mortality for up to a year.” The study compared “2,186 people who were prescribed pimavanserin and 18,212 who were not.” The findings were published online in the journal Neurology.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (8/16) reports, “Almost half of pediatric opioid prescriptions are considered high-risk by one or more metric, and high-volume prescribers write more than half of the prescriptions, according to” researchers who analyzed 4,027,701 prescriptions and “found that 3.5 percent of U.S. children and young adults had one or more dispensed opioid prescription. Overall, 41.8 of the prescriptions for opioid-naive patients exceeded a three-day supply and 3.8 percent exceeded a seven-day supply. For young children, 8.4 percent of prescriptions were for tramadol and 7.7 percent were for codeine.” The data were published in Pediatrics.

Related Links:

— “Almost Half of Pediatric Opioid Prescriptions Considered High-Risk
“Physician’s Briefing Staff, HealthDay, August 16, 2021

HealthDay (8/16, Mann) reports research indicates that “screen time should be replaced by ‘green time’ for optimizing the well-being of” children, investigators concluded after examining responses “from surveys of more than 577,000 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds in 42 European and North American countries.” The findingswere published online in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

Related Links:

— “More ‘Green Time,’ Less Screen Time Boosts Kids’ Mental Health “Denise Mann , HealthDay, August 16, 2021

MedPage Today (8/16, Monaco) reports, “Use of antipsychotics during pregnancy did not seem to have a significant developmental impact on babies,” researchers concluded “in an analysis of more than 300,000 mother-child pairs.” The study revealed that children of mothers “who were taking an antipsychotic during pregnancy showed no increased risk for developing” attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), “or of being born small for gestational age.” The findings were published online Aug. 16 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Psychiatric News (8/16) reports that even though “there was a small increased risk of preterm birth of children exposed to prenatal antipsychotics, additional analysis suggested this may be due to maternal psychiatric illness and not the medication.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)