STAT (6/17) reports a person’s 18th birthday can be “what some mental health [professionals] know, anecdotally, as ‘the cliff,’ the cutoff at which teens with mental health conditions are flung into adulthood, often without any preparation for the challenges to care ahead.” Since “young adults are among the most at risk of major mental illness, but are among the least likely to get mental health care,” according to experts, this “is a huge, pressing problem.” When “STAT spoke with teenagers, young adults, and mental health [professionals], and experts across the country to understand the experiences of young people with mental health conditions as they transition from adolescence to adulthood,” some “young people said no one prepared them for the often-complicated reality of navigating mental health care in adulthood: finding a therapist, filling prescriptions, scheduling appointments, shelling out co-pays.”

Related Links:

— “Facing a broken mental health system, many U.S. teens fall off a dangerous ‘cliff’ in their care, “Megan Thielking, STAT, June 17, 2020

HealthDay (6/17, Reinberg) reports researchers used “genetic and survey data from hundreds of thousands of people” and “found that loneliness makes it more likely that someone will smoke.” Robyn Wootton, a senior research associate at the University of Bristol and a co-lead author of the study, said, “We found evidence to suggest that loneliness leads to increased smoking, with people more likely to start smoking, to smoke more cigarettes and to be less likely to quit.” The findings were published in Addiction.

Related Links:

— “Loneliness May Make Quitting Smoking Even Tougher, “Steven Reinberg, HealthDay, June 17, 2020

MedPage Today (6/17, Hlavinka) reports researchers found in a meta-analysis of 14 trials that among “patients who had attempted or were considering suicide, brief encounters with healthcare [professionals] reduced the risk of subsequent suicide attempts and improved access to follow-up care.” The review studywas published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Brief Intervention Tied to Lower Repeat Suicide Attempt, “Elizabeth Hlavinka, MedPage Today, June 17, 2020

MedPage Today (6/15, Hlavinka) reports, “LGBTQ students attending schools with gay-straight alliance programs in place reported experiencing less bullying and better health outcomes than their LGBTQ peers whose schools lacked such programs,” investigators concluded. The survey study revealed that “among 17,112 LGBTQ high school respondents, 91% reported at least one experience with bullying of any type, and in fact most bullying was for ‘stigmatized identities’ unrelated to gender identity or sexual orientation, such as body weight or religion.” Even though “all forms of bullying were correlated with negative health outcomes like sleep issues, depression, or smoking, the presence of gay-straight alliance programs at schools, which focus on peer-to-peer connectedness to reduce prejudice, was not only associated with reductions in bullying, but improvements on these health outcomes,” the study revealed. The findings were published online June 15 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Gay-Straight Alliances at School Cut Bullying for LGBTQ Youth, “Elizabeth Hlavinka, MedPage Today, June 15, 2020

HealthDay (6/15, McNiff) reports that a recent study found “alarming” reported alterations “in eating and exercise” during the pandemic-related lockdowns among patients with obesity. Specifically, researchers found “almost 70% reported more difficulty in achieving weight-loss goals, and 6 out of 10 reported they were doing more stress-eating.” The findings were published in Clinical Obesity.

Related Links:

— “Lockdowns Making Things Worse for Obese Americans: Study, “Serena McNiff, HealthDay, June 15, 2020

MD Magazine (6/15) reports, “Familial psychiatric history could correlate with the risk of severe bipolar disorder activity in an individual,” investigators concluded after examining “both the Bipolar CHOICE (Clinical Health Outcomes Initiative in Comparative Effectiveness) comparing lithium with quetiapine and the LiTMUS trial, which compared optimized treatment with and without lithium.” In the trials were “a total of 757 patients.” The study revealed that “familial psychiatric history correlated with several disease severity measures, including hospitalizations, suicide attempts, and earlier onset.” The findings were published online ahead of print in the August issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Related Links:

— “Family History Link Found in Bipolar Disorder, “Kenny Walter, MD Magazine, June 15, 2020

Psychiatric News (6/12) reported, “Volunteering at least two hours a week may increase longevity and improve mental health in adults over age 50,” investigators concluded after examining “data from approximately 13,000 participants in the Health and Retirement Study, a large, ongoing study of adults aged 50 years and older in the United States that began in 2006.” The findings were published online June 11 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Volunteering May Boost Longevity, Mental Health in Adults Over 50, Psychiatric News , June 12, 2020

NBC News (6/13, Fitzsimons) reported, “The United Nations released a report [PDF] documenting the global reach and impact of gay and transgender ‘conversion therapy,’ calling for nations around the” globe “to work to ban the scientifically discredited practice.” Jack Turban, an LGBTQ youth mental health researcher at Harvard Medical School, stated, “There is broad consensus among the medical community, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, that conversion therapy for gender identity or sexual orientation is dangerous and should be banned.

Related Links:

— “U.N. calls for global end to conversion therapy, says it ‘may amount to torture’, “Tim Fitzsimons, NBC News, June 13, 2020

MedPage Today (6/12, Lou) reported, “Behavioral counseling and multidisciplinary care coordination together helped lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in people with serious mental illness,” investigators concluded.

Healio (6/12, Dobkowski) reported that “in the IDEAL trial…researchers analyzed data from 269 patients…who attended outpatient psychiatric rehabilitation programs and clinics and had dyslipidemia (n = 175), hypertension (n = 142), diabetes (n = 93), overweight/obesity (n = 242) and/or were current tobacco smokers (n = 138).” Patients were randomized to “the intervention (n = 132; mean age, 49 years; 47% men) or control (n = 137; mean age, 49 years; 48% men).” The study revealed that patients who had the intervention ended up having “a net percentage reduction of 12.7% for the 10-year global Framingham Risk Score.” The findings were published online in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Care Coordination Intervention Cuts Heart Risk Among the Mentally Ill, ” Nicole Lou, MedPage Today, June 15, 2020

Psychiatric News (6/11) reports research indicates that “handgun ownership is associated with an elevated risk of suicide by firearm, particularly immediately after the gun is acquired.” For the study, investigators “tracked firearm ownership and mortality over 12 years (2004-2016) among 26.3 million adults in California.” The findings were published online June 4 in the New England Journal of Medicine. According to Psychiatric News, the authors of an accompanying editorial posited that “assessments of suicide risk should include questions about recent gun ownership and access to firearms, for example, and women, as well as men, should be questioned about gun ownership.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide Risk Increases Immediately After Gun Purchase, Psychiatric News, June 11, 2020