Healio (5/7, Gramigna) reports, “Frequent religious service attendance appeared associated with lower risk for death from despair among health care professionals,” researchers concluded after analyzing “data from self-reported questionnaires and medical records of 66,492 female registered nurses included in the Nurses’ Healthy Study II…from 2001 through 2017” and the “data of 43,141 male health care professionals, such as dentists, pharmacists, osteopaths, podiatrists, optometrists and veterinarians, included in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study…from 1988 through 2014.” The findings of the “population-based cohort study” were published online May 6 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Religious service attendance linked to significantly lower risk for death from despair, “Joe Gramigna, Healio, May 7, 2020

TIME (5/7, Heid) reports, “Late last month, as the full weight of the COVID-19 crises was settling on the country’s shoulders, more than one in four American adults met the criteria that psychologists use to diagnose serious mental distress and illness. That represents a roughly 700% increase from pre-pandemic data collected in 2018.” TIME adds, “While this surge in mental distress showed up across age and demographic groups, young adults and those with children experienced the most pronounced spikes. Among adults living at home with kids under the age of 18, the rate of severe distress rose from just 3% in 2018 to 37% last month.” Researchers at Florida State University and San Diego University conducted the study, which is currently in preprint on the PsyArXiv website.

Related Links:

— “COVID-19’s Psychological Toll: Mental Distress Among Americans Has Tripled During the Pandemic Compared to 2018, “Markham Heid, TIME, May 7, 2020

HealthDay (5/7, Thompson) reports experts warn that COVID-19 survivors “will be emotionally scarred by their time spent in an intensive care unit (ICU), and they are at increased risk of psychological problems, such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).” Dr. Joshua Morganstein, chair of the APA’s Committee on the Psychiatric Dimensions of Disasters, said that in addition to the potential trauma of being in the ICU, the virus might cause psychiatric or neurological problems itself, “There certainly are many infectious illnesses that have associated with them the development of temporary or permanent neuropsychiatric symptoms that can range from things like mood changes to confusion or cognitive impairment, to pain or fatigue.” Dr. Morganstein advised, “When a person’s body and mind is trying to respond to and manage a severe infection, this can be disorienting and fatiguing. Health care workers should take their time when they are talking to articulate clearly and speak in a gentle but audible manner to patients, to help ensure the patients understand what is happening.”

Related Links:

— “Depression, Anxiety, PTSD May Plague Many COVID-19 Survivors, “Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, May 7, 2020

HealthDay (5/6, Preidt) reports, “Adults who had rough childhoods have higher odds for heart disease,” investigators concluded after looking at data from “more than 3,600 people who were followed from the mid-1980s through 2018.” Investigators found that people “who experienced the most trauma, abuse, neglect and family dysfunction in childhood were 50% more likely to have had a heart attack, stroke or other heart problem in their 50s and 60s.” The findings were published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Related Links:

— “Tough Childhoods Are Tough on Adult Hearts: Study, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 6, 2020

Healio (5/6, Gramigna) reports, “Nondiscrimination policies appeared associated with a decrease or no change in suicidality among gender minority individuals living in states with these policies,” investigators concluded after conducting “a difference-in-differences analysis to compare changes in mental health outcomes among gender minority enrollees before and after nondiscrimination policy implementation between 2009 and 2017.” Next, “using gender minority-related diagnosis codes obtained from private health insurance claims, they identified” and examined the “data of 28,980 unique gender minority enrollees from 2009 to 2017.” The findings were published online May 6 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “State-level nondiscrimination policies may decrease suicidality among gender minority individuals, “Joe Gramigna, Healio, May 6, 2020

The Hill (5/6, Weixel) reports a bipartisan group of 90 lawmakers in the House along with several medical groups, including the APA, “are pushing for the inclusion of enhanced mental health resources for health workers in the next coronavirus aid package.” The bipartisan group “called for the establishment of a grant program within the Department of Health and Human Services to allow healthcare employers or facilities to confidentially assess and treat the mental health of healthcare workers on the front lines of treating COVID-19 patients.”

Related Links:

— “Lawmakers push for mental health funding for providers in next aid package, “Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill, May 6, 2020

The New York Times (5/5, Mandavilli) reports, “Two new studies offer compelling evidence that children can transmit the” coronavirus. In one study published in Science last week, researchers “found that children were about a third as susceptible to coronavirus infection as adults,” but that when schools were open, “children had about three times as many contacts as adults, and three times as many opportunities to become infected, essentially evening out their risk.” In a second study, awaiting peer review but posted on the lab’s website, German researchers “tested children and adults and found that children who test positive harbor just as much virus as adults do – sometimes more – and so, presumably, are just as infectious.”

Related Links:

— “New Studies Add to Evidence that Children May Transmit the Coronavirus, “Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times, May 6, 2020

Psychiatric News (5/5) reports that “in an article” published online April 30 as a special communication “in JAMA Psychiatry, leaders from the Departments of Mental Health and Addiction in Lombardy describe several lessons learned during the COVID-19 crisis and unknowns about the long-term mental health of the population.”

Related Links:

— “Lessons Learned From Italy: COVID-19 and Mental Health Services, Psychiatric News, May 5, 2020

Healio (5/4, Gramigna) reports, “Intimate partner violence remained prevalent among middle-aged and older women and was associated with morbidity in these populations,” investigators concluded in a study that included “4,481 women aged 45 years and older who were screened for past-year intimate partner violence in 13 Veterans Health Administration [VHA] outpatient clinics in 11 states between April 2014 and April 2016.” Researchers “used positive screening result for past-year intimate partner violence as the exposure,” while “mental and physical health conditions” were “identified using ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes from VHA medical record data, as well as VHA health services utilization identified using inpatient and outpatient VHA encounter data.” The findings were published online April 21 in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Intimate partner violence prevalent among older women beyond guideline-recommended screening age, “Joe Gramigna, Healio, May 4, 2020

HealthDay (5/4, Preidt) reports LGBTQ people in the US military “are at higher risk for sexual harassment, sexual assault and stalking,” according to a study published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress. HealthDay adds “that sexual victimization can trigger mental health problems such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use and suicidal behavior, researchers say.”

Related Links:

— “Sexual Victimization Persists in U.S. Military for LGBTQs: Study, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 4, 2020