The Wall Street Journal (1/1, A1, Hopkins, Subscription Publication) reports that a new analysis from Rx Savings Solutions shows pharmaceutical companies are increasing prices on hundreds of drugs this year. According to the analysis, more than three dozen drugmakers raised prices on hundreds of medicines Tuesday. The Journal adds that overall, the price increases are in excess of inflation. Drugmaker Allergan increased prices by almost 10 percent on some two dozen medications, an analysis showed.

Related Links:

— “Drugmakers Raise Prices on Hundreds of Medicines, “Jared S. Hopkins, The Wall Street Journal, January 01, 2019.

The Hill (12/28, Bowden) reported “opioid-related deaths among teens and young children have nearly tripled since 1999.” The findings (12/7) were published in JAMA Network Open.

ABC News (12/28, Bracho-Sanchez) reported on its website that researchers “examined data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)” and found that “almost 9,000 children and young adults have died from opioid poisonings in the past 20 years.”

Related Links:

— “Opioid deaths in children, teens on the rise: study, “John Bowden, The Hill, December 28, 2018.

Psychiatric News (12/28) reported that on Dec. 26, “the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final order…to downgrade the risk category for certain uses of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).” This particular change was one “for which APA had strongly advocated, saying it could greatly expand access to safe, effective treatment for individuals with serious and persistent psychiatric disorders.

Related Links:

— “FDA Downgrades Risk Category for Certain Uses of ECT, Psychiatric News, December 28, 2018.

HealthDay (12/27, Mozes) reports, “Teens who are often bullied may be left with shrinkage in key parts of their brain, increasing their risk for mental illness,” researchers concluded after analyzing “brain scans of nearly 700 14- to 19-year-olds.” The study revealed that teens who were chronically bullied had at age 19 “reduced size in two key regions of the brain, compared to age 14” in the putamen and the caudate. The findings were published online Dec. 12 in Molecular Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Being Bullied May Alter the Teen Brain, “Alan Mozes, HealthDay, December 27, 2018.

The AP (12/26, Irvine) reports on a 12-step meeting focused on helping people for whom “tech gets in the way of daily functioning and self-care.” According to the AP, “an American Academy of Pediatrics review of worldwide research found that excessive use of video games alone is a serious problem for as many as nine percent of young people.” Just this past “summer, the World Health Organization also added ‘gaming disorder’ to its list of afflictions,” and “a similar diagnosis is being considered in the” US.

Related Links:

— “‘Hi, my name is ___, and I’m addicted to tech’, “Martha Irvine, AP, December 26, 2018.

HealthDay (12/26, Mozes) reports research indicates that “older folks can cut their depression risk by 32 percent simply by going to cultural activities every few months.” According to HealthDay, the “results are based on a decade-long tracking analysis that stacked cultural engagement – plays, movies, concerts and museum exhibits – against depression risk among approximately 2,000 men and women over the age of 50,” all of whom were “participants in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).”Related Links:

— “Head to the Movies, Museums to Keep Depression at Bay, “Alan Mozes, HealthDay, December 26, 2018.

U.S. News & World Report (12/21, Levine) reported, “Bullying…harms children who witness it,” researchers found after examining “data from nearly 4,000 Quebec high school students.” The findings were published in the December issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Gabrielle Shapiro, MD, “professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City,” who also chairs “the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Children, Adolescents, and Their Families,” said that when people who witness bullying “are feeling empathy for a victim but don’t speak up, they can feel sad and anxious and bad themselves. They are struggling with moral issues of right and wrong.” And, “according to the website StopBullying.gov, managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than a quarter of U.S. students in grades six to 12 say they have been bullied at school, and” almost “71 percent of young people say they have witnessed bullying at school.”

Related Links:

— “Why Bullying Harms More Than Just the Victim, “David Levine, U.S. News & World Report, December 21, 2018.

Healio (12/21, Demko) reported, “The prevalence of benzodiazepine use among adults in the United States was higher than previously reported,” researchers concluded after “analyzing data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” In addition, “the analysis found that the prevalence of benzodiazepine use among adults aged 50 to 64 years exceeded the prevalence among those aged 65 years and older, the group that historically had the highest benzodiazepine use,” the study revealed. The findings were published online Dec. 17 in Psychiatric Services, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association.

Related Links:

— “Benzodiazepine use among US adults higher than previously reported, “Savannah Demko, Healio, December 21, 2018.

Healio (12/20, Demko) reports, “Analysis of a large general population-based sample of Swedish twins” demonstrated that “genetic risk factors for psychiatric disorders – including autism,” attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, “tic disorders, intellectual disability, anxiety disorders and major depressive disorder – were associated with milder traits of these disorders.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after analyzing “genetic data from 13,412 people and phenotype data from 13,923 twin pairs at age nine years, 5,165 pairs at age 15 years and 4,273 pairs at age 18 years.” The findings were published online Dec. 19 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Psychiatric disorders show genetic correlations with related traits, “Savannah Demko, Healio, December 20, 2018.

Mason Marks, a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, argues in an opinion at the Washington Post (12/20) for strong oversight of emerging suicide prediction tools used commercially by companies such as Facebook. Marks writes that “corporations outside health care are racing to use AI to predict suicide in billions of consumers, and they treat their methods as proprietary trade secrets. These private-sector efforts are completely unregulated,” but he says the FDA “could exercise its power to regulate medical products and treat suicide prediction tools like mobile health apps or software-based medical devices.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide prediction technology is revolutionary. It badly needs oversight, “Mason Marks, The Washington Post, December 21 2018.