MedPage Today (7/12, George) reports researchers found that college athletes with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) “may have greater risks of depression and anxiety after concussion.” The findings are scheduled to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s Sports Concussion Conference later this month.

HealthDay (7/12, Norton) reports the researchers evaluated “nearly 1,000 college athletes,” and determined that “those with both” AD/HD and “a history of concussion scored higher on measures of depression and anxiety,” compared “to athletes without” AD/HD “and those with the disorder but no history of concussion.”

Related Links:

— “Concussion Tied to Anxiety, Depression in College Athletes with ADHD,”Judy George , MedPage Today , July 12, 2018.

The NPR (7/11, Chatterjee) “Shots” blog reports that following a suicide attempt, “a simple intervention conducted by staff in emergency departments can reduce the risk of future suicide attempts,” research indicates. This “intervention involves creating a safety plan for each patient and following up with phone calls after discharge.” Included in the study of the Safety Planning Intervention were “1,200 patients at five Veterans Affairs hospitals around the” US.

Healio (7/11, Demko) reports, “Adults who received the intervention plus follow-up were less likely to engage in suicidal behavior compared with those who received usual care during six-month follow-up,” the study revealed. What’s more, “patients receiving the intervention had more than two times the odds of attending at least one outpatient mental health visit.” The findings were published online July 11 in JAMA Psychiatry. Also covering the story are MedPage Today (7/11, Smith) and MD Magazine (7/11, Hoffman).

Related Links:

— “A Simple Emergency Room Intervention Can Help Cut Suicide Risk, “Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, July 11, 2018.

In an opinion piece in the New York Times (7/11), physician and author Lisa Pryor writes that “depression is a global problem, and developing nations are not immune.” In fact, “World Health Organization data show that the highest prevalence of depression by region is for women in Africa, at 5.9 percent.” Like depression, “suicide is also a global problem. In 2015, 78 percent of suicides occurred in low- and middle-income countries.” Pryor concludes, “Suffering is compounded when the groups that are most in need of treatment for mental illness are the very groups who are less likely to receive it.”

Related Links:

— “How to Have a Better Conversation About Mental Illness ,”Lisa Pryor , The New York Times, July 11, 2018.

The Hill (7/11, Hellmann) reports that “the Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized a proposal” yesterday “giving the agency more power to control how many opioids are produced annually in the U.S.” According to the Hill, “Under the proposal, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) could issue stricter limits on certain opioids if federal authorities believe they are being misused.”

Related Links:

— “DOJ unveils proposal giving feds more power to limit opioid production, ” Jessie Hellmann, , July 11, 2018.

HealthDay (7/10, Preidt) reports investigators “surveyed more than 12,000 teens in Germany, Poland and Romania and found those who used social network sites for more than two hours a day were at increased risk for cyberbullying.” The findings were published online July 10 in BMC Public Health. MedPage Today also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “Teens Focused on Social Media May Be at Cyberbullying Risk ,”Robert Preidt , HealthDay, July 10, 2018.

Reuters (7/10, Carroll) reports that research published online July 10 in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes suggests that “more than 16 years after cleanup was completed at the site of the September 11, 2001 attack on New York City’s World Trade Center complex, many who worked at the disaster site still struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and may also have an elevated risk of heart attack and stroke as a result.”

HealthDay (7/10, Gordon) reports that approximately “20 percent of men and 26 percent of women who responded when the twin towers were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001 developed PTSD, which is at least twice the rate expected in the general population, the researchers said.” The investigators found that “those who developed” PTSD “faced more than double the risk of a heart attack and stroke compared to those who worked on New York City’s World Trade Center site but didn’t develop PTSD.”

Related Links:

— “PTSD raises heart and stroke risk in World Trade Center cleanup crews,”Linda Carroll, Reuters, July 10, 2018.

HealthDay (7/9, Preidt) reports, “Children whose parents spend time in prison are more likely to lead risky lifestyles as young adults,” researchers found after analyzing “data from more than 13,000 young adults, aged 24 to 32,” about 10 percent of whom “had a parent incarcerated during their childhood.” The study revealed that “young adults who had a parent incarcerated during their childhood were more likely to skip needed health care, smoke cigarettes, engage in risky sex, and abuse alcohol, prescription and illicit drugs.” The findings were published online in the journal Pediatrics.

Related Links:

— “When Parents Do Time, Kids Pay the Price,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, July 9, 2018.

Healio (7/9, Demko) reports that a 24-study “integrative review published” online May 20 in the journal Birth “revealed that anger coexists with postpartum mood disturbances in women.” The review also demonstrated that “anger occurs when women’s expectations about motherhood are different from reality, and when they feel trapped in situations such as poverty and intimate partner violence.”

Related Links:

— “Anger coexists with postnatal depression,”Savannah Demko, Healio, July 9, 2018.

The ABC News (7/9, Powell) website reports research published online July 9 in Pediatrics “finds that traumatic events in childhood increase the risk of mental health and behavioral problems not just for that person but also for their children.” For the study, researchers “used a national sample of families from previous research – parents who had participated in a 2014 Child Development Supplement and 2,529 of their children who had complete data in the 2014 Childhood Retrospective Circumstances Study.” The study revealed an association “between children with a high rate of behavioral problems and parents who had experienced a greater number of adverse childhood events.”

HealthDay (7/9, Norton) reports children of parents who had experienced “abuse or other adversities” as children were themselves “twice as likely to have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder” and “four times as likely to have been diagnosed with any mental health disorder.” Medical Daily (7/9) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “Trauma suffered in childhood echoes across generations, study finds,”Denise Powell, The ABC News, July 9, 2018.

The New York Times (3/16, Span, Subscription Publication) reports that “for years, geriatricians and researchers have sounded the alarm about the use of benzodiazepines among older adults,” including Valium (diazepam), Klonopin (clonazepam), Xanax (alprazolam) and Ativan (lorazepam), but “the cautions have had scant effect” while the opioid epidemic has compounded the problem. According to Michael Schoenbaum, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes for Health, “Way too many older Americans are getting benzos. And of those, many — more than half — are getting them for prolonged periods. That’s just bad practice. They have serious consequences.” The Times notes that in 2016 “the Food and Drug Administration issued a black-box warning about co-prescribing benzodiazepines and opioids, including those in cough products.”

Related Links:

— “A Quiet Drug Problem Among the Elderly,” Paula Span, New York Times, March 16, 2018.