In a front-page story, the Wall Street Journal (3/8, A1, Whalen, Subscription Publication) reports the opioid crisis is creating a financial crisis for many families taking on huge debts to finance treatment and rehab. The Journal spotlights the highly fragmented rehab field offering expensive services which insurers often do not cover.
Related Links:
— “After Addiction Comes Families’ Second Blow: The Crushing Cost of Rehab,” Jeanne Whalen, Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2018.
The Washington Post (3/7, Moyer) reports, “Nationwide, suicides among black children under 18 are up 71 percent in the past decade, rising from 86 in 2006 to 147 in 2016, the latest year such data is available from the” CDC. During “that same period, the suicide rate among all children also increased, up 64 percent.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Post (3/7, Moyer) reports according to experts “parents should be on guard for an array of warning signs” that might indicate their child is thinking about suicide. One expert lists “risk factors” to be aware of, including “abuse, head trauma, chronic pain, addiction, mental illness and a family history of mental illness or suicide.”
Related Links:
— “‘HE WAS HAPPY. SO FAR AS I KNOW’,” Justin Wm. Moyer, Washington Post, March 7, 2018.
Medscape (3/7, Yasgur) reports, “Rates of breast cancer are higher in women with schizophrenia than in women in the general population,” researchers concluded in a meta-analysis, the findings of which were published online March 7 in JAMA Psychiatry.
Psychiatric News (3/7) points out that 12 “cohort studies that included 125,760 women were included in the meta-analysis.” Healio (3/7, Demko) also covers the story.
Related Links:
— “Women With Schizophrenia May Be at Greater Risk of Breast Cancer, Meta-Analysis Finds,” Psychiatric News, March 7, 2018.
The CBS Evening News (3/6, story 6, 2:10, Glor) reported, “New numbers out today show America’s opioid crisis is getting worse.” Emergency department visits for opioid overdoses “in 45 states” have risen “30 percent in a year.”
The Washington Post (3/6, Bernstein) reports there were 142,557 ED visits for opioid overdoses over a recent 15-month period, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CNN (3/6, Howard) reports on its website that opioid overdoses increased about 30% between July 2016 and September 2017, according to the report, which was based on data collected by the CDC from 45 states. Anne Schuchat, the acting director of the CDC, said, “This is really a fast-moving epidemic that’s getting worse.”
CNBC (3/6, LaVito) reports on its website that opioid overdoses increased 70% in the Midwest, 40% in the West, 21% in the Northeast, 20% in the Southwest, and 14% in the Southeast. The report said that opioid overdoses increased 30% among men and 24% among women, while overdoses increased by similar amounts among different age groups.
NBC News (3/6, Siemaszko) reports on its website that opioid overdoses increased 54% “from July 2016 through September 2017 in the major metro areas of 16 states.” The article suggests that “the opioid epidemic is fast becoming a big city problem.”
Related Links:
— “Emergency room data shows the opioid crisis continues to accelerate,” Lenny Bernstein, Washington Post, March 6, 2018.
Healio (3/6, Demko) reports, “Among children and teenagers with major depressive disorder [MDD], those with comorbid dysthymia and higher levels of residual symptoms after acute treatment are at greater risk for relapse,” researchers concluded in a study involving “102 youth aged 7 to 18 years with major depression who responded to 12 weeks of fluoxetine and then were randomly assigned to continue or switch to placebo for six more months.” The findingswere published online Feb. 20 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
Related Links:
— “Depression severity at baseline, end of treatment predict relapse among youth,” Kennard BD, et al., Healio, March , 2018.
Reuters (3/6, Rapaport) reports, “Adults who were pressured by their parents to diet during adolescence may have a higher risk of obesity and eating disorders as adults than people who weren’t urged to lose weight as teens,” researchers found after examining “data from eating surveys that 556 participants completed in school when they were 15 years old on average, as well as results from online surveys they completed as adults 15 years later.” The findings were published online in Pediatrics. The study provides “fresh evidence that even well-intended efforts by parents to encourage kids to slim down can backfire, said” the “co-author of an accompanying editorial.” HealthDay (3/6, Gordon) also covers the study.
Related Links:
— “Dieting pressure in teen years tied to food and weight problems later,” Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, March 6, 2018.
The New York Times (3/5, Frakt, Subscription Publication) reports that opioid abuse is not the only “significant drug problem” in the US, because “among illicit drugs, cocaine is the No. 2 killer and claims the lives of more African-Americans than heroin does.” The story cites a recent study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine where “researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that drug-related deaths have grown across all racial groups and among both men and women.”
The analysis indicates” that between 1999 and 2015, overdose deaths of any kind of drug for Americans 20 to 64 years old increased 5.5 percent per year.” Among “non-Hispanic black Americans, cocaine has been a larger problem than heroin for nearly 20 years.”
Related Links:
— “Overshadowed by the Opioid Crisis: A Comeback by Cocaine,” Austin Frakt, New York Times, March 5, 2018.
The AP (3/5, Tanner) reports researchers found that a growing number of minors in the US are being hospitalized because of opioid poisonings or overdoses, according to a study published in Pediatrics. The study found that such “hospitalizations were most common among kids aged 12-17 and those aged 1 to 5.”
CNBC (3/5, Lovelace) reports that the researchers found that “the number of pediatric opioid hospitalizations requiring intensive care nearly doubled to 1,504 patients between 2012 and 2015, from 797 patients between 2004 and 2007.”
HealthDay (3/5, Norton) reports that Dr. Sheryl Ryan, the chief of adolescent medicine at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, wrote in an accompanying commentary, “This epidemic is not limited to adults.” Ryan advised parents to store prescription opioids appropriately and to dispose of unused opioids, so they could not be accidentally ingested or abused by their children.
Additional coverage is provided by: NBC News (3/5, Fox), CNN (3/5, Lieber), TIME (3/5, MacMillan), Newsweek (3/5, Lee), and Medscape (3/5, Hackethal).
Related Links:
— “Opioid poisonings, overdoses send more US kids to hospitals,” LINDSEY TANNER, Associated Press, March 5, 2018.
The Wall Street Journal (3/5, Bernstein, Subscription Publication) reports that in an effort to help parents discern whether their adolescent children are depressed or merely moody, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidelines in February to recommend that youngsters age 12 and older be screened by their pediatricians for depression. The Journal also points out that depression can manifest itself in teens as physical ailments such as headaches or in anger or irritability. Teens who are having difficulty in several areas of their life and who don’t seem to be getting any enjoyment out of anything may be suffering from depression.
Related Links:
— “How to Spot Teenage Depression,” Elizabeth Bernstein, Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2018.
In a perspective piece in the Washington Post (3/1, Morris) “Health & Science” blog, Nathaniel Morris, MD, a resident physician in psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote that “evidence suggests that gun availability is a far better explanation for mass shootings than mental illness and that gun regulations targeted exclusively toward people with mental health issues will have minimal impact on the American epidemic of gun homicides.” Dr. Morris concluded that “when it comes to the link between guns and mental illness, gun-related suicides are an overlooked issue that takes more than 20,000 lives each year.”
Related Links:
— “We need to rethink mental health laws. But not because of mass shootings.,” Nathaniel Morris, Washington Post, March 2, 2018.