Healio (6/15, Oldt) reports, “Chronic physical illness in childhood,” particularly cancer, “was associated with increased risk for depression and anxiety in adulthood,” researchers found in a meta-analysis of 34 studies including 45,358 youngsters. The findings were published online April 27 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Related Links:
— “Childhood chronic illness increases risk for adult depression, anxiety,”Amanda Oldt, Healio, June 15, 2017.
USA Today (6/14, Weichselbaum) reports, “Suicides, post traumatic stress disorder and other mental-health problems that afflict corrections officers as well as police officers are an underreported sector of the criminal justice system.” Now “an awakening of sorts – from the halls of Congress to the prisons of California – is under way.” Recently, “the California peace officers association completed the first major step of a partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, by analyzing the results of a 61-question survey from more than 8,600 corrections and parole officers statewide.” The survey “responses serve as the basis for an ambitious plan to develop, test and implement a range of mental health services for officers across the state’s prison system.” Meanwhile, last month on Capitol Hill, “the Senate unanimously passed the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act.”
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Kaiser Health News (6/14, Allen) reports many people are concerned that proposed cuts to Medicaid could restrict access to treatment for drug addiction. The article highlights the situation in Pennsylvania where more than 124,000 people used Medicaid “to get help for their drug or alcohol addiction last year.”
Related Links:
— “People In Recovery Worry GOP Medicaid Cuts Would Put Treatment Out Of Reach,” Ben Allen, Kaiser Health News, June 14, 2017.
HealthDay (6/13, Norton) reports, “Older adults with evidence of ‘plaques’ in the brain are more likely to see their memory and thinking skills wane over the next few years,” researches found after studying “445 older US and Canadian adults (average age 74) who had no signs of dementia at” the start of the study. About 200 of these people did “have elevated levels of beta-amyloid in the brain,” however, that “were detected either in spinal fluid samples, or by specialized PET scans of the brain.” The study revealed that individuals “with elevated beta-amyloid showed a steeper decline in their memory and other mental skills over the next three years.” The findings were published June 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
MedPage Today (6/13, Fiore) reports the study supports “the idea that amyloid plaques presage eventual dementia, even in people with no signs of clinical impairment.”
Related Links:
— “Sticky Brain ‘Plaques’ Implicated in Alzheimer’s Again,”Amy Norton, HealthDay, June 13, 2017.
CNN (6/12, Emanuel) reports that teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) appear to be “36% more likely than other adolescent drivers to get into a car accident,” researchers found after examining data from some “18,500 electronic health records for young people, including nearly 2,500 with” AD/HD. The findings were published online June 12 in JAMA Pediatrics. Reuters (6/12, Seaman) and HealthDay (6/12, Mozes) also cover the story.
Related Links:
— “Young drivers with ADHD 36% more likely to have an accident, study says,”Daniella Emanuel, CNN, June 13, 2017.
On its “Morning Edition” program and in its “Shots” blog, NPR (6/12) reports that some first responders who handled casualties at last year’s Pulse Nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, FL are now dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. While only a few have come forward to discuss their PTSD diagnoses, such as police officer Gerry Realin who has been unable to work since the mass shooting, many others have not wanted to “come forward because they don’t want to be seen as weak or unfit for duty.”
Related Links:
— “A Pulse Nightclub Responder Confronts A New Crisis: PTSD,”Abe Aboraya, NPR, June 12, 2017.
TIME (6/12, Tweeten) reports that almost “10 million American adults have a serious mental illness, and a similar number have considered suicide during the past year, according to a new government report on the nation’s behavioral ills.” That report also found that some “15.7 million Americans abuse alcohol and 7.7 million abuse illicit drugs.”
HealthDay (6/12, Reinberg) reports the study found “mental illness is a growing problem among adolescents.” In 2015, “three million teens from 12 to 17 had major depression,” with “the problem” being “particularly acute among girls, the researchers found.”
According to Healio (6/12, Oldt), Beth Han, MD, PhD, MPH, of SAMHSA, and colleagues arrived at these conclusions after analyzing data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services for 2015. The report, called the “Behavioral Health Barometer: United States,” can be downloaded here.
Related Links:
— “Teens Are Getting More Depressed But Using Fewer Drugs,”Lon Tweeten, TIME, June 12, 2017.
The New York Times (6/10, A1, Popper, Subscription Publication) reports on its front page, “As the nation’s opioid crisis worsens, the authorities are confronting a resurgent, unruly player in the illicit trade of the deadly drugs, one that threatens to be even more formidable than the cartels.” More than ever, “law enforcement officials say, the drugs are being bought online.” The Times says “the problem of dark web sales appeared to have been stamped out in 2013, when the authorities took down the most famous online marketplace for drugs, known as Silk Road,” but “countless successors have popped up, making the drugs readily available to tens of thousands of customers who would not otherwise have had access to them.” According to the story, Congress has proposed strengthening the “requirements on information gathered by the Postal Service,” with USPS officials having told a Senate hearing last month that “they were working to collect information on more packages coming from China.”
Related Links:
— “The New York Times,”Nathaniel Popper, The New York Times, June 10, 2017.
“Since the beginning of this decade, death rates have risen among people between the ages of 25 and 44 in virtually every racial and ethnic group, according to” a front-page analysis by the Washington Post (6/9, A1, Achenbach, Keating), which found “the death rate among African Americans is up 4 percent, Hispanics 7 percent, whites 12 percent and Native Americans 18 percent.” The Post added that “after a century of decreases, the overall death rate for Americans in these prime years rose 8 percent between 2010 and 2015,” increased “in large measure by drug overdoses and alcohol abuse, according to…mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics for the CDC, said that based on preliminary 2016 data, “I think we’re in for another steep increase in the drug overdose deaths overall.” Leandris Liburd, director of the CDC’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity, asserted, “The data [are] very concerning.”
Related Links:
— “Drug crisis is pushing up death rates for almost all groups of Americans,”Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, June 09, 2017.
ABC World News Tonight (6/6, story 8, 0:20, Muir) reported that research suggests “moderate drinking may be riskier than previously” believed.
USA Today (6/6, Painter) reports that investigators found “moderate drinkers were more likely than abstainers or light drinkers to develop worrisome brain changes that might signal eventual memory loss.” Additionally, “they…were more likely to show rapid slippage on a language test, though not on several other cognitive tests.” The findings were published online June 6 in the BMJ.
Reuters (6/6, Kelland) reports that investigators came to these conclusions after analyzing “data on weekly alcohol intake and cognitive performance measured repeatedly over 30 years between 1985 and 2015 for 550 healthy” people “with an average age of 43 at the start of the study.” Reuters adds, “Brain function tests were carried out at regular intervals, and at the end of the study participants were given a MRI brain scan.” Also covering the story are CNN (6/6, Christensen) and HealthDay (6/6, Norton).
Related Links:
— “Study: Even moderate drinking might be bad for aging brains,”Kim Painter, USA TODAY, June 6, 2017.