HealthDay (4/10, Preidt) reports, “Having a mental health disorder doesn’t mean a person will develop Alzheimer’s disease later” in life, researchers found after examining “long-term data from nearly 60,000 people in Finland with and without Alzheimer’s disease.” The findings were published online April 4 in European Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Past Psychiatric Ills Don’t Raise Alzheimer’s Risk: Study
,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, April 10, 2017.

Kevin Breel didn’t look like a depressed kid: team captain, at every party, funny and confident. But he tells the story of the night he realized that — to save his own life — he needed to say four simple words. This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxKids@Ambleside, an independent event. (See “Continue reading…” to view video.)
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The Boston Globe (4/10, Weisman) reports critics warn that the Food and Drug Administration “may sacrifice patient safety” in an effort to accelerate drug approvals. Public Citizen’s health research director Michael Carome says the process is “already too fast,” and believes that the agency can’t “make it any faster without compromising public health.” Others say there is “no evidence the FDA is a bottleneck,” and call the efforts “wrongheaded.”

Related Links:

— “Critics worry faster FDA drug reviews could compromise safety,” Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, April 10, 2017.

Healio (4/7, Bortz) reported, “Rural children from small communities exhibited a higher prevalence of mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders than children living in cities and suburbs,” researchers found after analyzing “data collected from the National Survey of Children’s Health.” The findings were published March 17 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Related Links:

— “Developmental, behavioral issues more common among rural children,” Lara R. Robinson, PhD, Healio, April 7, 2017.

HealthDay (4/7, Mozes) reported, “Opioid treatment programs for low-income Americans are in short supply in areas where they’re needed the most,” researchers concluded, with a “lack of affordable access…particularly apparent across the Southeast.” Investigators arrived at the study’s findings are examining “data on approximately 1,150 opioid treatment programs” that “were located in 465 counties in 48 states and Washington, DC.” The findings were published online March 27 in Health Services Research.

Related Links:

— “Rehab Services Lacking in States Hit Hard by Opioids,” Alan Mozes, HealthDay, April 7, 2017.

Healio (4/5, Oldt) reports, “Individuals who deliberately self-harmed were more likely to commit violent crime,” researchers found after conducting “a population-based longitudinal cohort study among all Swedish citizens aged 15 years and older (n = 1,850,252).” The findings were published online April in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Deliberate self-harm increases risk for violent crime,” Hanna Sahlin, MSc, Healio, April 5, 2017.

Scientific American (4/5, Zamzow) runs a Spectrum article reporting, “Most children with autism go undiagnosed until after age three, and many of these children remain undiagnosed until after they reach school age,” researchers found in a large study published in the April issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Screening Status Quo Misses Most Children with Autism,” Rachel Zamzow, Scientific American, April 5, 2017.

In a detailed, nearly 1,300-word analysis piece in the Washington Post (4/3), Frank R. Baumgartner, the Richard J. Richardson distinguished professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Betsy Neil, who is about to graduate from UNC at Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and political science, write that the majority of Americans “oppose the death penalty for” people with mental illness.

Research conducted by Baumgartner and Neil, however, “suggests that the death penalty actually targets those who have mental illnesses.” The authors go on to make the case that those “who are executed have a far higher rate of mental illness than” members of “the general public,” using in their piece a graph that “compares the prevalence of the different diagnoses of these executed inmates with that in the general public, as reported by the National Institute of Mental Health.”

Related Links:

— “Does the death penalty target people who are mentally ill? We checked.,” Frank R. Baumgartner and Betsy Neill, Washington Post, April 3, 2017.

AFP (4/4, Sheridan) reports that research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests certain older people “known as “super-agers” lose less brain volume than regular seniors, which may help them stay sharp.” Investigators found “that super-agers, 80 and older, have a significantly thicker brain cortex than people who are aging normally.”

HealthDay (4/4, Thompson) points out that the study used brain scans.

Related Links:

— “Brains of ‘super-agers’ don’t shrink as fast as others,” Kerry Sheridan, Agence France Presse, April 4, 2017.

MedPage Today (4/4, Harrison) reports that research indicated “patients with a cancer diagnosis had a significantly greater risk of fatal suicide attempts compared with individuals who did not have diagnosed cancer.” Investigators found, in “the analysis of seven studies and almost 250,000 patients…that patients with a cancer diagnosis had a 55% greater risk of death by suicide (OR 1.55) compared with controls who didn’t have cancer.” Meanwhile, “two additional studies focusing on suicide death versus death from other causes showed that cancer patients had a 53% greater risk of suicide death than those without cancer.” The findings were presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Cancer Diagnosis Tied to Suicide Risk,” Pam Harrison, MedPage Today, April 4, 2017.