Healio (10/20) reports that recently, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) “announced it will provide $21 million in funding over five years for a study on the development of mental disorders that develop following trauma.” In a press release, NIMH director Joshua A. Gordon, MD, PhD, said, “In the relatively short term, this project is expected to deliver tools for clinicians to make informed decisions about risk and follow-up care soon after trauma.”

Additionally, the “research resource to be created will fuel a new generation of analyses on the underlying causes of disorders, identify new intervention targets, and in turn give rise to mechanism-informed treatments based on individual needs.”

Related Links:

— “NIMH study will explore trauma-related mental illness,” Healio, October 20, 2016.

The Huffington Post (10/18, Almendrala) reports that researchers are developing a test to “predict how effective antidepressants will be.” Although “the test is still in early stages, a recent study…found that it was able to predict whether or not an antidepressant would restore a person’s symptoms to healthy levels with 81 percent accuracy.” The findings of the 102-patient study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Related Links:

— “Will Antidepressants Work For You? There Will Soon Be A Test For That,” Anna Almendrala, The Huffington Post, October 18, 2016.

HCP Live (10/18) reports that “childhood adversity appears to be associated with bipolar disorder,” researchers concluded. The 19-study review “found that people with bipolar disorder were 2.63 times…more likely to have suffered emotional, physical, or sexual abuse as children than counterparts in the general population.” The findings were published online the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Bipolar Disorder Linked with Childhood Neglect and Abuse,” HCP Live, October 18, 2016.

In a 1,700-word article, The Atlantic (10/17, Goldberg) reports that “the majority of the nation’s youngest students don’t have access to mental-health resources at school.” Just “23 percent of prekindergarten programs have on-site or scheduled visits from psychiatrists or psychologists, according to the Child Mind Institute’s 2016 Children’s Mental Health Report.” Exacerbating the situation even further is “the current shortage of mental-health professionals, which is expected to continue.”

In fact, “the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration projects that 12,624 child and adolescent psychologists will be needed to meet demand by 2020, but a supply of only 8,312 is expected.” The article goes on to detail some new school-based programs designed to “make mental health a more robust part of the school day.”

Related Links:

— “The New Focus on Children’s Mental Health,” EMILY GOLDBERG, The Atlantic, October 17, 2016.

Philly (PA) (10/17, Burling) reports that on Oct. 17, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) “said…hospital emergency departments routinely are clogged with patients who are waiting, sometimes for days, for inpatient psychiatric care.” The group “bolstered its case with data from a poll of more than 1,700 emergency physicians as well as research presented at its annual meeting this week in Las Vegas.” The situation is being blamed “on inadequate inpatient and outpatient resources for patients with serious mental illnesses.”

Related Links:

— “Emergency physicians say psych patients wait too long for care,” Stacey Burling, Philly.Com, October 18, 2016.

The Washington Post (10/17, Searing) reports that people taking certain antihypertensives to treat high blood pressure may be at an increased risk of “depression or other mood disorders,” research suggests. Researchers examined medical records of 32,130 people “taking one of four types of drugs to control high blood pressure: beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin antagonists (including ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers) and thiazide diuretics.” They followed participants for five years and found that people taking “a beta blocker or calcium channel blocker were twice as likely to have been hospitalized with a mood disorder as those taking an angiotensin antagonist.” The findings were published online in Hypertension.

Related Links:

— “Blood pressure drugs linked to depression and other mental-health disorders,” Linda Searing, Washington Post, October 17, 2016.

The New York Daily News (10/17, Pesce) reports, “Children in the US foster care system suffer significantly higher risks of emotional and physical health problems…such as depression, asthma and obesity,” researchers found. Specifically, investigators “found those in foster care were seven times more likely to be depressed, five times more likely to be anxious, and six times more prone to behavior problems than other kids in the general population.”

MedPage Today (10/17, Bachert) reports that researchers arrived at the study’s conclusions after having “collected data from” the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health Data, “a nationally representative survey of 95,677 noninstitutionalized children ages 0 to 17 years in the US,” the reviewing “interviews with the adults in the household, usually a parent, regarding the children in the sample.”

Related Links:

— “Science backs how much foster care sucks — kids suffer more health problems ,” Nicole Lyn Pesce, New York Daily News, October 17, 2016.

HealthDay (10/13, Preidt) reports non-heterosexual adults are more likely to use illicit drugs or to have a mental illness than their heterosexual peers, and they are also more likely to seek treatment for drug use or mental illness than their heterosexual peers, according to a report from the US government based on data from the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Kana Emoto, the deputy principal administrator at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Adminisration, said, “This report offers unprecedented insight into the behavioral health needs of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans – people critical to our community whose health concerns have often been overlooked.”Related Links:

— “Mixed News on Drug Abuse Among Lesbian, Gay Americans,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, October 13, 2016.

On its website, ABC News (10/13, Mohney) reports that natural disasters may cause “an increased risk of substance abuse,” researchers found after examining “data from New Orleans” on people who survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Investigators “found that the rate of hospitalizations for substance abuse increased approximately 30 percent, from 7.13 hospitalizations for 1,000 people to 9.65 hospitalizations for every 1,000 people.” The findings were published in Oct. 13 in the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease journal.

Related Links:

— “Natural Disasters May Increase Substance Abuse Risk, Study Finds,” GILLIAN MOHNEY, ABC News, October 13, 2016.

HCP Live (10/12, Lutz) reports, “Mental health treatment disparities exist for black and Hispanic children and youth with behavioral and psychiatric problems,” researchers found after reviewing data from “the 2006 to 2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys.” Investigators found that despite similar rates of mental health conditions, “black and Latino children made 37% and 49% fewer visits to psychiatrists, respectively, than white children.” The findings were published online Aug. 12 in the International Journal of Health Services.

Related Links:

— “Ethnic Disparities in Pediatric Psychiatric Treatment Hard to Ignore,” Rachel Lutz, HCP Live, October 12, 2016.