BBC News (6/4, Kotecha) reports that a survey conducted by Public Health England and the National Health Service suggests that patients in UK mental healthcare units “smoke more than three times as much as the general population.” The PHE/NHS survey of 105 care units “suggests 64% of mental-health patients are addicted to tobacco – compared with 18% of the general population.” Experts caution that “smoking can increase depression and anxiety and reduce the effectiveness of medication by up to 50%.” PHE would like to have all psychiatric hospitals become “smoke-free.”

Related Links:

— “Mental health patients ‘smoke three times as much’,” Sima Kotecha, BBC News, June 4, 2015.

In continuing coverage, the Los Angeles Times (6/4, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog reports that adolescent “bullying may be responsible for nearly 30% of cases of depression among adults,” according to a study published June 2 in the BMJ. After following “2,668 people from early childhood through adulthood, researchers found that 13-year-olds who were frequent targets of bullies were three times more likely than their non-victimized peers to be depressed as adults.”

The CBS News (6/4, Welch, Kraft) website reports that the study “data factored out other causes of depression including mental and behavioral problems, previous bullying in childhood, and stressful life and family events, to focus on the relationship between bullying in teenage years and depression as adults.” For both genders, the study’s “results were the same.” MedPage Today (6/4, Walker) and Forbes (6/4, Walton) also cover the study.

Related Links:

— “Long-term study shows why bullying is a public health problem,” Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2015.

The AP (6/4, Tanner) reports, “Alcohol problems affect almost 33 million adults and most have never sought treatment,” according to a study published online June 3 in JAMA Psychiatry. The research conducted by investigators at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism also suggests that “rates have increased in recent years.” NIAAA director George Koob, PhD, “said it’s unclear why problem drinking has increased but that many people underestimate the dangers of excessive alcohol.” Koob also pointed out that effective behavioral treatments and medications exist to help people overcome problem drinking. He said, “There’s a lore that there’s only Alcoholics Anonymous out there and that’s not true.”

TIME (6/4, Sifferlin) reports that the study examined “the prevalence of drinking issues based on a new definition for alcohol use disorders in the” American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5). That “definition classifies problem drinkers as those who have two of 11 symptoms including continuing to drink even if it harms relationships, drinking harming performance at work of school, or inability to quit,” with problem severity being “classified by the number of symptoms a person has.”

Related Links:

— “PROBLEM DRINKING AFFECTS 33 MILLION _ 14 PCT. OF US ADULTS,” Lindsay Tanner, Associated Press, June 3, 2015.

The NPR (6/2, Brink) “Goats and Soda” blog reports that the World Health Organization’s report called Health for the World’s Adolescents: A Second Chance in the Second Decade reveals that “the number one cause of death around the world for older teen girls had shifted from maternal mortality to ‘self-harm,’” that is, suicide. These statistics on suicide are driven “by extraordinarily high rates in Southeast Asia, a WHO-designated region that includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste.” In these countries, “the rate of death by suicide is 27.92 per every 100,000 females between 15 and 19, more than twice the global rate in that group.”

Related Links:

— “The Truth Behind The Suicide Statistic For Older Teen Girls,” Susan Brink, National Public Radio, June 2, 2015.

AFP (6/3) reports that “nearly one in three cases of depression among young British adults may be traced to having been bullied as adolescents,” according to a study published June 2 in the BMJ.

Newsweek (6/3, Main) reports that after examining “records, interviews and diagnoses obtained from more than 2,600 adolescents in Britain, conducted at the ages of 13 and 18,” researchers “created a statistical model that predicted that 30 percent of cases of adult depression may be caused by bullying.”

HealthDay (6/3, Doheny) reports that the study also “found the often-bullied teens tended to stay depressed longer than others.” For example, “for 10 percent of those often-bullied who became depressed, the depression lasted more than two years.” In contrast, just “four percent of the never-bullied group had long-lasting depression.”

Also covering the study are Medical Daily (6/3, Scutti), the Telegraph (UK) (6/3, Knapton), and the Daily Mail (UK) (6/3, Davies).

Related Links:

— “Teenage bullying linked to adult depression: UK study,” AFP via Yahoo News, June 2, 2015.

The CBS News (6/2, Kraft) website reports that a study published in the June issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience “suggests that a good night’s sleep may play an important role in helping protect the brain against memory decline associated with Alzheimer’s.” In a study involving 26 older adults who were cognitively normal, investigators “found that a deficit in deep non-REM sleep, a sleep cycle associated with memory retention, was associated with a higher risk of buildup of brain proteins which are believed to play a role in triggering Alzheimer’s disease.” In turn, that “buildup of toxic beta-amyloid proteins in the brain then leads to further sleep deprivation.”

TIME (6/2, Park) reports that “the higher amount of amyloid and the disturbed sleep were also associated with worse performance on simple paired-word memory tests, which the researchers gave the volunteers both before and after a night’s sleep.”

HealthDay (6/2) points out that the “26 mentally healthy adults ages 70 to 79” recruited for the study “underwent brain imaging to assess plaque buildup, and were asked to remember pairs of words before and after a night’s sleep.” While participants slept “overnight, researchers measured their brain waves, and the next day they conducted MRI scans during the memory testing.”

Related Links:

— “Poor sleep may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease,” Amy Craft, CBS News, June 1, 2015.

HealthDay (6/2, Dallas) reports that the results of a 900-participant study published June 1 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention suggests that “the emotional health of cancer caregivers may affect the mental health of the loved ones they are caring for.” The study found that “when their husbands, wives or partners experience symptoms of depression, cancer survivors are more likely to develop depression themselves, say researchers at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI).”

Related Links:

— “Cancer Patient’s Health Affected by Spouse’s Mood,” Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay, June 1, 2015.

US News & World Report (6/2, Olivero) reports that “pediatric healthcare [professionals] are playing an expanded role in screening” for postpartum depression in new mothers as “research underscores the importance of healthy mother-baby relationships to an infant’s brain development.” The American Academy of Pediatrics “recommends universal surveillance and screening of postpartum depression by pediatric care [professionals], and national health care quality measures now include maternal depression,” US News reports. Insurers are also beginning to cover for screening of postpartum depression.

Related Links:

— “How Pediatricians are Helping Moms With Postpartum Depression,” Magaly Olivero, U.S. News & World Report, June 1, 2015.

HealthDay (6/1, Preidt) reports that according to “a large review” involving 42 studies, patients in the intensive care unit “who develop delirium have a higher risk of death, longer hospital stays and are more likely to have mental impairment after leaving the hospital.” Study authors said delirium is more common in elderly patients as well as “patients with preexisting mental impairments and the terminally ill.” The study was published May 31 in the British Medcal Journal.

Related Links:

— “ICU Delirium Tied to Higher Death Risk, Study Says,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 31, 2015.

The KQED-TV (5/30, Dornhelm) “State of Health” blog reported that new CMS “guidelines stipulate that nursing homes are graded on the percent of their dementia patients receiving antipsychotic medications,” a grade that “becomes part of their rating on Nursing Home Compare.” Reducing antipsychotic use “requires new approaches and retraining staff.” The article cited examples of “patient-centered care, which means being attentive to the cues people give and trying to understand what is bothering them even if they can’t communicate it directly.”

Related Links:

— “Calming Dementia Patients Without Powerful Drugs,” Rachel Dornhelm, Kaiser Health News, May 29, 2015.