The Washington Post (10/1, Kunkle) reports that middle-aged women who worry a lot may have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later in life, citing a study unveiled Wednesday in American Academy of Neurology’s journal, Neurology.

The paper notes that researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden “followed a group of women in their 40s, whose disposition made them prone to anxiety, moodiness and psychological distress, to see how many developed dementia over the next 38 years.”

They found that women “who were the most easily upset by stress — as determined by a commonly used personality test — were two times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than women who were least prone to neuroticism.”

Related Links:

— “Excessive worry in middle-aged women linked to higher Alzheimer’s risk,” Frederick Kunkle, Washington Post, October 1, 2014.

HealthDay (10/1, Thompson) reports that according to a study published online Sept. 30 in PLoS One, adolescents “who have experienced a traumatic brain injury [TBI] are much more likely to engage in a wide range of risky behaviors.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after having examined “data gathered during the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey developed by the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,” Canada on some “9,000 students between grades 7 and 12 in public schools across Ontario.”

Related Links:

— “Head Injuries May Raise Chances of Risky Behavior by Teens,” Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, September 30, 2014.

The New York Times (10/1, Gorman, Subscription Publication) reports the Obama Administration has recruited a number of new Federal agencies as well as universities, foundations and businesses to help pursue it’s goals associated with the BRAIN Initiative, which the president started in 2013. “For 2015, the Administration has asked for $200 million for all the agencies involved. The National Institutes of Health, part of the initiative, has proposed a $4.5 billion, 12-year program as part of the overall effort.”

Other companies and agencies involved include “Google, General Electric, companies involved in optics and other technologies, several universities and the Simons Foundation” along with the Food and Drug Administration and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

Related Links:

— “More Groups Join Project on the Brain,” James Gorman, New York Times, September 30, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (9/29, Netburn) “Science Now” blog reports that according to a new study, published in Pediatrics, “kids 7 to 9 years old who attended a daily, after-school fitness program showed an increased ability to pay attention, avoid distraction and switch between tasks at the end of a nine-month period.”

The study involved a total of 222 elementary-school-aged children, half of whom were enrolled in an after-school program with physical fitness elements while the rest of the participants were not. The report concluded that “at the end of the nine months, the physical fitness of the kids in the after-school program had improved by 6%, compared to just 1% improvement in the control group.” Additionally, “researchers also found that the kids in the program had a 10% increase in accuracy on a series of cognitive tests, while the control group saw an increase of just 5%.”

The NPR (9/29, Bruzeck) “Shots” blog also reported on this study.

Related Links:

— “An hour of physical activity a day helps kids think better, study says,” Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2014.

TIME (9/30, Sifferlin) reports that the DEA prescription pain killer take back program, which will “allow Americans to get rid of their excess drugs at pharmacies or police departments with drop-off receptacles,” is slated to launch in early October. The program was developed under the auspices of the 2010 Drug Disposal Act, which “gave the DEA the authority to create a framework for how the general public and facilities could dispose of prescription pills properly and safely.”

Related Links:

— “Soon You Can Send Your Expired Painkillers Through the Mail,” Alexandra Sifferlin, Time, September 29, 2014.

The Imperial Valley (CA) News (9/29, Trinidad) reports that “a multi-institutional team of researchers studying schizophrenia and bipolar disorder [BD] has been awarded a $16 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to create the most extensive genetic resource to date for these two devastating psychiatric disorders, using data assembled by the University of Southern California (USC).”

The “four-year award…will help fund a project titled: ‘Whole Genome Sequencing of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder in the Genomic Psychiatry Cohort (GPC).’” The goal of the study is to “sequence total genomic DNA from 10,000 or more ethnically diverse individuals from the GPC, split evenly among schizophrenia cases, bipolar disorder cases and psychiatrically normal controls.”

Related Links:

— “National research team awarded $16M NIH grant to study genetics of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” Alison Trinidad, Imperial Valley News, September 28, 2014.

HealthDay (9/27, Norton) reported that according to a paper published online Sept. 26 in The Lancet Psychiatry, researchers reviewed 101 clinical studies and found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) appears to be the “better first option” for the treatment of social phobia in teens instead of antidepressant medications. The piece also noted that “an estimated 15 million US adults have social anxiety disorder, according to the US National Institutes of Health.” TIME (9/27, Oaklander) also covered the story.

Related Links:

— “Behavioral Therapy Deemed Best for Social Phobia,” Amy Norton, HealthDay, September 26, 2014.

Medscape (9/26, Brauser) reports that according to a report released by LifeWay Research, even though people “with mental illness often first seek guidance from their church, many pastors do not offer help.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after surveying “1000 senior Protestant pastors, more than 300 individuals with a mental illness diagnosis, and 207 family members of those with an acute psychiatric illness.”

When asked for comment by Medscape, Annelle Primm, MD, MPH, deputy medical director for the American Psychiatric Association (APA), said, “The faith community is an important partner and an important vehicle for people to recognize they have an illness that needs help from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional.”

Dr. Primm, who was not involved in the research, also “noted that, unfortunately, there have been barriers and taboos to mental health–seeking that are ‘being illuminated because of studies like these.’”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Modern Healthcare (9/25, Dickson, Subscription Publication) reports that many community health centers find themselves providing low-cost services to people who purchased “bronze” level health insurance plans through Affordable Care Act exchanges. Low income individuals who hold such bare-bones health plans often find themselves unable to pay the full cost of coverage in the face of bronze plans’ high deductibles and co-pays.

The situation is seen as indicitive of a larger problem in the post-ACA world. “With the Affordable Care Act, while the number of uninsured may be dropping, there’s a new challenge in that there is now a huge cadre of underinsured people,” said Sara Rosenbaum, The George Washington University’s health policy chair.

Related Links:

ACCOUNT REQUIRED — “Underinsured ACA enrollees strain community health centers,” Virgil Dickson, Modern Healthcare, September 25, 2014.

Reuters (9/26, Doyle) reports that according to a study published online Sept. 22 in JAMA Pediatrics, the majority of US children who are on medications for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) are not undergoing any sort of behavioral counseling.

HealthDay (9/26, Thompson) reports that the findings “raise concerns that doctors may just be prescribing pills for behavior problems, rather than targeting kids’ specific difficulties through judicious use of medication and therapy, said lead author Dr. Walid Gellad, an adjunct scientist at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.”

In arriving at the study’s conclusions, investigators “combed through a commercial insurance claims database to identify more than 300,000 children aged 17 or younger who filled a prescription for AD/HD medication in 2010,” then cross-checked to determine if the youngsters had also gotten any behavioral counseling that year.

Related Links:

— “One in four kids on ADHD meds gets therapy too,” Kathryn Doyle, Reuters, September 25, 2014.