Psychiatric News (11/11) reports that at the 2014 Interim Meeting of the American Medical Association House of Delegates, psychiatrists from the AMA Section Council on Psychiatry told delegates that “solitary confinement of juveniles in correctional settings is severely detrimental to adolescent health, with long-term consequences for development, and should be prohibited.”

During debate of a resolution opposing the use of solitary confinement, “some emergency and other physicians testified that seclusion of adults is necessary and unavoidable in certain emergency hospital settings, and physicians working in correctional facilities argued the same for adults in jails and prisons.” For their part, psychiatry council representatives “insisted that there should be a separate policy for juveniles, especially in correctional facilities.”

David Fassler, MD, alternate delegate from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, said, “The potential psychiatric consequences of prolonged seclusion include depression, anxiety, and psychosis,” the consequences for which “juveniles in particular are at risk.”

Related Links:

— “AMA Leaders Debate Benefits, Harm of Solitary Confinement,” Psychiatric News, November 10, 2014.

The Wall Street Journal (11/11, D3, Lukits, Subscription Publication) reports that according to the results of a 1,352-participant study published in the November issue of the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, elderly participants who felt younger than their actual age in years had better scores on both cognitive and memory tests.

Related Links:

— “Feeling Younger May Help Memory as We Age,” Jason Schneider, Wall Street Journal, November 10, 2014.

TIME (11/7, Rayman) reports that according to “an analysis of more than 16,000 births by female veterans” published online Nov. 6 in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, “women with post-traumatic stress disorder are significantly more likely to give birth prematurely.”

HealthDay (11/7, Preidt) reports that researchers “found that having PTSD in the year before delivery increased the risk of spontaneous premature birth by 35 percent,” and that “recent PTSD” is tied to approximately “two additional premature births for every 100 deliveries.”

Related Links:

— “PTSD Raises Risk of Premature Birth, Study Says,” Noah Rayman, Time, November 6, 2014.

Medwire News (11/6, McDermid) reports that according to a study published online Oct. 29 in JAMA Psychiatry, there appears to be “an inverse association between people’s subjective social status (SSS) and the likelihood of them having a psychiatric disorder.” After examining data from 20 studies involving approximatley 56,000 individuals, researchers found that the “association was evident for all 16 mental disorders assessed, including bipolar disorder, and was independent of people’s objective social status, based on measures of income, education and occupation.” This finding led the study authors to surmise that “studies relying on objective measures of socioeconomic status may underestimate the size of the association between social circumstances and mental health.”

Related Links:

— “Low subjective social status linked to mental disorder risk,” Eleanor McDermid, Medwire News, November 6, 2014.

Medscape (11/5, Brooks) reports that three new studies of non-medication therapies for Alzheimer’s disease are being funded by research grants from the Alzheimer’s Association. One study will evaluate “the effects of a 12-week intervention of exercise or cognitive stimulation, or a combination of the two, for lowering the risk for cognitive decline and dementia in older adults showing signs of mild cognitive impairment.” A second study “will look at the impact of an eight-week aerobic interval training regimen on the brain and thinking abilities in people with type 2 diabetes.” The third study will focus “on the use of Skill-Building through Task-Oriented Motor Practice (STOMP) for improving daily life skills and delaying the decline of these skills in people with dementia.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Medwire News (11/5, Cowen) reports that according to a study published online Oct. 30 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, “patients with bipolar disorder [BD] have high rates of medical illness, which often exceeds the levels observed in patients with unipolar depression.” Researchers “interviewed 1720 patients (median age 47 years, 70% women) with bipolar disorder about their lifetime history of 20 common medical illnesses, and compared the rates of each illness with those observed in previously described recurrent unipolar depression (n=1737) and control (n=1340) groups.” Investigators found “significant” differences “for asthma, type 2 diabetes, elevated lipids, epilepsy, gastric ulcers, hypertension, kidney disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis and thyroid disease, with the highest rates generally observed among the patients with” BD.

Related Links:

— “Medical illness common in bipolar disorder,” Laura Cowen, MedWire News, November 5, 2014.

The Fox News (11/4) website reports that according to a study published in the British Medical Journal, working rotating or abnormal shifts over the long-term “may lead to memory loss and slower, irreversible brain processing speed.” After tracking “the cognitive abilities of more than 3,000 people who were either working in a range of sectors or who had retired at three points: 1996, 2001 and 2006,” investigators found that “participants who currently or had previously worked abnormal shifts had lower scores on memory, processing speed and overall brain power than those who had worked the same hours every day.”

Related Links:

— “Long-term shift work linked to decreased brain function, memory loss,” Fox News, November 3, 2014.

MedPage Today (11/3, Chu) interviews Michael J. Gerardi, MD, the new president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, who said, “One of my major initiatives this year as president of this college is to tackle the psychiatric patient boarding problems in emergency departments.” Dr. Gerardi discussed the promise of the so-called Alameda model, saying, “The length-of-stay for admitted patients qualified for bed, about 25% of patients under twenty hours, which is phenomenal.”

Patients in these outpatient centers get started with intensive treatment earlier and are more satisfied. Such centers also “decompress the emergency department of these patients,” Dr. Gerardi explained.

Related Links:

— “Psych Boarding ACEP Top Priority,” Elbert Chu, MedPage Today, November 2, 2014.

Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and head of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College, argues in a New York Times (11/1, Subscription Publication) essay that young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or AD/HD, should be give the chance to avail themselves of the experience of adults who, studies indicate, “grew out” of AD/HD symptoms and began functioning normally.

“In school, these curious, experience-seeking kids would most likely do better in small classes that emphasize hands-on-learning, self-paced computer assignments and tasks that build specific skills,” the better to “fit for their novelty-seeking behavior” and eventually enable them to “self-select jobs in which they are more likely to succeed.”

Related Links:

— “A Natural Fix for A.D.H.D.,” Richard A. Friedman, New York Times, October 31, 2014.

The US News & World Report (10/29) reports that although the ACA extends coverage to people with mental health issues or substance use disorders, “various loopholes in the health care law at this time have kept people from requesting mental health care.” Some states haven’t expanded Medicaid, for instance, leaving about 5 million Americans in a coverage gap – the majority of whom, “experts believe, need mental health care.” Indeed, demand for mental health services “hasn’t budged, even though provisions in the health law make it more affordable.”

Related Links:

— “Under Obamacare, Mental Health Lacking,” Kimberly Leonard, U.S. News & World Report, October 29, 2014.