Medscape (11/13, Brooks) reports that according to a November 7 news release from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, “the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) has voiced concern over the ‘dangerous and discredited’ practice of conversion therapy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT) youth in the” US. On November 11, “several CAT members asked US Department of State representatives why conversion therapy is still being practiced on LGBT youth after the practice was condemned by an array of major medical organizations and health and social welfare groups.” The American Psychiatric Association, for example, “states that ‘reparative’ and conversion therapies are ‘at odds’ with the scientific position of the APA, which has maintained, since 1973, that homosexuality per se is not a mental disorder.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The New York Times (11/13, Carey, Subscription Publication) reports that a study published Wednesday by the journal JAMA Psychiatry says that suicides among soldiers with psychiatric conditions could be reduced “by using a new screening system that flags those at highest risk of taking their own lives, a new study suggests.” The computer program, which “rates more than 20 actuarial factors, including age at enlistment, history of violence, and prescription medication use,” would be the most rigorous suicide prediction model available, if it performs as expected in real-world settings.” It would “allow doctors to follow high-risk soldiers closely after discharge, and to take preventive measures.”

USA Today reports that for the study, investigators “examined the records of nearly 54,000 soldiers hospitalized from 2004 to 2009, less than 1% of the Army.” The researchers “found 12% of Army suicides occurred within a portion of the 54,000 — those who had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and released from hospital care within the previous 12 months.” When the investigators “delved even deeper in that group, they identified soldiers who were extremely prone to suicide, with a rate as high as 3,824 per 100,000.”

Related Links:

— “Risk Model Seen as Reducing Military Suicides,” Benedict Carey, New York Times, November 12, 2014.

The CBS Evening News (11/11, story 8, 2:50, Pelley) reported on Lieutenant Justin Fitch, a terminally ill veteran who is, according to CBS correspondent Mark Strassman, seeking to stop “military suicides through a group called ‘Carry The Fallen.’”

CBS News (11/12) reports on its website that “last Sunday, volunteers marched the entire Boston Marathon course, 26.2 miles, to raise money and awareness of the issue.”

Related Links:

— “Terminally ill vet’s final mission: Helping others choose life,” Mark Strassman, CBS News, November 11, 2014.

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.