Medscape (5/6, Brauser) reports that according to the findings of a review presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, “ingredients in sexual enhancement products advertised and sold online are associated with several serious psychoactive effects.” The review of 108 Internet “sites and other online resources showed that the most common of these products contained the active ingredients yohimbine, maca, ginkgo biloba, and/or horny goat weed,” all of which were tied “to the induction of anxiety, panic, mood changes, hallucinations, and/or addictive behaviors.”

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Medscape (5/6, Anderson) reports that a literature review presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting “points to the potentially devastating effects of Internet addiction, especially in adolescents.” According to the “review of 13 published articles…people with Internet addiction disorder (IAD), especially those addicted to Internet gaming, tend to have certain brain abnormalities.” Researchers found that “increased blood flow is actually seen in the areas of the brain involving reward and pleasure centers, and decreased blood flow is observed in areas involved in hearing and visual processing.”

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The Wall Street Journal (5/6, D4, Chen, Subscription Publication) reports that a digital game called SuperBetter, which will soon undergo a scientific study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, may help some people manage anxiety and depression. Other digital games and apps are being developed for the management of post-traumatic stress disorder. Nevertheless, such games are no substitute for psychotherapy, according to Carol Landau, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School.

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— “Different Way to Treat Depression: Games,” Angela Chen, Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2014.

Medscape (5/5, Brooks) reports that according to research presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, “high school students who frequent the tanning salon may actually be depressed and at risk for suicidal thoughts and behavior.” The study “found that excessive indoor tanning, defined as tanning 40 times or more in 12 months, was associated with a greater than two-fold increased odds of depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts and a greater than four-fold likelihood of suicide attempt.” In arriving at the study’s conclusion, researchers analyzed data from the biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey “to study the relationship between excessive indoor tanning with depression, defined as 2 weeks of sadness, and suicide ideation, plan, attempt, and treatment.”

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The NPR (5/3, Pauly) “Shots” blog reported that under both the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity Act, “health insurance companies are required to provide mental health coverage if they cover physical illnesses.” Not included under ACA or MHPA is travel insurance, however. Linda Kundell, a spokesperson for the United States Travel Insurance Association, pointed out that “travel insurance policies typically only cover common risks in order to keep costs down.” She said, “If insurance companies take on added risk, it raises the cost of premium for consumers.”

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— “Don’t Count On Travel Insurance To Cover Mental Health,” Megan Pauly, National Public Radio, May 2, 2014.

The CBS Evening News (5/4, story 6, 2:00, Glor) reported, “A new study based on data from the Centers for Disease Control says hundreds of thousands of kids who say they are the victims of bullying are bringing some kind of weapon to school.” CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann explained, “The report analyzes the detailed survey of 15,000 high-school students who were asked questions about bullying.” The CDC survey revealed not only that one in five high-school students reported being the victim of a bully within the past year, but also that “an estimated 250,000 bullying victims were carrying guns, knives and clubs to school within the last 30 days of the survey being conducted.”

The NBC News (5/5, Briggs) website reported that “bullied students who have endured four types of aggressive clashes at school — being verbally tormented, sustaining a physical assault, suffering personal property theft or damage, and cutting school due to safety concerns — are nearly 49 times more likely to have recently carried a weapon to school and 34 times more likely to have carried a gun within the past 30 days.” Also covering the story are the CBS News (5/5, Strassmann) website and HealthDay (5/5, Preidt).

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— “Bullied Students Sneak Thousands of Guns Into Schools,” Bill Briggs, , May 2, 2014.

Reuters (5/4, Kelland) reported that according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and scheduled for presentation this past weekend at the annual meeting of the Pediatrics Academic Societies, environmental factors may be at least as important as genetics when it comes to autism. For the study, researchers analyzed data on two million youngsters born in Sweden between the years 1982 and 2006. Of those children, 14,516 were diagnosed with autism.

HealthDay (5/4) reported that researchers also found that “children with brothers or sisters who had previously been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum had a 10-fold higher risk for being diagnosed with the disorder themselves.”

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— “Environment as important as genes in autism, study finds,” Kate Kelland, Reuters, May 3, 2014.

Medscape (5/4, Brooks) reports that according to a study presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, “Instagram, the popular picture-based social media platform with more than 80 million users, contains ‘alarming’ prosuicidal or self-harm images, despite its stated policy against such content.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after having conducted “a search on Instagram using the search term, ‘hashtag suicide’ (#suicide), and analyzed the content of the first 60 images and quotes they found.” Investigators discovered that 27% of the images “had either a prosuicide (15%) or pro-self-harm (12%) theme, and none of them identified mental health resources or help.”

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HealthDay (5/2, Dotinga) reports that according to a review published online April 30 in the journal BMJ Open, “overweight teens are likely to feel stigmatized, isolated and even bullied for their size.” After reviewing “30 studies that surveyed teens in the United Kingdom (aged 12 to 18) about weight issues,” researchers concluded that “approaches that merely educate and admonish individuals about lifestyles and being overweight are not only insufficient but also potentially counterproductive.”

Related Links:

— “Overweight Teens Feel Stigmatized, Bullied: Study,” , HealthDay, May 1, 2014.

HealthDay (5/2, Preidt) reports that according to the results of a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and presented at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry’s annual meeting, “health, money and family problems – not depression – are the main factors that trigger thoughts of death and suicide among elderly Americans.” The study, which included “nearly 3,500 New York City residents, aged 65 to 75, found that factors other than depression were responsible for thoughts of death and suicide 75 percent of the time.”

Related Links:

— “When Older Adults Consider Suicide, Depression May Not Be Main Reason,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, May 1, 2014.