The Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal (3/17, Ungar) reported, “A stigma continues to surround mental illness, and some advocates say it’s been strengthened in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, which caused many to connect mental illness to violence.” The Courier-Journal added, “In reality, studies show that the mentally ill commit only a small portion of violent acts. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, for example, concluded that patients with severe mental illness, as identified by hospital admissions, committed about five percent of all violent crimes.” The Courier-Journal quoted American Psychiatric Association president Dilip Jeste, MD, who said in a statement made in December, “About one-quarter of all Americans have a mental disorder in any given year, and only a very small percentage of them will ever commit violent crimes.”

Related Links:

— “Stigma surrounding mental illness grows in wake of school shootings, “Laura Ungar, Courier-Journal, March 18, 2013.

HealthDay (3/18) reported, “Teens who were depressed as children are more likely to be obese, to smoke and to be sedentary,” according to a study that was scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society. The research involved more than 500 kids who were studied from the time they were age 9 until they were age 16. The investigators found that “twenty-two percent of the kids who were depressed at age 9 were obese at age 16.” The investigators “found similar patterns when they looked at smoking and physical activity.”

Related Links:

— “Childhood Depression May Be Tied to Later Heart Risk: Study, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, March 15, 2013.

In continuing coverage, Medscape (3/15, Brauser) reports that psychiatrists are at the top of ProPublica’s “updated Dollars for Docs list of large payments from pharmaceutical companies to individual US clinicians,” released March 12. Medscape Medical News spoke with James Scully, MD, CEO of the American Psychiatric Association, who said, “It surprises me because we’ve made so many changes in what we’ve done here at the APA.” He added, “Clearly, however, there are others out there who are still working closely with industry. That’s perfectly legal. But it’s important to have open communication. If people want to do marketing for drug companies, they need to be clear that that’s what they’re doing.”

In continuing coverage, the Hartford (CT) Courant (3/14, Sturdevant) “Insurance Capital” blog reported, “Several doctor organizations are criticizing Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut for not covering psychotherapy in some cases after a Jan. 1 change in medical-billing codes.” Insurer “Anthem has responded to changes in medical-billing codes for psychiatry by covering only visits for an evaluation or management of medical issues, and not psychotherapy as a separate equal category when provided during the same visit, according to the Connecticut Psychiatric Society, the American Psychiatric Association and the Connecticut State Medical Society.” The blog quoted APA CEO James H. Scully, Jr., MD, who called Anthem’s practices “unethical and illegal,” and who said, “We worked very hard to enact mental health parity laws, and it is now clear that Anthem is seeking a way to avoid compliance.”

Related Links:

— “Doctors: Anthem Not Paying For Psychotherapy In Some Cases, “MSturdevant, Hartford Courant, March 14, 2013.

On its website, WUSA-TV Washington (DC) Washington (3/14) reported, “The American Psychiatric Association (APA) no longer classifies sexual masochism, fetishism, transvestism, and sadism as mental disorders, according to The Daily Mail.” Now, “in order for something to be classified as a disorder, a person must ‘feel personal distress about their interest.’ These sexual interests will be renamed in an upcoming edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).”

Related Links:

— “APA: Happy People Who Have Sexual Fetishes No Longer Have Mental Disorder,CBS DC, March 14, 2013.

The Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer (3/15, Johnston) reports, “The world’s largest collection of suicide notes, more than 1,300 in all, is at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.” Researchers there “are using advanced computer technology to analyze the language in the notes and gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts of the people who wrote them. The goal is to create a tool, perhaps within two years, that can help mental health workers assess the likelihood a person will attempt suicide.”

Related Links:

— “Saving lives with world’s largest suicide-note collection, “John Johnston, Cincinnati.com, March 15, 2013.

The AP (3/14, Press) reports, “Young men who have served in the British military are about three times more likely than civilians to have committed a violent offense,” according to a study published online March 15 in The Lancet. One “key predictor was violent behavior before enlisting. Combat duty also raised the risk, as did witnessing traumatic events during deployment or misusing alcohol afterward,” the article notes.

Reuters (3/15, Kelland) reports that researchers arrived at these conclusions after having studied data on some 14,000 UK soldiers who were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq and then cross-checking that data against data derived from criminal records.

BBC News (3/15, Gallagher) reports, “Overall criminal activity was slightly lower in military personnel than in people of the same age in the wider population.” But, “the researchers found violent offending was higher within members of the armed services and there was a ‘stark’ difference in men under 30 – 20.6% of the 2,728 young men followed had committed a violent offence, compared with 6.7% of young mven outside the military.” The majority of “violent offences were assaults.”

Related Links:

— “Study finds British soldiers, vets who had combat duty more likely to commit violent crimes, “Associated Press, The Washington Post, March 14, 2013.

Medwire (3/14, Piper) reports, “Criminal justice problems are relatively common among patients with bipolar disorder [BD], but researchers have identified an array of risk factors that they believe will provide guidance when evaluating patients and identifying preventive strategies,” according to research published online March 7 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. “The factors were identified based on 34,508 wave 2 respondents of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) with valid responses to the mania section.” Notably, “a range of historical, clinical, and contextual factors were found to increase the risk for criminal involvement, but two multivariate analyses indicated the risk was particularly high for patients who were unemployed (odds ratio [OR]=3.89-4.27), of non-White race (OR=3.68-3.93), who had previously been detained as juveniles (OR=4.25-5.17), had a prior arrest while manic or using drugs (OR=3.28-3.62), used illicit drugs in the past year (OR=3.31-3.98), or showed both social and occupational impairment (OR=4.75-4.80).”

Related Links:

— “Integrated approach needed for reducing crime in bipolar disorder patients, “Lucy Piper, Medwire News, March 14, 2013.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (3/14, Hamill) reports, “In what is believed to be the largest study of its kind on depression in new mothers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that about one in seven women have experienced the illness before, during or after pregnancy. The study…involved screening 10,000 new mothers at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC over four years ending in 2011.”

On its “All Things Considered” program and in its “Shots” blog, NPR (3/13, Neighmond) reports that “the study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, finds that among women followed for a year after delivery, some 22 percent had been depressed. The study also recommends that all pregnant women and new mothers be screened for depression.”

Related Links:

— “University of Pittsburgh researchers find depression affects about 1 in 7 new mothers, “Sean D. Hamill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 14, 2013.

USA Today (3/13, Painter) reports that according to a new position paper published online March 13 in the journal Neurology, physicians “should not give in to pressure to prescribe medications that might boost mental performance in healthy children and teens.” The position paper “focuses mostly on inappropriate use of Ritalin [methylphenidate], Adderall [amphetamine, dextroamphetamine mixed salts] and other stimulant medications commonly used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD).” These medicines “are sought out by some parents, teens and college students as grade-boosting ‘study drugs.'”

The Hartford (CT) Courant (3/13, Weir) reports that the authors of the position paper contend that the overprescription of stimulant medications “poses both health risks and ethical concerns: the long-term effects of the medications are unknown, the practice creates the potential for over-medication and dependency, and it jeopardizes the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.” The Courant quotes the paper’s lead author, Dr. William Graf, of the Yale School of Medicine, who said, “You have ethics and professional integrity to consider.”

On its website, CBS News (3/14, Jaslow) reports, “In recent years, a growing number of students have used the medications as ‘study drugs’ to take before tests, and in turn, more parents are requesting AD/HD drugs for kids who don’t meet the criteria for the disorder.” A study published last June in the journal “Pediatrics found the number of AD/HD drug prescriptions for children under 17 climbed 46 percent from 2002 to 2012. Methylphenidate – a psychostimulant drug for AD/HD sold generically or as Ritalin and Concerta – was the top prescription dispensed to adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17.”

The NBC News (3/13, Rettner) “Vitals” blog runs a MyHealthNewsDaily story that reports, “Over the last two decades, there’s been a 20 percent increase in AD/HD diagnoses, and a tenfold increase in the production and consumption of AD/HD medications.” Still, “whether doctors are intentionally prescribing AD/HD drugs to healthy kids, or whether they mistakenly diagnose the children with AD/HD based on children’s reports of their own symptoms, is not clear.” Adolescents “may fake symptoms of the behavioral disorder, or parents may lie to doctors for their children to get the drugs.”

CNN (3/13, Christensen) reports that AD/HD medications may “have serious side effects like cardiac risks, and taking them can be addictive.” Yet, despite the potential for physical side effects and abuse, Dr. Mark Wolraich, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics clinical practice guideline subcommittee on AD/HD, is concerned that some parents “may be too nervous to seek treatment for their children with AD/HD, for whom the drugs would actually be beneficial.”

Also covering the story are Reuters (3/14, Pittman), the Connecticut Post (3/14, Cuda), HealthDay (3/14, Gray), and Medscape (3/14, Anderson).

Related Links:

— “Don’t give kids ADHD drugs as study aid, doctors warn, “Kim Painter, USA Today, March 13, 2013.