The Hill (10/6, Weixel) reported that on Friday, the Biden Administration “extended flexibilities regarding controlled substances to be prescribed via telemedicine.” The Drug Enforcement Administration “said in a notice it would allow [clinicians] to continue using telemedicine to prescribe certain controlled substances through the end of 2024.”

Psychiatric News (10/6) reported that “earlier this year, the DEA proposed regulations that would curtail telemedicine prescribing flexibilities extended to qualified health professionals during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency.” The article added, “APA filed two letters in response to these proposed rules in March, urging that the DEA balance common-sense safeguards for DEA enforcement without decreasing access to lifesaving treatment.” The agency “received more than 38,000 comments on the proposed telemedicine rules and last month held two days of public listening sessions related to those rules.” During the public meeting, APA Committee on Telepsychiatry Chair Shabana Khan, MD, said, “Rather than a mandatory blanket requirement [for an in-person visit], the need for an in-person examination of a patient really should be left to the clinical discretion of a practitioner who has the knowledge, skills, and experience to make that decision. … Reducing flexibility in modalities of care increases inequity, forcing practitioners to cherry-pick patients that have the ability to travel to in-person care.”

Related Links:

— “DEA extends pandemic telehealth rules for prescribing controlled substances,”Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill, October 6, 2023

HCPlive (10/6, Derman) reported, “A newly developed prediction model for opioid treatment may help detect risk of opioids by three weeks,” researchers concluded after creating “a prediction model to see if people with opioid use disorder” (OUD) “were at a risk for opioid return during early stages of treatment – which they were.” Included in the participant sample were “2199 adult trial participants aged >18 years old.” The findingswere published online Oct. 4 in JAMA Psychiatry. “A simplified score provided good clinical risk stratification wherein patients with weekly opioid-negative UDS (Urine Drug Screen) results in the 3 weeks after treatment initiation had a 13% risk of return to use compared with 85% for those with 3 weeks of opioid-positive or missing UDS results.”

Related Links:

— “New Decision Analytical Model Predicts Risk of Opioid Use Disorder Return,”Chelsie Derman, HCPlive, October 6, 2023

The New York Times (10/9, Richtel) reports, “Approximately 20 percent of adolescents had symptoms of major depressive disorder” (MDD) “in 2021 – the first full calendar year of the pandemic – but less than half who needed treatment received it,” according to a study that “drew from a nationally representative sample of 10,700 adolescents, ages 12 to 17, whose experiences were recorded by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” The study revealed that “treatment was most lacking for minority adolescents, particularly those who are Latino and mixed-race.” The findings were published online Oct. 9 in JAMA Pediatrics. HCPlive(10/9, Derman) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “Teen Depression Rose Sharply During the Pandemic, but Treatment Didn’t Follow,”Matt Richtel, The New York Times, October 9, 2023

The Washington Post (10/8, Blakemore) reports, “In a sobering analysis, researchers warn that those who’ve had childhood cancer are highly likely to face physical and mental health challenges later in life, with 95% developing a ‘significant health problem’ related to their cancer or treatment by age 45.” Investigators “reviewed 73 studies, including 39 cohort studies that followed patients over time.” Published in JAMA, “the researchdocumented a variety of concerns for young cancer survivors, ranging from subsequent hormone issues to reproductive health challenges, problems with muscles and bones, cognitive impairment and more.”

Related Links:

— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (10/6, Collins) reported, “As many as 1 in 4 teens with autism may be undiagnosed…research suggests.” For the study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, researchers “reviewed school and health records of close to 4,900 16-year-olds living in four northern New Jersey counties in 2014,” with the initial review identifying “1,365 cases that merited a closer look.” Of those cases, “a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was confirmed in 560” and “from the chosen cases, 384 had been diagnosed at age 8, and 176 met the diagnostic criteria for autism at 16.”

Related Links:

— “1 in 4 Teens With Autism May Be Undiagnosed,”Sarah D. Collins, HealthDay, October 6, 2023

HealthDay (10/6, Murez) reported a pilot study “suggests new dads should also be screened for” postpartum depression. For the study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, “researchers interviewed and screened 24 dads using a tool commonly used for screening moms” and found that “about 30% of dads were positive for postpartum depression.” About “90% of study participants were from groups facing structural racism and social factors such as crime and poverty that can worsen mental health.”

Related Links:

— “New Dads Might Also Need Screening for Postpartum Depression,”Cara Murez, HealthDay, October 6, 2023

RevCycle Intelligence (10/6, Bailey) reported, “More than half of new physicians receive over 100 job offers during their training, but many would not choose the health care field again, a survey from AMN Healthcare found.” The “2023 Survey of Final-Year Medical Residents; Many Job Choices, Many Reservations” included “241 responses from physicians in their last year of residency training.” Over 80% “of residents said they sometimes, often, or always experienced feelings of burnout during their training,” and “almost half (45%) of respondents said they often or always experienced burnout.”

Related Links:

— “New Physicians See Plenty of Job Offers but Burnout Impacts Choices,”Victoria Bailey, RevCycle Intelligence, October 6, 2023

The New York Times (10/5, Caron), in light of numerous and often inaccurate TikTok videos and social media posts defining dissociative disorders, differentiates between dissociative identity disorder (DID), depersonalization/derealization disorder, and dissociative amnesia. In spite of “the inclusion of D.I.D. in the D.S.M.-5., the American Psychiatric Association’s official manual of mental disorders, some psychiatrists and psychologists think that patients with symptoms of D.I.D. actually have borderline personality disorder.” According to the APA, people “who experience depersonalization can feel at times as though they are detached from their mind or body…like they are watching events happen to them,” while “derealization…refers to feeling detached from the environment as though the people and things in the world are not real, in some cases appearing like cardboard cutouts.” Dissociative amnesia “occurs in response to a variety of different types of trauma, and involves having blocks of time where you lose your identity and are not able to recall important information about your life.”

Related Links:

— “What Does It Really Mean to Dissociate?,”Christina Caron , The New York Times, October 5, 2023

The New York Times (10/5, Rabin) reports, “The rate of firearm fatalities among children under 18 increased by 87 percent from 2011 through 2021 in the” US, while “the death rate attributable to car accidents fell by almost half, leaving firearm injuries the top cause of accidental death in children,” according to findingsreleased Oct. 5 in a research brief in the journal Pediatrics. The study revealed that “some 2,590 children and teenagers under the age of 18 died of firearm injuries in 2021, up from 1,311 in 2011.”

ABC News (10/5, Martin, Huang) reports, “Researchers looked at data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s injury reporting system,” then “analyzed injuries leading to death from 2011-2021 and nonfatal injuries from 2011-2020.” Overall, the study team “found that fatal injury rates increased from about 14 deaths per 100,000 children in 2011 to over 17 deaths per 100,000 children in 2021,” with “firearm injuries” making “up the biggest portion of those fatal injuries.” HealthDay (10/5, Gotkine) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “Gun Deaths Rising Sharply Among Children, Study Finds,”Roni Rabin, The New York Times, October 5, 2023

NBC News (10/4, Bellamy) reports that researchers have found that “experiencing discrimination may change how the brain and the gut communicate with each other.” This “disruption, the researchers say, could promote behaviors that increase people’s risk of obesity.” The study, which used brain scans, found that “in individuals who reported experiencing high levels of discrimination…photos of unhealthy, high-calorie foods triggered a larger response in the reward processing region of the brain, called the frontal-striatal region.” The findingswere published in Nature Mental Health.

Related Links:

— “Discrimination may disrupt how the brain and the gut talk to each other, raising risk of obesity, study finds,”Claretta Bellamy , NBC News, October 4, 2023