Bloomberg News (6/26, Ostrow) reports, “Taking prescription painkillers without a medical need increased 75 percent from 2002 to 2010, and most users were men, according to the first study to look at who is likely to abuse the drugs and how often it occurs.” A research letter published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that men and people between the ages 26 and 49 experienced the greatest increase in prescription medicine abuse, and that over 15,500 people died from overdosing on medicines such as oxycodone — more than twice the number recorded in 2002.

MedPage Today (6/26, Walsh) reports, “To see if this skyrocketing rate of fatal overdoses was accompanied by an overall increase in nonmedical use of these painkillers,” researchers “analyzed data from the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health. … The analysis showed no increase in the number of people reporting any nonmedical use of prescription painkillers, or use on 1 to 200 days in the past year. But the total number of days of use rose by 35% to 612,829,084 in 2010 from 451,031,411 in 2002.”

According to Medscape (6/26, Fox), the study’s lead author “reports that during the study period, the rate of chronic (at least 200 days per year) nonmedical use of the drugs increased significantly (P < .05), although the overall number of people using these drugs for nonmedical purposes did not change." WebMD (6/26) reports that the "study shows the number of people who abused prescription pain killers for more than 200 days in the last year rose by nearly 75% between 2002-03 and 2009-10." However, "estimates for overall past-year abuse have stayed about the same since 2002." Related Links:

— “Prescription Painkiller Abuse Surged In U.S., Study Finds, “Nicole Ostrow , Bloomberg News, June 25, 2012.

HealthDay (6/23, Holohan) reported, “Teens who engaged in more moderate-to-vigorous outdoor activity reported better health and social functioning than their peers who spent hours in front of television and computer screens,” according to a study published in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics. Of the 1,216 teens studied, those “who had the highest perceived health in the study spent an average of 2.5 hours more per day playing sports or doing other high-intensity activity than their least-active counterparts.” What’s more, “youths in the study overall spent an average of 3.3 hours a day playing video games, watching television or doing other sedentary activities, compared with only 2.1 hours in physical activity.”

Related Links:

— “Active, Outdoor Teens Are Happier Teens: Study, “Ellin Holohan, HealthDay, June 22, 2012.

In a lengthy piece in its magazine section, the New York Times (6/24, MM24, Interlandi, Subscription Publication) reported, “Deinstitutionalization, the systematic closure of state psychiatric hospitals, was codified by the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 and supported by patients’ rights laws secured state by state. Chief among those laws were strict new standards: only people who posed an imminent danger to themselves or someone else could be committed to a psychiatric hospital or treated against their will.” However, “in the decades since, the sickest patients have begun turning up in jails and homeless shelters with a frequency that mirrors that of the late 1800s.” Such patients also end up in the emergency department. The article detailed the story of Joseph Interlandi, the article author’s father and a patient with bipolar disorder who was bounced around between the ED, jail cells, and short-term psychiatric hospitals before finally receiving long-term psychiatric help through a community mental-health center.

Related Links:

— “When My Crazy Father Actually Lost His Mind, “Jeneen Interlandi, , June 22 , 2012.

Reuters (6/21, Norton) reported that according to a data analysis published online May 15 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, report that clinical trials of schizophrenia medications reveal that increasing numbers of participants appear to be responding to the comparison placebos which contain no active medication whatsoever. Researchers at the US Food and Drug Administration arrived at that conclusion after examining 32 clinical trials of pharmaceutical company data submitted to FDA during the years 1991 to 2008. Review author Thomas P. Laughren, MD, pointed out the importance of discovering the reasons why responses to placebo are increasing. The failure likelihood of clinical studies with bigger placebo responses is increased and may discourage pharmaceutical makers from development of new medications for schizophrenia.

Related Links:

— “Rising placebo response seen in schizophrenia trials, “Amy Norton, Reuters, June 21, 2012.

On its front page, the Boston Globe (6/21, A1, Kowalczyk) reports that shared electronic mental health records within Partners HealthCare system has raised privacy issues. According to Dr. David Blumenthal, Partners’ chief health information and innovation officer, “It’s one thing to give your psychiatrist the right to share your information [with certain doctors], it’s another to enter your data into a system that makes it available with relative ease to an unknown number of physicians who may be involved in your care … There are groups who are very uncomfortable with their records being shared with people they have not specifically designated.” Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said the new health information exchange will share patient records online across clinicians, “but only with patients’ permission.”

Related Links:

— “As records go online, clash over mental care privacy, “Liz Kowalczyk, The Boston Globe, June 21, 2012.

The AP (6/21, Freking) reports, “The Veterans Affairs Department hopes to reduce the risk of suicide among veterans by making greater use of video conferences between patients and doctors and by gradually integrating its electronic health records with those maintained by the Defense Department, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki told mental health professionals” who attended a suicide prevention held Wednesday in Washington, DC. Shinseki “oversees a department that members of Congress have criticized heavily in recent months for overstating how frequently patients are able to see a doctor or other mental health professional.” But, according to the AP, “as many as two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are not enrolled” in VA healthcare. As Shinseki put it during his Wednesday conference remarks, VA “can’t influence and help those we don’t see.”

Stars And Stripes (6/21, Shane) points out that during Wednesday’s conference, Shinseki “called for a national commitment to end military suicides, ‘not just controlling, reducing or managing those at risk.'” The “official theme of the conference this year is ‘back to basics,’ a call by officials to ensure that all caregivers are equipped with fundamental suicide prevention principles. But after the first day, the unofficial theme could have been ‘frustration despite progress,’ as mental health officials lamented lingering difficulty stopping suicide even after years of focusing on the issue.”

The American Forces Press Service (6/21, Parrish) notes, “The ongoing battle against service member and veteran suicide requires community, commitment, and attention to three critical areas, a senior Defense Department official said” on Wednesday. Addressing “attendees at the annual DOD and Department of Veterans Affairs suicide prevention conference, Dr. Jonathan Woodson,” assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, “said employing vigilance, reducing stigma and sharing success stories are essential to the struggle to end suicide.” The conference, which began Wednesday and “ends June 22, drew hundreds of health care [professionals], researchers, and others from what Woodson called a broad community of people from government and private industry working to understand and defeat the occurrence of suicide in the ranks and among the nation’s military veterans..”

USAF Monitoring Social Media Sites For Potential Suicides. The Washington Times (6/21) reports that the US Air Force (USAF) “plans to increase its monitoring of its airmen on Facebook and other social media sites for signs of personal distress.” That is according to Air Force Maj. Michael McCarthy, who on Wednesday “spoke at a suicide prevention conference sponsored” by VA and the DOD.

Related Links:

— “VA looking to technology to reduce suicide risks,”Kevin Freking, Associated Press, June 20, 2012.

HealthDay (6/21, Esposito) reports, “Lingering symptoms from combat-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) — even ‘mild’ cases — may persist for years,” according to a study presented at the American Headache Society’s annual meeting. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after looking “at 500 veterans who underwent general health and depression screenings between 2008 and 2011 at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center and were found to have symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome.” Notably, “whether the injury had occurred two years or eight years earlier made no significant difference in frequency or intensity of symptoms. And the type of injury made no difference.”

Related Links:

— “For Combat Vets, Brain Injury Symptoms Can Last Years, “Lisa Esposito, HealthDay, June 20, 2012.

USA Today (6/21, Lloyd) reports that, according to a study appearing today in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, eating disorders appear to be common in older women. The online study of some 1,849 US women found that “13% of women ages 50 and older struggle with the problem — some for the first time in their lives. Eating disorders are more common in women than men and include purging, binge eating, excessive dieting and excessive exercising.”

Related Links:

— “Eating disorders are common in older women, study shows., “Janice Lloyd, USA Today, June 21, 2012.

The New York Times (6/21, Parker-Pope) “Well” blog reports, “The emotional toll of a heart attack can be so severe that an estimated one in eight patients who survive the experience develop post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that doubles the risk of dying of a second heart attack, according to new research” by the from Columbia University Medical Center. The Times adds, “While it has long been known that a heart attack affects both physical and mental health, most doctors and patients are not aware that the emotional stress of a life-threatening heart event can develop into full-blown” PTSD.

The Los Angeles Times (6/21, Khan) “Booster Shots” blog reports that investigators “looked at the results from 24 studies involving nearly 2,400 heart patients, and found that about 12% of heart attack patients went on to develop PTSD symptoms.” The researchers reported that “4% of heart patients met the full criteria for the disorder.” The investigators “also found that those heart attack patients with PTSD symptoms were twice as likely to have a second heart attack or die as the heart attack patients without PTSD symptoms.”

Related Links:

— “Heart Attack Survivors May Develop P.T.S.D., “Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times, June 20, 2012.

ABC World News (6/18, story 10, 0:35, Sawyer) reported, “Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University did something unprecedented. They compared stress levels across the country and found that stress has spiked in the past 25 years 18% among women, 24% among men.” However, they “did find that stress goes down as we age.”