The Washington Post (8/9, Kam) reports, “Caring for a loved one with a serious illness, “ including dementia, “can be daunting for anyone,” and “for some men, especially those who are older, the transition can also be unfamiliar and jarring.” Last year, “41 percent of adults providing unpaid adult care were men, according to a Washington Post analysis of the latest American Time Use Survey data,” but “the gender gap in unpaid adult care continues to grow, with women providing most of the care.”

Related Links:

— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

Psychiatric News (8/9) reports, “Patients with depression who scheduled an appointment to see a psychiatrist between July 2020 and October 2022 were less likely to miss or cancel the appointment if it was virtual compared with in person,” investigators concluded after examining “electronic health records for 12,894 patients aged 10 or older with a diagnosis of depression who scheduled 586,266 psychiatric outpatient appointments at Johns Hopkins Medicine between November 2017 and October 2022.” The study team then “compared the number of in-person and telepsychiatry appointments that patients completed, cancelled, or failed to show up to before the pandemic with these outcomes of in-person and telepsychiatry appointments scheduled from July 2020 to October 2022.” The findings were published online Aug. 9 in the journal Psychiatric Services, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association.

Related Links:

— “Patients Found Less Likely to Cancel Telepsychiatry Visits, Study Shows, Psychiatric News , August 9, 2023

Healio (8/8, Bascom) reports, “Healthcare support workers, social or behavioral health workers and registered nurses were at an increased risk for death by drug overdose compared with non-healthcare workers,” investigators concluded in a study “based on data from a nationally representative cohort from the 2008 American Community Survey including 176,000 healthcare workers and 1,662,000 non-healthcare workers aged 26 years or older who were followed through 2019.” The findings were published online Aug. 8 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

HealthDay (8/8, Murez) quotes Smita Das, MD, PhD, MPH, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Addiction Psychiatry, who said, “Healthcare workers are often subject to incredible amounts of stress.” Dr. Das, who had no involvement in the study, added, “Early on this has to do with rigorous training and costs of that training, and later it has to do with job responsibilities.” Dr. Das also “said the analysis sheds light on an important topic – the health of those who look out for other people’s health.”

Related Links:

— “Three groups of health care workers face an increased risk for death from drug overdoses,”Emma Bascom, Healio , August 8, 2023

The Hill (8/7, Klar) reports, “Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools provided responses that promoted harmful eating disorder content in response to queries tested by researchers,” investigators concluded in the findings of a report release Aug. 7 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The report found that “popular AI tools, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and Google’s rival tool Bard, provided responses that gave guides or advice on how to take part in harmful disordered eating behavior, such as stimulating vomiting or how to hide food from parents, according to the report.”

In an ethics column in the Washington Post (8/7), Geoffrey A. Fowler observes that “with eating disorders, the problem isn’t just AI making things up.” Rather, “AI is perpetuating very sick stereotypes we’ve hardly confronted in our culture.” Not only is it “disseminating misleading health information,” but it is also “fueling mental illness by pretending to be an authority or even a friend.”

Related Links:

— “AI chatbots provided harmful eating disorder content: report,”Rebecca Klar, The Hill , August 7, 2023

mHealth Intelligence (8/8, Melchionna) reports, “Using survey data on patient attitudes toward mental health services and depression screening,” research published online July 19 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research “indicated that Black American women are comfortable with using voice or video calls to communicate with mental health” clinicians. The 395-participant study also suggested that “Black American women are commonly affected by depression.

Related Links:

— “Black Women are Open to Mental Health Services Via Mobile Technology,”Mark Melchionna, mHealth Intelligence, August 8, 2023

According to CNN (8/7, McPhillips), “only about a third of adults with opioid use disorder” (OUD) “received any type of treatment for substance use,” and only about one in five “received medication to treat” the disorder, according to findings published online Aug. 7 in JAMA Network Open. The study also “supports previous research that has found telehealth to improve rates of treatment,” in that “those receiving substance use treatment via telehealth were nearly 40 times more likely to receive medications for opioid use disorder than those who did not receive telehealth treatment, the researchers found.”

According to HealthDay (8/7, Mann), after analyzing “data from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration,” investigators found that “only 36% received any substance use treatment, and only 22% received medications for opioid use disorder.” Bloomberg (8/7, Jones, Griffin, Subscription Publication) also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “Only 1 in 5 adults with an opioid use disorder received medication to treat it in 2021,” Deidre McPhillips, CNN, August 7, 2023

MedPage Today (8/7, Henderson) reports, “For young people with opioid use disorder (OUD), buprenorphine costs have declined overall but with drastic variation by payer type,” researchers concluded in findingspublished online Aug. 7 in a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics. After “examining buprenorphine prescriptions dispensed for U.S. youth ages 12 to 19,” investigators found that “mean daily out-of-pocket costs declined 57.6% from 2015 through 2020 (from $4.03 to $1.71), with an increasing percentage of prescriptions paid by Medicaid.” Nevertheless, “those costs were approximately 24 times higher with commercial payers and 119 times higher for self-pay than with Medicaid in 2020,” the study team concluded.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (8/4, Solomon) reported, “Approximately one-third of patients 50 years or younger with sudden cardiac death (SCD) have positive toxicology for illicit drugs,” investigators concluded in findings published online ahead of print in the journal Heart Rhythm. The study, which “identified rates of illicit drug use in younger patients with SCD using data from 523 patients with confirmed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (ages 18 to 50 years) with a toxicological assessment (April 2019 to April 2021),” revealed that “32.5% of patients had either positive toxicology for illicit drugs (138 patients) or negative toxicology but reported regular drug use (32 patients).”

Related Links:

— “Illicit Drug Use Seen in One-Third of Sudden Cardiac Deaths in Younger Adults,”Lori Solomon, HealthDay, August 4, 2023

The New York Times (8/4, A1, Belluck) reported the FDA has approved Zurzuvae (zuranolone), “the first pill for postpartum depression, a milestone considered likely to increase recognition and treatment of” the condition. According to the Times, “Clinical trial data show the pill works quickly, beginning to ease depression in as little as three days, significantly faster than general antidepressants, which can take two weeks or longer to have an effect.”

NBC News (8/4, Bendix, Kopf) reported, “The medication…is taken daily for two weeks.” Researchers found, “in a pair of clinical trials involving women who experienced severe depression after having a baby, the drug improved symptoms – such as anxiety, difficulty sleeping, loss of pleasure, low energy, guilt or social withdrawal – as early as three days after taking the first pill.”

Also covering the story were CNN (8/4, Howard), Reuters (8/5), The Hill (8/4, Robertson), the AP (8/4, Perrone), HealthDay (8/5, Mann), MedPage Today (8/4, Monaco), and Medscape (8/4, Marcus, Subscription Publication).

Related Links:

— “FDA approves first pill for postpartum depression,”Aria Bendix and Marina Kopf, NBC News, August 4, 2023

According to Healio (8/3, Herpen), “rates of new-onset mental health conditions were higher in U.S. soldiers with a history of military-related traumatic brain injury” (TBI), “while increased risk for suicide was both directly and indirectly associated with TBI history.” Investigators arrived at this conclusion after having examined data on “more than 860,000 U.S. soldiers, including more than 108,000 with history of” TBI. The findings were published online July 31 in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Rates of new-onset mental health conditions higher in US soldiers with history of TBI,”Robert Herpen, Healio, August 3, 2023