NPR (10/18, Godoy) reports, “Teaching middle schoolers bike riding skills as part of physical education classes may help improve their mental health,” according to “a new study that looked at the effects of a six- to eight-week cycling class taught in schools across the U.S.” and that “involved more than 1,200 students.” The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living.

Related Links:

— “Bike riding in middle school may boost mental health, study finds,”Maria Godoy, NPR, October 18, 2023

HealthDay (10/18, Gotkine) reports, “ChatGPT provides recommendations that align with accepted guidelines for management of mild and severe depression, according to” findings published online Oct. 4 in Family Medicine and Community Health. After presenting vignettes about depression ten times to Chat GPT-3.5 and Chat GPT-4, researchers concluded that “ChatGPT-3.5 and ChatGPT-4 recommended psychotherapy in 95.0 and 97.5 percent of cases, respectively, for mild depression, while primary care physicians recommended psychotherapy in 4.3 percent of cases.” Additionally, “for severe cases, primary care physicians mostly recommended ‘referral for psychotherapy and prescription of pharmacological treatment,’” while “ChatGPT favored this approach more frequently.”

Related Links:

— “ChatGPT Potentially Beneficial for Treating Depression,”Elana Gotkine, HealthDay, October 18, 2023

Psychiatric News (10/18) reports, “States vary widely in the reporting of mental health data to the federal system known as NICS that conducts background checks on people who want to own a firearm,” researchers concluded in a study that “used the Thomson Reuters Westlaw database to identify and collect data on each state’s laws regarding mental health reporting requirements between February and April 2022.” The study team “analyzed data on whether the states required reporting to NICS, how many requirements the states imposed, and the type of mental health and/or substance use-related events that were required to be reported.” The findings were published online Oct. 16 in a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Related Links:

— “State MH Reporting Requirements Vary for Firearm Background Checks, Psychiatric News , October 18, 2023

PatientEngagementHIT (10/17, Heath) reports, “A dementia diagnosis is going to cost you, with new data from the University of Michigan showing that individual personal wealth dropped after a diagnosis while out-of-pocket health care costs nearly doubled.” Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the data “showed personal wealth decreasing from around $79,000 at diagnosis to $58,000 two years after. Meanwhile, out-of-pocket health care costs soared from $4,000 at diagnosis to $8,000 after a dementia diagnosis.” As time wore on, the trend continued: “after eight years, people with dementia saw their wealth drop to an average of $30,500 and had spent twice as much as their peers on health care expenses.”

Related Links:

— “Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Costs Double with Dementia Diagnosis,” Sara Heath, PatientEngagementHIT , October 17, 2023

HealthDay (10/17, Reinberg) reports, “Women are more likely to develop depression after suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI),” investigators concluded after analyzing data from “nine published studies” that “included nearly 700,000 people.” The systematic review revealed that “the risk for depression among women after a TBI was nearly 50% higher than it is for men.” The findings were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Related Links:

— “Women Face Higher Odds of Depression After Head Injury Than Men,”Steven Reinberg, HealthDay , October 17, 2023

HealthDay (10/17, Gotkine) reports, “The rates of major depressive disorder (MDD) vary from 14.5 to 26.5percent among adolescents by race and ethnicity,” researchers concluded after conducting “a cross-sectional analysis of the nationally representative 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, including 10,743 U.S. adolescents aged 12 to 17 years.” The findings were published online Oct. 9 in JAMA Pediatrics. “During the first full calendar year of the pandemic, approximately 1 in 5 adolescents had MDD, and less than half of adolescents who needed treatment had any mental health treatment. Adolescents in racial and ethnic minority groups, particularly Latinx, experienced the lowest treatment rates.”

Related Links:

— “Among Adolescents, Major Depressive Disorder Prevalence Varies by Race, Ethnicity,”Elana Gotkine, HealthDay , October 17, 2023

HealthDay (10/17, Gotkine) reports, “Depressive symptoms in adults are associated with mortality in a graded association,” investigators concluded after conducting “a prospective cohort study to examine the association between depressive symptoms and mortality in a large, nationally representative sample of 23,694 U.S. adults.” The findings were published online Oct. 9 in JAMA Network Open. “ Risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and ischemic fears disease (IHD) mortality was 62%, 79%, and 121% higher, respectively, for those with moderate to severe depressive symptoms compared to those without depressive symptoms. Associations were largely consistent across subgroups and in all sensitivity analyses.”

Related Links:

— “Graded Association ID’d for Depressive Symptoms With Mortality Risk,”Elana Gotkine, HealthDay , October 17, 2023

According to HealthDay (10/16), “For women with myocardial infarction (MI), stress and depression are common at the time of MI and two months later,” a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology shows. Investigators “found that women with MINOCA (myocardial infarction with nonobstructive coronary arteries) were younger and more diverse than women with MI-CAD (myocardial infarction-coronary artery disease).”

Related Links:

— “Stress, Depression Common Among Women With Myocardial Infarction,”Elana Gotkine, HealthDay , October 16, 2023

Medscape (10/16, Banks, Subscription Publication) reports, “Patients who need medications for opioid use disorder (OUD) should continue to receive them prior to surgery, rather than stopping those drugs, as has been the convention,” according to findings from “a new analysis of more than five million surgeries presented at Anesthesiology 2023.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

MedPage Today (10/16, Haelle) reports, “People taking antidepressants lost a similar amount of weight on semaglutide 2.4 mg (Wegovy) compared with those not taking antidepressants, according to a post-hoc analysis of four STEP trials” presented at the ObesityWeek annual meeting. The study revealed that “participants on antidepressants taking the GLP-1 receptor agonist lost an average 10.7% to 19% of their baseline body weight compared to a 9.5% to 15.9% loss in participants not taking antidepressants.”

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)