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Latest News Around the Web

Some Academics Contend Gun Violence Should Be Considered A Public Health Crisis

The Washington Post (10/3, Dennis) “To Your Health” blog wrote that some academics now contend that gun violence should be considered “a public health crisis.” For example, “US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has referred to the problem as a health epidemic.” Last Thursday, following the mass shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR, President Obama “lamented ‘a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.’”

Related Links:

— “Why we should think of gun violence as a disease, and study it accordingly,” Brady Dennis, Washington Post, October 2, 2015.

Secondhand Smoke May Be Associated With Behavior Issues In Kids

HealthDay (10/2, Preidt) reports a new study indicates “early exposure to secondhand smoke may lead to behavioral problems in children.” The study by the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris “analyzed data from more than 5,200 primary school students in France and found that those exposed to secondhand smoke while in the womb and/or at a young age were at higher risk for behavioral problems, particularly emotional and conduct disorders.” The study was published online in PLoS One.

Related Links:

— “Secondhand Smoke Linked to Behavior Issues in Kids,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, October 1, 2015.

Pilot Program Aims To Train Pediatricians, Schools To Evaluate Troubled Children For Mental Illness

On the CBS Evening News (10/1, story 6, 1:15, Pelley) in response to yesterday’s shootings at Umpqua College in Roseburg, OR, CBS News chief medical correspondent Jonathan LaPook, MD was shown saying that “when it comes to mental illness, early intervention works.” However, “the big problem in the US and elsewhere is access to care.” A new pilot program started this past May at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC is “training the pediatricians” and “schools to evaluate” troubled “kids via tele-medicine.” As it happens, “only 10 percent of the time do those kids then need to be seen face to face by the psychiatrist.” To date, “there are a total of 17 such programs in the” US, all of which operate under the premise that “early intervention, increased access to care, and maybe treating [kids] earlier will make a big difference.”

Related Links:

— “Mass shootings and the mental health connection,” Jonathan Lapook, CBS News, October 1, 2015.

Medical literature may have overstated benefits of treatments for depression

The New York Times (10/1, A23, Carey, Subscription Publication) reports, “Medical literature has overstated the benefits of talk therapy for depression, in part because studies with poor results have rarely made it into journals,” according to a review published Sept. 30 in PLOS One. For the study, researchers “tracked down all the grants funded by the National Institutes of Health to test talk therapy for depression from 1972 to 2008.”

On its “All Things Considered” program and in its “Shots” blog, NPR (10/1, Hamilton) reports that “results from nearly a quarter of” 55 “trials were never published.” When the review’s authors included those results, they “found that the apparent effectiveness was inflated by publication bias.” That bias “may have led psychiatrists and psychologists to be too optimistic about both talk therapy and drug treatment…says” one of the study’s authors.

Related Links:

— “Effectiveness of Talk Therapy Is Overstated, a Study Says,” Benedict Carey, New York Times, September 30, 2015.

Family Structure May Play Role In Teens’ Involvement With Alcohol

The Fox News (9/30) website reports that whether teenagers “who are allowed to drink alcohol at home go on to have negative involvement with alcohol is dependent on the family structure,” according to the results of a 772-participant study conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions. The study found that adolescents “from intact families that were allowed to drink at home had the lowest levels of alcohol use and problems,” whereas “teens who lived in non-intact family environments, and were allowed to drink at home, had the highest levels of negative alcohol involvement.”

Related Links:

— “Study finds family structure plays role in adolescents’ future alcohol attitudes,” Fox News, September 30, 2015.

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