HealthDay (12/4, Thompson) reports that “mass shootings and the accompanying carnage” that happen all too often in the US now have some “mental health experts” warning of possible “major consequences for the nation’s psyche.” But, people “struggling to cope with these violent events would do well to remember that it’s still very unlikely that you or yours will become directly involved in a shooting, said” Renee Binder, MD, president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Binder suggested that people “do a reality check and consider that the chances of this happening to someone you love is still very rare.”

Related Links:

— “Making Sense of the Senseless Violence,” Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, December 3, 2015.

USA Today (12/3, Painter) reports that a study published online Dec. 2 in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that “young adults who watch a lot of TV and engage in very little exercise” may encounter problems with thinking in middle age. For the study, researchers “followed more than 3,000 people, starting at an average age of 25 and ending when they took cognitive tests 25 years later.”

The Los Angeles Times (12/3, Kaplan) “Science Now” blog reports that those individuals “who were most likely to get the lowest scores were the ones who watched the most television and the ones who got the least exercise when they were young adults,” with “extreme couch potatoes” having “the greatest risk of intellectual decline.”

Related Links:

— “Study: too much TV, too little exercise might dull young adult brains,” Kim Painter, USA Today, December 2, 2015.

Reuters (11/28, Doyle) reported a study published online Nov. 17 in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggests that Southern California high school students are increasingly using hookahs, e-cigarettes, and other alternative tobacco products, often at the same time. The study showed that around 10 percent of 11th and 12th graders used e-cigarettes or hookahs in the last 30 days.

Related Links:

— “Hookah and e-cigarettes popular with high schoolers,” Kathryn Doyle, Reuters, November 27, 2015.

HealthDay (11/25, Preidt) reported that new research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found that reported alcohol consumption in the previous 30 days among women rose from about “45 percent to more than 48 percent, while it fell among men, from slightly more than 57 percent to just over 56 percent.” The investigators analyzed data from 2002 to 2012 and found that “the average number of drinking days in the past month also increased among women, from 6.8 to 7.3 days, but fell among men, from 9.9 to 9.5 days.” The findings were published online Nov. 23 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Related Links:

— “Women starting to match men’s drinking habits,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay via CBS News, November 25, 2015.

Medscape (11/27, Brauser) reports that a study suggests that “not only is major depression common in black patients, it’s also associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events.” The “analysis of more than 3000 participants from the Jackson Heart Study, which is comprised of black individuals from Jackson, Mississippi, showed that those with major depressive symptoms at baseline (22%) had almost twice the hazard of having a stroke or CHD up to 10 years later compared with those without depressive symptoms.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)