USA Today (2/25, Leger) reports that a study from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics indicates that “deaths from prescription narcotic painkillers have soared as the opioid drugs became more popular and powerful.” The data indicated that “four out of five people who used a prescription narcotic painkiller in 2011 to 2012 took pills equal to or stronger than morphine.” The investigators also found that “the percentage of people who took painkillers stronger than morphine, which include such drugs as fentanyl, hydromorphone, methadone and oxycodone, grew from 17% in 1999 to 37% in 2012.”

Related Links:

— “CDC: Deaths soared as narcotic painkillers grew popular,” Donna Leinwand Leger, USA Today, February 25, 2015.

Reuters (2/25, Kelland) reports that a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry suggests that people who have received the diagnosis of major depression may have up to triple the likelihood of committing certain violent crimes, such as assault, sexual offenses and robbery, or of committing an act of self-harm, compared to people who have not been diagnosed with major depression. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after studying data on some 47,158 people in Sweden and then examining data on some 898,454 matched, mentally healthy controls. The study also found, however, that the vast majority of people with depression committed no violent crimes or criminal acts at all.

Related Links:

— “Clinically depressed three times more likely to commit violent crime,” Kate Kelland, Reuters, February 24, 2015.

The Los Angeles Times (2/24, Healy) “Science Now” blog reports that in an editorial published Feb. 23 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the American Bar Association, the American Public Health Association and “seven medical specialty societies…joined forces to declare gun-related injuries, which annually kill an average of 32,000 Americans and harm nearly twice that number, ‘a public health crisis’ that should be studied and solved ‘free of political influence or restriction.’”

Together, the societies “issued a ‘call to action,’ and declared their collective backing for universal background checks, a ban on military-style assault weapons and large capacity magazines, more federal support for gun-injury research, and an end to laws that would punish physicians who discuss the safety of gun ownership with their patients.”

Related Links:

— “Gun injuries are a public health emergency, nine organizations say,” Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2015.

ABC World News (2/23, story 7, 0:18, Muir) reported, “Ten students and two visitors at Wesleyan University” in Middletown, CT, were “treated for an overdose of the drug called ‘molly.’” Eight people remain in the hospital, with “two in critical condition.”

The New York Times (2/24, A20, Hussey, Schlossberg, Subscription Publication) reports that molly is “a club drug also known, sometimes in different forms, as MDMA or Ecstasy, and which has been linked to a number of overdoses and deaths in recent years.” And, “according to the National Institutes of Health, 12.8 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds have used MDMA, Ecstasy or Molly at some point in their lives.”

Related Links:

— “12 at Wesleyan University Are Hospitalized for Drug Overdoses,” Kristen Hussey and Tatiana Schlossberg, New York Times, February 23, 2015.

The Hampton Roads (VA) Virginian-Pilot (2/23, Simpson) reports that “a widening mix of frail elderly people and those with behavior problems” are landing “in nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, group homes and supportive-housing situations.” About 10 percent of the more than 17,000 people discharged from Virginia psychiatric hospitals between 2010 and last year “went to assisted-living facilities, adult care homes or nursing homes, according to the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.” Robert Palmer, MD, MPH, who directs the Glennan Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said, “They are invisible populations, but they are there, and they are increasing in numbers.”

Related Links:

— “Senior care facilities mix the frail and the disturbed,” Elizabeth Simpson, Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot, February 22, 2015.