The Fox News (11/25) website reports that according to a study by University of Michigan School of Nursing and published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, adolescents “prescribed sleep and anti-anxiety [medications] may be up to 12 times more likely to abuse them compared to teens who have never received these prescriptions.” Investigators arrived at that conclusion after surveying “more than 2,700 middle and high school students online from the Detroit area twice annually from 2009 to 2012.” The study authors suggested that “substance abuse assessments, in addition to strict limitations on prescription refills, may help reduce the number of teens that abuse prescription” medicines. The piece also points out that a 2011 survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that three percent of US teens abuse sleep and anti-anxiety medicines.

Related Links:

— “Abuse of sleep, anti-anxiety drugs a growing issue among teenagers, study shows,” Fox News, November 24, 2014.

Huffington Post (11/25, Gregoire) reports that a study published in the journal Social Science and Medicine examined the growing rate of diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) “in five countries where AD/HD diagnosis and treatment rates increased dramatically – the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil.” The study suggested that “while AD/HD has been medicalized in the US since the 1960s, other countries have been slower to medicalize the condition.” However, “it wasn’t until the 1990s…that AD/HD diagnosis and treatment migrated from North America to be increasingly applied internationally.”

Related Links:

— “Worldwide ADHD Rates Are Higher Than Ever, And It Might Be America’s Fault,” Carolyn Gregoire, Huffington Post, November 24, 2014.

Bloomberg News (11/24, Cortez) reports that according to a study published Nov. 23 in The Lancet Psychiatry, “a handful of counseling sessions for people who tried to kill themselves significantly reduced the chances they would make another attempt.” After analyzing data on some 65,000 Danes who tried to commit suicide during the 1992 to 2010 time frame, researchers “found six to 10 sessions of talk therapy reduced suicide attempts by 27 percent and deaths by 38 percent in just one year.” What’s more, “the benefits lasted as long as two decades, they found.” BBC News (11/24) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “Counseling Shown to Reduce Repeat Attempts at Suicide,” Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg News, November 24, 2014.

The Dallas Morning News (11/24, Yasmin) reports on the rise and fall of suicide rates as they relate to the economy, saying that “suicide rates have spiked during every recession since the Great Depression and have dropped during times of economic growth.” Additionally, several studies have indicated a “relationship between a bad economy and higher rates of suicide, especially among men.” For example, for every rise of one percent in unemployment between 2008 and 2010, “there was a one percent increase in the suicide rate. The state with the strongest correlation between unemployment and suicide was Texas.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide rates rise and fall with economy, especially in Texas,” Seema Yasmin, Dallas Morning News, November 23, 2014.

MedPage Today (11/22, Johnson) reported that according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting, patients with gout may “face a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared with people without gout.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after using “data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical records database representative of the UK general population,” to identify “59,224 individuals with gout (70.8% male, mean age 65.3 years) and matched them to 238,805 controls without gout (71.1% male, mean age 65.3 years) based on age, sex, body mass index, date of study entry, and year of enrollment.” After adjustment for confounding factors, “the multivariate hazard ratio of AD among those with gout was 0.76 (95% CI 0.66 to 0.87), translating to a 24% lower risk of AD among people with a history of gout compared to those without.”

Related Links:

— “Gout May Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease,” Kate Johnson, MedPage Today, November 21, 2014.