On its website, WUSA-TV Washington (DC) Washington (3/14) reported, “The American Psychiatric Association (APA) no longer classifies sexual masochism, fetishism, transvestism, and sadism as mental disorders, according to The Daily Mail.” Now, “in order for something to be classified as a disorder, a person must ‘feel personal distress about their interest.’ These sexual interests will be renamed in an upcoming edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).”

Related Links:

— “APA: Happy People Who Have Sexual Fetishes No Longer Have Mental Disorder,CBS DC, March 14, 2013.

The Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer (3/15, Johnston) reports, “The world’s largest collection of suicide notes, more than 1,300 in all, is at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.” Researchers there “are using advanced computer technology to analyze the language in the notes and gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts of the people who wrote them. The goal is to create a tool, perhaps within two years, that can help mental health workers assess the likelihood a person will attempt suicide.”

Related Links:

— “Saving lives with world’s largest suicide-note collection, “John Johnston, Cincinnati.com, March 15, 2013.

The AP (3/14, Press) reports, “Young men who have served in the British military are about three times more likely than civilians to have committed a violent offense,” according to a study published online March 15 in The Lancet. One “key predictor was violent behavior before enlisting. Combat duty also raised the risk, as did witnessing traumatic events during deployment or misusing alcohol afterward,” the article notes.

Reuters (3/15, Kelland) reports that researchers arrived at these conclusions after having studied data on some 14,000 UK soldiers who were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq and then cross-checking that data against data derived from criminal records.

BBC News (3/15, Gallagher) reports, “Overall criminal activity was slightly lower in military personnel than in people of the same age in the wider population.” But, “the researchers found violent offending was higher within members of the armed services and there was a ‘stark’ difference in men under 30 – 20.6% of the 2,728 young men followed had committed a violent offence, compared with 6.7% of young mven outside the military.” The majority of “violent offences were assaults.”

Related Links:

— “Study finds British soldiers, vets who had combat duty more likely to commit violent crimes, “Associated Press, The Washington Post, March 14, 2013.

Medwire (3/14, Piper) reports, “Criminal justice problems are relatively common among patients with bipolar disorder [BD], but researchers have identified an array of risk factors that they believe will provide guidance when evaluating patients and identifying preventive strategies,” according to research published online March 7 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. “The factors were identified based on 34,508 wave 2 respondents of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) with valid responses to the mania section.” Notably, “a range of historical, clinical, and contextual factors were found to increase the risk for criminal involvement, but two multivariate analyses indicated the risk was particularly high for patients who were unemployed (odds ratio [OR]=3.89-4.27), of non-White race (OR=3.68-3.93), who had previously been detained as juveniles (OR=4.25-5.17), had a prior arrest while manic or using drugs (OR=3.28-3.62), used illicit drugs in the past year (OR=3.31-3.98), or showed both social and occupational impairment (OR=4.75-4.80).”

Related Links:

— “Integrated approach needed for reducing crime in bipolar disorder patients, “Lucy Piper, Medwire News, March 14, 2013.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (3/14, Hamill) reports, “In what is believed to be the largest study of its kind on depression in new mothers, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that about one in seven women have experienced the illness before, during or after pregnancy. The study…involved screening 10,000 new mothers at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC over four years ending in 2011.”

On its “All Things Considered” program and in its “Shots” blog, NPR (3/13, Neighmond) reports that “the study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, finds that among women followed for a year after delivery, some 22 percent had been depressed. The study also recommends that all pregnant women and new mothers be screened for depression.”

Related Links:

— “University of Pittsburgh researchers find depression affects about 1 in 7 new mothers, “Sean D. Hamill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 14, 2013.