On the front of its Science Times section, the New York Times (12/18, D1, Quenqua, Subscription Publication) reports, “For young people exposed to gun trauma — like the students of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — the road to recovery can be long and torturous, marked by anxiety, nightmares, school trouble and even substance abuse. Witnessing lethal violence ruptures a child’s sense of security, psychiatrists say, leaving behind an array of emotional and social challenges that are not easily resolved.” However, Glenn Saxe, MD, chairman of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center, stated, “The data shows that the majority of people after a trauma, including a school assault, will end up doing OK.”

Related Links:

— “Children Can Usually Recover From Emotional Trauma, “Douglas Quenqua, The New York Times, December 17, 2012.

In continuing coverage, NBC Nightly News (12/17, story 5, 1:25, Williams) reported, “This tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut has already ignited a national conversation about guns, as we have just seen.” However, mental illness has been a “component…in all the serious gun crimes we have covered. One in 17 Americans lives with a serious mental illness, that’s according to the government, and their symptoms range in severity, of course. But fewer than a third of them receive treatment.” Chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman, MD, explained, “Less than 10% of our healthcare dollars are spent on mental healthcare.” While well-to-do people can pay for care and the poor may get some care through Medicaid, other people fall through the cracks.

American Medical News (12/17, Krupa) reports, “Physicians with mental illness are at a higher risk of committing suicide than nonphysicians,” according to a study published online Nov. 5 in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. After evaluating “data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Violent Death Reporting System on 31,636 adult suicide victims in 17 states,” researchers found that “the 203 physicians in the study were more likely than nonphysicians to have a known mental health disorder or to have experienced recent job-related stress.” The piece goes on to note that physicians may be reluctant to seek help for a number of reasons, including the fact that they may be required by their state medical boards to self-report any psychiatric treatment.

Related Links:

— “Doctors shun the help that could cut suicide risk, “Carolyne Krupa, American Medical News, December 17, 2012.

In “The Mind” column for the New York Times (12/18, D5, Subscription Publication), psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman, MD, writes, “In the wake of the terrible shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., national attention has turned again to the complex links between violence, mental illness and gun control.” Dr. Friedman asserts, “All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group.” However, “the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.”

Related Links:

— “In Gun Debate, a Misguided Focus on Mental Illness, “Richard Friedman, The New York Times, December 17, 2012.

The ABC News (12/16, Moisse) “Medical Unit” blog reported, “If you’ve ever felt bullied at work, you’re not alone. A study” published online Dec. 12 in BMJ open “suggests workplace bullying is common, and so is the need for medical intervention.”

MedPage Today (12/15, Neale) reported, “Middle-age, municipal employees who said they were bullied were significantly more likely to be prescribed and reimbursed for at least one psychotropic medication in the next five years (HR 1.51 for women and 2.15 for men).” The study of “6,287 workers (80% female) between the ages of 40 and 60 [who] were not using psychotropic medications at baseline” also revealed that “frequently observing a fellow worker being bullied was similarly associated with subsequent psychotropic medication use for both women (HR 1.53) and men (HR 1.92), the researchers reported.”

Related Links:

— “Workplace Bullying Tied to Psychiatric Tx, “Todd Neale, MedPage Today, December 14, 2012.