HealthDay (12/14, Gray) reports, “As the US Supreme Court prepares to enter the debate about gay marriage, a new study” published online Dec. 13 in the American Journal of Public Health “suggests that being in a legally recognized relationship of any kind may reduce feelings of nervousness, hopelessness and depression.” After analyzing data on some 47,000 adults, “researchers found that psychological distress was lower among people in a legally recognized relationship, whether gay or straight. Those in same-sex relationships that were legally recognized — either as marriage or as a registered domestic partnership — also revealed less psychological distress.”

Related Links:

— “Legal Unions, Including Marriage, Boost Mental Health for Gay People: Study, “Barbara Bronson Gray, HealthDay, December 13, 2012.

HealthDay (12/14, Gray) reports that a study published online Dec. 13 in the journal Stroke “found that people over 65 with the highest levels of psychosocial distress — including depression, a negative outlook and dissatisfaction with life — had triple the risk of death from stroke as compared with those who had lower levels of stress.”

WebMD (12/14, Goodman) reports that for the study, Susan A. Everson-Rose, PhD, MPH, of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and colleagues “surveyed more than 4,000 adults over age 65 in the three neighborhoods in Chicago. The majority of people who took part were women and African-American. Their average age was 77.”

Many Cardiac Arrest Survivors May Also Suffer From Psychological Distress. Reuters (12/14, Stokes) reports that according to a review published online Dec. 3 in the journal Resuscitation, approximately 25% of patients who survive an episode of cardiac arrest may end up with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, or anxiety over the long term. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after analyzing data from 11 studies. The review’s authors pointed out the importance of identifying such issues to help treat these mental-health disorders. Reuters also notes that only one out of 10 people who experience cardiac arrest survive. For that reason, the long-term psychological needs of survivors may have been overlooked.

Related Links:

— “Stress, Depression Linked to Raised Stroke Risk in Seniors, “Barbara Bronson Gray, HealthDay, December 13, 2012.

The Toronto (CAN) Star (12/12, Hall) reports on a study published in the December issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry that examines the differences in how a tobacco-cessation medication, naltrexone, affects men and women. According to the article, “the study of 700 smokers — all of them using tobacco patches — showed those men using” the medication “increased their chances of quitting from 17 to 30 per cent after a 12-week trial.” However, for women, “the increase in quit rates were negligible.”

Related Links:

— “Anti-smoking drug Naltrexone has his and hers effects, “Joseph Hall, The Toronto Star, December 11, 2012.

Medscape (12/12) reports, “There is fair evidence to support the effectiveness of psychological therapies for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents,” according to a review published online Dec. 12 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. After analyzing data from 14 studies encompassing 758 patients, researchers found that “children and teens diagnosed with PTSD showed signs of improvement up to three months following psychological therapy, and they called for more studies to assess its long-term benefits.”

In its “Well” blog and in print, the New York Times (12/11, D6, Bakalar) reports that “an economist has published an unusual study in the December issue of PLoS One,” which found that “about half of the population has a variation in a specific gene connected to nicotine addiction that makes them more likely to respond to cigarette tax increases.” After looking at data on 6,178 adults in a national health survey, Jason M. Fletcher, an associate professor of health policy at Yale, found that “about half of the subjects had a variation in a gene for a nicotine receptor in the brain that is thought to control the pleasure reward of nicotine consumption.” The article details that Fletcher “found that a 100 percent increase in taxes had a significant effect only on people with this particular genetic variation in DNA sequence,” and the “other half of the population was immune to the effect of taxation.”

Related Links:

— “Efficacy of Tobacco Taxes Tied to Gene Type, “Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times, December 10, 2012.