The New York Times (9/4, O’Connor) “Well” blog reports, “Research published [online] on Monday in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine shows that children with autism spectrum disorders, who typically have difficulty in communicating and forming relationships, are far more likely to be bullied than their” peers without autism. The study “data, collected from a nationally representative sample of 920 middle- and high-school students with an autism disorder, shows that 46 percent have been bullied.” In contrast, “in the general adolescent population, an estimated 10.6 percent of children have been bullied.”

HealthDay (9/4, Reinberg) reports, “Some of the most common factors of the victims of bullying included having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), poor social skills and taking more general education classes,” the study also found. Reuters (9/4, Seaman) also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “School Bullies Prey on Children With Autism, “Anahad O’Connor, New York Times, September 3, 2012.

HealthDay (8/30, Preidt) reports, “A ‘happy’ gene that affects females but not males may explain why women are often happier than men,” according to a study published online in the journal Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry. After analyzing “data from 193 women and 152 men who were assessed for happiness and underwent DNA testing as part of a long-term study of mental health,” researchers found that “women with the low-expression version of the MAOA gene were much happier than other women.” The low-expression MAOA gene appeared not to have the same happiness effect for men.

Related Links:

— “Scientists ID ‘Happy’ Gene in Women, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, August 29, 2012.

Reuters (8/30, Joelving) reports on a study, published in the journal Addiction, which found that substance abusers recently discharged from hospitals face elevated death rates. Researchers discovered that the rates of deaths from overdose and suicide were more than ten times higher for addicts who had been discharged from a hospital for less than a month than those who had been discharged for a year or more. The study authors concluded, “Like prison-release, hospital discharge marks the start of a well-defined period of heightened vulnerability for drug-treatment clients.” Additionally, the researchers suggest that “hospital contact may simply represent a desperate, sometimes final, call for help.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide, OD risks high when addicts leave hospital, “Frederik Joelving, Reuters, August 29, 2012.

Reuters (8/29) reports that a study published online Aug. 27 in the journal Pediatrics (8/29) found that routine screening of abuse in children treated in the ER appears to have improved child abuse detection rates in the Netherlands. Researchers involved with the study tested a checklist that nurses in the ER used to screen for possible abuse. If a child was found to exhibit any of the checklist’s warning signs, the nurse would inform a physician who was responsible for investigating further. While acknowledging that the use of a standard checklist may have improved abuse detection rates in Netherlands, Dr. Michael J. Gerardi, who serves on the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians, doubted that the findings could be applicable in the US. Gerardi suggests that electronic medical records hold more promise than standard checklists in detecting abuse.

Related Links:

— “Routine screening catches child abuse in ER, “Amy Norton, Reuters, August 28, 2012.

Medscape (8/28, Brauser) reports, “Smartphone users are inundated with all types of downloadable applications (apps) for their smartphones, including a myriad of so-called ‘mental health self-help apps.'” As to whether such apps are helpful for patients with psychiatric disorders, psychiatrist Lori Simon, MD, who is a volunteer member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Electronic Health Records, said, “I don’t see them as something to be used instead of being treated by a practitioner, but I see them as adjuncts or if the patients are fairly stable. And if a person is in between treatment sessions, these can be good for them.”