HealthDay (6/13, Mundell) reports, “About one in every seven American kids aged five to 17 underwent some form of mental health treatment in 2021, the latest year for which statistics are available,” according to CDC research that “pegs the percentage of kids who got mental health care in 2021 at 14.9%.” The data also revealed that “rates of mental health care were higher among older kids (aged 12 to 17), nearly 19% of whom received treatment over the prior year, than they were for children aged 5 to 11 (just over 11%).” The findings were published online June 13 in the CDC’s NCHS Data Brief 472.

Related Links:

— “Nearly 15% of School-Age Children in U.S. Have Received Mental Health Treatment,” Ernie Mundell, HealthDay, June 13, 2023

MedPage Today (6/12, Henderson) reports, “Parents of children in palliative care placed the highest value on the child’s quality of life (QoL), but with considerable individual-level variation and substantial change over time, researchers found.” Data from a cohort study of 680 parents of 603 patients show that “QoL garnered the highest mean importance score among the five goals of care assessed at initiation of care.” Next highest importance “to parents was pursuit of health, followed by pursuit of comfort, disease modification, and life extension.” The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (6/12, VanDewater) reports, “From 2018 to 2021, psychiatric disorders were the primary reason for a small portion of physician-assisted suicides in the Netherlands and Belgium,” according to a poster presented at the American Psychiatric Association 2023 Annual Meeting. For the study, researchers “analyzed annual reports from the Regional Euthanasia Review Committees on Euthanasia from the Netherlands and the Reports to the Legislative Chamber by the Federal Control and Evaluation Committee for Euthanasia in Belgium from 2018 to 2021.” The study revealed that “psychiatric disorders accounted for 4% or less of physician-assisted suicides.”

Related Links:

— “Euthanasia for psychiatric reasons uncommon in Belgium, Netherlands,” Kalie VanDewater, Healio, June 12, 2023

MedPage Today (6/12, George) reports, “The shingles vaccine may be linked with a 20% lower dementia risk,” according to “an analysis of 300,000 health records.” The study revealed that “receiving the herpes zoster vaccine (Zostavax) reduced the probability of a new dementia diagnosis over seven years by 3.5 percentage points,” which “corresponded to a 19.9% relative reduction in dementia risk.” The findings were published online in a “preprint paper on medRxiv, which has not yet been peer reviewed.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (6/12, Welsh) reports, “Loneliness frequently plays an important mental health role for women who experience perinatal depression,” investigators concluded in the findings of a 27-study, 537-woman meta-analysis published online Feb. 28 in the journal BMC Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Loneliness contributes to perinatal depression,” Erin T. Welsh, MA, Healio, June 12, 2023