Psychiatric News (6/26) reports, “Three in ten young adults who identify as members of sexual minorities experience weight-based discrimination and may have a higher risk of disordered eating behaviors as a result,” investigators concluded after analyzing “data from 1,257 sexual minority women and men aged 18 to 31 years…who had participated in the U.S. Growing Up Today Study as children and adolescents and responded to a follow-up questionnaire in 2013.” The findings were published online June 21 in a brief report in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Related Links:

— “Weight-Based Discrimination Linked to Disordered Eating in Sexual Minority Young Adults,” Psychiatric News, June 26, 2023

According to HCPlive (6/26, Walter) research suggests that there may be a “link between benzodiazepine use and suicidal behavior that warrants further exploration.” Included in the study were “data from 111,550 individuals who attempted suicide and 12,312 suicide victims.” The study revealed “an adjusted odds ratio of 1.74 for hospitalized suicide attempts and 1.45 for those who [died by] suicide in individuals with recent psychiatric history,” and “benzodiazepine dispensing was higher in the 30-day risk period compared to the reference ones.” The findings were published online June 20 in the journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica.

Related Links:

— “Association Found Between Benzodiazepine Use and Suicide Attempts, Suicide,” Kenny Walter, HCPLive, June 26, 2023

Medscape (6/26, Rak, Subscription Publication) reports, “Mothers with obsessive-compulsive disorder are more likely to have adverse pregnancy, delivery, and neonatal outcomes than those without the disorder, according to…research.” The findings of the observational study were published online in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

CNN (6/26, Viswanathan) reports, “Most children in the U.S. who die from an accidental shooting are playing around with guns at home or mistaking them for toys, according to a” study that “suggests that over 90% of guns used in such shooting deaths were left unlocked and loaded.” The study, published in “Injury Epidemiology, looked at cases” of unintentional firearm fatalities among “children under 15” and found that “most of the shootings happened at the victim’s home, where, in 8 out of 10 cases, the gun belonged to an older relative.” Furthermore, “over 40% of the time, these unintentional deaths happened among kids ages 2 to 4, the researchers found.”

Related Links:

— “Most accidental shooting deaths among children involve guns left loaded and unlocked, study finds,” Giri Viswanathan, CNN, June 26, 2023

The AP (6/23, Perrone) reported that xylazine, “a powerful animal sedative in the illicit drug supply, is complicating the U.S. response to the opioid crisis, scrambling longstanding methods for reversing overdoses and treating addiction.” The drug “can cause severe skin wounds, but whether it is leading to more deaths – as suggested by officials in Washington – is not yet clear, according to health and law enforcement professionals on the front lines of efforts in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.”

Related Links:

— “Animal sedative xylazine in fentanyl is causing wounds and scrambling efforts to stop overdoses,” Matthew Perrone, Associated Press, June 23, 2023