MedPage Today (2/16, Monaco) reports “people who battled COVID-19…had a higher risk of multiple mental health conditions,” according to researchers who found that “among those who survived the first 30 days of COVID-19 infection, there was a 60%…increased risk for having any new mental health diagnosis or a new mental health-related drug prescription compared with those who were never infected.” This risk “was largely driven by an uptick in mental health-related drug prescriptions, which increased by 86%,” the study published in The BMJ found. Moreover, “COVID-19 survivors saw significantly higher risks for developing anxiety disorders…which included a higher risk for generalized anxiety disorder, mixed anxiety disorder, and panic disorder.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (2/16, Marabito) reports, “Adults with higher aging satisfaction were more likely to have improved health and well-being later in life,” investigators concluded after having “analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a national, diverse, longitudinal sample of 13,752 U.S. adults aged older than 50 years.” The findings were published online in JAMA Network Open.

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— “Higher aging satisfaction improves subsequent health outcomes “Maria Marabito, Healio, February 16, 2022

The Washington Post (2/15, A1, Achenbach) reports, “The United States has recorded more than 1 million ‘excess deaths’ since the start of the pandemic, government mortality statistics show, a toll that exceeds the officially documented lethality of the coronavirus and captures the broad consequences of the health crisis that has entered its third year.” The country’s “excess deaths figure surpassed the milestone last week, reaching 1,023,916, according to Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.” While “the vast majority of the excess deaths are due to the virus, the CDC mortality records also expose swollen numbers of deaths from heart disease, hypertension, dementia and other ailments across two years of pandemic misery.”

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

Healio (2/15, Herpen) reports, “Psychological pain is linked with levels of physical pain and recent suicidal acts, as well as depression symptom severity,” researchers concluded in a study including “a total of 371 patients (259 women) aged 18 to 71 years who were admitted for a major depressive episode according to DSM-IV criteria between 2010 and 2017 to the department of psychiatric emergency and acute care at” a hospital in France. The findings were published online Feb. 8 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

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— “Physical pain, depression symptoms, suicidal acts all indicators of psychological pain “Robert Herpen, Healio, February 15, 2022

HealthDay (2/15, Preidt) reports people who abuse amphetamines may be “five times more likely to develop psychosis than non-users, “researchers concluded after analyzing “data on more than 74,600 illicit amphetamine users in Taiwan and a comparison group of more than 298,000 non-users matched for age and sex.” The findings were published online Feb. 14 in the journal Evidence-Based Mental Health.

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— “Psychosis Risk Rises When People Abuse ‘Speed’ “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, February 15, 2022