The AP (8/20, Fingerhut, Anderson) reported, “Anxiety in the United States over COVID-19 is at its highest level since winter, a new poll shows, as the delta variant rages, more states and school districts adopt mask and vaccination requirements and the nation’s hospitals once again fill to capacity.” The poll (PDF) published by Associated Press-NORC Center shows that “41% [of 1,729 adults] are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ worried about themselves or their family becoming infected with the virus. That is up from 21% in June, and about the same as in January, during the country’s last major surge, when 43% were extremely or very worried.”

HealthDay (8/20, Preidt) reported the poll also found that “nearly six in 10 favor requiring full vaccination for people to travel on airplanes or attend crowded public events, while roughly one-quarter oppose such measures.” The Hill (8/20, Vakil) also reported on the poll.

Related Links:

— “COVID anxiety rising amid delta surge, AP-NORC poll finds “James Anderson and Hannah Fingerhut, AP, August 20, 2021

HealthDay (8/19, Thompson) reports research indicates that “some key brain functions can improve in people as they age, researchers” concluded after examining “three components of mental ability in a group of more than 700 Taiwanese people between 58 and 98 years of age,” including “alerting, the enhanced vigilance that triggers one’s attention to incoming information; orienting, the ability to shift brain resources to a particular location in our environment,” and “executive inhibition, the ability to ignore distractions to focus on what’s important.” The study revealed that with “increasing age, many people appear to get better at focusing on important matters and ignoring distractions – tasks that support other critical brain functions like memory, decision making and self-control.” The findings were published online in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Related Links:

— “Neuro Surprise: Some Brain Skills Might Improve With Age “Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, August 19, 2021

MedPage Today (8/19, Grant) reports, “Nearly half of emergency medicine (EM) residents in the U.S (45.1%) reported being exposed to some form of mistreatment,” ranging “from discrimination based on race or gender to verbal and physical abuse,” according to findings from “a large survey study” published in JAMA Network Open. Researchers “also found a significant association between the frequency of mistreatment and reports of suicidal thoughts among EM trainees.”

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (8/19, Gramigna) reports, “Co-occurrence of multiple abuse subtypes across childhood and adulthood was linked to higher psycho-social risk and suicide attempt history among military service members hospitalized due to suicide risk,” investigators concluded in a “latent class analysis” that sought “to elucidate how these abuse subtypes co-occur during childhood and adulthood among a high-risk sample of 115 military service members and adult beneficiaries who underwent psychiatric hospitalization after a suicide-related crisis.” The findings were published online ahead of print in the October issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.
“ Three latent classes were identified: Multiple and Persistent Abuse (Class One: 29.6%), Childhood Physical and Persistent Emotional Abuse (Class Two: 27.0%), and Minimal Abuse (Class Three: 43.5%). Females were more likely than males to report a history of Multiple and Persistent Abuse. After controlling for gender, the Multiple and Persistent Abuse Class had higher scores of depressive symptoms and hazardous drinking, poorer sleep quality, and increased social stress than the Minimal Abuse Class. Moreover, the Multiple and Persistent Abuse Class was associated with increased likelihood of lifetime” suicide attempts.

Related Links:

— “Abuse subtypes affect suicide risk among military psychiatric inpatients “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 19, 2021

Healio (8/18, Gramigna) reports, “Patients hospitalized with serious mental illness had a cardiometabolic profile that conferred increased risk for diabetes and hypertension-related mortality,” researchers concluded in a study that “used a form of propensity score matching called entropy balancing to compare cardiometabolic health of a sample of the general population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey…datasets with that of inpatients hospitalized in an urban psychiatric hospital in Texas.” The study team “analyzed data via independent linear regression models, with outcome variables including blood pressure, blood glucose, triglyceride to high-density lipoprotein…ratio, total cholesterol and BMI.” The findings of the “observational study” were published online ahead of print in the October issue of the journal Psychiatry Research.

Related Links:

— “Inpatients with severe mental illness at increased risk for diabetes, hypertension “Joe Gramigna, Healio, August 18, 2021