The New York Times (7/14, A1, Katz, Sanger-Katz) reports, “Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30% in 2020 to a record 93,000, according to preliminary statistics released Wednesday by the” CDC. That figure represents the “largest single-year increase recorded.” According to the article, “Several grim records were set: the most drug overdose deaths in a year; the most deaths from opioid overdoses; the most overdose deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine; the most deaths from the deadly class of synthetic opioids known as fentanyls.”

The Washington Post (7/14, A1, Bernstein, Achenbach) reports, “The increase came as no surprise to addiction specialists, drug counselors and policy experts who have watched the steady rise in deaths throughout the pandemic. But that did not make the statistics any less horrifying.”

The Wall Street Journal (7/14, A1, McKay, Subscription Publication) says the drug overdose fatalities and the COVID-19 pandemic form a twin public health crisis.

Related Links:

— “‘It’s Huge, It’s Historic, It’s Unheard-of’: Drug Overdose Deaths Spike ” Josh Katz and Margot Sanger-Katz, The New York Times, July 14, 2021

Psychiatric News (7/14) reports, “Telehealth visits accounted for nearly two-thirds of all mental health visits by patients enrolled in private insurance plans in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic,” investigators concluded after analyzing data from “roughly 25 million separate mental health claims submitted between January and June 2020 in a national data set of commercial enrollees from FAIR Health, a nonprofit organization managing a database of more than 33 billion privately billed health insurance claims.” The study also revealed, however, that “telehealth use for mental health services from April to June 2020 was lower in rural areas compared with urban areas, and lower among those over 65 years of age compared with those 24 to 35 years of age.” The findings were published online July 13 in Psychiatric Services, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association.

Related Links:

— “Telehealth Services Increased During Pandemic, but Age and Regional Disparities Exist, Psychiatric News, July 14, 2021

Psychiatric News (7/13) reports, “Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) does not appear to significantly increase the risk of serious medical events in adults who are hospitalized for depression,” investigators concluded in a study that “compared more than 10,000 hospitalization records for adults with depression who received treatment at psychiatric inpatient facilities in Ontario, Canada, for more than three days between April 1, 2007, and February 28, 2017.” The findings were published online July 12 in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Benefits of ECT May Outweigh Risks for Patients Hospitalized for Depression, Psychiatric News, July 13, 2021

HealthDay (7/13, Murez) reports, “Marriages can remain stable after something as challenging as a brain injury for one of the spouses,” investigators concluded even though “past reports have suggested that divorce rates were high among those who experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI).” In the study, researchers examined “more than 1,400 patients from a database of people hospitalized with TBI” and found that “66% of the patients with TBI remained married to the same person 10 years after the injury.” Approximately “68% of the marriages that did end did so within five years of the injury, including 39% within that first year.” The findings were published online in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation.

Related Links:

— “Most Marriages Survive a Spouse’s Brain Injury “Cara Murez, HealthDay, July 13, 2021

MedPage Today (7/13, Grant) reports, “Opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment increased in Medicaid recipients from 2014 to 2018,” investigators concluded in an “analysis of Medicaid data from the 11 states that participated in the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN) – Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.” That analysis “included six of the 10 states that ranked highest in the nation for overdose deaths.” The study revealed that “the proportion of people with opioid use disorder who received buprenorphine (Buprenex), methadone, or naltrexone (Revia) increased from 47.8% to 57.1% across that period.” The findings of the “exploratory serial cross-sectional study” were published June 13 in JAMA.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)