MedPage Today (5/8, Monaco ) reports, “Almost a quarter of surveyed U.S. adults met criteria for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), though the vast majority of them were undiagnosed, a retrospective cross-sectional study suggested.” Out of more than 75,000 “respondents to the online 2022 National Health and Wellness Survey, 23.3% screened positive for anxiety using the 7-Item GAD Questionnaire, Daniel Karlin, MD, chief medical officer of MindMed in New York City, reported…at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting.” However, “of those who screened positive, 83.1% had never received a GAD diagnosis. Most (55.1%) of the individuals screening positive had moderate symptoms while 44.9% had severe symptoms.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (5/8, Miller) reports, “Using mindfulness to help people trying to overcome opioid addiction can boost their odds of continuing treatment, new research shows.” Researchers “found that supplementing standard opioid addiction treatment with an intervention called Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) cut dropout rates by 59% and relapses by 42%.” The results were published in JAMA Psychiatry.

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— “How Mindfulness Could Help Folks Quit Opioids,”Carole Tanzer Miller, HealthDay, May 8, 2024

Healio (5/7, Young) reports, “Referrals for eating disorder treatment spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, with patients more likely to present with eating disorder as a primary diagnosis, according to a poster at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting.” According to the researchers, “the average number of referrals per month spiked from 3.67 pre-pandemic to 8.56 during the pandemic.”

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— “Eating disorder referrals spiked during COVID-19 pandemic,”Kate Young, Healio, May 7, 2024

Healio (5/7, Young) reports, “A poster presented at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting highlighted the need for greater access and engagement in trauma-focused care for incarcerated women, including peer-led interventions.” In a study of such individuals, “all 51 participants reported experiencing at least one traumatic event prior to incarceration, with 98% reporting physical and emotional abuse. Symptoms of PTSD were present in 96% of participants, and 43% had a history of drug-related charges. Of those selected for in-depth interviews, 87.5% reported substance use before incarceration.”

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— “‘Very clear’ need, desire for trauma-focused treatment in women’s prisons,”Kate Young , Healio, May 7, 2024

The New York Times (5/6, Belluck ) reports, “Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer’s that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease.” The concept “involves a gene variant called APOE4. Scientists have long known that inheriting one copy of the variant increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s, and that people with two copies, inherited from each parent, have vastly increased risk.”

The AP (5/6, Neergaard ) reports that now, “research published Monday suggests that for people who carry not one but two copies of the gene, it’s more than a risk factor, it’s an underlying cause of the mind-robbing disease.” Additionally, for these patients, “symptoms can begin seven to 10 years sooner than in other older adults who develop Alzheimer’s.” Around “15% of Alzheimer’s patients carry two copies of APOE4.”

Reuters (5/6, Steenhuysen) reports, “The reclassification could change Alzheimer’s research, diagnosis and approaches to treatment, according to the researchers, whose study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.”

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— “The New York Times (requires login and subscription)