Healio (11/9, Buzby) reported, “Patients aged 50 years or older with depression were found to have a significantly greater risk for abdominal aortic aneurysm than those without depression,” researchers concluded. The study abstract disclosed that data on 59,136 people were included in the study. The findingswere published online Oct. 23 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Related Links:

— “Clinical depression confers elevated risk for abdominal aortic aneurysm, “Scott Buzby, Healio, November 9, 2019

Reuters (11/8, Carroll) reported, “Many insured Americans go out of network for mental health services…despite the higher costs to them and despite a federal law mandating that policies’ mental health coverage be at least as good as their physical health coverage,” research indicated. After “focusing on data from 2012-2017” and identifying “3.2 million adults with mental health conditions, 294,550 with alcohol use disorders, 321,535 with drug use disorders, 178,701 with heart failure and nearly 1.4 million with diabetes with coverage under employer-sponsored insurance plans,” investigators found that “Americans with health insurance were spending more out of pocket on mental health services, such as treatment for substance abuse, than on conditions like diabetes and heart failure,” mostly because “many were getting mental health care out of network.” The findings were published online Nov. 6 in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Americans spending more out-of-pocket on mental health than physical health, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, November 8, 2019

On its website, CNN (11/7, LaMotte) reports on a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology that found “people who feel they aren’t supported by their extended family are more likely to suffer chronic illness than those who aren’t happy with their spouse or partner.” The researchers followed around 3,000 people from 1995 to 2014 and asked them three times “to rate the quality of their family and partner interactions, which was then compared to their total number of chronic conditions, ranging from stroke to headaches.” The researchers “found strained extended family relations to be highly associated with a greater number of chronic conditions and poor health.”

HealthDay (11/7, Gordon) reports the researchers say they were surprised that relationships with other family members appear to have a bigger impact on health than relationships with spouses. The study’s lead author, Sarah Woods at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said, “That doesn’t mean intimate partnerships don’t matter. Our hypothesis is that relationships with family members are longer than relationships with intimate partners. You come from that family of origin, and you can’t divorce your parents or siblings.”

Related Links:

— “Having a poor relationship with your family could make you sick, “Sandee LaMotte , CNN, November 7, 2019

Healio (11/7, Welsh) reports, “Transgender individuals who receive gender-affirming surgeries are less likely to require mental health treatment,” researchers concluded in “the first total population study of transgender individuals with a gender incongruence diagnosis.” The findings were published online Oct. 4 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association.

Related Links:

— “Gender-affirming surgeries reduce mental health treatment in transgender population, “Erin T. Welsh, Healio, November 7, 2019

STAT (11/7) reports that in findings published last month in Pediatrics, researchers “analyzed mental health among 2,000 teens, more than half of whom were transgender.” The researchers “asked teens to identify their current gender identity and what gender they were assigned at birth.” The findings reveal that “transgender boys were at the highest risk of a suicide attempt requiring medical attention, followed by non-binary teens assigned male at birth.” Also, “transgender girls were six times more likely than cis boys to have suicidal thoughts.”

Related Links:

— “Mental health studies lump transgender teens under one umbrella — and miss clues to help them in the process, “Megan Thielking, STAT, November 7, 2019