NBC News (5/21, Sullivan) reports, “Combined deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide in the U.S. plateaued in 2018 for the first time in two decades, according to a” report (PDF) from Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust. NBC News adds, “The so-called deaths of despair reached a high in 2017, and the leveling off in 2018 was driven by a decrease in overall drug overdose deaths – the first such decrease in a decade.”

However, CNN (5/21, Erdman) reports “that deaths of despair increased in some minority communities during the same time period. And separately alcohol-related deaths were up 4% and suicides were up 2%.”

Medscape (5/21, Brooks, Subscription Publication) reports experts warn that deaths of despair “may well increase in the wake of COVID-19.”

Related Links:

— “Drug overdose deaths drop in U.S. as other deaths of despair rise, report finds, “Kaitlin Sullivan, NBC News, May 21, 2020

Psychiatric News (5/21) reports the leaders of the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience wrote an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that organizations must take actions to protect healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The authors wrote, “Before the virus struck, the U.S. clinical workforce was already experiencing a crisis of burnout. We are now facing a surge of physical and emotional harm that amounts to a parallel pandemic. Tragically, we are already seeing reports of clinicians dying by suicide amid the pandemic, including the highly publicized death of a prominent emergency medicine physician in Manhattan, the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.”

Related Links:

— “Five Actions to Promote Well-Being of Health Care Workers During, After COVID-19, Psychiatric News, May 21, 2020

Psychiatric News (5/20) reports, “The stresses on older people and their caregivers associated with COVID-19 – social isolation, financial hardship, difficulties accessing needed care and supplies, and anxiety about infection – may increase the risk of elder abuse,” experts concluded in an article published online May 18 in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “How to Identify, Help Older People in Potentially Abusive Situations, Psychiatric News , May 20, 2020

Healio (5/20, Gramigna) reports, “Patients with major depressive disorder [MDD] were more likely to receive effective treatment if they persisted beyond early unhelpful treatment,” investigators concluded after analyzing “the results of a coordinated series of community epidemiologic surveys of noninstitutionalized adults using 17 WHO World Mental Health surveys, of which eight were conducted in high-income countries and nine in low- and middle-income countries.” The findings were published online May 20 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “‘Trial and error’ treatment approach for major depressive disorder has pros and cons, experts say, “Joe Gramigna, Healio, May 20, 2020

Healio (5/20) reports that “from 2009 to 2017, the proportion of teens who identified as a sexual minority nearly doubled to more than 14%, according to researchers, who found that these teens are still more than three times as likely to attempt suicide compared with heterosexual youths.” For the studypublished in Pediatrics, researchers “analyzed data from six states that collected information on sexual orientation identity and four states that collected information on the sex of sexual contacts through the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance Survey.” According to the data, “the proportion of participants who identified as heterosexual declined from 92.7% in 2009 to 85.7% in 2017, whereas the proportion of youths who identified as a sexual minority increased from 7.3% in 2009 to 14.3% in 2017.” Meanwhile, they “observed a decline in suicide attempts by sexual minorities over time…but not by heterosexual students, although sexual minorities remained more than three times more likely to attempt suicide.”

Related Links:

— “As more teens identify as sexual minority, suicide rate remains disproportionately high, Healio, May 20, 2020