HealthDay (6/17, Preidt) reports researchers in Australia found that “children of mothers with long-term depression have an increased risk of behavioral problems and poor development.” The researchers examined levels of depression “in the mothers before, during and after pregnancy,” and “also analyzed their children’s development and behavior.” The findings were published in Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.

Related Links:

— “Mom’s Depression Can Lead to Behavior Problems in Kids, “Robert Preidt, HealthDay, June 17, 2020

STAT (6/17) reports a person’s 18th birthday can be “what some mental health [professionals] know, anecdotally, as ‘the cliff,’ the cutoff at which teens with mental health conditions are flung into adulthood, often without any preparation for the challenges to care ahead.” Since “young adults are among the most at risk of major mental illness, but are among the least likely to get mental health care,” according to experts, this “is a huge, pressing problem.” When “STAT spoke with teenagers, young adults, and mental health [professionals], and experts across the country to understand the experiences of young people with mental health conditions as they transition from adolescence to adulthood,” some “young people said no one prepared them for the often-complicated reality of navigating mental health care in adulthood: finding a therapist, filling prescriptions, scheduling appointments, shelling out co-pays.”

Related Links:

— “Facing a broken mental health system, many U.S. teens fall off a dangerous ‘cliff’ in their care, “Megan Thielking, STAT, June 17, 2020

HealthDay (6/17, Reinberg) reports researchers used “genetic and survey data from hundreds of thousands of people” and “found that loneliness makes it more likely that someone will smoke.” Robyn Wootton, a senior research associate at the University of Bristol and a co-lead author of the study, said, “We found evidence to suggest that loneliness leads to increased smoking, with people more likely to start smoking, to smoke more cigarettes and to be less likely to quit.” The findings were published in Addiction.

Related Links:

— “Loneliness May Make Quitting Smoking Even Tougher, “Steven Reinberg, HealthDay, June 17, 2020

MedPage Today (6/17, Hlavinka) reports researchers found in a meta-analysis of 14 trials that among “patients who had attempted or were considering suicide, brief encounters with healthcare [professionals] reduced the risk of subsequent suicide attempts and improved access to follow-up care.” The review studywas published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Brief Intervention Tied to Lower Repeat Suicide Attempt, “Elizabeth Hlavinka, MedPage Today, June 17, 2020

MedPage Today (6/15, Hlavinka) reports, “LGBTQ students attending schools with gay-straight alliance programs in place reported experiencing less bullying and better health outcomes than their LGBTQ peers whose schools lacked such programs,” investigators concluded. The survey study revealed that “among 17,112 LGBTQ high school respondents, 91% reported at least one experience with bullying of any type, and in fact most bullying was for ‘stigmatized identities’ unrelated to gender identity or sexual orientation, such as body weight or religion.” Even though “all forms of bullying were correlated with negative health outcomes like sleep issues, depression, or smoking, the presence of gay-straight alliance programs at schools, which focus on peer-to-peer connectedness to reduce prejudice, was not only associated with reductions in bullying, but improvements on these health outcomes,” the study revealed. The findings were published online June 15 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Gay-Straight Alliances at School Cut Bullying for LGBTQ Youth, “Elizabeth Hlavinka, MedPage Today, June 15, 2020