Medscape (7/30, Vlessides, Subscription Publication) reports, “Children who live in areas that offer statewide child psychiatric telephone consultation programs are significantly more likely to receive mental health services than their counterparts who live in states without such programs,” researchers concluded after using “weighted information on 245,512 children and adolescents (aged five to 17 years) from 2003, 2007, 2011, and 2016 to identify those who received mental health services.” The study revealed that “compared to 2003, children in 2016 were 37% more likely to receive mental health services.” The findings were published online June 27 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Call-In Consults the Answer to Severe Child Psychiatrist Shortage?, “Michael Vlessides, Medscape, July 30, 2019

Healio (7/30, Mille) reports, “Questions that assessed frequency of use of alcohol, cannabis and other illicit drugs correctly determined which adolescents had substance use disorders,” researchers concluded after pooling “survey data from 169,986 respondents between 12 and 20 years of age to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health from a six-year period, focusing on tobacco use in the past month and cannabis, alcohol and other illicit drug use in the past year.” The findings were published in the July issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Drug use within 3 days sufficient to identify substance abuse disorder in younger teens, “Janel Miller, Healio, July 30, 2019

The Wall Street Journal (7/29, Reddy, Subscription Publication) reports researchers found genetic factors linked to anorexia nervosa and metabolism, suggesting there may be a link between the genetics of metabolism and the eating disorder. The findings were published in Nature Genetics.

Related Links:

— “A New Genetic Explanation for Anorexia, “Sumathi Reddy, The Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2019

Healio (7/29, Demko) reports research indicated “patients with PTSD were at greater risk for death in the year following co-prescription of opioids and benzodiazepines than patients newly prescribed opioids only, benzodiazepines only or neither medication class.” Investigators arrived at this finding after examining one-year “total and cause-specific mortality for 17,476 patients (adjusted for propensity score, age, baseline comorbidity and daily medication dose) using data from the VA Corporate Data Warehouse.” The findings were published online July 9 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Concurrent opioid, benzodiazepine use increases mortality risk in PTSD, “Savannah Demko, Healio, July 29, 2019

The Washington Post (7/26, Wan) reports that up until fairly recently, “the suicide prevention movement has been largely driven by family and friends of those who died.” In the past five years, however, “as suicide rates have climbed to historic levels, survivors of suicide attempts have been ‘coming out,’ determined to combat the problem even if it means speaking out about their own, often-hidden pasts.” This “has transformed the suicide prevention world.” For example, “researchers trying to understand suicide, who previously focused on post-mortem data and environmental factors, are starting to embrace the relatively new idea of reaching out to people who experienced it directly.” Meanwhile, mental health “advocates are harnessing those voices to raise awareness of suicide as a public health issue and win sorely needed funding and attention.”

Related Links:

— “Once they hid their stories. But now, survivors of suicide are ‘coming out’ to combat a national crisis., “William Wan, The Washington Post, July 26, 2019