Psychiatric News (5/9) reports that on Wednesday, “as the 2024 Annual Meeting wound down, outgoing APA President Petros Levounis, M.D., M.A., capped his presidential theme of ‘confronting addiction’ with a presentation titled ‘Technological Addictions: The New Frontier in Addiction Medicine.’” Levounis “outlined some of the parallels between technological addictions and substance use disorder (SUD) in terms of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.” Levounis “said that technological addictions (such as video/internet gaming, cybersex, and online gambling addiction) have several characteristics in common with other addictions such as SUD.” Levounis “said that cognitive behavioral therapy is better suited to patients who already recognize they have a problem and want to address it.”

Related Links:

— “https://alert.psychnews.org/2024/05/technology-addictions-are-real-but.html, Psychiatric News, May 9, 2024

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.

Related Links:

— “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.”

Related Links:

— “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.”

Related Links:

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