Psychiatric News (7/31) reports, “Youth with bipolar disorder who take lithium may be less likely to attempt suicide than those who take other mood stabilizers,” researchers concluded after analyzing “longitudinal data collected from the Course and Outcome of Bipolar Youth…study, which included 413 youth aged seven to 17 who met criteria for DSM-IV bipolar spectrum disorders.” Next, investigators examined “data collected from 340 youth during 2,638 follow-ups to assess whether the youth who took lithium differed on these measures compared with those who took antimanic anticonvulsants, first- and second-generation antipsychotics, and/or lamotrigine.” The findings were published online July 29 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Lithium Found Superior to Other Mood Stabilizers in Improving Outcomes in Youth With Bipolar Disorder, Psychiatric News, July 31, 2019

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