HealthDay (1/9, Mundell ) reports, “Depression that emerges around the time of pregnancy raises a woman’s risk for suicide sharply and for many years, new Swedish research shows.” Investigators “found that a new mom’s odds for suicide soars seven-fold in the year after a diagnosis of perinatal depression – depression that arises just before, during or after a pregnancy.”

The study indicated that “between five to 18 years after delivery, the risk of suicide in women with perinatal depression was still more than double that of women unaffected by the illness.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

Psychiatric News (1/9) also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “Pregnancy-Linked Depression Raises Odds for Suicide Years After Delivery,” Ernie Mundell, HealthDay, January 9, 2024

ABC News (1/8, Zhang) reports, “For children under the age of 2, television screen time is associated with sensory differences later in toddlerhood, according to a new study.” Notably, “children who watched any television or DVDs at 12 months of age were twice as likely by 36 months to experience ‘atypical sensory processing’ … compared to others of that age.” According to the research, “after 18 months of age, each extra hour of screen exposure per day was associated with around a 20% increased likelihood of sensory processing differences.” The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics.

Related Links:

— “Screen time for kids under 2 linked to sensory differences in toddlerhood: Study,” Dr. Angela Zhang, ABC News, January 8, 2024

Healio (1/8, Weldon) reports, “Residential addiction treatment centers serving adolescents are scarce and expensive in the United States, new study findings suggest, despite increasing overdose rates among young people in recent years.” The findings were published in Health Affairs.

Related Links:

— “Study: Residential addiction treatment for adolescents limited, costly,” Rose Weldon, Healio, January 8, 2024

The New York Times (1/5, Kolata ) said, “People taking the wildly popular drugs Ozempic, to treat diabetes, and Wegovy, to combat obesity, are slightly less likely to have suicidal thoughts than people who are not taking them, researchers reported on Friday.” The findings were published in Nature Medicine.

The AP (1/5, Aleccia ) reported NIH and Case Western Reserve University researchers found that “people taking semaglutide had a 49% to 73% lower risk of first-time or recurring suicidal thoughts than those taking another drug for those conditions during a six-month follow-up period.”

CNN (1/5, Tirrell ) reported, “The findings from the new study come days after the FDA said it was reviewing reports of suicidal ideation among people using semaglutide and similar medicines and evaluating the need for regulatory action.” Similarly, “the European Medicines Agency said in July that it was reviewing 150 reports of possible cases of self-injury and suicidal thoughts among people taking semaglutide and similar medicines.”

Related Links:

— “People taking Wegovy and Ozempic have lower risk of suicidal thoughts vs. older drugs, study finds,” Jones Aleccia, Associated Press, January 5, 2024

MedPage Today (1/5, Robertson) reported, “Problems with the veterinary sedative xylazine – also known as ‘tranq’ – appeared to be concentrated in the eastern U.S. but were spread across the entire country, a cross-sectional study found.” Investigators found that “at least 43 states reported at least one xylazine-related overdose death from 2019 to 2022.” The data also indicated that “in 2019, 16 states had no xylazine forensic reports but by 2022, only two states had no such reports.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)