Reuters (7/31, Rapaport) reports researchers found that “the volume of damaged white matter in” female soccer players who frequently headed the ball “was five times greater than it was for” their male counterparts. The researchers used diffusion tensor imaging to examine the brains of “49 male and 49 female amateur soccer players who reported a similar number of headings during the previous year.” The findings were published in Radiology.

NPR (7/31, Watson) reports lead author Michael Lipton, a neuroradiologist and neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said, “The most important finding here is that we see that in women’s brains, actually looking at brain tissue, there seems to be a greater sensitivity to repetitive, very low-level injury relative to men.”

Related Links:

— “Soccer headings may damage women’s brains more, “Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, July 31, 2018.

Healio (7/31, Demko) reports, “Using substance abuse and anxiety assessments at the enrollment of collaborative care treatment for depression can help identify teenagers with depression at risk for treatment failure,” researchers concluded in a study involving “182 teens aged 12 years to 17 years with depressive disorder.” The findings were published online July 17 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Teens with depression may benefit from collaborative care treatment, “Savannah Demko, Healio, July 31, 2018.

The NBC News (7/31, Fox) website reports, “At least 90 percent of teens and young adults with symptoms of depression said they had gone online for information about mental health issues, compared with 48 percent of those without any symptoms, according to the survey [pdf]” conducted “by Hopelab, a foundation set up to help young people with chronic illnesses, and the Well Being Trust, which is focused on mental, social and spiritual health.” Included in the “national survey” were “more than 1,300 people aged 14 to 22 in all 50 states.”

Related Links:

— “Depressed teens turn to social media to cope, survey finds, “Maggie Fox, The NBC News, July 31, 2018.

The NPR (7/30, Aubrey) “Shots” blog reports that researchers found in a 33-study review that being mildly dehydrated may cause “a range of subtle effects – from mood changes to muddled thinking.” The findingswere published online July 10 in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise.

Related Links:

— “Off Your Mental Game? You Could Be Mildly Dehydrated, “Allison Aubrey, NPR, July 30, 2018.

Reuters (7/30, Carroll) reports, “How the media reports on suicides may impact whether others decide to kill themselves in the days following the original death,” researchers concluded after gathering and analyzing “print and online reports published in the Toronto media market from 2011 to 2014,” then looking at “a list of people who died by suicide in Toronto between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014.” The findings were published online July 30 in CMAJ.

According to TIME (7/30, Ducharme), the study suggested that “some specific journalistic practices – such as including lots of details about a death by suicide, or glamorizing these incidents – may make suicide contagion worse.”

HealthDay (7/30) reports the author of an accompanying editorial said, “I think everybody should think twice about sharing stories about a suicide.” The editorialist added, “Sharing positive stories with information about how to get help has the potential to be really helpful.” But, “stories about a celebrity suicide or stories that describe a suicide method could be very dangerous.

Related Links:

— “Suicide details reported by the media may lead others to copy, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, July 30, 2018.