Psychiatric News (5/13) reports, “Adults who are incarcerated have nearly nine times the risk of dying by suicide within a year of their release than those who have never been in jail, according to a study.” Additionally, “the study…found that people who were released from jail within the year accounted for nearly 20% of all adult deaths by suicide.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

Related Links:

— “Adults Recently Released from Jail Account for One in Five Adult Suicide Deaths, Psychiatric News, May 13, 2024

Psychiatric News (5/10) reported, “By combining high-powered microscopy with AI-guided illustration software, researchers reconstructed a 1 cubic millimeter fragment of living human brain tissue; these findingswere published in…Science.” The “detailed 3D rendering required 1,400 terabytes of data. By comparison, today’s high-end computer games typically contain around 0.1-0.2 terabytes of data.”

Related Links:

— “Researchers Reconstruct 3D Fragment of Human Brain, Psychiatric News, May 10, 2024

HealthDay (5/10, Miller) reported, “When folks in rural America need treatment for a substance use disorder, significant obstacles stand in their way, researchers say.” Specifically, “they are more likely to have to look outside their insurance network for care, resulting in higher out-of-pocket costs, according to a recent study published in the journal Health Services Review.” In the study, “compared to those in urban areas, rural patients were less likely to initiate treatment for disorders involving alcohol (37% versus 38%), opioids (41% versus 44%) or other drugs (38% versus 40%).”

Related Links:

— “Getting Help for Alcohol, Drug Abuse Tougher for Rural Americans,”Carole Tanzer Miller, HealthDay , May 10, 2024

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.”

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)