Medscape (10/26, Lowry) reports, “A study that examined sexual health in persons aged 15 to 24 years who were attending a mental health clinic for a variety of mental disorders found low rates of contraception and high rates of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs),” researchers found. The findings of the 103-participant study were presented at the IEPA 10th International Conference on Early Intervention in Mental Health.

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (10/25, Preidt) reports, “Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters may raise dementia risk for seniors forced to leave their homes,” researchers found after examining data on “nearly 3,600 survivors of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan,” all of whom “were 65 and older.” Investigators found that “the rate of dementia in this group was 4.1 percent before the disaster and 11.5 percent two-and-a-half years after the tsunami.”

Related Links:

— “Study Links Disasters to Dementia,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, October 25, 2016.

Time (10/25, Sifferlin) reports investigators arrived at this conclusion after examining “the results of a study called the Preschool Autism Communication Trial” in which “152 kids from ages two to four were randomly assigned to a year of a parent-led intervention, in which their parents interacted with them and received feedback from a therapist gam), research published online Oct. 25 in The Lancet suggests that “children with autism may be able to work with” their parents “from a young age to help reduce the severity of their symptoms and improve their ability to communicate.”

Related Links:

— “How Parents Can Help Their Children With Autism,” Alexandra Sifferlin , Time, October 25, 2016.

The New York Times (10/25, A21, Goode, Subscription Publication) reports that research suggests individuals “who tell small, self-serving lies are likely to progress to bigger falsehoods, and over time, the brain appears to adapt to the dishonesty.” This “finding, the researchers said, provides evidence for the ‘slippery slope’ sometimes described by wayward politicians, corrupt financiers, unfaithful spouses and others in explaining their misconduct.”

The AP (10/24, Borenstein) reports that researchers “put 80 people in scenarios where they could repeatedly lie and get paid more based on the magnitude of their lies.” According to the AP, “They said they were the first to demonstrate empirically that people’s lies grow bolder the more they” lie. The investigators “then used brain scans to show that our mind’s emotional hot spot – the amygdala – becomes desensitized or used to the growing dishonesty.” The findings were published online in Nature Neuroscience.

TIME (10/24, Park) reports that the investigators “were even able to map out how each lie led to less amygdala activation and found that the decrease could predict how much the person’s dishonesty would escalate in the next trial.”

Related Links:

— “Why Big Liars Often Start Out as Small Ones,” ERICA GOODE, New York Times, October 24, 2016.

Medwire News (10/24, Piper) reports, “Orthostatic hypotension has been linked to an increased long-term risk of dementia,” research published Oct. 11 in PLOS Medicine indicates. Included in the study were some “6,204 individuals with no history of Alzheimer’s disease or stroke” who were followed “over a median…of 15.3 years.”

Related Links:

— “Transient blood pressure drop poses dementia risk,” Lucy Piper, MedWire News, October 24, 2016.