Publications on Mental Health Topics

Environment May Play Major Role in Psychosis, by Rick Nauert, PhD, Psych Central, Dec 7 2017.

“A new study finds that rates of psychosis can be close to eight times higher in some regions compared to others. The findings suggest that environmental factors, in addition to genetics influence the development of psychosis...'It’s well-established that psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, are highly heritable, but genetics don’t tell the whole story. Our findings suggest that environmental factors can also play a big role,' said the study’s lead author, Dr. James Kirkbride (UCL Psychiatry). The study appears in JAMA Psychiatry...The researchers say their findings can be used to help plan mental health services, by identifying which regions could expect greater incidence of psychosis. ”

Caring Parenting Can Influence Teen Suicide Risk, by Rick Nauert, PhD, Psych Central, Dec 6 2017.

“In a new review, University of Cincinnati investigators finds that parents’ caring words and deeds are linked to thoughts of suicide among adolescents...The findings showed that children between the ages of 12 and 17 are significantly more likely to contemplate, plan, and attempt suicide when their parents do not engage in certain behaviors that demonstrate to their children that they care about them. 'Kids need to know that someone’s got their back, and unfortunately, many of them do not. That’s a major problem,' King said. ”

'The Woebot will see you now' — the rise of chatbot therapy, by Amy Ellis Nutt, The Washington Post, Dec 3 2017.

“Mobile talk-therapy and life-coaching apps have proliferated in the past few years as traditional therapy has remained difficult to obtain. The Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to cover mental health as part of standard medical services, but many people still do not have access to treatment. More than 106 million people — nearly a third of the country — live in areas that are federally designated as having a shortage of mental-health-care professionals, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. “I think using chatbot for mental health is certainly an innovative approach to increase access to care,” said John Torous, co-director of a digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. [There is] tremendous potential to deliver personalized mental health care, on demand, as needed.” ”

Chronic Pain + Mental Health Disorder = Risk of Opioid Overdose, by Rick Nauert, PhD, Psych Central, Nov 29 2017.

“A new study finds that over 60 percent of individuals who died from an opioid overdose had been diagnosed with a chronic pain condition, and many had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder...The analysis is timely as according to the US Centers for Disease Control, the number of opioid-related deaths has quadrupled, from 8,048 in 1999 to 33,091 in 2015. The findings underscore the importance of providing substance use treatment services in conjunction with behavioral interventions for people with chronic pain...'Such a strategy might increase early clinical intervention in patients who are at high risk for fatal opioid overdose,' said Mark Olfson, M.D., professor of psychiatry at CUMC and lead investigator of the study. ”

Signs of ADHD can be different in girls, by Meadow Schroder, CNN, Nov 27 2017.

“ADHD can look different in girls than boys. A boy who is hyperactive might have trouble sitting in his seat in the classroom -- so he sits with one knee on the seat and one foot on the floor. It is likely, given his constant shifting and unequal balance on the seat, that the back legs of the chair will eventually lift up and the chair pitch forward causing the boy to fall to the floor. In contrast, a hyperactive girl may be out of her seat but have taken on the role of classroom helper, wandering around to different desks. A teacher completing a rating scale might rate the boy higher on hyperactive questions than the girl because the second example is not seen as disruptive. Thus, girls do not score as high as boys on these scales and are underrepresented because they do not meet criteria for a diagnosis. ”

Telemedicine For Addiction Treatment? Picture Remains Fuzzy, by Emily Forman, NPR, Nov 24 2017.

“When President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, it came with a regulatory change intended to make it easier for people to get care. Doctors are now allowed to prescribe addiction medicine virtually, without ever seeing the patient in person. In Indiana, this kind of virtual visit has been legal since early 2017. So I called about a dozen addiction specialists in Indiana to find out how it was going.  ”

Health Care System Fails Many Transgender Americans, by Neda Ulaby, NPR, Nov 21 2017.

“Preventable problems, including HIV infection and some cancers, kill many people in this community. It's harder for transgender people to find health care coverage, because it's harder for them to find jobs. Social stigmas aside, consider the difficulty of getting hired if your gender does not appear to match the one on your legal ID. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Study, transgender people face an unemployment rate three times as high as the national average — 15 percent versus 5 percent...'Right now, it's very hard for a lot of people to even find a primary care provider who's willing to work with them,' said Kellan Baker, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University who studies how health policies affect gay, lesbian, queer and transgender Americans. He said even if you regularly see a physician, a number of insurance companies will not cover care related to gender transition, such as hormones or surgery. 'Which, as you can imagine, is a huge barrier for transgender people in terms of mental health,' he said. 'So you're looking at yourself in the mirror, you're not able to get health insurance coverage [and] you can't get health care that you need to make sure that how you look aligns with who you are.' ”

Boosting Brain Activity May Buffer Against Anxiety, by Traci Pedersen, Psych Central, Nov 20 2017.

“A new study at Duke University finds that boosting brain activity in regions related to thinking and problem-solving may help buffer against anxiety. The researchers found that people at greater risk for anxiety were less likely to develop the disorder if they had higher activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region responsible for complex mental operations...The new findings, published recently in the journal Cerebral Cortex, may be a step toward tailoring mental health therapies to the specific brain functioning of individual patients. ”

Increased Hours Online Correlate With An Uptick In Teen Depression, Suicidal Thoughts, by Patti Neighmond, NPR, Nov 14 2017.

“A study published Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science finds that increased time spent with popular electronic devices — whether a computer, cell phone or tablet — might have contributed to an uptick in symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts over the last several years among teens, especially among girls. Though San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge, who led the study, agrees this sort of research can only establish a correlation between long hours of daily screen time and symptoms of alienation — it can't prove one causes the other — she thinks the findings should be a warning to parents. ”

Higher Brain Glucose Levels Linked to More Severe Alzheimer’s, by Janice Wood, Psych Central, Nov 12 2017.

“A new study has found a connection between abnormalities in how the brain breaks down glucose and the severity of the signature amyloid plaques and tangles in the brain, as well as the onset of eventual outward symptoms, of Alzheimer’s disease...They discovered distinct abnormalities in glycolysis, the main process by which the brain breaks down glucose, with evidence linking the severity of the abnormalities to the severity of Alzheimer’s. Lower rates of glycolysis and higher brain glucose levels correlated to more severe plaques and tangles. More severe reductions in brain glycolysis were also related to the expression of symptoms of Alzheimer’s during life, such as problems with memory. ”

Sharp rise seen in self-harm among young teen girls, by Shereen Lehman, Reuters, Nov 2 2017.

“Reports of self-harm jumped nearly 70 percent among younger teen girls in the UK between 2011 and 2014, suggesting an urgent need for interventions targeted to this group, researchers say...Almost 17,000 kids and teens had harmed themselves at least once, and about 73 percent were girls. Just over 84 percent of the incidents were drug overdoses and about 12 percent were self-cutting episodes. Between 2 percent and 3 percent poisoned themselves, and the remaining 1 percent of incidents involved hanging, suffocation, jumping and scalding. Roughly one in five of these kids harmed themselves again sometime during the year after their first episode, researchers found. ”

Teen Depression in US Jumps By Nearly Half in 10 Years, by Rick Nauert, PhD, Psych Central, Oct 31 2017.

“A new study finds a startling rise in depression among all Americans, with youth demonstrating the most rapid increase over the last decade. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy found that from 2005 to 2015, depression rose significantly among Americans age 12 and older. Young people between the ages of 12 and 17 experienced a 46 percent increase in reported depression over this time span...Specifically, the increase in rates of depression was most rapid among the youngest and oldest age groups, whites, the lowest income and highest income groups, and those with the highest education levels. ”

Depression tied to shorter lifespan, by Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, Oct 25 2017.

“People who suffer from depression may not live as long as individuals who don’t experience this mental health disorder, a Canadian study suggests...Depression has long been linked to a variety of health problems, in part because it may lead to physiological changes in the body and also because it can contribute to unhealthy habits like a poor diet, inactivity, smoking and excessive drinking. In the current study, however, researchers found a link between depression and premature death even after accounting for things like obesity, smoking and drinking habits...'This study suggests that this increased risk of death extends to other causes of premature death and persists over decades,' Stewart said by email. ”

Better Sleep Can Build Emotional Resilience, by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, Oct 23 2017.

“The authors of a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience say this is one of the first to show that sound sleep might protect against fear and distress, while a person’s tendency to sleep fitfully can make them more likely to be traumatized later on...stress hormones are also low during REM sleep, allowing the brain to activate memories yet strip away their “emotional tone.” Because of that, people who get plenty of REM sleep might be less reactive to emotional stimuli. If the study is replicated, there could be real-world implications for stopping trauma—before it starts. 'You could imagine that the army could start screening procedures where people with more REM sleep could be better candidates for combat units,' said Itamar Lerner, the study’s lead investigator, who is also with the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers. ”

New Study Casts Doubt on Diagnosis of Adult-Onset A.D.H.D., by Benedict Carey, New York Times, Oct 20 2017.

“In just the past few years, researchers have identified what they believe is an adult version of attention deficit disorder: a restless inability to concentrate that develops spontaneously after high school, years after the syndrome typically shows itself, and without any early signs...Yet a new study suggests that adult-onset A.D.H.D. is rare — if it exists at all...The new study, while smaller, mined more extensive medical histories than earlier work and found that most apparent cases of adult-onset attention deficits are likely the result of substance abuse or mood problems. ”