Consistently good sleep is important for everyone, but it is particularly important for patients with schizophrenia, a new study suggests. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, along with collaborators in Italy, used wrist monitors to measure activity and rest in 250 people, including 150 patients with schizophrenia, in both outpatient settings and in psychiatric hospitals. The investigators found that the schizophrenia patients had erratic sleep patterns, dysregulated transitions between sleep and wake cycles, and excessively rigid daily routines that were predictive of worse symptoms. “Regulating sleep and wake cycles is important for your overall health and our findings can also be extended to people without underlying mental health conditions,” said senior study author Dr. Fabio Ferrarelli, an associate professor of psychiatry at Pitt. “Most people can benefit from better sleep hygiene and paying attention to their daily routines by incorporating activity and variety in their daily lives.” Well-established research literature suggests that people suffering from schizophrenia have trouble falling asleep and get poorer rest than people without mental health conditions. Sedatives used to manage schizophrenia symptoms can extend sleep to 15 hours per day. Getting too much sleep like this can have a negative effect on symptoms. “It’s important to be mindful of how drugs that we prescribe to patients affect their health more broadly,” Ferrarelli said in a Pitt news release. “Our study shows…  read on >  read on >

The kids, no matter how they are conceived, are all right. That is the main takeaway from a new study by British researchers that found no real differences in the psychological well-being of kids who were born via sperm/egg donation or surrogacy and those born naturally by the time they reached the age of 20. “Children born through third-party reproductive donation — egg donation, sperm donation or surrogacy — are well-adjusted and have positive relationships with their parents right up to adulthood,” said study author Susan Golombok, former director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. For the study, the researchers followed 65 families with children born via assisted reproduction from infancy until the child turned 20. Moms and kids were interviewed and filled out questionnaires about their relationships. Their answers were compared to those of 52 families of children conceived naturally during the same period. The bottom line? “The absence of a biological [genetic or gestational] connection between children and their parents does not interfere with the development of positive relationships between them or the psychological well-being of the child,” Golombok said. The new findings are consistent with previous assessments the researchers made at ages 1, 2, 3, 7, 10 and 14, she added. Kids aren’t all that fussed about how they were born, but it may be better to…  read on >  read on >

A teenager’s brain power appears to have little bearing on whether they will become overweight or obese as adults. British researchers found that, on average, sharper teens weighed only slightly less in adulthood than siblings who scored lower on tests of thinking skills, according to a new study published April 13 in the journal PLOS Medicine. The difference amounted to just under a half-pound for a 6-foot-tall adult, said lead author Liam Wright, a senior research fellow in population health at University College London. “We found a very small association that in practice means that, on average, siblings with higher cognitive ability are unlikely to weigh much less than siblings with lower cognitive ability,” he said. The research refutes prior studies that have linked low cognitive scores in teens to higher risk of obesity in later life. That’s because those earlier studies looked at general populations, and didn’t take into account other powerful factors besides smarts that could influence a person’s weight, Wright said. “The problem with comparing people from the general population according to their cognitive ability and BMI is that unobserved factors may explain the association,” he said. (BMI, or body mass index, is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight.) To account for those unknown factors, Wright and his colleagues analyzed data on 12,250 siblings from more than 5,600…  read on >  read on >

In a disappointing finding, a new report shows that suicide rates in America are on the upswing again after a momentary, and minute, decline. According to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate increased from 10.7 people per 100,000 people in 2001 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018. The rate then dropped to 13.5 per 100,000 through 2020, but rose again to 14.1 per 100,000 in 2021. Why suicide rates rose, then dropped, then rose again isn’t entirely clear, said senior study author Sally Curtin, a statistician at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. “We’re not exactly sure what happened, because we know that many of the suicide risk factors increased, depression increased and money problems increased, we know all that,” she said. And early numbers from the first half of 2022 show that the suicide rate continues to climb, Curtin added, so the short-lived decline might just have been a blip. “Unfortunately, the suicide rate bounced back after a couple of years of decline,” she said. “If you look at the long, long picture, 20 years, it’s been almost steadily increasing.” For the study, Curtin’s team used data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System. The researchers found that suicide rates among women increased between 2020 and 2021, but that increase was significant only for women aged 75…  read on >  read on >

It’s not new for young people to develop an interest in their favorite pop singer or actor, but it can be problematic if that adoration turns toxic. It’s easier than ever to get lost in a celebrity’s carefully curated image via social media posts, according to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which offers some tips for when fandom goes too far. “Artists may do things that encourage people to get to know them better, so when they start giving people a peek into their lives and creating a persona that their fans can emotionally invest in, they get more people interacting with their work and also gain prestige and make more money,” explained Dr. Laurel Williams, an associate professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor. Any fan can become unhealthily invested in celebrities or individuals, Williams said. Previously, fans had to spend money and time repeatedly to see a celebrity and then cultivate a connection that could turn obsessive — but in today’s internet age, celebrity channels are available online anytime. Superficial connections are now more easily and frequently made, Williams cautioned, and adolescents are more susceptible to having addictive emotions over this. “When someone starts ‘speaking their truth’ about a celebrity or topic in a way that dehumanizes others, either online or in person, that’s when you know…  read on >  read on >

Financial stress and work lost to cancer treatment affects patients and their partners alike. Partners also experienced pain, fatigue and sleep issues owing to these fiscal worries, a new study found. “We know that financial toxicity or hardship is a significant effect of cancer and its treatment and is associated with poor health issues for patients and survivors,” said lead author Lauren Ghazal. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Rogel Cancer Center and the University of Michigan School of Nursing. “Financial toxicity extends to caregivers or partners, too,” she said in a university news release. Her team wanted to understand how that toxicity affects the caregiver’s health, including anxiety, depression, fatigue and overall quality of life. “It is important to examine the full effect of financial toxicity on a household in order to develop multilevel interventions that center the patient,” she explained. For the study, the researchers surveyed patients who had been treated for stage 3 colon cancer one to five years earlier, as well as their spouses, domestic partners or significant others from the same household. In all, 307 patient-partner pairs responded. The survey asked about potential stressors including cutting spending, missing bill payments and debt from unpaid bills, bank loans or money borrowed. Patients and partners were also asked about physical function, anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbance, social roles, social activities and…  read on >  read on >

The “baby bust” that hit the United States during the first year of the COVID pandemic did not affect all states equally — with states that were more racially diverse or more “blue” seeing bigger drops in their birth rates. That’s among the findings of a new study that probed a now well-documented phenomenon: The pandemic triggered a drop-off in the U.S. birth rate, as it did in many other countries. That was the national picture at least. But the United States is geographically huge and diverse in many ways, said Linda Kahn, the senior researcher on the study and an assistant professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in New York City. And as the new study demonstrates, the pandemic’s effects on birth rates differed from state to state. On the national level, Kahn’s team found what others have: Nine months into the pandemic, the U.S. birth rate was down compared to the year before — with 18 fewer births per month for every 100,000 women of childbearing age. But by the pandemic’s “second wave,” in 2021, the national birth rate had gotten back on track: That is, it returned to the declining trajectory it had been on in 2019. A deeper look, though, showed that states varied widely in how the early pandemic affected births. New York state, for example, saw a huge…  read on >  read on >

Over the past few years the escalating opioid crisis has touched off a complex debate about how best to reign in suicide risk among patients who are prescribed the addictive painkillers. The question: Could rapidly cutting back on legal opioid prescriptions help, or might patients’ desperation over lack of access inadvertently drive up suicide risk? Now new research suggests that opioid prescription rates and suicide risk appear to go hand-in-hand. As prescription rates fall, so does suicide risk. “People who are prescribed opioids, especially at higher doses, are at increased suicide risk,” said lead author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry, medicine and law at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. Roughly 4 in 10 overdose suicide deaths across the U.S. involve opioids, Olfson pointed out. And suicide risk is twice as high among patients prescribed high-dose opioids as among those who receive low-dose options. But the role of legal prescribing patterns has been a matter of controversy and competing considerations, he said. “On one hand, increasing opioid prescriptions might increase suicide risks by expanding access to medications that are potentially fatal when mixed with other drugs — such as benzodiazepines — or when taken in excess.” Olfson said, adding that opioids also increase depression risk in some people. “On the other hand, lowering the dose of opioids too quickly or…  read on >  read on >