The Pearl Jam song “Jeremy” tells the story of a boy driven mad by bullies who commits suicide in front of his classroom. The song might reflect a real and ongoing threat to teens’ mental health, new research suggests. Teens being bullied face a greater risk of early-stage psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations or paranoia, according to findings published recently in the journal Nature. Bullied teenagers also have lower levels of a key neurotransmitter found in a part of the brain involved in regulating emotions, researchers said. The findings highlight the value of efforts to reduce bullying at schools, said lead researcher Naohiro Okada, a project associate professor with the University of Tokyo’s International Research Center for Neurointelligence. “Anti-bullying programs in schools that focus on promoting positive social interactions and reducing aggressive behaviors are essential for their own sake and to reduce the risk of psychosis and its subclinical precursors,” Okada said in a university news release. “These programs can help create a safe and supportive environment for all students, reducing the likelihood of bullying and its negative consequences,” Okada added. Researchers tracked bullying via questionnaires completed by Japanese teenagers, as well as the effect bullying had on their mental health. They found bullying associated with subclinical psychotic experiences in early adolescence — symptoms that come close to psychosis but do not meet the full…  read on >  read on >

Police seizures of “magic” mushrooms have more than tripled within the past five years, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse reports. The total weight of psilocybin mushrooms seized by law enforcement increased from 498 pounds in 2017 to 1,861 pounds in 2022, according to a new report published Feb. 6 in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. To put those seizures in perspective, a typical dried mushroom dose in clinical trials for psilocybin therapy runs between 2.5 grams (.08 ounces) to 6 grams (.2 ounces), according to a 2022 analysis in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry. These seizures come in the midst of a surge in public interest regarding the use of psilocybin for therapy and recreation, researchers said. “While psilocybin is by no means the most dangerous drug, recreational use can come with unforeseen risks such as bad trips,” said lead researcher Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of epidemiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.  “Research studies suggesting its effectiveness in treating mental health issues and extensive positive media coverage may lead some people to seek ‘shrooms’ outside of medical contexts,” Palamar added. “People who use psilocybin outside of medical supervision need to be educated about risks associated with use.” In 2018 and 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted breakthrough therapy status to research using psilocybin as a treatment for…  read on >  read on >

The former ‘party drug’ ketamine has gotten some good press recently, with clinical trials suggesting it might be a powerful and fast-acting antidepressant. Now, one of the first “real-world” studies of ketamine against depression appears to support those findings. Researchers at the University of Michigan and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System say that almost half of 215 veterans who’d been suffering severe, treatment-resistant depression benefited from six weeks of ketamine infusions. “It’s not a silver bullet,” stressed study lead author Dr. Paul Pfeiffer. “But when we see these patients in our clinic, who have been through every treatment available and nothing has worked, to have even a quarter achieve a significant measurable response is very good. We routinely get thanked for making a difference in their lives.”  Pfeiffer led the study with Dr. Avinash Hosanagar. Both are faculty at the U-M Medical School department of psychiatry, and both treat patients in the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. The veterans involved in the new study were selected because they’d all tried and failed multiple treatments to curb their severe depression. Many had other mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety or a history of alcohol or drug abuse. The Michigan researchers had each of the patients receive ketamine infusions beginning in 2019 or the first nine months of 2020. Their outcomes were tracked…  read on >  read on >

They say money can’t buy happiness – and now a new study of Indigenous peoples around the world backs up that assertion. People living in small-scale societies on the fringes of the modern world lead lives as happy and satisfying as folks from wealthy, technologically advanced nations, researchers report Feb. 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Surprisingly, many populations with very low monetary incomes report very high average levels of life satisfaction, with scores similar to those in wealthy countries,” said lead researcher Eric Galbraith, a professor with McGill University in Montreal. This runs counter to the notion that economic growth is a sure-fire way to increase the well-being of people in low-income countries, researchers noted. Global surveys have found that people in wealthier countries tend to report higher levels of life satisfaction than those in poorer countries, researchers said in background notes. However, these global polls tend to overlook people in societies where the exchange of money plays a minimal role in everyday life, and where livelihoods depend directly on nature, researchers said. For this study, researchers surveyed nearly 3,000 people from Indigenous or primitive communities at 19 sites around the world. Only 64% of the surveyed households had any cash, researchers said. And yet, their average life satisfaction scores were 6.8 on a 10-point scale across all communities, and…  read on >  read on >

Police killings of unarmed Black people are robbing the Black community of a precious commodity – sleep. Black adults across the United States suffer from sleep problems after they’re exposed to news of killings that occur during police encounters, a new study published Feb. 5 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine finds. Specifically, Black adults experienced increases in short sleep, lasting fewer than seven hours a night, and very short sleep of less than six hours nightly. “These findings show that poor sleep health is another unfortunate byproduct of exposure to these tragic occurrences,” said lead researcher Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, an associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Exposure of Black Americans to police violence — which disproportionately effects Black individuals — adversely impacts sleep health of these individuals, a critical keystone that further impacts our mental, physical and emotional well-being,” Venkataramani added in a university news release. For the study, researchers analyzed changes in sleep duration tracked by two separate federal surveys, and tied those changes to data on officer-involved killings around the nation. Results showed that about 46% of Black adults reported short sleep versus 33% of white respondents. For very short sleep, the numbers were 18.4% for Black adults and 10.4% for whites. Researchers speculated that awareness of the deaths…  read on >  read on >

If you’re over 65, you likely struggle sometimes to hear conversations clearly, but ignoring that may prompt even more serious health problems, experts say. If left unchecked, hearing loss can lead to social isolation and depression — two conditions known to raise dementia risk, said Dr. Leah Ross, a physician in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Hearing impairment is the third most common chronic condition faced by older adults, Ross said. Yet, only 20% of these folks have had a hearing test in the past five years, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. While more than half of adults acknowledge they struggle with hearing problems, only 11% have sought treatment. “A lot of times, people are suffering with hearing impairment for years before they even say anything to their doctors,” Ross noted in a Penn State news release. The good news? “It is a modifiable risk factor,” Ross said. “There’s something we can do about it.” What’s missed by not treating hearing loss is what it can trigger, Ross explained. In her practice, she often sees this familiar scenario: An older adult with hearing loss discovers his or her hearing has declined to the point where they have trouble understanding conversations. They start to skip social events and stay at home, as their world shrinks and…  read on >  read on >

Accessing mental health care via telehealth boomed during the pandemic, and it continues to be a valuable resource for patients. However, it could still be tough to find, depending on the clinics available in your area, new research finds. “We found considerable variation in the types of services telehealth offered by mental health clinics across the U.S.,” said study author Jonathan Cantor, a policy researcher at RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization. His team published its findings, based on a “secret shopper” study, in the Feb. 2 issue of JAMA Health Forum. Between late 2022 and March 2023, Cantor and his colleagues tried phoning more than 1,900 outpatient mental health treatment facilities treating adults across the United States. For more than 500 clinics called, the researchers failed to reach anyone. “The fact that we could not reach anyone at one in five facilities suggests that many people may have trouble reaching a clinic to inquire about mental health care,” Cantor noted in a RAND news release. Of the remaining 1,404 clinics that did have someone respond to the “secret shopper” queries, 87% said they were accepting new patients and 80% said they offered telehealth services. Those services varied in terms of how they were offered. For example, about half of clinics offering telehealth said it was available via video appointments only, 5% said it was…  read on >  read on >

Even mild cases of COVID can trigger insomnia in most people, a new study reports. About three out of four people with mild COVID (76%) reported experiencing insomnia following their illness. Further, nearly one in four (23%) said they’d experienced severe insomnia, according to results published Feb. 5 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. “If you experience insomnia after COVID-19, don’t think that is normal,” said lead researcher Huong Hoang, head of the surgical nursing unit at Phenikaa University in Vietnam. For the study, Hoang and colleagues surveyed more than 1,000 adults who’d been diagnosed with COVID but did not require hospitalization. The surveys were conducted between June and September 2022. Half of the participants said they woke more often in the night. A third said they found it harder to fall asleep, had worse sleep and slept for less time. The severity of COVID infection did not seem linked with the severity of insomnia, researchers noted. Although COVID patients without symptoms scored lower on an insomnia index, the difference was not statistically significant. There were two groups of patients who did appear more likely to have insomnia following COVID — people with a preexisting chronic condition and people who scored highly for symptoms of depression or anxiety. Both of those groups had a higher rate of insomnia than the rest of the COVID…  read on >  read on >