Increased access to prescription opioids has driven up U.S. suicide rates by making it easier to women to end their lives, a new study claims. The study also blames a shrinking federal safety net during tough economic times for rising suicide rates. “We contend that the U.S. federal government’s weak regulatory oversight of the pharmaceutical industry and tattered social safety nets have significantly shaped U.S. suicide risk,” said lead researcher Daniel Simon, a doctoral candidate in sociology and a research affiliate with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science. U.S. suicide rates had been steadily declining until the late 1990s, when the numbers started ticking up, researchers said. They’ve risen steadily ever since. Analyzing nearly 600,000 suicide deaths in the United States between 1990 and 2017, researchers noted two spikes in the data that occurred in 1997 and 2007. Women’s suicide rates by poisoning – the leading method among females – had been declining about 3% a year during the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers said. But in 1997, one year after approval of the long-acting opioid Oxycontin, women’s suicide rates by poisoning began increasing by about 2% a year. “In the late 1990s, the method women often consider using to attempt to end their life suddenly became much more potent and much more available,” Simon said in a university news release. Notably,…  read on >  read on >

A study of mental health care in Maryland finds an increasing number of children and teens covered by Medicaid are taking multiple psychiatric meds. This trend towards “polypharmacy” might be happening elsewhere, prior research suggests. In the new study, Maryland kids ages 17 or younger experienced “a 4% increased odds of psychotropic polypharmacy per year from 2015 to 2020,” reported a team led by Yueh-Yi Chiang. She’s a graduate student at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. Chiang’s group tracked prescription data for nearly 127,000 Medicaid enrollees under the age of 18 between 2015 and 2020. Those receiving multiple psychiatric drugs during that time rose from 4.2% in 2015 to 4.6% five years later. “Individuals who were disabled or in foster care were significantly more likely than individuals with low income to receive three or more psychotropic classes overlapping for 90 days or more,” Chiang’s group noted. Polypharmacy among kids in foster care rose from 10.8% in 2015 to 11.3% in 2020, the study found. The reasons behind the steady increase in polypharmacy aren’t clear, although “factors such as complex medical conditions, early-life trauma and fragmented care may have contributed to these findings,” the team said. Chiang’s group believes the findings “emphasize the importance of monitoring the use of psychotropic combinations, particularly among vulnerable populations, such as youths enrolled in Medicaid who have a…  read on >  read on >

Nearly 15% of Americans still deny that climate change is real, according to a new national assessment from the University of Michigan. Evidence of climate change has been mounting, including science which has shown that climate-related natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity sooner than originally predicted, researchers said. Nevertheless, climate change is still not wholly accepted as fact in the United States. To assess climate change denialism in America, researchers analyzed Twitter (now X) data from 2017 to 2019, using AI techniques to track how social media has spread such denial. The study also identified key influencers like former President Donald Trump, and assessed how they spread and cemented misinformation about climate change. Using ChatGPT AI, researchers classified more than 7.4 million tweets as “for” or “against” climate change, and mapped the results at state and county levels. “Prior to the advancement of AI and social media data, this work relied on expensive and time-consuming surveys,” said senior study author Joshua Newell, co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. Analysis of the tweets showed that belief in climate change is highest along the West Coast and East Coast, and that denialism is highest in the central and southern parts of the United States. In fact, more than 20% of the populations of Oklahoma,…  read on >  read on >

FRIDAY, Feb. 16, 2024 (HealthDay News) —When grandparents can lend a hand with little ones, moms are less likely to battle depression. And, in turn, they are less likely to take antidepressants, Finnish researchers report in the Feb. 15 issue of the journal Population Studies. Based on a study that tracked 488,000 mothers of young children in Finland, use of antidepressants was highest in moms whose parents and in-laws lived far away or were old and ailing. “Previous studies have consistently shown that younger grandparents in good health are more likely to provide support and childcare,” said study co-author Niina Metsä-Simola, a researcher at the University of Helsinki.  “Having an old and frail grandparent may even place an additional burden on mothers as they cannot expect to receive support from such grandparents, but instead need to continue providing support upwards,” she added in a news release from the journal’s publisher. The depression effect was strongest in women who separated from their partners during the 2000-2014 study period.  Metsä-Simola said that made sense, because these women often have custody of their child and may need relatives’ help.  “Mothers in such a situation may need to take on additional work, affecting their need for childcare, and may even need to move home,” she said, adding that parents of young children, especially those entering single parenthood, may be…  read on >  read on >

Doctors are bailing on the profession for a reason that may surprise their patients. It’s not frustration with government rules or cumbersome insurance requirements, but problems securing suitable childcare for long and ever-changing working hours, a new survey published Feb. 15 in the BMJ finds. Erin Dean, who wrote a summary of the survey results, noted that some doctors have quit or are considering doing so. Others have changed specialties in the hope that they will have more flexibility. And even more have altered their plans to have children. The online survey, conducted in the U.K. and completed in November, included 533 respondents who identified themselves as doctors and medical students; 14 nurses; and 49 others. Of these, 548 were women. (The survey could be completed by anyone who clicked the link.) Other studies have indicated that parenthood appears to have a bigger impact on the careers of female doctors, Dean noted. More than 9 in 10 respondents said they had struggled to find suitable childcare for their work schedule. The No. 1 problem: Finding care that covers the full length of their workday. Many respondents commented on the stress and guilt of trying to be on time for work in the morning and then to pick up their children at day’s end. Cost was the No. 2 problem, cited by 75% of respondents, followed…  read on >  read on >

Aromatherapy might be able to improve memory and help treat depression Depressed individuals better recalled specific personal memories after exposed to scents These memories could help them rewire their thought patterns Aromatherapy might be able to help people recover from depression by helping them more clearly recall specific, often positive, memories, a new study shows. Scents are more effective than words at cueing up the memory of a specific event, researchers report Feb. 13 in the journal JAMA Network Open. That could help depressed individuals shake negative thought cycles and rewire their thinking patterns, researchers said. “If we improve memory, we can improve problem-solving, emotion regulation and other functional problems that depressed individuals often experience,” said senior researcher Kymberly Young, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. For the study, researchers asked 32 adults with major depressive disorder to recall a specific memory, no matter good or bad, as they breathed in glass vials containing potent familiar scents. The scents ranged from oranges to ground coffee to shoe polish to the distinct eucalyptus sharpness of Vicks VapoRub. Prior studies have found that people with major depression are less capable of drawing on specific memories from their lives, researchers said. This might contribute to depression because patients will repeat self-denigrating thoughts like “I am a failure” or “I fight with…  read on >  read on >

When bullies destroy a young victim’s trust, mental health problems are likely to follow them into adulthood, a new study warns. “There are few public health topics more important than youth mental health right now,” said senior study author George Slavich, director of UCLA Health’s Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research, who called for investments in further research to identify risk factors and develop programs to improve lifelong health and resilience. Working with the University of Glasgow, his team looked at data from 10,000 children in the U.K. who were followed for nearly 20 years.  Researchers found that kids who were bullied at age 11 and then became distrustful by age 14 were roughly 3.5 times more likely to have mental health problems by age 17 than those who were more trusting. The findings were published Feb. 13 in the journal Nature Mental Health. Researchers believe the study is the first to probe the link between peer bullying, interpersonal distrust and development of mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and anger. Slavich said the findings could help schools and other institutions develop programs to address mental health impacts of bullying. The mental health of young people is a growing public concern. In a sample of U.S. high school students, 44.2% said they had been depressed for at least two weeks in 2021, according…  read on >  read on >