A new report shines a light on the toll the pandemic and other stressors have taken on the mental health of US children and adolescents over the last 6 years. The report shows a dramatic increase in use of acute care services for depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions, especially among teens and preteens. … Read more
At the risk of losing a digit or two I am going to dip my toes into the murky waters of gender-affirming care, sometimes referred to as trans care. Recently, Moira Szilagyi, MD, PhD, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, released two statements, one in the Aug. 22, 2022, Wall Street Journal, the other … Read more
Mothers who have a family history of any psychiatric disorder have almost two times the risk of postpartum depression as do mothers without such history, according to a new study. Mette-Marie Zacher Kjeldsen, MSc, with the National Center for Register-based Research at Aarhus (Denmark) University, led the study, a meta-analysis that included 26 studies with … Read more
Dee McClure works with many older people who don’t think they’re depressed. They may be down in the dumps. They may be blue. But they aren’t depressed — because they aren’t crazy. Dee McClure McClure, coordinator of the Community Based and Peer Counseling Program at North Range Behavioral Health , in Greeley, Colorado, doesn’t judge … Read more
The investigational agent xanomeline-trospium (KarXT, Karuna Therapeutics), which combines a muscarinic receptor agonist with an anticholinergic agent, helps improve psychosis symptoms, and is not associated with weight gain or sedation in adults with schizophrenia, new research shows. Top-line results from the phase 3 EMERGENT-2 trial showed a significantly greater reduction from baseline on Positive and … Read more
A journal has issued an expression of concern for a federally-funded paper on Alzheimer’s disease after a sleuth on PubPeer noted potentially duplicated figures in the article. We shouldn’t forget to mention, as the paper did, that one of the authors – a prominent scientist who also happens to be a co-editor in chief of … Read more
We tend to think a good night’s sleep should be uninterrupted, but surprising new research from the University of Copenhagen suggests just the opposite: Brief awakenings may be a sign you’ve slipped well. The study, done on mice, found that the stress transmitter noradrenaline wakes up the brain many times a night. These “microarousals” were … Read more
Efforts to prevent and curb substance use in schools through public health engagement (PHE) appear to be effective where use of cigarettes and cannabis is high but had the opposite impact in where use of alcohol and cannabis is low, according to a cross-sectional study published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. The study … Read more
Ann Shulgin at her home “The Farm,” in Lafayette, Calif.ornia, in 1979. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Ann Shulgin, who together with her late husband Alexander Shulgin pioneered the use of psychedelic drugs in psychotherapy and co-wrote two seminal books on the subject, has died at the age of 91. Shulgin had been in ill health … Read more
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with accelerated cognitive decline over time, new research suggests. In an analysis of more than 12,000 middle-aged women who had experienced at least one trauma in their lives, those with PTSD symptoms showed an approximately two-fold faster decline in cognition during follow-up compared with those who did not have … Read more