Thursday, April 21, 2005

1 in 5 Teens Abused Prescription Drugs AP story at MentalHelp.net - "The nation's teenagers are increasingly trying prescription drugs such as Vicodin and OxyContin to get high, with the pill-popping members of "Generation Rx" often raiding their parents' medicine cabinets, according to the latest national study by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The 17th annual study on teen drug abuse, released Thursday morning, found that about one in five teenagers has abused a prescription painkiller - more than have experimented with either Ecstasy, cocaine, crack or LSD. One in 11 teens had abused over-the-counter products such as cough medicine, the study reported." See also the related page of resources at the Partnership for a Drug Free America web site and the full Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (Adobe Acrobat format).  
  

Keeping Youth in Treatment Reduces Suicide Attempts  Psychiatric News story - "Two protocols for treating adolescents who have attempted suicide appear to work equally well, but retaining the youngsters in treatment may be more important than the type of therapy used. About 15 percent of adolescents who attempt suicide unsuccessfully try again within six months, and repeat attempts increase the risk of completed suicide, so treatments that reduce that rate are critical. A new study found little difference between two such treatment protocols but retained most patients in treatment through the six-month trial."  
  

Schizophrenia's Suicide Risk May Be Less Than Thought  Psychiatric News story - "A new meta-analysis estimates that 5.6 percent of people with schizophrenia will commit suicide—half the rate usually reported in the psychiatric literature. The lifetime risk of suicide among persons diagnosed with schizophrenia is about half of the rate routinely quoted in the psychiatric literature, according to a meta-analysis of 61 studies. Rather than the conventional estimate that 10 percent of those with schizophrenia will die by suicide, the new study estimates that 5.6 percent will commit suicide during their lifetime, with most deaths occurring shortly after the onset of illness..."  
  

Remember the Endocrine System When Using Psychoactive Drugs  Psychiatric News story - "Commonly prescribed psychopharmacological agents can cause a range of side effects in the endocrine system, but they can be managed by aware clinicians. The endocrine complications of psychopharmacological agents in children demand particular attention because the patients are still developing. One of the oldest psychotropic drugs has well-known effects on the thyroid gland, said Harold Carlson, M.D., head of the division of endocrinology at Stony Brook University in New York..."  
  

Electroshock therapy speeds improvement in schizophrenia patients Center for the Advancement of Health press release - "Shock therapy, a controversial practice conjuring frightening images of behavior control, still has a place in schizophrenia treatment, a newly updated research review shows. Although the data confirmed that antipsychotic drugs are still the first choice for schizophrenia treatment, they also showed that electroconvulsive, or shock, therapy clearly works, and combining both treatments can accelerate benefits to some patients, the review finds. Dr. Prathap Tharyan, head of psychiatry at Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu, India, and colleagues analyzed 26 randomized controlled trials, involving 1,485 adult patients, 798 of whom were treated with shock therapy. Trials were conducted in India, the United States, Thailand, Canada, Hungary and Nigeria. The review appears in the most recent issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research."  
  

Scientists Add Clout in NIH Fight LA Times story - "Scientists at the National Institutes of Health who are fighting new rules that would end their financial ties to the drug industry have hired, at a favorable rate, a law and lobbying firm that also represents the companies. The hiring has added firepower to the government scientists' campaign, which already is getting results: Senior aides to NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni now are discussing whether to soften a requirement that employees sell any stock they hold in a biomedical company, according to an agency spokesman. The divestiture requirement — scheduled to take effect in October — was part of a package of reforms announced by Zerhouni on Feb. 1. The new rules also immediately prohibit all NIH scientists from taking fees, stock options or any other compensation from pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies."  
  

Brain Scans Reveal How Gene May Boost Schizophrenia Risk Science Daily story - "Clues about how a suspect version of a gene may slightly increase risk for schizophrenia* are emerging from a brain imaging study by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The gene variant produced a telltale pattern of activity linked to production of a key brain messenger chemical. The study found that increased activity in the front of the brain predicted increases in the neurotransmitter dopamine in the middle of the brain in subjects with the suspected schizophrenia-related version of the gene. Yet, the opposite relationship held for subjects with the other of two common versions of the gene."  
  

Lawrence Memorial Hospital to boost mental health services (Kansas) Lawrence Journal-World story - "Lawrence Memorial Hospital will remodel its emergency room and hire new ER workers to better treat patients with mental illness. advertisement The decision, agreed to Wednesday by hospital trustees, was applauded by some who have criticized LMH for having inadequate services for the mentally ill. But one trustee said the plan to spend $150,000 remodeling the emergency room was a hasty reaction to public pressure"