Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Study shows non-children's hospitals serve majority of US children University of Vermont press release - "A study comparing U.S. pediatric hospitalizations showed that only one-third of a total 1.7 million hospitalizations in the year 2000 were to children's hospitals with specialized pediatric expertise. The results were presented today by University of Vermont Professor of Pediatrics Richard Wasserman, M.D., at the 2005 Pediatric Academic Societies' Annual Meeting. Wasserman and colleagues examined data from the 2000 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Kids' Inpatient Database for the study. The team found that a total of 64.4 percent of hospitalizations for children ages 1 to 17 were to non-children's hospitals. More than one in 20 of these hospitalizations was for a mental health admission."  
  

Minority youths self-esteem grows, not shrinks over time Brief Blackwell Publishing press release - "Research on the self-esteem of youths has primarily focused on White, middle-class adolescents, excluding the experiences of ethnically and socioeconomically diverse teens. A new study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence focused on Black, Latino, and Asian American students from lower and working class families at a public high school in New York City. The researchers found that on average the self-esteem of these students increased. And contrary to other common assumptions, both boys and girls experienced similar trajectories. 'Black adolescents reported higher self-esteem, while Asian American adolescents reported lower self-esteem, compared to their Latino peers,' the authors state. Latinos experienced the sharpest increase over time creating self-esteem that was comparable with their Black peers."  
  

St. John's Wort only minimally effective in relieving major depression, review confirms Health Behavior News story based on a study published in The Cochrane Library - "St. John’s Wort, the herbal medicinal long thought to relieve symptoms of depression, provides only minor benefits in patients with the most acute depression and perhaps no benefit for those with chronic depression. The updated review of 37 trials, involving 4,925 patients, reaffirms earlier findings that St. John’s Wort reduces symptoms of mild-to-moderate depression among adults in a manner similar to antidepressant drugs; causes fewer side effects than some of the older antidepressants on the market; and causes slightly fewer side effects compared with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, the class of antidepressants most recently developed."  
  

Living in rural areas and mental health risk, study (UK) Medical News Today (UK) story - "Residents of rural areas may be at increased risk of mental health problems. If so, public health programs aimed at preventing poor mental health may have to be customized for delivery to rural areas. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between residing in a rural area and frequent mental distress, which is one indicator of poor mental health." See also the full study (Adobe Acrobat format).