Anxiety Disorders
Article in WebMD Scientific American Medicine at Medscape - "Up to 10% of the population experience sporadic panic attacks. These attacks are characterized by sudden onset and rapid escalation of somatic symptoms referable to the autonomic nervous system (e.g., chest pain, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and dizziness) along with fear or apprehension. Panic attack is diagnosed when at least four of 13 symptomatic criteria occur unexpectedly and peak within 10 minutes .... Panic disorder is more common in women and has an average-age-group onset of early adulthood." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
comment []    

Report: State shorted on aid (California)
Sacramento Bee story - "California suffers under the formula used to calculate federal Medicaid payments, creating a funding gap that dramatically reduces the amount of medical help the state is able to offer the poor, according to a General Accounting Office report released Monday. The report was requested by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who pledged to work toward revising the nearly 40-year-old formula when Congress returns in September." See also the story Highlights Funding Ability Among States Often Are Widened (Adobe Acrobat) in the GAO Highlights newsletter and the full GAO report (also in Adobe Acrobat format).  
comment []    

New Drug Promises Shift in Treatment for Heroin Addicts
New York Times story on buprenorphine - "For many addicts, though not all, buprenorphine does what methadone does, blocking the addict's craving for a high, but experts and addicts say it has several advantages over the older drug, and the most important may be that a patient can get a supply, not merely a dose, with a visit to a doctor and pharmacy. Like methadone, buprenorphine (pronounced byoo-pre-NOR-feen) is addictive, but the risk of overdose is much lower. Unlike methadone, buprenorphine will not give an addict more than a mild high no matter how large the dose, and it cannot be combined with opiates or other narcotics to get higher still. Users suffer fewer unpleasant side effects, and milder withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking it." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
comment []    

Schizophrenia could cause patients to forget their medication
BioMed Central press release at EurekAlert - "Patients with schizophrenia must take medication regularly to reduce their risk of relapse. But the disease impairs memory, according to an article published in BMC Psychiatry, meaning these patients may have difficulty in remembering to take their tablets. Habitual tasks, like taking medicine every few hours, rely on 'prospective memory'. This type of memory, which appears to be impaired by schizophrenia, enables you to remember that you have to do something in the future, without being prompted. Brita Elvevåg, from the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health and her colleagues who carried out the research, wrote: 'To our knowledge this is the first study to show that schizophrenia is associated with an overall impairment in habitual prospective memory performance.'"  
comment []