Racial and ethnic minorities bore a disproportionate mental health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the authors of a study published in 

During the heights of the pandemic, research established that minority groups were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 when compared to non-Hispanic whites, including experiencing higher rates of infection, severe disease, hospitalization, and death. Following the pandemic, reports showing a 3-fold increase in the incidence of depression symptoms showed that the pandemic had a significant impact on mental health broadly, but the effects of COVID-19 on the mental health of minorities was not clear based on the data.

In the new study, investigators used data on 691,473 individuals in the United States and United Kingdom who responded to the smartphone-based COVID Symptom Study between January 23, 2021, and June 9, 2021. Recruited through social media, participants reported baseline information before logging daily information on their symptoms and COVID-19 testing results using an app called Zoe.

According to the study, after controlling for personal factors including prior mental health diagnoses and changes in leisure time activities, Black participants in the United States were 1.16 times more likely to screen positive for depression than White participants. Hispanic participants were also 1.23 times more likely to screen positive for depression and 1.23 times more likely to show signs of anxiety compared to White participants.

“The early phase of [the] COVID-19 pandemic was incredibly disruptive to everyday life,” wrote the authors in the study. “We found that racial and ethnic minorities in the US and UK were more likely to screen positive for depression and anxiety.”

Similar results were found for Black and Asian participants in the United Kingdom, as well as those within other participant subgroups, including Black health care workers, who had higher rates of depression and anxiety than White health care workers.

Based on these findings, the authors concluded that minority communities in both the United States and the United Kingdom experience a mental health burden that was disproportionate to other communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. These problems could also last well beyond any presumed conclusion of the pandemic.

“[The findings] suggest a disproportionate impact and mental health burden on persons of color, which need to be considered as we reshape health care systems to prioritize the long-term consequences of this disease,” the authors wrote in the study.

Minorities bore disproportionate mental health impact of pandemic. News release. Science Daily; August 10, 2022. Accessed August 17, 2022. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220810161148.htm

Articles

Research found that Black health care workers had higher odds of depression and anxiety than White health care workers.

Study: COVID-19 Pandemic Disproportionately Impacted the Mental Health of Minority Populations

New research has found that tendencies toward impulsivity in early adolescence are connected to a variety of poor outcomes in later adolescence, including antisocial personality disorder (APD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD), according to data from hundreds of Philadelphia youth tracked for more than 6 years.

In past studies, the link between impulsivity and disorders such as APD and AUD were analyzed, but the value of intervention during adolescence was not evaluated. The new findings suggest that targeted support during early adolescence once individuals start to exhibit higher levels of impulsivity may help to stop a cascading chain of events that could lead to APD and AUD in late-adolescence.

“Kids with impulse control problems are at risk for a variety of adverse outcomes, such as drug use, acting-out behavior, and antisocial behavior,” said study co-author Dan Romer, PhD, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, in a press release. “What we’ve found is that you’ve got to start mitigating impulsivity before it starts influencing behaviors that lead to substance use and antisocial behavior disorders. Once adolescents are on a trajectory of engaging in those behaviors, it may become more difficult to prevent disorders later in adolescence than it is to treat impulsivity itself.”

The study is based on data from the Philadelphia Trajectory Study, which included 364 adolescents of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The study was conducted over 6 waves, during which participants between the ages of 10 and 12 years were interviewed annually starting from 2004 to 2010, with a final 2-year follow-up in 2012. The current study relies on 5 years of self-reported data pulled from waves 3 through 6; by the final wave, the participants were between the ages of 18 and 21 years.

During the study, the team found that from early to mid-adolescence, changes in impulsivity predicted changes in antisocial behavior and alcohol use. However, by the time the participants have reached mid- to late-adolescence, changes in impulsivity were no longer predicting those behaviors.

“It is also important to target antisocial behavior to interrupt the cascade that predicts both [AUD] and [APD],” lead study author Ivy Defoe, an assistant professor of social and behavioural sciences at the University of Amsterdam, said in the press release. “In fact, the study showed that increases in antisocial behavior in mid- to late-adolescence further predicted increases in impulsivity as well. This is consistent with labeling theory that suggests that individuals who show antisocial behavior are subsequently labeled as ‘antisocial’ or ‘rule-breakers,’ which causes them to further exhibit attributes that are associated with such behavior.”

The investigators noted that potential interventions for individuals exhibiting high levels of impulsivity in early adolescence is by alerting parents about the potential risks and ways of referring their children for treatment.

“Intervening early is critical to further avoid the consequences of impulsivity which are more difficult to reverse once psychopathology has developed,” said the research team in the press release. They added that such interventions could include mindfulness training and family-based interventions in which parents and caregivers work to help their child overcome harmful impulsive tendencies.

Significantly, the investigators also noted that the data showed that socioeconomic status was a significant predictor of impulsivity at each wave of the study.

“Future research could further investigate the mechanisms by which early exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage influences heightened impulsivity during adolescence, including impacts on child executive functioning and parenting behaviors,” the researchers said in the press release.

Targeting Impulsivity Early in Adolescence Could Prevent Later Behavioral Disorders. Annenberg Public Policy Center University of Pennsylvania. August 8, 2022. Accessed August 16, 2022. 

https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/targeting-impulsivity-early-in-adolescence-could-prevent-later-behavioral-disorders/

Research showed that changes in impulsivity during early to mid-adolescence predicted changes in antisocial behavior and alcohol use. 

Study: Targeting Impulsivity Early in Adolescence Could Prevent Later Behavioral Disorders

Almost 30,000 people in the United States die from alcoholic liver diseases every year. Alcohol, especially in excess amounts, has a slew of negative adverse effects (AEs) on the liver, stomach, and the intestinal gut microbiome. The cause for the latter condition has not yet been identified, but new data suggest the liver may be the cause of the gut microbiome imbalance.

Investigators at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) recently proposed that alcohol negatively affects the gut microbiome because of acetate in particular. When drinking, acetate is produced by the liver then diffused into the intestines where it becomes a carbon source that supports growth of bacteria. However, not all of the resulting bacteria growth is beneficial.

"You can think of this a bit like dumping fertilizer on a garden," said co-corresponding author Karsten Zengler, PhD, professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Bioengineering at UCSD School of Medicine and Jacobs School of Engineering, in a press release. "The result is an explosion of imbalanced biological growth, benefitting some species but not others."

Known to regulate appetite, energy, and immune response, acetate can be health promoting by improving cardiac function, enhancing red blood cell production, and improving memory function. However, like many nutrients, an excess amount of acetate can create dysbiosis, which is associated with metabolic changes that can cause cancer.

To understand the issue further, Zengler and his colleagues conducted a study in mice. They fed the mice a molecule that the gut broke into 3 acetates, the third of which altered the rodents’ intestinal microbiome similarly to that of the effects of alcohol. However, it did not damage the rodents’ livers.

Following the experiment, Zengler explained that the intestines express fewer antimicrobial molecules by consuming alcohol frequently.

“Persons with alcohol-related liver disease commonly have bacterial overgrowth in their guts. These findings suggest that microbial ethanol metabolism does not contribute significantly to gut microbiome dysbiosis (imbalance) and that the microbiome altered by acetate does not play a major role in liver damage," Zengler said in the press release. "The situation is more complicated than previously assumed. It's not as simple as more ethanol equals microbiome changes and thus, microbiome dysbiosis equals more liver disease.”

The study authors noted that the findings do not provide a direction for new treatments for alcoholic liver disease. However, the authors explained that the results can guide future research toward the investigation of the effects of acetate on gut microbiota.

Zengler also noted that in future research that will be conducted among his colleagues at UCSD, the investigation of how ethanal consumption changes the gut microbiome is no longer necessary. Instead, Zengler and colleagues will begin to look to identify the bacteria that are causal for deleterious effects of alcohol consumption, rather than the AEs of consumption or disease.

University of California – San Diego. Alcohol use can alter gut microbes, but not in the way you might think. Science Daily. Aug 11, 2022. Accessed on Aug 15, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220811135321.htm

Although alcohol is not absorbed by the intestines, research has demonstrated that excessive drinking causes the liver to produce too much acetate which may lead to intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Study: Excessive Alcohol Consumption Causes Gut Microbiome Imbalance 

When children get a sense of comfort from spending time with a parent or a caregiver, their experiencing a type of attachment termed a “secure attachment” with that individual. This secure attachment with a parental figure has been shown to play a significant part in socio-emotional development and mental health during an individual’s youth.

On the other end of the spectrum, a child’s insecure attachment with a parent or caregiver has been found to be associated with depression and anxiety, delinquency and substance use problems, and poorer social competence.

"When mothers struggle in their own interpersonal relationships, the passing on of secure attachment and healthy relationship functioning to adolescent offspring seem to be impeded," said Carla Sharp, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the University of Houston Developmental Psychopathology Lab, in the journal 

Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation

. "Maternal interpersonal problems were associated with higher levels of insecure attachment in adolescent offspring such that adolescents would either dismiss the need for attachment with their moms or show angry preoccupation with the relationship with their moms."

Although there has been an accumulation of data showing the presence of an association between a mothers' mental health issues and their child’s maladaptive attachment in close or romantic relationships in adulthood, the study published in 

 is the first to investigate adolescent relationships and their association with offspring attachment.

The study authors noted that after infancy and early childhood, the parent-child attachment during adolescence is considered to be the second most critical developmental window. Due to the importance of this period, the investigators wanted to assess this period in an individual’s development further to shed light on the impact of the parent-child attachment in adolescence to inform potential interventions that may prevent or reduce youth psychopathology and other adverse outcomes.

During the study, the investigators interviewed 351 adolescents who were inpatient at a psychiatric program or facility and those adolescents’ biological mothers. The adolescents interviewed had an average age of 15 years and 64% of them were female.

During the interviews, the adolescent participants were asked about distressing interpersonal behaviors that they find "hard to do," such as feeling close to other people, or behaviors that they "do too much," such as trying to please other people. Following the interviews, the participants were then assessed on their ability to describe their attachment experiences in a manner that was coherent and collaborative, as well as to reflect on these attachment experiences and how they have impacted the participants personally.

Additionally, the investigators interviewed the biological mothers of the adolescents and asked them to recall experiences from their relationships with their mothers. During these interviews, the investigators looked at whether the relationship dynamic that the mothers recalled having with their mothers helped to explain their present relationship with their children. The results showed a strong correlation between the two.

"The way that parents recalled their experiences with their caregivers is likely impacted by their own interpersonal functioning and may impact the relationship that they build with their children," first study author Sophie Kerr, a graduate student working with Sharp at the University of Houston Developmental Psychopathology Lab, said in a press release.

The authors further noted that these study results will help to drive research to examine the mechanisms of intergenerational risk to tailor interventions that can help to improve parent-child relationships and attachment.

"Findings highlight the mediating role of the mothers' recalled experiences with caregivers in the impact of their interpersonal problems on adolescents, suggesting interventions that enhance interpersonal function such as mentalization-based interventions may be helpful for mothers with interpersonal problems and personality pathology," said Sharp in the press release.

Moms' problems linked to adolescent attachment issues. Houston, TX: University of Houston; August 9, 2022. Accessed August 15, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220809141259.htm

Research found a strong correlation between a mother’s dynamic with their mother and whether or not their child is able to form secure attachments with others in adolescence.

Maternal Personality Disorder Symptoms May Lead to a Child’s Insecure Attachment in Adolescence

Men with early and curable stages of prostate cancer miss opportunities for cancer detection, because of media health campaigns and national guidelines that focus on urinary symptoms, experts at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom said.

Despite a lack of evidence that links prostate cancer and urinary symptoms, many continue to promote this link, according to investigators.

, investigators said that this link could deter men from coming forward for earlier testing and detection of potentially treatable cancer.

“When most people think of the symptoms of prostate cancer, they think of problems with peeing or needing to pee more frequently, particularly during the night,” Vincent Gnanapragasam, professor of urology at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. “This misperception has lasted for decades, despite very little evidence, and it’s potentially preventing us picking up cases at an early stage.”

Screening programs can detect cancers at early stages. However, in the case of prostate cancer, some contend that these programs could potentially overwhelm health services and cause individuals to be treated for benign disease.

Testing includes a blood test that looks for a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) that is made only in the prostate gland, though this is not always accurate, according to investigators.

PSA density has been shown to be significantly more accurate than PSA alone.

Evidence shows that there is a misconception that prostate cancer is always symptomatic, with a previous study citing that 86% of the public associated prostate cancer with symptoms, and just 1% were aware that it could be asymptomatic, investigators said.

“We need to emphasize that prostate cancer can be a silent or asymptomatic disease, particularly in its curable stages. Waiting out for urinary symptoms may mean missing opportunities to catch the disease when it’s treatable,” Gnanapragasam said in the statement.

“Men shouldn't be afraid to speak to their [physicians] about getting tested and about the value of a PSA test, especially if they have a history of prostate cancer in their family or have other risk factors, such as being of Black or mixed Black ethnicity,” he said.

Individuals are not advocating for immediate screening programs, investigators said.

They also acknowledged that changes in messaging could mean more men approaching their physicians for a PSA test, which they said could potentially result in unnecessary treatment.

However, they also said there are ways to reduce the risk of this happening, including the use of algorithms to assess an individual’s risk and whether they need to be referred to a specialist and for those who are referred, MRI scans could help rule out mild disease or negative findings.

“If men were aware that just because they have no symptoms doesn’t necessarily mean they are cancer-free, then more might take up offers for tests. This could mean more tumors identified at an earlier stage and reduce the numbers of men experiencing late presentation with incurable disease,” Gnanapragasam said.

Prostate cancer cases risk being detected too late due to misleading focus on urinary problems. News release. ScienceDaily. August 3, 2022. Accessed August 10, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220803203926.htm

Men with early, curable stages of the disease are missing opportunities for detection, according to an analysis by investigators at the University of Cambridge.

Prostate Cancer Cases Risk Late Detection Because of Misguided Focus on Urinary Problems 

Retaining staff and facility administrators in long-term care facilities continues to be challenging after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the importance of care continuity for patients, according to researchers.

The pandemic exacerbated and drew attention to staffing challenges for nursing home residents, their families, and other health care workers in long-term care environments. Further, recruiting and retaining staff have become significant challenges in recent years.

Researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine noted that continuity of staff and leadership has been associated with improving quality of resident care in long-term care facilities, including onsite treatment, post-hospital care, assistance with basic care needs, and more. To discuss the issue further, researchers Jennifer L. Carnahan, MD, MPH, and Kathleen Unroe, MD, MHA, wrote an editorial published in the 

Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

According to Carnahan and Unroe, building trust between patients, their families, and long-term care staff allows residents to feel comfortable with the very personal care that they receive. In addition to focusing on tasks, caregivers in such environments must know and interact personally with residents.

In addition to impacting the trust with patients, staff turnover can affects patients’ families as well. Family members rely on staff to care for their loved ones and keep them apprised of changes to their family members’ health and lifestyle. Changes in patients in long-term care can be subtle, including mood changes, loss of interest in activities, or inability to perform a task that they could previously accomplish, necessitating close attention from long-term care staff.

“Doctors and nurses are obviously important, but it should be recognized that frontline nursing home staff deliver 90% of care and thus are critical to creating a high-quality long-term care system,” Unroe said in a press release. “Everyone agrees we have a recruitment and retention problem. We need to devise incentives to attract and keep people in this workforce who enjoy working with older adults and are well trained, especially in the needs of people with dementia.”

Unroe, a geriatrician and past chair of the American Geriatrics Society Public Policy Committee, currently serves as a member of the technical expert panel of the Centers for the Medicare & Medicaid Services Five-Star Quality Rating System. In the editorial, Unroe said the tool provides more than 100 quality metrics divided into 5 categories: mortality, safety of care, readmission to hospitals, patient experience, and timely and effective care. These measurements allow patients, their families, social services, and others to compare quality of care at facilities.

“We need to prioritize nurturing and supporting staff so that they can deliver the hands-on care nursing home residents require,” Carnahan said in the press release. “Given the importance of continuity to quality of care for this vulnerable population and the current lack of viable solutions to improve staff and leadership recruitment and retention, researchers, in partnership with nursing home operators, must take the lead in developing and testing practical and reproduceable strategies to attract and keep a talented workforce and leadership.”

Staff and facility administrator retention has been challenging for long-term care facilities. News release. Regenstrief Institute; August 4, 2022. Accessed August 10, 2022. 

https://www.regenstrief.org/article/staff-retention-challenging-for-long-term-care-facilities/

Building trust between patients, their families, and long-term care staff allows residents to feel comfortable with the very personal care that they receive.



Staff Retention Continues to Be Challenging in Long-Term Care Facilities

Excessive heat during the night may interrupt the normal physiology of sleep and have a predicted climate-change related mortality risk on a global scale, according to the authors of a study from the UNC Gillings School of Public Health.

Less sleep due to heat can lead to immune system damage and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic illnesses, inflammation, and mental health conditions. Additionally, results showed that the average intensity of hot night events will nearly double by 2090 across 28 cities in east Asia, which will increase the burden of disease due to excessive heat that can disrupt normal sleeping patterns.

The findings of the study also demonstrated that the burden of mortality could be significantly higher than previously estimated due to the lack of consideration regarding the impact of average daily temperature increases on mortality estimates.

“The risks of increasing temperature at night were frequently neglected,” said study co-author Yuqiang Zhang, PhD, a climate scientist in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School, in a press release. “However, in our study, we found that the occurrences of hot night excess (HNE) are projected to occur more rapidly than the daily mean temperature changes. The frequency and mean intensity of hot nights would increase more than 30% and 60% by the 2100s, respectively, compared with less than 20% increase for the daily mean temperature.”

During the study, the research team estimated mortality rates due to excess heat in 28 cities in China, South Korea, and Japan between 1980 and 2015 and applied it to 2 climate change modeling scenarios that aligned with carbon-reduction models adapted by each city’s respective national government.

Between the years 2016 and 2100, the team estimated the risk of death from excessively hot nights increased nearly 6-fold.

“From our study, we highlight that, in assessing the disease burden due to non-optimum temperature, governments and local policymakers should consider the extra health impacts of the disproportional intra-day temperature variations. A more complete health risk assessment of future climate change can help policymakers for better resource allocation and priority setting,” corresponding study author Haidong Kan, PhD, a professor at Fudan University in China, said in the press release.

Further, the study authors found that regional differences in temperature accounted for many of the variances in nighttime temperature, and areas with the lowest average temperature were projected to have the largest warming potential.

“To combat the health risk raised by the temperature increases from climate change, we should design efficient ways to help people adapt,” Zhang said in the press release. “Locally, heat during the night should be taken into account when designing the future heatwave warning system, especially for vulnerable populations and low-income communities who may not be able to afford the additional expense of air conditioning. Also, stronger mitigation strategies, including global collaborations, should be considered to reduce future impacts of warming.”

Risk of death rises as climate change causes nighttime temperatures to climb. UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health; August 8, 2022. Accessed August 9, 2022. 

https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/risk-of-death-rises-as-climate-change-causes-nighttime-temperatures-to-climb/

The study authors found that regional differences in temperature accounted for many of the variances in nighttime temperature.

Study: Climate Change Predicted to Cause Increase in Mortality Rate of More Than 60% by 2100s

Researchers discovered hundreds of links between the cultural ecosystem services (CESs) of nature and human wellbeing, identifying contributions that could be used in future policy for real-world impact.

CESs are the nonmaterial benefits that humans receive from nature. Current studies on CESs make it difficult to explore any patterns or commonalities of their effects on wellbeing. This research is often fragmented by method, measurement, demographic, or place.

Lam Huynh, a PhD candidate in Sustainability Science at the University of Tokyo, gathered a team to capture a “big-picture” view of CESs and wellbeing. The team performed a systematic literature review of 301 academic articles that identified hundreds of links between the intangible benefits of nature on human health.

"We identified 227 unique linkages between a single CES (such as recreation or aesthetic value) and a single constituent of human wellbeing (such as connectedness, spirituality, or health). We knew that there are many linkages, but we were surprised to find quite so many of them," explained Huynh in the press release. "Then, through further critical reading, we could identify major commonalities."

Underlying these 227 unique links are 16 mechanisms, or ways in which a person’s interaction with nature affects their wellbeing, according to Huynh. Specifically, “cohesive," "creative," and "formative" mechanisms facilitated positive interactions with nature, while "irritative" and "destructive" mechanisms facilitated negative ones.

Based on the researchers’ analysis, the degradation or loss of CESs contributed to worse wellbeing, as well as annoying wildlife noises, which were found to negatively impact some people’s mental health. Conversely, “recreation,” “tourism,” and “aesthetic value” were CESs that contributed significant positive affects on mental and physical health.

"It is particularly interesting to note that the identified pathways and mechanisms, rather than affecting human wellbeing independently, often interact strongly," co-author Alexandros Gasparatos, PhD, an associate professor at the Institute for Future Initiatives (IFI) at the University of Tokyo, said in the press release. "This can create negative trade-offs in some contexts, but also important positive synergies that can be leveraged to provide multiple benefits to human wellbeing."

However, the research team noted that they still may not have found all the links between nature and wellbeing. They acknowledged the possibility that there are missing pathways among traditional and indigenous communities and their independent relationships with nature.

Huynh also explained that there is a knowledge gap in existing literature on the individual’s relationship with nature and personal wellbeing. This could make it hard to identify trade-offs in ecosystem management research and practice.

Having received a grant, Huynh and the other members of the research team will study CESs and human wellbeing in urban spaces in Tokyo next.

"This project is a logical follow-up to test whether and how some of the identified pathways and mechanisms unfold in reality and intersect with human wellbeing," Gasparatos said in the press release.

“An improved understanding of nature's many connections to human wellbeing and the underlying processes mediating them, can help policymakers to design appropriate interventions,” study co-author Kensuke Fukushi, PhD, a professor and vice director of the IFI, said in the press release. "Such coordinated action could leverage the positive contributions of these connections and become another avenue to protect and manage ecosystems sustainably.”

The many ways nature nurtures human well-being. University of Tokyo; Aug 5, 2022. Accessed on Aug 9, 2022. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220805154349.htm

Researchers observed 227 pathways that show how interacting with nature affects human wellbeing.

Study: Researchers Discover ‘Mechanisms’ Underlying Nature’s Influence on Wellbeing

Better mental health for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with several factors, including easy care of a service dog and the closeness of the bond between dogs and veterans, according to the results of an analysis from Purdue University.

The findings of the study, conducted by Clare Jensen and colleagues, were published in the open-access journal 

“This study provides new information about how and why service dogs may improve mental health for some veterans with PTSD. We are especially grateful to the military veterans who made this possible by sharing their time and experiences with us,” Jensen, a research assistant in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement.

Previous research results showed that there was an association between a veteran being paired with a service dog and lower severity of PTSD, though it was unclear why.

To better understand the link, the investigators studied 82 military members or veterans and their service dogs. The dogs were all trained to alleviate PTSD symptoms.

The veterans completed several different surveys shortly before the pairing and again after 3 months together. Investigators used this to make additional observations for the dog-veteran interactions.

First, they analyzed the results of the surveys and records related to personal characteristics of the service dogs and veterans as well as the closeness of the bonds.

The investigators found that most of the dog characteristics were not associated with better or worse veteran mental health outcomes, except for lower dog excitability. This was linked to a closer veteran-dog relationship and lower severity of PTSD symptoms.

Additionally, the investigators probed potential mechanisms that could help alleviate mental health symptoms. To do this, they analyzed the results of observations and surveys that captured dog behavior, training methods, and the use of specific trained tasks.

Better mental health was associated with several factors, including the close bond between the dogs and veterans and perception of easy care for the dog.

The analysis also showed that there was a link between more frequently asking service dogs to initiate the social greeting and worse depression. Additionally, veterans who more frequently asked the dogs to alert them to individuals approaching them from behind were more likely to have greater anxiety but less severe PTSD symptoms.

further research is needed to expand on the findings, investigators said.

This could lead to a better understanding of how to identify veterans who could benefit from service dogs and how to best select and train the dogs.

How service dogs reduce PTSD symptoms: factors and mechanisms. News release. Science Daily. July 27, 2022. Accessed August 1, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220727141337.htm

New analysis highlights factors and mechanisms that underlie the mental health effects for veterans.

Service Dogs Reduce PTSD Symptoms, Study Results From Purdue Show

Frequent daytime napping in adults was associated with a 12% higher risk of developing high blood pressure as well as a 24% higher risk of stroke, compared to adults who never take daytime naps, according to a study published in 

For the study, researchers in China examined whether frequent or usual napping could be a potential causal risk factor for high blood pressure or stroke. This was the first study to use observational analysis of participants over a long period of time as well as Mendelian randomization, which is a genetic risk validation, to investigate potential links.

“These results are especially interesting since millions of people might enjoy a regular, or even daily, nap,” said corresponding author E. Wang, PhD, MD, a professor and chair of the department of anesthesiology at Xiangya Hospital Central South University in China, in a press release.

The research team used data from UK Biobank, a large biomedical database and research resource containing anonymized genetic, lifestyle, and health information from more than 500,000 UK participants. The database recruited participants between 40 and 69 years of age who lived in the United Kingdom between 2006 and 2010. They provided regular blood, urine, and saliva samples, as well as detailed lifestyle information. The daytime napping frequency survey occurred 4 times between 2006 and 2019 in a small proportion of UK Biobank participants.

Wang’s research team then excluded records of individuals who had already had a stroke or experienced hypertension before the start of the study. This left approximately 360,000 participants to analyze the association between napping and first-time reports of stroke or high blood pressure, with an average follow-up of about 11 years. Participants were divided into groups based on their self-reported napping frequency, including “never/rarely,” “sometimes,” or “usually.”

According to the study, a higher percentage of the “usual” nappers were men, had lower education and income levels, and reported cigarette smoking, daily drinking, insomnia, snoring, and being an evening person compared to participants who said they never or sometimes napped. Compared to individuals who reported never taking a nap, individuals who usually nap had a 12% higher likelihood of developing high blood pressure and 24% higher likelihood of having a stroke.

Furthermore, participants younger than 60 years of age who usually napped had a 20% higher risk of developing high blood pressure compared to individuals the same age who never napped. After 60 years of age, usual napping was associated with a 10% greater risk of high blood pressure compared to those who reported never napping. Approximately three-fourths of participants remained in the same napping category throughout the study.

Finally, the Mendelian randomization result showed that if napping frequency increased by one category (from never to sometimes, or from sometimes to usually), high blood pressure risk increased by 40%. Higher napping frequency was related to the genetic propensity for high blood pressure risk.

“This may be because, although taking a nap itself is not harmful, many people who take naps may do so because of poor sleep at night,” sleep expert Michael A. Grandner, PhD, MTR, said in the press release. “Poor sleep at night is associated with poorer health, and naps are not enough to make up for that.”

The authors recommended further examination of the associations between a healthy sleep pattern, including daytime napping, and heart health. They also noted that they only collected data on daytime napping frequency, not duration, which could be a limitation.

Additionally, nap frequency was self-reported without any objective measurements, making estimates nonquantifiable. The results also may not be generalizable based on the study population.

“This study echoes other findings that generally show that taking more naps seems to reflect increased risk for problems with heart health and other issues,” Grander concluded in the press release.

Study shows link between frequent naps and high blood pressure. Press release. American Heart Association; July 25, 2022. Accessed August 4, 2022. 

https://newsroom.heart.org/news/study-shows-link-between-frequent-naps-and-high-blood-pressure

Although naps may not be unhealthy, frequent napping could reflect poorer sleep at night.

Study Links Frequent Naps, High Blood Pressure

A belief that “brilliance” is considered a male trait specifically was found to increase in children up until 12 years of age, according to research conducted in Nanyang Technological University in Singapore in collaboration with New York University in the United States. The study was conducted in a participant population that consisted of 389 Chinese Singaporean parents and 342 of their children between the ages of 8 and 12 years.

The study carried out tests to measure the extent to which parents and their children associate the notion of brilliance with men over other genders and to analyze the relationship between parents and their children’s views. During the study, the investigators defined brilliance as “an exceptional level of intellectual ability,” and the results showed that children are more likely to associate brilliance with men if their parents hold the same belief regarding brilliance being a male trait.

Previous research on gender stereotypes has found that the idea of giftedness as a male trait can emerge at approximately age 6 years, and it was unknown whether and how this stereotype changes over the course of childhood. To understand the development of gender stereotypes among children, the investigators in this study investigated the gender stereotype associated with brilliance in particular.

"Stereotypical views about how boys are smarter than girls can take root in childhood and become a self-fulfilling prophecy," said lead author Setoh Peipei, an associate professor at the NTU Singapore School of Social Sciences, in a press release. "For girls, this may lead them to doubt their abilities, thus limiting their ideas about their interests and what they can achieve in life. Our research work shows parents must also be included in policies and school programs to effectively combat children's gender stereotypes from a young age.”

Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is a common implicit measure of stereotyping that is used in research, the investigators evaluated parents’ and children’s behavior. During the test, the participants were asked to categorize photographs of men and women and 2 sets of words. One set of “genius words” referred to the notion of brilliance and included words like “super-smart” and “genius,” while the other set of words referred to creativity.

The first half of trials saw the participants pressing keys to categorize the male photographs with genius words, and this process was repeated in the second half of the trials with female photographs and genius words. The participants with an implicit association of men being brilliant will react faster to the task of categorizing genius words with the male photographs than the same task with female photographs.

The results showed an average D score of 0.16, which indicated that the Singaporean children included in the study associate brilliance with men more than they associate the trait with women.

In the second half of the study, scores from parent-child pairs were investigated among those who took the tests separately. The results showed that children’s scores were correlated to their parents’ test scores, which suggested to the researchers that during the earlier years of primary school, parents may play a part in their children’s acquisition of the “brilliance equals men” stereotype.

In a further analysis, the investigators discovered that, as the age of the boys that were tested got older, they were less likely to hold the same stereotype of brilliance being a male trait as their parents. However, for girls, the stereotypes remained closely linked to their parents’ stereotypes throughout the primary school years.

"This study adds to the evidence that the gender imbalances observed in many prestigious careers are not a function of differences between women and men in their inherent aptitudes or interests,” said co-author Andrei Cimpian, PhD, professor of Psychology at New York University, in a press release. “Rather, these imbalances are the product of the messages that young people are getting from those around them about what women and men are supposedly—and supposed to be—like. As a society, we have a responsibility to work toward addressing this issue."

The authors of the study noted that future studies will be focused on whether this gender stereotype about brilliance being a male trait may differently impact primary and secondary school girls’ and boys’ outcomes in math, which is a core STEM subject that is commonly believed to require intellectual brilliance to excel in.

Pre-teen children believe 'brilliance' is a male trait, and this stereotype increases in strength up to the age of twelve. ScienceDaily. July 25, 2022. Accessed August 1, 2022. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220725105645.htm

The investigators discovered that, as the age of the boys that were tested got older, they were less likely to hold the same stereotype of brilliance being a male trait as their parents.

Study: Stereotyping 'Brilliance' As Male Trait Increases With Age in Children Up to Age 12 Years

Through the use of metaphors and images alongside traditional medical scales, patients may be better able to identify and express their experience of pain and its personal toll to their health care providers, according to research published in the journal 

. Due to the complicated ways patients make sense of their experience of pain, poetry and images may help to reveal important details that can aid in diagnosis and treatment, according to the study.

Developed in the 20th century, pain charts and visual-linguistic scales help to measure pain, but patients’ endeavors to self-report pain may pose challenges for some due to the subjective nature of pain and difficulties with externalizing it on an objective scale.

"Feeling supported rather than stigmatized can help people cope with pain. We need better ways to express and describe pain other than a scale of 1 to 10. Numbers are useful, but often there is too much riding on picking the right number. We need to give patients better resources to describe pain in a different way,” said study co-author Jessica Stanier, a doctoral student from the University of Exeter, in a press release.

Stanier noted that due to the nature of how we process our experiences, a far more radical understanding of the expression of pain involves embracing the role of the imagination in that process, which would require moving beyond the use of pain scales and toward a transformation of social and material conditions.

"Imagination plays a crucial role in determining how the self makes sense of experiences of pain figuratively,” Stanier said in the press release. “Pain is not a thing, a state, or a condition, but rather a process that involves the whole person and whose complexity lies in the way it implicates all kinds of different biological structures and layers of meaning."

Stanier explained that during her team’s research, they explored ways people in pain can creatively express sensations, bodily feelings, and their psychical impact through metaphor to health care providers. Specifically, they investigated the use of metaphors, which can help patients express a given experience in terms of another, and the use of images in the form of pain cards, which are a set of laminated images representing aspects of pain.

The investigators found that pain cards can help patients to more readily volunteer details of their experience without solicitation by the provider. Pain cards also provide the added benefit of relying less on language, which aids patients who are not English first-language speakers, allows greater support of visual imagination in thinking about a patient’s experience of pain, and could help patients from different cultural backgrounds better express how they feel.

Stanier explained that pain cards in the clinic setting can be complemented with the availability of free publications containing pain-related poetry, zines, and other community-based schemes, so that people experiencing pain can continue to understand that experience beyond the medical setting.

"These types of interventions give people back the sense of control that long-term conditions can very often take away," Steiner said in the press release. “These approaches do not treat participants as anonymous patients but instead respect the differences between people in pain and their individual situations.”

Metaphor and images should be used alongside traditional medical scales for patients to describe pain. University of Exeter; July 27, 2022. Accessed August 1, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220727175640.htm

A far more radical understanding of how humans express their experiences of pain moves into embracing the role of the imagination in that process.

Use of Metaphor, Images May Play Help Providers Better Understand Patients’ Pain for Diagnosis, Treatment

It may be beneficial to incorporate spirituality into patient care for both serious illness and overall health, according to investigators from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

"This study represents the most rigorous and comprehensive systematic analysis of the modern-day literature regarding health and spirituality to date," said Tracy Balboni, MD, MPH, senior physician at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, in a statement. "Our findings indicate that attention to spirituality in serious illness and in health should be a vital part of future whole person-centered care, and the results should stimulate more national discussion and progress on how spirituality can be incorporated into this type of value-sensitive care."

The investigators identified and analyzed evidence on spirituality on serious illness and health in studies published between January 2000 and April 2022. Of the 8946 articles about serious illness, 371 met the study’s strict criteria. Additionally, of 6485 articles focused on health outcomes, 215 were included in the study.

A structured, multidisciplinary group of experts reviewed the strongest collected evidence and offered their consensus on the implications for patient health and health care. Included in the panel were 27 experts on spirituality and health care, public health, or medicine, representing a diversity of spiritual and religious views including spiritual-not-religious, atheist, Muslim, Catholic, Christian denominations, and Hindu.

The panel said that for health of individuals, spiritual community participation, exemplified by religious service attendance, was associated with healthier lives, including greater longevity, less occurrences of depression, less risk of suicide, and less risk of substance use.

For many individuals included in the study, the panelists noted that the data demonstrated that spirituality influenced key outcomes in illness, quality of life, and medical care decisions. Further, the consensus implications included incorporating considerations of spirituality as part of patient-centered health care, as well as increasing awareness among physicians and health care professionals regarding the protective benefits of spiritual community participation.

According to the investigators, the simple act of asking about a patient’s spirituality can and should be part of patient-centered, value-sensitive care. They said that this information can help health care providers guide further medical decisions, including, but not limited to, notifying a spiritual care specialist.

Spiritual care specialists, such as chaplains, are individuals who are trained to provide clinical pastoral care to diverse individuals, whether associated with a religion or otherwise. Chaplains can represent a variety of spiritual backgrounds, including secular and religious backgrounds.

"Overlooking spirituality leaves patients feeling disconnected from the health care system and the clinicians trying to care for them," Howard Koh, the Harvey V. Fineberg professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at Harvard Chan School, said in the statement. "Integrating spirituality into care can help each person have a better chance of reaching complete wellbeing and their highest attainable standard of health."

Spirituality linked with better health outcomes, patient care. News release. Science Daily. July 12, 2022. Accessed July 25, 2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220712141303.htm

A panel of experts discussed the benefit of incorporating considerations of spirituality as part of patient-centered health care.

Study: Spirituality Linked With Positive Health Outcomes for Patients With Serious Illness

Researchers have found no clear evidence that serotonin levels or activity cause depression, according to a review of prior research published in 

The findings suggest that depression is most likely not caused by a chemical imbalance, calling into question how antidepressants work and what they do, according to the study authors. Most antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which were believed to work by correcting low serotonin levels. According to the study, there is no other accepted pharmacological mechanism by which antidepressants affect symptoms of depression.

“It is always difficult to prove a negative, but I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels of reduced activity of serotonin,” lead author Joanna Moncrieff, MD, said in a press release.

Moncrieff added that the chemical imbalance theory of depression led to a significant increase in the use of antidepressants. Prescriptions have risen dramatically since the 1990s, with 1 in 6 adults in England and 2% of teenagers now being prescribed an antidepressant in a given year. The new research, however, suggests that the use of SSRIs may not be grounded in scientific evidence.

This could be important because other studies have shown that as many as 85% to 90% of the public believes that depression is caused by low serotonin levels or a chemical imbalance. However, a growing number of experts and professional bodies are recognizing the chemical imbalance framing as an over-simplification.

“Thousands of people suffer from side effects of antidepressants, including the severe withdrawal effects that can occur when people try to stop them, yet prescription rates continue to rise,” Moncrieff said in the press release. “We believe this situation has been driven partly by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is high time to inform the public that this believe is not grounded in science.”

To investigate the issue, researchers conducted an umbrella review aimed to capture all relevant studies that have been published in the most important fields of research on serotonin and depression. Taken together, the studies in the review included tens of thousands of participants.

According to the study, research that compared levels of serotonin and its breakdown products in the blood or brain fluids did not find a difference between individuals diagnosed with depression and health control participants.

Similarly, research on serotonin receptors and the serotonin transporter, the protein targeted by most antidepressants, found weak and inconsistent evidence suggesting higher levels of serotonin activity in individuals with depression. However, the investigators said the findings are likely explained by the use of antidepressants among the study population, since such effects were not reliably ruled out.

The investigators also examined studies in which serotonin levels were artificially lowered in hundreds of participants by depriving their diets of the amino acid required to create serotonin. These studies have been cited as demonstrating that a serotonin deficiency is linked to depression, but a meta-analysis conducted in 2007 and a sample of recent studies found that lowering serotonin in this way did not produce depression in hundreds of healthy volunteers. There was very weak evidence in a small subgroup of individuals with a family history of depression, but the authors noted that this only involved 75 participants and more recent evidence was inconclusive.

Larger studies with tens of thousands of participants have examined gene variation, including the gene for the serotonin transporter. These studies found no difference in these genes between individuals with depression and healthy controls, and also looked at the impacts of stressful life events. They found that these events exerted a strong influence on individuals’ risk of becoming depressed—the more stressful a life event, the more likely they would become depressed.

Taken together, the authors of the umbrella review said this evidence suggests that there is “no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”

“I had been taught that depression was caused by low serotonin in my psychiatry training and had even taught this to students in my own lectures,” co-author Mark Horowitz, MBBS, PhD, said in the press release. “Being involved in this research was eye-opening and feels like everything I thought I knew has been flipped upside down.”

Other evidence suggests that individuals who believe that a low mood is caused by a chemical imbalance could lead them to have a pessimistic outlook on the likelihood of recovery, as well as the possibility of managing moods without medical assistance. This is important because most individuals will meet criteria for anxiety or depression at some point in their lives.

Studies have shown that as many as 85% to 90% of the public believes that depression is caused by low serotonin levels or a chemical imbalance.

News

All Content