Between the year 1990 and 1998 the number of children and adults diagnosed with ADHD rose dramatically. In 1990 those diagnosed were estimated to be around 900,000; this number is now approaching 5 million. Many psychologists feel that these numbers are reflective of tendencies of physicians to be too quick to medicate. According to Esther Fine, PhD, a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles, the etiology of the disease is not understood well enough; while it may be that there are a variety of instances where neurological causes are central to cases of ADHD, children may be just as, or more, responsive to psychotherapy. According to Fine, “Unfortunately, it is now a prevalent notion that it is no longer necessary or relevant to understand the unconscious meaning of psychological symptom… It’s becoming a popular idea to consider psychoanalysis, and even psychotherapy, ‘dinosaurs’ in the treatment of mental disorders.” Mark D. Smaller, PhD, a psychoanalyst in private practice in Chicago, commenting, relayed that he felt much of the problem was due to the desire of parents and teachers to have a quick fix for unwanted child and adolescent behaviors. Click here to read an article from Medpage Today that discusses this study more.

According to a study reported in the January 14th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, army wives pay a significant price related to emotional health when spouses are deployed for long periods of time. According to the study, the longer the soldiers spent in Afghanistan or Iraq, the likelihood that their wives would seek out psychiatric treatment increased. These numbers were significantly higher when spouses were deployed for a year or more. The study found that some individual diagnoses were sometimes as high as threefold among wives of soldiers with long deployments. According to Alyssa J. Mansfield, PhD, MPH, of RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., “Overall, our data suggest that the mental health effects of current operations are extending beyond soldiers and into their immediate families… without persuasive evidence that male spouses had a similar pattern of effects, it was not appropriate to generalize these results to husbands and wives. Therefore, we opted to be conservative and restrict our analyses to wives (approximately 95% of the complete sample); this limited the generalizability of our results according.” Click here to read an article from Modern Medicine that discusses this study more.

According to information reported in the January Archives of Internal Medicine, doctors have decreased the instance of prescribing antipsychotic drugs to older patients with dementia after warnings from the FDA. According to the investigators, from 2004 to 2008 the use of antipsychotic drugs among older patients with dementia decreased by 50%; however, a review of antipsychotic drug use during the same period revealed that aging patients with dementia still accounted for 10% of those prescribed this type of drug. According to  E. Ray Dorsey, MD, of the University of Rochester in New York, and colleagues, “Without clinical data, the appropriateness of this use is uncertain… targeting specific segments of patients and physicians and further customizing and evaluating the impact of regulatory actions may improve their impact at minimizing the risks associated with select prescription medications.” Click here to read an article from Business Week that discusses these findings more.

According to findings published in the January 14th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the use of morphine may actually help to prevent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) developments in combat injured military personnel. According to Lisa Holbrook, PhD, of the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, and colleagues, “our findings suggest that the use of morphine after serious injury may be a first-line defense against the development of PTSD… the logical conclusion to be made on the basis of these data is that a reduction in perceived pain levels through the use of morphine or other opiates as part of trauma care may lower the rate of PTSD onset after major trauma.” Previous studies had found that the use of pharmacology served as a good secondary prevention of PTSD; it interfered with fear response and the consolidation of memory associated with trauma. Click here to read a blog from NPR that discusses these findings more.

It may come as no surprise to you, but binge drinking affects both one’s attention and reaction time several hours after alcohol has left the body; a study reported online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research now confirms this finding. Regardless of whether or not participants felt that their driving was affected by the previous nights drinking, all binge drinkers scored poorer in their performance in driving tests measuring both sustained attention and reaction time. Although poor sleep quality was not correlated with the performance of tasks, the researchers also found that heavy drinking disrupted sleep. Damaris Rohsenow, PhD, of Brown University in Providence, R.I., commenting, stated, “I would hope that individuals realize that the morning after the night before, their performance is going to be impaired, particularly in some tasks that may be involved in safety-sensitive behaviors, such as driving a car in heavy traffic and operating dangerous machinery.” Click here to read an article from the Los Angeles Times that discusses this study more.