What We’re Reading
By Joy Burkhard, MBA
Founder and Executive Director, 2020 Mom
What I’m reading this month not surprisingly focuses on how the pandemic is affecting mood and also what we might be able to do about it. Interestingly, the Federal Agency AHRQ is also now more aggressively recommending a standardized depression screening/measurement approach to allow for more compatibility and quality improvement efforts. As a health systems quality improvement practitioner, I also believe this is critical and controversial.
Read more below and if you have related thoughts, add your comments below.
Feeling Down? Anxious? Hostile?
A 4-Day-a-Week Exercise Regimen May Help
Angelo Silvio Vasta for The New York Times
(New York Times) During these trying times, exercise could provide indispensable mental-health support for many of us, according to a timely new study. The study finds that among a generally healthy but sedentary group of adults in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, working out lowers levels of depression, hostility, and other negative feelings.
A regular workout was shown to ease depression and lift moods.
Read more here.
Standard Approach to Measuring Depression Can Advance Quality of Care
Use of a standard approach for measuring depression in both clinical and research settings has the potential to significantly improve quality of care. In an AHRQ-sponsored study, funded by the Office of the Secretary Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund and published in Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers described a project to develop uniform measures that make it possible to link and compare data, enabling new depression research and quality improvement efforts. To identify standard measures, the researchers gathered inputs from organizations that collect depression data, conducted a literature review, and convened a workgroup to narrow the list to 10 broadly relevant measures. Access the abstract of the study and a related AHRQ white paper, Standardized Library of Depression Outcome Measures.
Read more here.
Prescriptions for Antidepressants, Anti-anxiety, Anti-insomnia Drugs Jumps 21% Post COVID-19
Medical photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com
(Fierce Healthcare) - Amid stress about health, finances, and uncertainty about what to expect next, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on Americans’ mental health, a new report from Express Scripts shows.
The pharmacy benefit manager found that prescriptions per week for antidepressants, anti-anxiety, and anti-insomnia drugs increased by 21% between February 16 and March 15, peaking the week of March 15 when the virus was deemed a pandemic.
The largest increase was in anti-anxiety medications, according to the report, which rose by 34.1% over that month and 18% in the week of March 15. Filled antidepressant prescriptions increased by 18.6% and for anti-insomnia medications by 14.8%.
That stands in contrast to double-digit drops in the use of some of these medications over the previous five years.
Read more here.
The Strong Relationship Between Sleep and Suicide
(Psychiatric Times) - The steadily rising rate of suicide in the US is a vexing public health crisis. Between 2007 and 2017, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death, claiming the lives of nearly half a million people. It is perhaps even more striking that suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for individuals aged 35 to 54 as well as the second leading cause for those aged 10 to 34. Among the many risk factors for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, one that consistently emerges as an independent risk factor is sleep disturbance (broadly defined) along with the specific sleep disorders of insomnia, nightmares, and sleep apnea.
One reason that this sleep-suicide relationship is so important is that sleep disorders represent a modifiable risk factor. As noted a decade ago, several sleep medicine interventions can potentially make a difference in the lives of individuals who may be on a trajectory to suicide.
What, then, are actionable items for the clinician wishing to address the sleep-suicide relationship?
We present three focal areas:
Sleep disturbance screening
Suicide assessment and safety planning
Sleep treatment options in the suicidal patient
Given the high prevalence of insomnia in psychiatric populations and the ability of psychiatrists to fully manage insomnia (as opposed to sleep apnea), the primary focus of treatment options is for insomnia disorder.
Read more here.
Preventing Suicide in the Context of the COVID Crisis
“The two most replicated, robust factors linked to suicide are economic change — downturn — and social disconnection," says Dr. Roger McIntyre, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Those two factors are major hallmarks, he notes, of the COVID-19 pandemic.
McIntyre and his team this week published online in the journal World Psychiatry their research estimate of how the current pandemic and its economic constraints could affect some people.
Read more here.