Patients with long-term opioid prescriptions and depression who take antidepressants are more likely to stop using opioids, a new study concludes. “Depression can worsen pain and is common in patients who remain long-term prescription opioid users,” lead researcher Jeffrey Scherrer, PhD, of Saint Louis University said in a news release. “Our study should encourage clinicians to determine if their non-cancer pain patients are suffering from depression and aggressively treat patients’ depression to reduce opioid use.” He added, “Effective depression treatment may break the mutually reinforcing opioid-depression relationship and increase the likelihood of successful opioid cessation.” The findings will be published in British Journal of Psychiatry.

According to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was a 33% increase in the number of teens experiencing depression, a 23% rise in teen suicide attempts, and a 31% surge in the number of teens who died by suicide in the five years between 2010 to 2015. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Foundation says suicide is now the second leading cause of death for young people between the ages of 10 to 24. What has gone wrong in the lives of our teens and why at such an alarming rate? Despite the critical nature of this question, there are no clear answers. There is, however, a great deal of speculation, and many say our kids’ use of social media contributes this high suicide rate. In a paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, researcher Jean Twenge and her colleagues found significant increases in depression, suicide attempts, and...

People with anxiety and depression have a high rate of prescription opioid use, a new study finds. Almost 19 percent of the estimated 38.6 million people diagnosed with anxiety and depression received at least two prescriptions for opioids in one year, the study found. More than half of opioid prescriptions went to people with these mental health disorders, according to The Washington Post. People with anxiety and depression may feel pain more acutely, or may be less able to cope with the pain, leading to increased requests for opioids, said lead researcher Brian Sites of Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. Pain that “you may report as a two out of 10, someone with mental health disorders — depression, anxiety — may report as a 10 out of 10,” Sites told the newspaper. He added that opioids may improve the symptoms of depression for a short while. This may lead patients to...

The prevalence of smoking has remained fairly stable over the past decade after declining sharply for many years. Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health analyzed changes in the prevalence of depression among current, former and new smokers in the U.S. to determine whether an increase in certain barriers to successful cessation and sustained abstinence may be contributing to this slowed decline. “The prevalence of depression increased and remains higher among current smokers overall, but the rate of the increase among former and never smokers was even more prominent,” noted Dr. Renee Goodwin, lead researcher. The research indicates that depression remains a real concern for current smokers, noting the significance between smoking and mental health concerns. The concern is prominent with youth smokers, which still remains fairly high in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states: each day in the United States, more than 3,200...

A recent study suggests that the number of U.S. teens with untreated depression may be on the rise. A recent article by Reuters Health notes that “For youth ages 12 to 17, the prevalence of depression increased from 8.7 percent in 2005 to 11.3 percent in 2014, the study found. Among adults aged 18 to 25, the prevalence climbed from 8.8 percent to 9.6 percent during the study period.” The study also found that there hasn’t been much change in the proportion of teens and young adults seeking mental health treatment. The findings suggest a growing number of teens and young adults have depression and don’t receive treatment, the authors conclude. Each year, about 1 in 11 teens and young adults suffers at least one episode of major depression, researchers report in Pediatrics. The report suggests that there’s room for parents, pediatricians and school and college counseling services to step up...

A new study suggests addiction may be linked with the high use of social media in people with depression. People who check social media most frequently throughout the week were 2.7 times more likely to be depressed than those who check it least often, the study found. Compared with peers who spend less time on social media, people who spend the most time on social media throughout the day are 1.7 times more likely to be depressed, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found. Addiction seemed to explain about three-fourths of the effect of social media use on depression, the researchers report in Depression and Anxiety. “It may be that people who already are depressed are turning to social media to fill a void,” researcher Lui yi Lin said in a news release. “We believe that at least having clinicians be aware of these associations may be valuable...

Using opioid painkillers for more than one month may increase the risk of depression, a new study suggests. People who take opioids and feel depressed should be aware that the drugs, and not just the pain, may be a potential cause, the researchers say. While pain itself can be a cause of depression, the researchers found a link between opioids and depression even when they took patients’ pain into account, Fox News reports. “We really did rigorous control for pain, and we feel strongly that these results are independent of the known contribution of pain to depression,” said study author Jeffrey Scherrer of Saint Louis University in Missouri. The study included data from three groups of people who started taking opioids around the time the study began. One group had almost 71,000 people, while the second group had almost 14,000 people and the third had almost 23,000 people. None of the...