Mental Health

Children whose parents were both diagnosed with a psychiatric illness were at 51-times higher risk for developing reactive attachment disorder than those whose parents were not diagnosed with a disorder, according to a nationwide population-based study in Finland.

A movement sensor was able to identify children with internalizing disorders — including anxiety and depression — with 81% accuracy, according to research published in PLoS One.

I followed a somewhat circuitous route to a career in ID. In medical school and residency, I was strongly drawn to oncology but got a bit distracted by also falling in love with viruses, especially retroviruses. I worked in research virology labs all through college and medical school, and as retroviruses were considered as potentially causing common cancers in humans, that research was typically found not in ID but rather in oncology divisions. I came to UCSF in 1978 for my oncology fellowship and to work in Jay Levy’s retrovirus lab. But when an ID giant, Merle Sande, offered me the chance to start a medical oncology division at San Francisco General Hospital immediately following the end of my training, I eagerly accepted. I left retrovirus research forever, only to walk into the very beginning of the AIDS epidemic on July 1,st 1981, when I saw the first Kaposi sarcoma KSpatient admitted to SFGH. I started the world’s first comprehensive AIDS clinic with Connie Wofsy, my ID counterpart in 1983 and when HIV was discovered (in part by Jay), I realized I might get back to my favorite viruses! While I still feel as if part of me is in oncology, my community is clearly ID! Definitely hooked on ID!

Tomorrow marks the first day of National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week, a national health awareness week that offers teenagers and young people the facts about drugs, alcohol and addiction backed by clinical research.

Adolescents who self-harmed were three times more likely to commit violent crime than those who did not, according to study findings.

Half of parents were unaware that their teens had thoughts of killing themselves, and when parents reported that their children had thoughts of suicide, nearly half of those children denied having them, according to a study published in Pediatrics.

Recent study findings published in Birth Defects Research demonstrate that infants born to mothers with severe influenza requiring ICU care were at risk of several adverse health outcomes, including prematurity.

Findings from a prospective cohort study of more than 30,000 children showed that more than 40% started school with vulnerabilities in social-emotional functioning tied to emerging mental health conditions.

Study findings published in JAMA Psychiatry indicated a link between depression in fathers during the postnatal period and later depression in their offspring at age 18 years.

After assessing data from a large community sample of more than 7,000 youth, researchers found a high rate of obsessive-compulsive symptoms, particularly in females and after puberty.