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A new study published in Health Services Research looked at the effect of mental health staffing on suicide-related events. “We wanted to answer a seemingly simple question: does increasing mental health staffing at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities reduce suicide-related events?” study author Yevgeniy Feyman told us. “While this seems straightforward on its face, the existing evidence is mixed. Some work has found that staffing reduces suicide related events, while others have found no effect.” [More]

“Our study is about estimating the population level mental health impacts of sexual violence experiences in mid-adolescence and understanding whether and to what extent sexual violence contributes to the gender gap in mental health problems in adolescence,” study author Francesca Bentivegna told us. “We did this by examining the link between sexual violence and psychological distress, self-harm, and attempted suicide, in both girls and boys aged 14-17 years. We also estimated the effect of eliminating sexual violence at this stage (in a hypothetical scenario) on mental health problems.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology looked at the mechanisms underlying childhood exposure to blue spaces and adult subjective well-being. “Our study is about the benefits of childhood contact with blue spaces, a collective name to indicate all the areas with waterbodies or watercourses, such as the sea, lakes and rivers,” study author Valeria Vitale told us. “We were hoping to find a positive link between the exposure to blue spaces during childhood and adult well-being and explore potential pathways that may explain this relationship.” [More]

27% of Americans say they are so stressed they can’t function. A poll from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that more than a quarter of Americans are facing significant stressors due to external stressors that are beyond their personal control. [More]

The more hours worked in a stressful job, the greater the risk of depression. A study of doctors published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that medical residents who worked 90 or more hours a week experienced changes in their depression symptom scores that were three times greater than the change experienced by those working 40 to 45 hours a week. [More]

“Our study was about adolescent health in the context of parental incarceration and foster care,” study author, Luke Muentner told us. “Really, we were hoping to get a deeper understanding of how exposure to both the criminal legal and the child welfare system differentially impacts youth mental health compared to peers who were exposed to only one system as well as those who were never systems-impacted.” [More]

A new study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research looked at the performance of machine learning models in predicting suicidal ideation, attempts, and deaths. “My study sought to quantify the ability of existing machine learning models to predict future suicide-related events,” study author Karen Kusuma told us. “While there are other research studies examining a similar question, my study is the first to use clinically relevant and statistically appropriate performance measures for the machine learning studies.” [More]

A new study published in Child Development looked at whether older children verify adult claims because they are skeptical of those claims. “When children between four and seven years old are told something surprising, for example that a smaller object is heavier than a much larger object, they will frequently pick up those objects,” study author Samuel Ronfard, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga told us. “Older children engage in such exploratory behavior more frequently than younger children.” [More]

A new study published in Health Services Research looked at whether Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) work requirements in the U.S. increased mental health care use. “We wanted to determine whether imposing work requirement policies on SNAP (food stamp) enrollees increased their levels of depression and anxiety,” study author Lindsay Allen told us. [More]

50% of people who are pregnant or postpartum report feeling dissatisfied with their bodies. A small survey of 161 women aged between 18 and 45 who were either pregnant or postpartum found that more than half were unhappy with how they looked either during or following pregnancy. [More]