Culture

Medical students with moderate to severe depression more frequently endorsed several depression stigma attitudes than nondepressed students and had a higher rate of suicidal thoughts, according to a study in the September 15 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

Fourth-year medical students who participated in an educational intervention were more likely to seek, identify and incorporate into care patient circumstances that may require variation from standard care, compared to students in a control group, according to a study in the September 15 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

Dorothy A. Andriole, M.D., and Donna B. Jeffe, Ph.D., of Washington University, St. Louis, conducted a study to identify demographic variables prior to medical school acceptance associated with outcomes for medical school students. The study used data from a 1994-1999 national cohort of 97,445 students accepted to medical school who were followed up through March 2009 and had graduated, withdrawn, or were dismissed.

Doctors can be taught to listen better to individual circumstances that may affect patient care, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. The findings are reported in the Sept. 15 issue of JAMA.

In a previous study the investigators had shown that doctors are not good at picking up clues to details in their patients' personal lives that may affect their treatment -- what the researchers call "context." The current study was designed to see if doctors could be taught to think about context when examining patients.

Ann Arbor, Mich. --- Medical students experience depression at a higher rate than the general population and attach high levels of stigma to the mental illness, according to U-M research to be published Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study showed that 53.3 percent of medical students who reported high levels of depressive symptoms were worried that revealing their illness would be risky. Almost 62 percent of the same students said asking for help would mean the student's coping skills were inadequate.

Medical students and residents should receive much more thorough and realistic instruction about the economic forces affecting health care and their own clinical decisions so that they can better serve patients' well-being and the nation's economic welfare, says a commentary published today in a theme issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which focuses on improving medical education.

Students who enter medical school with high debt levels, low scores on the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) or who are non-white are more likely to face difficulties that may prevent graduation or hinder acceptance into a residency program if they do graduate, according to a nationwide study of students enrolled in MD programs.

The research, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is reported Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Data and research on what it really takes for seniors to make ends meet in each of California's 58 counties will be released today at the state Capitol in Sacramento.

The release is the latest update of the Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index), a tool that measures the actual costs of basic necessities for older adults. The Elder Index is quickly replacing federal poverty level (FPL) guidelines as a new standard for evaluating and meeting the needs of seniors across California.

Families from rural Mexico who receive health care from centralized clinics run by the federal government pay up to 30 percent less in out-of-pocket expenses and utilize preventive services more often than those families who access decentralized clinics run by states, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health.

The findings are published in the September issue of the Journal of Social Science and Medicine and are currently available online.

Washington, DC, SEPTEMBER 14, 2010– A widely prescribed class of drugs is highly effective in reducing common bone fractures in people with osteoporosis, but an expert panel announced today that these same drugs – when used long term – may be related to unusual but serious fractures of the thigh bone. In the most comprehensive scientific report to date on the topic, the task force reviewed 310 cases of "atypical femur fractures," and found that 94 percent (291) of patients had taken the drugs, most for more than five years.

For Immediate Release – September 10, 2010 – (Toronto) – Mental illness is associated with more lost work days than any other chronic condition, costing the Canadian economy $51 billion annually in lost productivity. In the first study of its kind, researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have calculated the actual cost of mental health leave and found that on average it's double the cost of a leave for a physical illness.

Montreal / September 13, 2010 – September 21, 2010 marks the one year anniversary of the release of a landmark document produced by researchers at Concordia University. Mobilizing The Will to Intervene (W2I) offers governments practical steps to prevent future genocides and mass atrocities. Produced by researchers with the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) based at Concordia, the document was presented to the governments of Canada and The United States of America.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced today that Dr. Eric M. Verdin of the J. David Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, Calif., has been selected as the 2010 recipient of the NIDA Avant-Garde Award for HIV/AIDS Research for his proposal to study the mechanisms of latent HIV infection. NIDA's annual Avant-Garde award competition, now in its third year, is intended to stimulate high-impact research that may lead to groundbreaking opportunities for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in drug abusers.

Durham, NH—September 13, 2010— During the recent recession in the United States, many industries suffered significant layoffs, leaving individuals and families to revise their spending and rethink income opportunities. Many wives have increasingly become primary breadwinners or entered the labor market, highlighting employment trends that have been emerging for several decades, which in turn demonstrates changing gender roles in the family, equity in the workplace, and work and family balance.