How Do Emergency Medical Service Workers Cope with Daily Stressors?

Emergency medical service (EMS) workers face triple the risk for significant mental health problems like depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to the general population. This brief summarizes the results of a study that surveyed EMS workers in Syracuse, NY to better understand how their mental health symptoms relate to daily occupational stressors. These stressors can take the form of routine work demands, critical incidents involving serious harm or death, and social conflicts. The study also examined whether daily mental health symptoms may be reduced through protective behaviors in the form of recovery activities such as exercising, socializing with other people, and finding meaning in the day’s challenges

Patterns of co-occurring addictions, PTSD, and MDD in detoxification treatment seekers: Implications for improving detoxification treatment outcomes

Background and objectives Poly-substance use and psychiatric comorbidity are common among individuals receiving substance detoxification services. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are the most common co-occurring psychiatric disorders with substance use disorder (SUD). Current treatment favors a one-size-fits-all approach to treating addiction focusing on one substance or one comorbidity. Research examining patterns of substance use and comorbidities can inform efforts to effectively identify and differentially treat individuals with co-occurring conditions. Methods Using latent class analysis, the current study identified four patterns of PTSD, MDD, and substance use among 375 addiction treatment seekers receiving medically supervised detoxification. Results The four identified classes were: 1) a PTSD-MDD-Poly SUD class characterized by PTSD and MDD occurring in the context of opioid, cannabis, and tobacco use disorders; 2) an MDD-Poly SUD class characterized by MDD and alcohol, opioid, tobacco, and cannabis use disorders; 3) an alcohol-tobacco class characterized by alcohol and tobacco use disorders; and 4) an opioid-tobacco use disorder class characterized by opioid and tobacco use disorders. The observed classes differed on gender and clinical characteristics including addiction severity, trauma history, and PTSD/MDD symptom severity. Discussion and conclusions The observed classes likely require differing treatment approaches. For example, people in the PTSD-MDD-Poly SUD class would likely benefit from treatment approaches targeting anxiety sensitivity and distress tolerance, while the opioid-tobacco class would benefit from treatments that incorporate motivational interviewing. Appropriate matching of treatment to class could optimize treatment outcomes for polysubstance and comorbid psychiatric treatment seekers. These findings also underscore the importance of well-developed referral networks to optimize outpatient psychotherapy for detoxification treatment-seekers to enhance long-term recovery, particularly those that include transdiagnostic treatment components

Mental Health After Injury: How Neighborhoods Impact Recovery

Each year in the United States, there are over 90 million injury-related emergency department visits, resulting in $4.2 trillion in costs related to medical care, loss of work, and reduced quality of life. Nearly a quarter of injury survivors are diagnosed with a new mental health disorder within the first year of injury. This brief examines several aspects of neighborhood context and their relationship to PTSD symptom severity following an injury. Results show that survivors living in neighborhoods with higher racial segregation and lower socioeconomic status report higher PTSD symptom severity

Seroprevalence of hepatitis E virus antibodies in adults and children from upstate New York: A cross-sectional study.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a major cause of viral hepatitis around the world, especially in developing countries. Recently, HEV has also been recognized as important cause of hepatitis in Europe and Japan, however, there is a paucity of clinical data from the United States. The overall seroprevalence of HEV antibodies is around 10% in the United States, but considerable variation is seen based on geographic location, year, and assay used. In this study, 63 adults and 417 children from New York State were tested for anti-HEV IgG antibodies using the commercially available Wantai IgG assay. The overall seroprevalence of HEV antibodies among adult participants was 9.52% (95% CI: 3.58-19.59%). Positive adults tended to be older than HEV negative adults, all positive adults were female. Only 3 (0.7%, 95% CI:: 0.15-2.09%) of the children were positive, all positive children were male. These results are consistent with global and United States trends in HEV seroprevalence

A pragmatic approach to the comparison of wrist-based cutpoints of physical activity intensity for the MotionWatch8 accelerometer in children.

BackgroundA variety of wearable monitors are available for objectively assessing physical activity but there is a lack of established values for the activity intensity of MotionWatch8 (MW8) and a similar lack of studies on comparability across devices. Our study aimed to establish activity intensity cutpoints for the MW8 accelerometer in children, which are necessary to determine whether they are meeting physical activity guidelines.MethodsChildren (n = 39, ages 9-13 years) were asked to wear two different accelerometers (MW8 and ActiGraph) simultaneously on the same dominant wrist as they performed different activities designed to mimic activities of variable intensity that a child might perform in a free-living environment. Linear regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were performed to assess sensitivity and specificity of the identified MW8 intensity cutpoints compared to established ActiGraph cutpoints.ResultsMean values for each activity were positively correlated using the MW8 and ActiGraph monitors (r = 0.85, pConclusionsOur study demonstrated the ability of MW8 to discriminate different intensity activities and provided the first cutoff values for researchers using the MW8 to measure physical activity patterns among children