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The article outlines clinical concerns for mental health providers, particularly in addressing psychiatric problems with alcohol and substances such as tobacco, cannabis, prescription opioids and benzodiazepines, among older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract Purpose We sought to compare the demographic characteristics, drug and alcohol use, sexual behaviors, delinquency, and mental health indicators of sexual minority and nonsexual minority first-time offending, court-involved, nonincarcerated adolescents. Methods Using adolescent- and caregiver-reported baseline data from the Epidemiologic Study Involving Children in the Court, a prospective cohort study of 423 adolescent-caregiver dyads recruited from a Northeastern family court system, we compared demographic and behavioral health characteristics of sexual minority and nonsexual minority first-time offending, court-involved, nonincarcerated adolescents. Results Nearly one-third of the adolescents (31.4%, n = 133) were classified as a sexual minority; 19.6% (n = 81) self-identified with a nonheterosexual sexual orientation. Sexual minority adolescents were more likely than their nonsexual minority peers to identify as female, to have used psychiatric services or psychotropic medications, to have used an illicit drug or alcohol or to know peers who use these substances, to report alcohol/drug use during sex, to endorse more severe mental health problems, to have more recent post-traumatic symptoms, and to have engaged in self-harm behaviors. However, sexual minority adolescents did not differ from nonsexual minority adolescents in other demographic characteristics (including school performance) or delinquent behavior. Conclusions One-third of court-involved, nonincarcerated adolescents may be sexual minorities. Specific screening methods are necessary to identify these adolescents and to address their unique risk characteristics, which include more severe mental health difficulties and higher rates of high-risk sexual behavior and drug/alcohol use compared with their nonsexual minority peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Our recent 8-week, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of fluoxetine in adolescents (ages 12-17 years) with comorbid depression and substance use disorder (SUD) did not detect a significant antidepressant treatment effect. The purpose of this secondary analysis was to explore moderators of the effect of fluoxetine in this sample. Static moderators measured at baseline were depression chronicity and hopelessness severity; time-varying moderators measured at baseline and weekly during the 8-week trial period were alcohol and marijuana use severity. Treatment effects on depression outcomes were examined among moderating subgroups in random effects regression models. Subjects assigned to fluoxetine treatment with chronic depression at baseline (p = .04) or no more than moderate alcohol use during the trial (p = .04) showed significantly greater decline in depression symptoms in comparison to placebo-assigned subgroups. The current analysis suggests that youth with chronic depression and no more than moderate alcohol consumption are likely to respond better to treatment with fluoxetine compared with placebo than youth with transient depression and heavy alcohol use. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: Tourette's disorder (TD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) share clinical features and possibly an overlapping etiology. The aims of this study were to examine ASD symptom rates in participants with TD, and to characterize the relationships between ASD symptom patterns and TD, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Method: Participants with TD (n = 535) and their family members (n =234) recruited for genetic studies reported TD, OCD, and ADHD symptoms and completed the Social Responsiveness Scale Second Edition (SRS), which was used to characterize ASD symptoms.Results: SRS scores in participants with TD were similar to those observed in other clinical samples but lower than in ASD samples (mean SRS total raw score = 51; SD = 32.4). More children with TD met cut-off criteria for ASD (22.8%) than adults with TD (8.7%). The elevated rate in children was primarily due to high scores on the SRS Repetitive and Restricted Behaviors (RRB) subscale. Total SRS scores were correlated with TD (r = 0.27), OCD (r = 0.37), and ADHD (r = 0.44) and were higher among individuals with OCD symptom-based phenotypes than for those with tics alone.Conclusion: Higher observed rates of ASD among children affected by TD may in part be due to difficulty in discriminating complex tics and OCD symptoms from ASD symptoms. Careful examination of ASD-specific symptom patterns (social communication vs. repetitive behaviors) is essential. Independent of ASD, the SRS may be a useful tool for identifying patients with TD with impairments in social communication that potentially place them at risk for bullying and other negative sequelae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]