1 in 6 Americans Takes a Psychiatric Drug

One in six U.S. adults reported taking a psychiatric drug, such as an antidepressant or a sedative, in 2013, a new study found.

The new data comes from an analysis of the 2013 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which gathered information on the cost and use of health care in the United States.

An earlier government report, from 2011, found that just over one in 10 adults reported taking prescription drugs for "problems with emotions, nerves or mental health," the authors wrote in a research letter published today (Dec. 12) in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. 

But that report, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, didn't "provide information on which specific medications were more commonly used " or on how long they were used, said authors of the new study, Thomas Moore, a senior scientist at the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, and Dr. Donald Mattison, the chief medical officer at the Canadian consulting company Risk Sciences International.

Moore and Mattison found that nearly 17 percent of adults in the U.S. reported filling at least one prescription for a psychiatric drug in 2013.

Antidepressants were the most common type of psychiatric drug in the survey, with 12 percent of adults reporting that they filled prescriptions for these drugs, the study said. In addition, 8.3 percent of adults were prescribed drugs from a group that included sedatives, hypnotics and anti-anxiety drugs, and 1.6 percent of adults were given antipsychotics, the researchers found.

Demographic differences

Psychiatric drug use differed among adults of different ages, sex and race, the researchers found. For example, nearly 21 percent of white adults reported taking a psychiatric drug, compared with less than 9 percent of Hispanic adults, according to the report.

Older adults also reported a higher rate of psychiatric drug use. One-quarter of adults ages 60 to 85 reported taking at least one of these drugs, compared with less than 10 percent of adults ages 18 to 39, the researchers found.

In addition, nearly twice as many women as men reported taking psychiatric drugs: 21 percent compared with 12 percent, according to the report. [7 Ways Depression Differs in Men and Women]

Popular prescriptions

Two antidepressants topped the list for the most commonly used psychiatric drugs: sertraline hydrochloride, which goes by the brand name Zoloft, and citalopram hydrobromide, or Celexa.

Alprazolam, or Xanax, was the most common drug from the sedative, hypnotic and anti-anxiety category, the study said. This medication was the third most common psychiatric drug overall, following Zoloft and Celexa, according to the report.

Other leading drugs included Ambien, which is a hypnotic sleeping pill, and the antidepressants Prozac and Desyrel, the report said.

The researchers noted that because the survey data included information on only a single year, it was difficult to determine how long people had been prescribed different psychiatric drugs. However, more than eight in 10 adults who were taking psychiatric drugs reported long-term use, the researchers wrote.

For antidepressants, there is limited information available about how long an individual should stay on the drug, Moore and Mattison wrote. For certain drugs in the sedative, hypnotic and anxiolytic category, however, people can become dependent, the researchers noted.

To improve the safety of psychiatric drugs, Moore and Mattison suggested increasing the emphasis on prescribing these medications at the lowest effective dose and continually re-assessing the need to keep individuals on the drugs. 

Benefits of 'Kangaroo Mother Care': Do They Last

Vulnerable babies who are held close by their parents, skin to skin, may reap the benefits of this so-called "kangaroo mother care" for at least two decades, according to a new study from Colombia.

Researchers found that premature and low-birth-weight babies who had been held by their moms or dads, with skin-to-skin contact, during their first weeks of life were less likely to be hyperactive and aggressive as young adults, compared with those premature and low-birth-weight babies who did not receive this type of care.

The babies who received kangaroo-style care also had bigger brains than those who did not receive this type of care, the researchers found. 

"This study indicates that Kangaroo Mother Care has significant, long-lasting social and behavioral protective effects 20 years after the intervention," lead study author Dr. Nathalie Charpak, a pediatrician at the Kangaroo Foundation in Bogotá, said in a statement. The nonprofit organization advocates for research on effective ways to care for low-birth-weight babies.

Kangaroo mother care involves prolonged contact between a baby and his or her mother or father, exclusive breastfeeding if possible and early discharge from the hospital after birth, with close follow-up with a pediatrician during the child's first year of life, according to the study, which was published today (Dec. 12) in the journal Pediatrics.

In an earlier study, which was conducted in 1993 to 1996, researchers randomly assigned babies who were either born prematurely or had a low birth weight to receive either personal, kangaroo-style care, or traditional care in an incubator until they could maintain their own body temperature. The findings showed that kangaroo-style care benefited the infants' survival and brain development as well as the quality of mother-infant bonding.

In the new study, the researchers followed up with 441 of those babies, including 228 who had received kangaroo mother care and 213 who did not. The participants, now young adults in their 20s, underwent brain imaging and took tests that examined their neuropsychological health. The researchers also asked the participants about their education and work histories.

The researchers found that the participants who had received kangaroo-style care as babies were less likely to have missed some of their schooling, compared with ones in the control group. They also earned higher hourly wages on average, the researchers found.

The participants who received kangaroo-style care as infants also had larger brains as young adults than the ones in the control group, the researchers found.

The exact reasons behind the link between kangaroo mother care and these potential health benefits are unclear, however. They might have something to do with the fact that, because kangaroo mother care requires a lot of work, a baby's entire family becomes more involved in his or her care, Charpak told Live Science. Previous research has suggested that increased parental involvement is related to better cognitive development in the child and lowers his or her risk of dropping out of school, the researchers said. [7 Baby Myths Debunked]

The study had certain limitations, however, wrote Dr. Lydia Furman, a pediatrician at the Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, who was not involved in the study, in a related editorial that was published in the same journal. For example, it is hard to pinpoint with certainty which specific factors might have influenced the participants' cognitive and developmental outcomes during the 20 years between the first and second studies — and that is a long time, she said. Besides the type of early care that the participants received as babies, many other potentially unmeasured factors might have affected their development during that time, she said.

She also noted that not all of the associations between kangaroo mother care and developmental outcomes that were found in the study were positive. For example, the researchers found that the math and language academic scores of the participants who had received kangaroo mother care as babies were worse later in life than for those participants in the control group.

Altogether, the findings show that the relationship between different types of infant care and later cognitive outcomes is complicated, and it is likely mediated by many factors that may vary from person to person, Furman noted.

Ancient Marsupial Relative May Have Eaten Little Dinosaurs

An ancient mammal the size of a badger may have used its bone-crushing canines and powerful bite to take down little dinosaurs, researchers have found. In fact, the little guy could chomp down with more force, pound for pound, than any other mammal on record.

The creature (Didelphodon vorax), an early marsupial relative, lived during the last few million years of the Mesozoic, or dinosaur age, in what is now present-day Montana and North Dakota, the researchers said.

The new findings upend an old theory suggesting that marsupials originated in South America. Rather, an analysis of D. vorax's anatomical features suggest that marsupials originated in North America a good 10 million to 20 million years earlier than scientists thought. Later, these early marsupials would have dispersed and diversified in South America, the researchers said

"What I love about Didelphodon vorax is that it crushes the classic mold of Mesozoic mammals," the study's lead researcher Gregory Wilson, an adjunct curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum in Seattle, and an associate professor of biology at the University of Washington, said in a statement. "Instead of a shrew-like mammal meekly scurrying into the shadows of dinosaurs, this badger-sized mammal would've been a fearsome predator on the Late Cretaceous landscape — even for some dinosaurs."

Hell Creek fossils

Researchers found the four fossil specimens in rock dating to about 69 million to 66 million years ago in the Hell Creek Formation. Before these four individuals were unearthed, researchers knew about 60 species of metatherians (marsupials and their closest relatives) from the Cretaceous period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago) of North America. But most of these were fragments of jawbones or teeth, which provided only limited information about marsupial's closest relatives. 

In contrast, the new findings include an almost complete skull from the North Dakota Geological Survey State Fossil collection, a partial snout and an upper jawbone from the Burke Museum's collections and another upper jaw from the Sierra College Natural History Museum in California.

These never-before-seen parts of D. vorax's body indicate that these marsupial relatives were the largest metatherian to live during the Cretaceous, the researchers said. It likely weighed from 5.3 lbs. to 11.5 lbs. (2.4 to 5.2 kilograms), they said.

In order to test the creature's bite force, the researchers took a computed tomography (CT) scan of the fossils, and determined where the jaw muscles would have attached to the skull. By comparing these muscles with those of modern animals, whose bite forces are known, the researchers were able to determine that D. vorax had the strongest bite of any mammal, alive or extinct.

Moreover, D. vorax's canines are similar to those of living felines and hyenas, indicating that these ancient creatures could probably bite into bone while hunting prey, the researchers found. Its extraordinary bite force, when combined with its canines, shearing molars and big, rounded premolars, suggest that it could have crunched on shells and even small dinosaurs, they added.

"I expected Didelphodon to have a fairly powerful bite based on the robust skull and teeth, but even I was surprised when we performed the calculations and found that, when adjusted for body size, it was capable of a stronger pound-for-pound bite than a hyena," said Abby Vander Linden, who performed the research as a research technician at the Burke Museum, and is now a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "That's a seriously tough mammal," [In Photos: Mammals Through Time]

Dental scratches

The researchers also compared the tiny pits and scratches (known as microwear) on D. vorax's teeth with those found on other fossilized and modern teeth. They found that D. vorax was an omnivore that ate vertebrates, plants and hard-shelled invertebrates, including mollusks and crayfish, as well as insects, spiders and annelids (earthworms and leeches).

"The interesting thing about these fossils is that they allowed us to study the ecology of Didelphodon from many angles," said study co-author Jonathan Calede, a former biology graduate student at the University of Washington who is now a visiting assistant professor at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. "The strength of the conclusion comes from the convergence of microwear with bite-force analysis, studies of the shape and breakage of the teeth, as well as the shape of the skull as a whole."

What's more, the new marsupial family tree will help researchers understand where marsupials developed over time. For instance, they found five major lineages of marsupials and their relatives that diverged in North America from 100 million to 85 million years ago.

Intriguingly, marsupial relatives grew in size and expanded their diet just as other early mammals and flowering plants began to diversify. However, much of this North American diversity gradually faded from 79 million to 66 million years ago, and then abruptly disappeared when the asteroid collided with Earth and killed the nonavian dinosaurs. But marsupials managed to live on, diversifying and evolving in their new South American home.

The study was published online Dec.