Incremental Health Care Burden of Treatment-Resistant Depression Among Commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare Payers.

Objective: This study compared health care use and costs among patients with treatment-resistant versus treatment-responsive depression across Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial payers.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted by using Truven Health Analytics' commercial (2006-2017; N=111,544), Medicaid (2007-2017; N=24,036), and Medicare supplemental (2006-2017; N=8,889) claims databases. Participants were adults with major depressive disorder who had received one or more antidepressant treatments.

Exposure to violence and its relationship to mental health among young people in Palestine.

Background: Exposure to violence is a significant risk factor for the development of psychopathology in young people. Research on the mental health consequences of violence exposure in youth has focused mostly on post-traumatic stress disorder, however, the association with depression and anxiety has also been established. As a result of the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict, young Palestinians are vulnerable to exposure to various types of violence.

The economic burden of kidney graft failure in the United States.

Despite improvements in outcomes for kidney transplant recipients in the past decade, graft failure continues to impose substantial burden on patients. However, the population-wide economic burden of graft failure has not been quantified. This study aims to fill that gap by comparing outcomes from a simulation model of kidney transplant patients in which patients are at risk for graft failure with an alternative simulation in which the risk of graft failure is assumed to be zero.

Perceived peer norms, health risk behaviors, and clustering of risk behaviors among Palestinian youth.

Relatively little is known about patterns of health risk behaviors among Middle Eastern youth, including how these behaviors are related to perceived peer norms. In a sample of approximately 2,500 15-24 year old Palestinian youth, perceived engagement of general peers in alcohol consumption, drug use and sexual activity was substantially greater than youths' own (self-reported) engagement in these activities, suggesting a tendency to overestimate the prevalence of risk-taking behavior among peers. Individual participation in a risk behavior strongly covaries with the perceived levels of both friends' and peers' engagement in that behavior (p = 0.

Health risk behaviours of Palestinian youth: findings from a representative survey.

Background: There is little systematic information about health risk behaviours among youth in Middle Eastern countries, leaving public health authorities unprepared to deal with emerging public health threats at a time of major social change.

Aim: The Palestinian Youth Health Risk study investigates patterns of risk behaviours among Palestinian youth, their perceptions of the risks and benefits of such behaviours, and the relationship of exposure to violence with mental health and engagement in risk behaviours.

Methods: We conducted a representative survey among 2500 individuals aged 15-24 years in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, permitting reliable comparison across sex and rural-urban divisions.

National Survey Indicates that Individual Vaccination Decisions Respond Positively to Community Vaccination Rates.

Some models of vaccination behavior imply that an individual's willingness to vaccinate could be negatively correlated with the vaccination rate in her community. The rationale is that a higher community vaccination rate reduces the risk of contracting the vaccine-preventable disease and thus reduces the individual's incentive to vaccinate. At the same time, as for many health-related behaviors, individuals may want to conform to the vaccination behavior of peers, counteracting a reduced incentive to vaccinate due to herd immunity.

A Structured Protocol Model of Depression Care versus Clinical Acumen: A Cluster Randomized Trial of the Effects on Depression Screening, Diagnostic Evaluation, and Treatment Uptake in Ugandan HIV Clinics.

Unlabelled: Depression is common among people living with HIV, and it has consequences for both HIV prevention and treatment response, yet depression treatment is rarely integrated into HIV care in sub-Saharan Africa, partly due to the paucity of mental health professionals. We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial of two task-shifting models to facilitating depression care delivered by medical providers: one that utilized a structured protocol, and one that relied on clinical acumen, in 10 HIV clinics in Uganda. Both models started with routine depression screening of all clients at triage using the 2-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2), from which we enrolled 1252 clients (640 at structured protocol clinics, 612 at clinical acumen clinics) who had screened positive over 12 months.