Smoking deprivation | Suicidal ideation in school students | Obesity surgery | Oestrogen in the environment

About 7% of Chinese people smoke so much their spending on cigarettes deprives the household of essential items like food, a study from Beijing has found. Low-income smokers were more likely to have smoking-induced deprivation.

Suicidal ideation occurs in one in three Chinese high school girls and 20% of boys, a study of 5249 students in Anhui Province of China has found.

Laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy are safe and effective for the treatment of morbid obesity, resulting in 63% and 76% loss of excess weight, a study from Nankai Hospital of Tianjin Medical University has shown.

The waist circumference cut off for high risk of central obesity and metabolic syndrome is 85 cm for women and 90 cm for men, researchers from Shandong have shown.

In Shanghai, almost one-in-five boys are obese and 8% of girls are obese. The prevalence of combined overweight and obesity is 49% for boys and 31% for girls aged 8-15-years, according to a study that found rates of obesity started to increase from age 10 years.

Oestrogen hormones are widely used in animal rearing in China and this leads to high levels of the hormones in excreted manure which is then used on crops, perpetuating the environmental contamination and human exposure, researchers from the State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, Beijing have shown.

The highly pathogenic strain of H7N9 avian influenza is quite different from other H7N9 strains seen in China and appears to have come about by re-assortment with the H9N2 strain, according to researchers from the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Infliximab is safe and effective in Chinese patients with ulcerative colitis, resulting in 85% response rates and 62% remission rates after 30 weeks of treatment. However, relapse rates are high, say researchers from the Department of Gastroenterology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou.

Shanghai's new suicide hotline receives hundreds of calls

Shanghai's new suicide hotline offers counselling day and night

by Wang Hongyi
Shanghai's first 24-hour suicide-intervention hotline received more than 200 calls during its first week of operation.
The free hotline at 021-5161-9995, launched on Dec 3, is run by the Life Education and Crisis Intervention Center, a nonprofit organization.
Compared with other similar hotlines in the city, this new line extends its psychological service into late nights and early mornings, peak times for people to reach out for mental comfort, according to the hotline operator.
"We received a lot of phone calls after the hotline was launched. This reflects that many people are needing the psychological and mental health aid," says psychological expert Lin Kunhui, the founder, who is also the secretary-general of the Taiwan Suicide Prevention and Cure Association.
During the first week, a total of 201 calls were received. Among them, 137 calls were "ordinary" psychological counseling calls while 64 required crisis intervention.
The psychological crises were divided into seven degrees by the center; degree five and above are considered serious and needing urgent intervention.
Among the 64 calls that required crisis intervention, 22 were urgent, according to the center.
When receiving the most serious calls, Lin says, "the immediate thing for our staff member to do is to manage to lower the callers' degree of crisis".
Volunteers will contact the 110 or 120 emergency hotlines immediately if they suspect a life may be in danger, he adds.
So far, about 100 volunteers have been trained, and they work in shifts for the 24-hour service.
According to statistics by the center, most phone calls were received between 10 pm and 8 am. Peak times for psychological crisis occurred on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.
"So far, we have only mastered one week's figures. After several weeks' operation, we will sort and analyze the data, and identify the peak periods when people most need psychological crisis intervention," Lin says.
The World Health Organization said that each year about 287,000 people kill themselves in China, while about 2 million more attempt suicide.
The first suicide intervention hotline on the Chinese mainland was opened in Beijing in 2002. Since then, similar hotlines have opened across the country, such as in Guangzhou in Guangdong province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province and Nanjing in Jiangsu province.
"In Taiwan, a 24-hour suicide intervention hotline can receive as many as 100,000 calls each year on average. But on the Chinese mainland, the number is still lagging behind," Lin says. "In this regard, psychological aid and crisis intervention need to be widely publicized."
In addition to enrolling volunteers citywide, Life Education and Crisis Intervention Center will also organize public education and training activities at local schools, communities and companies.
An online platform for psychological health guidance and suicide intervention is also expected to be operating within three to six months.
Source: China Daily

Suicidality more common in Chinese women

 by Michael Woodhead
Women are more likely to attempt suicide than men, a study carried out in the emergency departments of Shenyang has found.
A review of 239 patients who were treated at a Shenyang hospital fro attempted suicide found that 22% were men, and 78% were women.
Men were more likely to be drug users, more likely to be icing with family and less likely to be living alone or co-habitating. Women were more likely to express suicide ideation compared with men. About 70% of both men and women who attempted suicide had   had mental illness.
The unique, gender-specific characteristics pertaining to suicide attempters in urban China emphasizes the need for gender-specific interventions in future clinical treatment.
Read more: General Hospital Psychiatry

Almost one in three elderly Chinese have contemplated suicide

In a study of 263 people over 50 years of age in Mianyang, Sichuan, the lifetime prevalence of suicidal ideation was 28.9%, planning 11.4% and attempt 5.3%  respectively. The corresponding 12-month prevalence was 8.8% for ideation,  2.7% for planning and 0% for attempting suicide, respectively.

Correlates of suicidal thoughts/behaviors of this group are similar to findings from other community studies, such as female gender, unmarried status, major medical conditions, insomnia, financial difficulties and lower education, depressive symptoms, recent stressful life events, greater life dissatisfaction.

Read more: International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 27: 1124