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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 24, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- One in five adults avoided seeking health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, even when they had symptoms suggesting the need for urgent medical attention, according to researchers in the Netherlands."Health care avoidance during COVID-19 may be prevalent amongst those who are in greater need of it in the population, such as older individuals," a team led by Silvan Licher, of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, reported.The findings suggest the need for public information efforts to urge individuals who are most likely to avoid getting care "to report both alarming and seemingly insignificant symptoms" to a primary care doctor or specialist, the researchers wrote in the report published Nov. 23 in the journal PLOS Medicine.Patient...

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 24, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not just a childhood disorder, and new research shows that adults with ADHD are four times more likely to have anxiety disorder. "These findings underline how vulnerable adults with ADHD are to generalized anxiety disorders," said study author Esme Fuller-Thomson. She is a professor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and director of the Institute for Life Course & Aging. "There are many studies linking adult ADHD to depression and suicidality, but less attention has been paid to generalized activity disorders and other adverse outcomes across the life course," Fuller-Thomson said in a university news release.For the study, her team examined a nationally...

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 24, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- If you live the country life, new research brings a reassuring finding: Your chances of surviving a heart attack, stroke or other potentially life-threatening medical emergency at a rural emergency department are similar to odds at a city ER in the United States. Researchers analyzed more than 470,000 outcomes among Medicare beneficiaries treated at rural and urban ERs between 2011 and 2015.Overall 30-day death rates were 3.9% in rural ERs and 4.1% in urban ERs, according to the study. However, patients with symptoms that did not result in a specific diagnosis had higher death rates at rural ERs than urban ERs.The researchers also found that patients in rural ERs were much more likely to be transferred than those in urban ERs, 6.2% versus...

TUESDAY, Nov. 23, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The latest in a spate of studies investigating links between use of social media and depression suggests the two go hand in hand."The relationship between social media and mental health has been the subject of a lot of debate," said Dr. Roy Perlis, lead author of the new study. He's director of the Center for Experimental Drugs and Diagnostics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.On one hand, social media is a way for people to stay connected to a larger community and get information about things that interest them, Perlis noted. On the other, even before widespread misinformation on these platforms was recognized, there was a sense that young people might be negatively affected.The new study follows a yearlong look at social media use...