Boston hospitals made a strong showing in the newest US News & World Report rankings.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital both scored high on the honor roll for hospitals with top scores in at least six of the 16 specialties rated. Mass. General was fifth and the Brigham was 10th on the 21-member list.

The rankings are based on patient outcomes, reputation, and care-related measures. Out of 4,861 hospitals in the country, 174 scored high enough to be included on the specialty lists.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center made the top 50 in eight specialties and Boston Medical Center was ranked in three.

When crimes of violence are committed by people with mental illness, some wonder why more can't be done to prevent such horrifying acts. But the answer isn't so simple, a large study of multiple factors associated with violence concludes.

Mental illness by itself does not predict future violent behavior, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine report in tomorrow's Archives of General Psychiatry, echoing previous smaller studies. Only when it is combined with other problems -- substance abuse, stressors like the loss of a job or a spouse, and a history of violence -- is an increase in violence seen, the researchers found in a national survey of more than 34,000 people.

"I think the real important finding here is that just because someone has a mental illness, it does not mean they are going to act violent," said Donald Davidoff, director of neuropsychology at McLean Hospital. He was not involved in the study. "Mental illness alone is not a significant risk factor."

But people with both mental illness and substance abuse had a 10 times higher risk of being violent than people with mental illness alone.

"Because severe mental illness did not independently predict future violent behavior, these findings challenge perceptions that mental illness is a leading cause of violence in the general population," the authors wrote. "Still, people with mental illness did report violence more often, largely because they showed other factors associated with violence. Consequently, understanding the link between violent acts and mental disorder requires consideration of its association with other variables such as substance abuse, environmental stressors and history of violence."

Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell takes her research seriously, grounding her fiction in the real thing by visiting McLean Hospital in 2004 to learn about the mysteries of the human brain and the depression, rage, and substance abuse that affect her characters.

McLean has now recruited her to join its National Council as an ambassador for mental health around the world, the Harvard-affiliated hospital said today.

“Her outreach efforts through her novels and her willingness to push psychiatric illness to the forefront of everyday conversation is helping to eliminate the stigma of these diseases,” McLean president and psychiatrist in chief Dr. Scott L. Rauch said in a statement. “We are excited to have her as part of our advocacy team.”

Two Boston hospitals make US News & World Report's latest Best Hospitals rankings look a little like "Partners and Everyone Else," to borrow a phrase from former Globe business columnist Steve Bailey.

That's because Partners stalwarts Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital are the only ones in the state to crack the magazine's 19-member Honor Roll. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near the top in at least six of the list's 16 specialties. Pediatrics will have its own ranking in the fall.

Not that other hospitals didn't perform well. Our medical mecca's reputation is still intact with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital all finishing in the top 10 of various specialties.

Risk factors for developing eating disorders are different for girls and boys, and a mother’s history may affect girls differently depending how old they are, a Boston study reports.

Alison E. Field of Children’s Hospital Boston and her colleagues report in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine on their study following more than 12,000 sons and daughters of participants in the Nurses Health Study II to see what influences might predict eating disorders. The girls and boys answered questionnaires every 12 or 18 months for seven years, starting when they were 9 to 15 years old. Their mothers were asked if they themselves had ever had an eating disorder.

After seven years, 10 percent of the girls and 3 percent of the boys said they were binge eating – overeating and feeling out of control -- or purging – vomiting or using laxatives to keep from gaining weight -- at least once a week. For girls, purging was more common than binge eating. For boys, the opposite was true. Few boys or girls did both, the study said.

MIT biochemist Alexander Rich has won the Welch Award in Chemistry for his fundamental insights into the structure and function of RNA and DNA. He will receive the $300,000 prize in October.

Caritas Christi Health Care's senior vice president and chief information officer is leaving for Vermont. Charles H. Podesta, 50, will become chief information officer of Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vt., in June. Last month Roger Deshaies, formerly senior vice president for finance at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, joined Fletcher Allen as its chief financial officer. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Vermont School of Medicine.

Clifford J. Tabin, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is one of two scientists to win the 2008 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology. He will share the $250,000 award with Philip A. Beachy of Stanford. They are being honored for their work with "hedgehog" genes and how they affect the way embryos develop and form limbs, the brain, and other organs. Hedgehog genes got their name from the prickly appearance they gave fruit fly embryos.

Dr. Andy Whittemore, chief medical officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has been elected president of the American Surgical Association. Whittemore trained as a vascular surgeon, was a division chief at Brigham and Women's, and has been chief medical officer there since 1999.

By Elizabeth Cooney
Globe Correspondent

Many of the people who literally write the book on mental illness collect pay checks from companies whose products treat some of those illnesses.

Sixteen of the 28 members of a task force overseeing revision of the psychiatry profession's diagnostic bible have disclosed financial ties to drug or medical device companies, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, raising concern about possible conflicts of interest.

"To me, this doesn't pass the smell test for conflict of interest,” said Merrill Goozner, a director at the watchdog center. “What they should have done is find psychiatrists without conflicts of interest."

The American Psychiatric Association, which will oversee publication of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defended its choice of panel members, who include Harvard Provost Dr. Steven E. Hyman. The association also noted that all panel members have pledged not to receive more than $10,000 per year from industry sources, aside from unrestricted research grants, until the manual is published in 2012.

"We have made every effort to ensure that [the manual] will be based on the best and latest scientific research, and to eliminate conflicts of interest in its development," Carolyn B. Robinowitz, president of the psychiatric association, said in a statement.

A Harvard hospital and a Canadian university have formed an alliance focused on brain research, the institutions said today.

The Center for Neuroregeneration Research at McLean Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and the Brain Repair Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, will join forces on research, education, and clinical care programs.

The partnership will develop clinical services, such as robotic surgery, neural transplantation, and deep-brain stimulation, as well as commercial applications for new technologies, the announcement said. An exchange program for scientists will also be set up between the two centers.

Regulations to protect patient privacy make it more difficult to conduct medical research, a national study reports, findings that don't surprise Boston researchers who say the rules slow the pace of their work, place a burden on the patients they seek to protect and may discourage them from participating in clinical trials.

Two-thirds of the scientists who answered a survey on privacy rules imposed under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act said the law had a "substantial negative influence" on human health research, according to the article in tomorrow's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"HIPAA regulations have hindered more than they have helped," Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in an interview. She was not involved in the study. "They have had a chilling effect on researchers and epidemiologists."

For those of you who will be keeping score at home tonight, and especially you lucky ones who will be in the boxes or bleachers, McLean Hospital sports psychologist Dr. Jeff Brown has some advice for you to combat stress:

Stay in the moment
Control only the factors that you can control
Respect the Opponent; if they aren’t good, neither are you
Release emotion in healthy ways
Expect your team to compete again.

Back in 2004, when the Red Sox were clawing their way back against the Yankees and into the World Series, Brown developed a plan to help fans keep their equilibrium during that post-season roller-coaster ride. The Rockies aren’t exactly ancient rivals, but that doesn’t mean our stress is any less, he said in an interview.