Medical Daily (8/3, Dovey) reports, “Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease may share many of the same symptoms, but the two are not different names for the same condition.” The article goes on to explain that “dementia is a syndrome, or a group of symptoms that consistently occur together,” and “is not a specific disease.”
Related Links:
— “Alzheimer’s vs. Dementia: How They Differ And What To Do,” Dana Dovey, Medical Daily, August 3, 2016.
On its website, CNBC (8/1, Mangan) reports a new analysis conducted by FAIR Health found that healthcare claims for people addicted to prescription pain medications “and heroin skyrocketed as the number of Americans who fatally overdosed on those opioids hit record highs.” Data show the number of such claims rose by 3,204 percent from 2007 to 2014
The analysis also revealed “other disturbingly sharp spikes upwards in the number of private insurance claims related to opioid abuse, drug dependence by pregnant women and heroin overdoses since 2011.”
Related Links:
— “Opioid-related insurance claims rose more than 3,000 percent 2007 to 2014,” Dan Mangan, CNBC, August 1, 2016.
Medscape (8/2, Brooks) reports an analysis by a WHO-led global advisory group concluded “dementia prevention, risk reduction, and delivery of high-quality care are global dementia research priorities.” The World Alzheimer Report 2015 found that the number of people living with dementia globally is “expected to rise from the current 46 million to 131.5 million by 2050.” Global treatment costs are estimated to jump from $818 billion in 2015 to $1 trillion by 2018 and $2 trillion by 2030. The WHO analysis, which included input from over 200 researchers and stakeholders, concluded a series of “overarching research goals.” Among the top 10 overall research priorities include “prevention, identification and reduction of dementia risk, and delivery and quality of care for dementia patients and their caregivers.”
Related Links:
— Medscape (requires login and subscription)
In The Hill (8/2, Izenberg) “Congress Blog,” Jacob Izenberg, MD, a psychiatry resident in San Francisco and a member of the Committee of Interns and Residents, urges the Senate to pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. He says the bill will introduce “reforms that seek to expand access to acute psychiatric care while also bolstering community-based programs…that have a proven track record of reducing hospitalization and incarceration.”
Izenberg cites his own experiences in psychiatry resident training to argue that emergency departments “are not designed to deliver the humane care that…mental suffering necessitates.” The “staggering” cuts to mental health services are to blame for the lack of resources, pointing out that the US now has only “11.7 state psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, compared to 14 in 1850.”
Related Links:
— “Reforming our broken mental health system,” Jacob Izenberg, MD, The Hill, August 2, 2016.
The Washington Post (8/1, Stein) covers a new report “from Project Know, a website that connects people to alcohol and drug addiction treatment resources,” that found more American high school students smoke pot than binge drink. The report examined data taken “from state and national agencies to determine drug usage rates in each state and the District.” The District of Columbia had the highest rate of marijuana use at 32.2 percent, but the lowest rate of binge drinking and prescription drug abuse at 12 and 7.3 percent, respectively.
Related Links:
— “More American high school students smoke pot than binge drink, report says,” Perry Stein, Washington Post, August 1, 2016.
The AP (8/1, Ritter) reports, “In a key advance for the study of depression, a comprehensive scan of human DNA has turned up the apparent hiding places of more than a dozen genes linked to the disorder.” Investigators “identified 15 areas of the human DNA…that show signs of harboring genetic variations that affect risk of becoming depressed.”
The Washington Post (8/1, Cha) “To Your Health” blog reports that while “gene association studies…are published” frequently, “this is a particularly important one,” as “it’s the first large study on major depressive disorder in people of European descent, and it shows that the genes that may be involved in the condition correspond to those involved in the development of neurons in the brain.” The research, “published in Nature Genetics, involved an analysis of genetic variations of 75,607 people of European ancestry who self-reported having depression and 231,747 healthy controls.”
Related Links:
— “Large DNA study using 23andMe data finds 15 sites linked to depression,” Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post, August 1, 2016.
Patrice A. Harris, MD, chairwoman of the American Medical Association, writes in a letter to the editor of the Hartford (CT) Courant (8/1) that the AMA concurs “with Aetna medical officer Dr. Mark Friedlander that we need to increase access to medication-assisted treatment for patients with substance use disorders.”
She says the AMA is also urging “Aetna, Cigna and all other payers in Connecticut to remove barriers to evidence-based care, including limits on physical therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, psychiatric care and other multimodal therapies that may be appropriate.”
Harris adds that in order to effectively combat the opioid epidemic, “physicians must continue to play an active role in treating our patients using evidence-based care, and that also means insurance policies must provide our patients with the benefits, coverage and access necessary for that care.”
Related Links:
— “AMA: Insurers Must Broaden Opioid Addiction Coverage,” Patrice A. Harris, M.D.,
Kaiser Health News (7/29, Bluth) reported a new study exploring the connection between older people’s health and their living arrangements published recently in the Journal of Applied Gerontology found that “people over 65 who live alone were more likely to describe their health as excellent or very good than were seniors who live with others.” The study’s results notwithstanding, the researchers said they were unable to draw any conclusion “about whether keeping a solitary household in old age leads to a longer life.”
Related Links:
— “Seniors Who Live Alone Likeliest To Rate Their Health Highly, Study Says,” Rachel Bluth, Kaiser Health News, July 29, 2016.
In an editorial, the Washington Post (7/31) observed that the number of people with mental illnesses “in many detention facilities – local jails, especially – has been soaring, forcing the institutions into the role of treatment centers, for which they are unprepared.” To prevent strain on its jail and to stop incarcerating people with mental illness “who commit relatively minor crimes,” Montgomery County, MD “is moving swiftly to establish mental-health courts.” The goal “is to divert qualified defendants charged with nonviolent crimes…from jail to supervised treatment regimens.” The Post hailed the plan as an “excellent idea.”
Related Links:
— “A step forward for mentally ill defendants,” Editorial Board, Washington Post, July 31, 2016.
MedPage Today (7/29, Harris) reported, “Locked inpatient wards do not reduce suicide attempts or unauthorized absence among patients with mental illness,” researchers found after conducting “a 15-year observational study of approximately 145,000 cases.” The findings were published online July 28 in The Lancet Psychiatry. An accompanying commentary “agreed that ‘the authors are surely justified in concluding that locked doors do not seem to provide the anticipated protection.’”
Related Links:
— “Locked inpatient wards do not reduce suicide attempts,” Scott Harris, MedPage Today, July 29, 2016.