Kaiser Health News (11/19, Waters) reports that in the aftermath of recent mass shootings across the US, “public health and mental health experts counter that blaming the violence on the mentally ill is unfair and inaccurate, pointing instead to lax gun laws.” Renée Binder, MD, “a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco and a past president of the American Psychiatric Association,” said, “Most violence is not committed by people who are mentally ill.” Dr. Binder added, “Even if you took everyone who had any kind of mental illness and locked them up and gave them meds, it would hardly make a dent on the problem of violence.

Related Links:

— “Gun Control Vs. Mental Health Care: Debate After Mass Shootings Obscures Murky Reality, “Rob Waters, Kaiser Health News, November 19, 2018.

The Tennessean (11/18, Bliss, Wadhwani) reported, “The goal of Tennessee’s public psychiatric hospitals is to serve as a last-resort safety net to stabilize patients in crisis and then link them to ongoing treatment in their communities,” but because the state’s mental healthcare “system as a whole is overburdened,” about “one in three adults admitted to Tennessee’s public psychiatric hospitals will return within six months [pdf], according to federal data.”

Related Links:

— “13 suicide attempts, 18 hospitalizations, few options: Lost in Tennessee’s mental care system, “Jessica Bliss and Anita Wadhwani, The Tennessean, November 18, 2018.

The AP (11/17, Jojola) reported an ongoing investigation is tracking a “growing health care epidemic where hundreds of people” with dementia and similar conditions “are abandoned every year at metro-area hospitals,” a problem which “is costing hospitals and in some cases, taxpayers, millions of dollars a year.” Many such “at-risk adults…end up languishing in hospitals because they have no family to take care of them or a facility willing to take them in due to a lack of space, finances, or appropriate scope of care.” According to one survey of hospitals in the Denver area, “on a single day in September 113 at-risk adults were stuck in the system, beyond medical necessity,” and about 30 percent had mental health issues such as dementia.

Related Links:

— “People without caregivers end up stranded in hospitals, “Jeremy Jojola, AP, November 17, 2018.

USA Today (11/16, O’Donnell) reported, “From 2007 to 2017, the number of deaths attributable to alcohol increased 35 percent,” research indicated. What’s more, “deaths among women rose 67 percent,” whereas they rise “29 percent” among men. USA Today went on to summarize a number of studies indicating “increases for acute and chronic alcohol use.”

Newsweek (11/17, Wynne) reported, “Women are more susceptible to alcohol-related risks because they typically weigh less than men, and can feel the effects of alcohol faster, according to the National Institute on Alcohol and Abuse and Alcoholism.”

Related Links:

— “Alcohol is killing more people, and younger. The biggest increases are among women, “Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today, November 16, 2018.

HealthDay (11/15, Salamon) reports that in a “first-of-its-kind study, which surveyed white and Latino young adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT),” researchers found that “more than half of them experienced efforts to change their sexual orientation during adolescence.” The findings of the 245-young adult study were published online Nov. 7 in the Journal of Homosexuality.

Related Links:

— “Gay ‘Conversion Therapy’ Often Begins at Home, With Devastating Consequences, ” Maureen Salamon, HealthDay, November 15, 2018.

MedPage Today (11/15, Dotinga) reports, “Previous homelessness appears to be an independent risk factor for suicide attempts among U.S. veterans,” researchers concluded. In their “analysis of over 3,000 veterans, the link between lifetime homelessness and suicide attempts remained after adjusting for demographics and mental health,” investigators found. The findings were presented at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting.

Related Links:

— “MedPage, (requires login and subscription), November 15, 2018.

The AP (11/15) reported that “health officials” with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “say the workers with the highest suicide rates have construction, mining and drilling jobs.” The findings, which were published Nov. 16 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, corrected “an earlier study that mistakenly said farmers, lumberjacks and fishermen killed themselves most often.” In arriving at these conclusions, investigators examined data on “22,000 people who died of suicide in 2012 and 2015, and what jobs they held.”

The NBC News (11/15, Fox) website reports that across the entire population, suicide rates are rising, the report revealed, with men being more likely than women to commit suicide.

Related Links:

— “Corrected study: Building, mining have high suicide rates, AP, November 15, 2018.

TIME (11/14, Bajekal) reports that “the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has worked with tens of thousands of children in struggling, often war-torn nations around the world who are suffering from…toxic stress,” which is “a relentless cycle of trauma, violence and instability, coupled with a lack of adequate care at home.” According to TIME, “in some cases, the IRC has used drawing to help children open up or as a way to process their trauma.” The article features drawings “from IRC projects in Cambodia during the genocide, in Sierra Leone and Uganda in the early-2000s and in Jordan just last year.” These drawings depict “what it’s like to endure displacement, violence and separation, through the eyes of the children themselves.”

Related Links:

— “How Traumatized Children See the World, According to Their Drawings, ” Naina Bajekal, TIME, November 14, 2018.

In a greater than 5,300-word article, ProPublica (11/14, Fraser, Muldowney, Sandoval, Mierjeski), in partnership with the Malheur Enterprise, conducted “a comprehensive new analysis” in which they found that “about 35 percent of people found criminally insane in Oregon and then let out of supervised psychiatric treatment were charged with new crimes within three years of being freed by state officials.” The analysis revealed that “Oregon releases people found not guilty by reason of insanity from supervision and treatment more quickly than nearly every other state in the nation.” What’s more, “the speed at which the state releases the criminally insane from custody is driven by both Oregon’s unique-in-the-nation law and state officials’ expansive interpretation of applicable federal court rulings.”

Related Links:

— “Oregon Board Says Those Found Criminally Insane Rarely Commit New Crimes. The Numbers Say Otherwise, “Jayme Fraser, , November 14, 2018.