The Dallas Morning News (11/24, Yasmin) reports on the rise and fall of suicide rates as they relate to the economy, saying that “suicide rates have spiked during every recession since the Great Depression and have dropped during times of economic growth.” Additionally, several studies have indicated a “relationship between a bad economy and higher rates of suicide, especially among men.” For example, for every rise of one percent in unemployment between 2008 and 2010, “there was a one percent increase in the suicide rate. The state with the strongest correlation between unemployment and suicide was Texas.”

Related Links:

— “Suicide rates rise and fall with economy, especially in Texas,” Seema Yasmin, Dallas Morning News, November 23, 2014.

MedPage Today (11/22, Johnson) reported that according to research presented at the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting, patients with gout may “face a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared with people without gout.” Researchers arrived at that conclusion after using “data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), an electronic medical records database representative of the UK general population,” to identify “59,224 individuals with gout (70.8% male, mean age 65.3 years) and matched them to 238,805 controls without gout (71.1% male, mean age 65.3 years) based on age, sex, body mass index, date of study entry, and year of enrollment.” After adjustment for confounding factors, “the multivariate hazard ratio of AD among those with gout was 0.76 (95% CI 0.66 to 0.87), translating to a 24% lower risk of AD among people with a history of gout compared to those without.”

Related Links:

— “Gout May Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease,” Kate Johnson, MedPage Today, November 21, 2014.

The Washington Post (11/21, Holley, Larimer) “Post Nation” blog reported that in wake of Thursday morning’s shooting at the Florida State University library, experts are once again debating the fairness of the connection between gun violence and serious mental illness. Earlier this year, in a piece run by Psychiatric News, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association, Thomas Insel, MD, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, discussed that very issue in a keynote address at a workshop on mental health and violence conducted by the Institute of Medicine, putting the issue in perspective and reiterating that the vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, nor are most violent acts perpetrated by people with mental illnesses.

Related Links:

— “In wake of Florida State shooting, spotlight returns to mental health issues and violence,” Peter Holley and Sarah Larimer, Washington Post, November 21, 2014.

Pew Charitable Trusts (11/19) reports on a new Federal rule that “will require states to ensure that long-term care alternatives to nursing homes work with residents and their families to develop individual care plans specifying the services and setting each resident wants,” with the goal of creating a “home-like atmosphere” within assisted living facilities. However, “the rule could make it difficult for [physicians] to fulfill increasing demand for long-term care outside of nursing homes,” and “could limit the availability of services for elders,” while bringing unintended consequences, according to Pew. For example, patients with dementia who are not likely to wander off should not face constraints such as locked doors under the new rule, but this guideline becomes complicated when multiple dementia patients share living space and some are at risk for wandering and some are not.

Related Links:

— “New Medicaid Rule Could Challenge State Shift Away From Nursing Homes,” Christine Vestal, Pew Charitable Trusts, November 19, 2014.

HealthDay (11/21, Preidt) reports that according to a report issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and based on the agency’s annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “nearly one in five American adults – 43.8 million people – had a diagnosable mental illness in 2013.” In addition, the report revealed “10 million adults had a serious mental illness, 15.7 million had major depressive episodes, 9.3 million had serious thoughts of suicide, 2.7 million made suicide plans and 1.3 million attempted suicide.” In a news release, SAMHSA Administrator Pamela Hyde said, “It is a serious issue that millions of Americans are needlessly affected by mental illness when they can get effective treatment to restore their well-being.” Hyde emphasized the importance of seeking help.

Related Links:

— “1 in 5 U.S. Adults Dealt With a Mental Illness in 2013,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, November 20, 2014.

The New York Times (11/21, Parker-Pope) “Well” blog reports that according to a report released Nov. 20 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease journal, the majority of “people who drink to get drunk are not alcoholics.” The conclusions of “a government survey of 138,100 adults counters the conventional wisdom that every ‘falling-down drunk’” has an addiction to alcohol. Rather, “the results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health show that nine out of 10 people who drink too much are not addicts, and can change their behavior with a little – or perhaps a lot of – prompting.”

Related Links:

— “Most Heavy Drinkers Are Not Alcoholics,” Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times, November 20, 2014.

Medscape (11/20, Cassels) reports that according to a study published online Nov. 19 in JAMA Psychiatry, “collaborative care delivered via telemedicine may offer a viable and effective way of treating veterans with severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who live in rural and remote areas.” The “results of a multisite, randomized effectiveness trial” including 265 veterans with PTSD “showed that Telemedicine Outreach for PTSD (TOP), an off-site intervention in which a multidisciplinary PTSD care team uses telemedicine tools, such as telephone calls, interactive videos, and shared electronic medical records, to support on-site [healthcare professionals] significantly improved clinical outcomes in veterans compared with usual care.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

USA Today (11/20, Crutchfield) reports that at a meeting of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee yesterday, senators concluded that “veterans at risk of suicide have to wait too long to get mental health treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Each day, “about 22 veterans commit suicide…VA records show, and they remain a higher risk of suicide than members of the general population.” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) told representatives of the VA, “We cannot have someone call in for an appointment and have to wait five weeks to get help.”

Related Links:

— “At-risk veterans need help on suicide, senators say,” Charmaine Crutchfield, USA Today, November 19, 2014.

The Higher Education Mental Health Alliance (HEMHA) has published Postvention: A Guide for Response to Suicide on College Campuses. From its introduction:

This resource is intended for use by colleges and universities that are affected by and/or want to be prepared for campus crises and campus deaths. Suicide postvention efforts address the need for predetermined strategies to effectively and sensitively respond to campus deaths after they occur and also contribute to improved prevention efforts….While our hope is that schools will use this guide to help with planning so that systems are in place to respond, we have tried to make this guide sufficiently concise to be valuable also when a school has not engaged in planning but is faced with a student suicide and needs to rapidly develop and implement a response plan.

The guide specifically looks at facilitating the grieving process, stabilizing environments, reducing negative behaviors, and limiting further suicides through contagion.

Another resource for learning about depression associated with college life is the Maryland Foundation for Psychiatry’s own Love, From Depression site.

The Colorado Daily (11/18, Brennan) reported that a University of Colorado study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering suggests that “physical pain and social pain are processed by distinct neural circuits, which could help direct scientists and clinicians toward prevention and treatment options that work best for emotional suffering.” While “neuroscientists in the past decade had largely come to think that physical and social pain are processed by the brain in the same way.” Now, “a new study led by CU graduate student Choong-Wan Woo shows the two types of pain actually use separate neural circuits.”

Related Links:

— “CU-Boulder study shows differences in brain’s processing of emotional, physical pain,” Charlie Brennan, The Colorado Daily, November , 2014.