The Connecticut Mirror (9/25, Radelat) introduces the alarming trend of veteran suicide through personal stories. The article goes on to cite 22 national veteran suicides daily, with concerns of under-reporting due to stigmatization. Though Connecticut has one of the lowest rates at 28.8 per 100,000, compared to the national rate of 35.9, its veterans still commit suicide twice as frequently as non-veterans.

The article cites criticisms of VA healthcare, including mental healthcare’s wait times and the cycling of counselors. A VA audit in May found average wait times of four days at West Haven, 28 days at Waterbury, and 33 at Winsted. Maureen Pasko, suicide prevention coordinator with the West Haven VA hospital, said caregivers “only capture 50% of what is going.”

The article closes citing complaints of other suicide victims’ families and calls for overhaul of the VA healthcare system.

Related Links:

— “SUICIDE BY VETERANS REMAINS A DAUNTING PROBLEM AS VA STRUGGLES TO IMPROVE CARE,” Ana Radelat, Connecticut Mirror, September 24, 2014.

The Los Angeles Times (9/25, Healy) “Science Now” blog reports that according to a study published online Sept. 24 in the journal Neurology, “after the age of 60, ‘cognitive complainers’ – people who say they have noticed mental slippage – are more likely than those who do not complain of such changes to develop mild cognitive impairment, and to have Alzheimer’s-like plaques and tangles in their brains upon death even when dementia was never diagnosed.”

Related Links:

— “Cognitive complaints in the elderly are often dementia harbingers,” Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2014.

USA Today (9/23, Penzenstadler) reports that police agencies across the country, in embracing the Memphis Model, which “aims to de-escalate and divert people suffering a mental health crisis to services instead of jail,” are now facing “full hospitals and a shortage of psychiatric resources.”

Michele Saunders, the crisis intervention team coordinator for the state of Florida, says that in some ways this is a “good problem” because “a greater number get diverted from jail, and that increases the number into the treatment system.”

Related Links:

— “Police crisis system taxes psychiatric resources,” Nick Penzenstadler, USA Today, September 23, 2014.

NPR (9/22, Neighmond) reports in a radio report and in its “Shots” blog that chronic stress, either from major events or even minor issues such as fretting while stuck in traffic, can be “deadly,” citing a study that followed 1,293 men for years. The study, which is scheduled for publication in the journal Experimental Gerontology, found that the “most stressed-out people have the highest risk of premature death.”

The blog post highlights a couple of solutions for “chronically upset worriers,” pointing out that exercise and meditation could help alleviate stress.

Related Links:

— “Best To Not Sweat The Small Stuff, Because It Could Kill You,” Patti Neighmond, National Public Radio, September 22, 2014.

On its website, CBS News (9/22, Firger, Augenbraun) reported on the experiences of mothers whose children have severe mental illnesses. One of the mothers interviewed believes that “the mental health care system must move away from a symptom-based approach to treating mental illness often results in a wrong diagnosis or a succession of inadequate treatment efforts,” which is a “view…shared by Dr. Tom Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), who explains that ‘symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment.’”

In his blog on NIMH’s website, Dr. Insel wrote that the healthcare “system must get better at diagnosing and treating mental illness based on the latest research into its underlying biological causes.”

Related Links:

— ““Every mom’s worst nightmare”: Coping with a child’s mental illness,” Jessica Firger and Eliene Augenbraun, CBS News, September 22, 2014.