The Los Angeles Times (8/8, Pandika) “Science Now” blog reports that according to a study published online Aug. 7 in the journal Neurology, cocoa appears to “help improve brain health and thinking skills in the elderly.” Researchers found that seniors “who initially performed poorly on a memory and reasoning test and also had reduced blood flow to their brains showed improvement after drinking two cups of cocoa every day for a month.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer (8/8, Townsend) reports that researchers studied 60 seniors whose average age was 73. At study start, no participant had dementia, but 18 participants “had impaired blood flow.” During the study, all participants “drank two cups of hot cocoa per day,” but only half of the participants drank cocoa containing high levels of flavonol, an antioxidant. For the duration of the study, the participants’ only source of cocoa was what they were drinking. No other forms of cocoa or chocolate were consumed.

Related Links:

— “Chocolate may help keep brain healthy, sharp in old age, study says, “Melissa Pandika, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 2013.

The AP (8/8, Marchione) reports that according to a study published Aug. 8 in the New England Journal of Medicine, “higher blood-sugar levels, even those well short of diabetes, seem to raise the risk of developing dementia.” For that reason, investigators theorize that “keeping glucose at a healthy level” might be one way of trying to prevent Alzheimer’s.

Related Links:

— “Study ties higher blood sugar to dementia risk, “By Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press, August 8, 2013.

Psychiatrist and author Christine Montross, MD, wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times (8/4, SR5, Montross, Subscription Publication) that there are “countless psychiatric patients who have nowhere to turn for care, other than the” emergency department. “It is well known that millions of uninsured Americans, who can’t afford regular medical care, use the country’s emergency rooms for primary healthcare.” She asserted that the failure to provide care for these people is detrimental to society in general. Montross suggested that “a basic level of outpatient psychiatric care” be offered to help stem the problem.

Related Links:

— “The Woman Who Ate Cutlery, “Christine Montross, The New York Times, August 4, 2013.

In a 10,000-word cover story, the Christian Science Monitor (8/4, Paulson) reported that although “mass shooters are the catalyst forcing the public to focus on mental health care, the reality, say psychiatrists, is that predicting the one person in thousands who will act on such violent impulses, even among those suffering from a serious mental illness, is nearly impossible.” However, “the focus on the system is exposing how vastly inadequate it is,” psychiatrists say. Currently, just “four in 10 people with a serious mental illness have access to any treatment” whatsoever, and the number of psychiatric beds is just five percent of what is was five decades ago.

Related Links:

— “Mental health in the US: New ideas on care emerge, “Amanda Paulson, The Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2013.

On its website, NBC News (8/2, Fox) reports that statistics from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, published in Aug. 2 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that “the rate of suicide using guns has gone up in most of the 50 most populous US metropolitan areas, but the murder rate has fallen.” The study suggests that “the economy is a clear factor in the rise in suicides, as is access to guns.” The report focused on large metropolitan areas, and people aged from 10 to 19.

According to HealthDay (8/2, Reinberg), the report “found that the overall gun-murder rate dropped by about 15 percent overall between 2006-2007 and 2009-2010 in a majority of the nation’s 50 largest cities,” but in the same time frame, “the suicide-by-gun rate rose 10 to 15 percent in nearly three-quarters of those cities.” Overall, “more than 22,500 gun murders and more than 38,000 gun suicides were tallied for 2009-2010.”

Related Links:

— “Gun suicides up, murders down in US cities, CDC finds, “Maggie Fox, NBC News, August 1, 2013.