The Time (2/24, Thompson) “Battleland” blog points out that a “wrenching chart in a new Congressional Budget Office report on how the Department of Veterans Affairs is handling wounded troops suffering” from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) “shows that nearly all the troops afflicted with both ailments remain under the VA’s care after four years of care. In contrast,” the chart, which does not grade VA’s work, says that “only 42% of the troops seeking VA care with neither diagnosis were still under VA care after four years’ treatment.”

Related Links:

— “They Don’t Seem to Get Better…,”Mark Thompson , Time U.S. Battleland, February 23, 2012.

The ABC News (2/24, Moisse) “Medical Unit” blog reports, “Elderly nursing home residents who take certain antipsychotic drugs for dementia have an increased risk of death,” according to a study published online Feb. 23 in the BMJ. “The study of more than 75,000 nursing home residents with dementia, all of whom were 65 or older, found that residents taking the drug Haldol [haloperidol] had double the risk of death as those taking Risperdal [risperidone],” with the risk being “highest during the first 40 days of treatment.”

“In fact, the risk of death associated with haloperidol (Haldol) is so high that its use ‘cannot be justified because of the excess harm,’ according to Krista Huybrechts, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues,” MedPage Today (2/24, Smith) reports. “Quetiapine (Seroquel) appeared to be the safest among six medications studied in a large cohort of people 65 and older in US nursing homes,” the study found. “While antipsychotics are not approved for people with dementia, they are widely used to help control aggression, the researchers noted.”

HealthDay (2/24, Preidt) points out, “In 2005, the US Food and Drug Administration warned that certain antipsychotic drugs are associated with an increased risk of death in elderly patients with dementia. This warning was expanded to include conventional antipsychotics in 2008, according to a journal news release.” The study authors “said that, despite the FDA action, the use of antipsychotic drugs for this patient population is likely to grow,” due to the fact that “there are a growing number of elderly patients with dementia who require some type of treatment.” Also covering the story are BBC News (2/24, Gallagher) and the UK’s Daily Mail (2/24, Hope).

Related Links:

— “Drugs Raise Death Risk in Dementia Patients,”Katie Moisse , abc News, February 23 , 2012.

Bloomberg News (2/23, Silverberg, Kazel) reports, “US states looking to balance budgets by cutting mental-health facilities and Medicaid payments risk increasing health-care costs by pushing psychiatric patients into emergency” departments. “States trimmed 9.5 percent, or more than $1.6 billion, from their mental-health spending from fiscal 2009 to 2012, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The coming budget year will be worse in some states, with Illinois looking to shutter two psychiatric hospitals and Alabama planning to close all of its except for one serving the elderly and another treating criminal cases.” According to emergency department physician Dr. William Sullivan, of the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, “if patients can’t find free or low-cost outpatient psychiatric care due to government cutbacks, they may swamp emergency rooms and raise health-care costs for all patients.”

Related Links:

— “Mental-Health Cuts by U.S. States Risk Boosting Health Costs,”Melissa Silverberg and Bob Kazel , Bloomberg Businessweek, February 26, 2012.

MedWire (2/22, Cowen) reports, “The presence of anxiety is associated with increased impulsivity in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) or major depressive disorder (MDD),” according to a study published online Feb. 13 in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. In 205 adult patients with BD and 105 adult patients with MDD, investigators “found that the presence of anxiety, either as a comorbidity or a symptom, was significantly associated with increased impulsivity in both groups. Specifically, BD and MDD patients with anxiety had mean” Barratt Impulsivity Scale “scores of 79.56 and 73.91, respectively, versus respective scores of 77.73 and 66.23 in those without anxiety.”

Related Links:

— “Anxiety linked to increased impulsivity in mood disorder patients,”Mark Cowen , MedWire News, February 22, 2012.

Reuters (2/18, Grens) reported that according to a study published online Feb. 6 in Archives of General Psychiatry, no association was found between suicide and antidepressants among children and adults taking fluoxetine or venlafaxine. In addition, results based on unpublished data, also found that antidepressants may decrease the risk of suicide in adults.