Reuters (11/23, Carroll) reported, “Patients who are treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) and survive are at increased risk of depression,” researchers concluded after following “4,943 ICU patients who had spent at least 24 hours in one of 26 ICUs in the UK between 2006 and 2013.” The study also revealed that “depression in ICU survivors was linked with a higher risk of death in the next two years.” The findings were published online Nov. 23 in the journal Critical Care.

Related Links:

— “ICU stay can lead to depression, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, November 23, 2018.

CNN (11/19, Scutti) reports, “Prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution was associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder, a new study finds.”

HealthDay (11/19, Reinberg) reports researchers found that prenatal exposure to nitric oxide, “a common” traffic-related “air pollutant…was tied to higher odds of a child being diagnosed with autism by age” five. The findings of the 132,000-child study were published online Nov. 19 in JAMA Pediatrics. STAT (11/19, Weintraub) also reports.

Related Links:

— “Prenatal exposure to air pollution linked to autism risk, study says, “Susan Scutti, CNN, November 19, 2018.

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.