Anne Zink, MD, “the immediate past president of the Alaska chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians,” writes in STAT (10/18) “First Opinion” about “psychiatric boarding,” the practice of emergency departments holding patients with mental health issues “because no appropriate mental health care is available.” Dr. Zink outlines different initiatives that aim to address the problem before concluding that “the better able we are to treat patients with mental and behavioral issues, communicate and collaborate effectively, and match patients with the appropriate resources outside of the emergency department, the better off our health system and our patients will be.”

Related Links:

— “Mental health patients, with nowhere else to go, are overwhelming emergency departments, “Anne Zink, STAT, October 18, 2018.

The New York Times (10/17, Bakalar) reports, “Having pre-eclampsia – dangerously high blood pressure during pregnancy – is linked to an increased risk for dementia later in life,” research indicated.

MedPage Today (10/17) reports the condition is particularly tied to “vascular dementia, later in life,” researchers concluded in an analysis involving “over one million women over a median of 21 years.” The findings were published online in the BMJ. The authors of an accompanying editorialobserved, “What the study endorses is some commonality between preeclampsia and vascular dementia: both are propagated by preexisting cardiovascular risk factors and have a pathogenesis that targets blood vessels – something not seen with the Alzheimer’s variant of dementia, for example.” HealthDay (10/17, Thompson) also covers the study.

Related Links:

— “High Blood Pressure of Pregnancy Tied to Dementia Later in Life, “Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times, October 17, 2018.

Reuters (10/16, Carroll) reports researchers found that “people with restless legs syndrome may be more likely to think about suicide or to actually make plans to take their own lives, compared to people without the troublesome condition.” The findings were published in Sleep Medicine.

Related Links:

— “Restless legs syndrome linked with risk for suicidal thoughts, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, October 16, 2018.

Medscape (10/16, Brooks, Subscription Publication) reports researchers found that “older adults with a history of intentional self-harm are at risk of dying from unnatural causes, particularly suicide, yet they often are not referred for mental health care services.” The findings were published in Lancet Psychiatry. In an accompanying commentary, Rebecca Mitchell of Macquarie University in Australia, said the findings raise “questions regarding adherence to recommended clinical guidelines for the clinical management of older adults who self-harm and has signalled the need for improved quality of health care for this population.”

Healio (10/16) reports the researchers also found that “in the first year after self-harm, only about 12% of older adults were referred by a primary care physician to mental health services.” The researchers wrote that “self-harm among older people has received little attention compared with other age groups.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

NPR (10/15, Silberner) reports on its website that the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health released “a comprehensive report” on mental health and mental illness around the world. NPR says that while “it’s a major milestone in the fight to recognize mental health and mental illness as global issues,” the release of the report “was not a celebratory event,” because “threaded throughout the 45-page report is a lament that the world is ignoring millions of suffering people.” The report calls international financial support for mental healthcare and people with mental illnesses “pitifully small.”

Related Links:

— “Report: World Support For Mental Health Care Is ‘Pitifully Small’, “Joanne Silberner, NPR, October 15, 2018.