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.

Healio (10/15, Demko) reports researchers found in an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “that a 1% point increase in state-level depression diagnoses was tied to a 26% increase in opioid analgesic-related deaths.” The findings were published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

Related Links:

— “Strong link between depression rates, opioid-related deaths, “Savannah Demko, Healio, October 15, 2018.

Medscape (10/11, Davenport, Subscription Publication) reports on a study presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Congress and published in Psychoneuroendocrinology finding that “childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse, is more common in those with anxious depression and causes permanent biological changes that may explain poorer responses to standard treatment in this patient population.” The study included 144 “patients with major depressive disorder” and found “that those with anxious depression were almost twice as likely to have suffered sexual abuse in childhood and were 1.3 times more likely to have experienced emotional neglect than those with depression that was not accompanied by anxiety.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Reuters (10/11, Lehman) reports on a study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice finding, “Women who have asthma during their pregnancies are more likely to experience postpartum depression.” The study included “the health histories of more than 35,000 pregnant women with asthma and almost 200,000 women without asthma who delivered babies in Quebec between 1998 and 2009.”

Related Links:

— “Asthma during pregnancy tied to postpartum depression risk, “Shereen Lehman, Reuters, October 11, 2018.