In “To Your Health,” the Washington Post (7/1, Beachum) reported that researchers for the Treatment Advocacy Center have found the number of psychiatric beds in state hospitals across the US has fallen to a historic low, and almost half of those that are available “are filled with patients from the criminal justice system.” Both sets of data “reflect the sweeping changes” that have occurred in the 50 years since the nation began deinstitutionalizing mental-health patients “in favor of outpatient treatment.” The “promise of that shift was never fulfilled,” however, “and experts and advocates say the result is seen even today in the increasing ranks of homeless and incarcerated Americans suffering from serious mental conditions.”

Related Links:

— “Nation’s psychiatric bed count falls to record low,” Lateshia Beachum, , July 1, 2016.

HealthDay (6/30, Preidt) reports that a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society “suggests that the problem of missed” medication “rises with age and failing memory, especially for men.” Researchers found that “overall, people aged 80 and older were 1.5 to 3 times more likely to require help taking medications than those ages 65-69.” The investigators found that other factors linked to “medication lapses” were “memory deficits” and having “trouble with the tasks of everyday living.”

Related Links:

— “Why Some Seniors Don’t Take Their Meds,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, July 30, 2016.

The AP (6/30, Stobbe) reports, “Farmers, lumberjacks and fishermen have the highest suicide rate in the US, while librarians and educators have the lowest,” the findings of a CDC report published July 1 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report suggest. Investigators “found the highest suicide rates in manual laborers who work in isolation and face unsteady employment,” but “high rates were also seen in carpenters, miners, electricians and people who work in construction.” Dentists, physicians, and “other health care professionals had an 80 percent lower suicide rate than the farmers, fishermen and lumberjacks.”

STAT (6/30, Seervai) reports that “men were far more likely to take their own lives than women,” the paper found. Report lead author and health scientist Wendy LiKam Wa McIntosh, of the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, “said she hopes the report’s findings will help employers design strategies to prevent suicide – including wellness and education programs – and encourage people showing signs of distress to seek help.”

Related Links:

— “Professions at highest risk of suicide: Farming, fishing, construction work,” SHANOOR SEERVAI, StatNews, June 30, 2016.

In “Science Now,” the Los Angeles Times (6/29, Healy) reports, “Compared with women who never participated in religious services, women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide between 1996 and 2010,” research published online June 29 in JAMA Psychiatry suggests. The effect was particularly evident among Catholics. In fact, “among the 6,999 Catholic women who said they attended mass more than once a week, there was not a single suicide.”

HealthDay (6/29, Preidt) reports that researchers arrived at these conclusions after analyzing “data on nearly 90,000 women” who were “enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study from 1996 to 2010.”

Related Links:

— “Church attendance linked with reduced suicide risk, especially for Catholics, study says,” Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2016.

TIME (6/6, Sifferlin) reports that just “about 4% of interpersonal violence in the United States can be attributed to mental illness…yet close to 40% of news stories about mental illness connect it to violent behavior that harms other people,” research published in Health Affairs suggests. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after examining “400 news articles about mental illness that were published over two decades, from 1994 to 2014, in popular news outlets.” Time also notes, “According to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), people with severe mental illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crimes than people in the general population.”

Related Links:

— “Most Violent Crimes Are Wrongly Linked to Mental Illness,” Alexandra Sifferlin, Time, June 6, 2016.