Mental Health News
Nova Scotia to factor Hyde inquiry report into new mental health strategy
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia’s health minister says she will direct her department’s mental health policy working group to look at recommendations from a fatality inquiry into the jail cell death of Howard Hyde.
Maureen MacDonald says provincial court Judge Anne Derrick used some very specific language regarding mental health issues in her report on Howard Hyde’s death.
Hyde, a 45-year-old musician diagnosed with schizophrenia, died while in custody in a Halifax jail in November 2007 after he was restrained by guards.
MacDonald says she will review the directions she has already given department officials to make sure the parameters outlined by Derrick are covered.
She says a direct response to the concerns raised by Hyde’s death will follow shortly.
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MacDonald expects to deliver government’s new mental health strategy next year.
Secondhand smoke tied to childrens’ poor mental health
(Reuters Life!) – The evidence is piling up that parents who smoke really should quit — or at least not smoke at home, a study said.
Children who breathe secondhand smoke are more likely to struggle with mental health problems, especially hyperactivity and “bad” behavior, according to the study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
While the findings add urgency to the push for parents to quit smoking or at least smoke outside the home, it remains unclear whether tobacco fumes actually take a toll on childrens’ brains or if something else is at play, said researchers led by Mark Hamer of University College London.
“We know that exposure to secondhand smoke is associated with a lot of physical health problems in children, although the mental health side has not been explored,” Hamer told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
In the United States, two of every three children between the ages of three and 11 are exposed to secondhand smoke. Meanwhile, one in five children aged nine to 17 have been diagnosed with some kind of mental or addictive disorder, according to the U.S. department of Health and Human Services.
Hamer and his colleagues studied 901 nonsmoking British children between the ages of 4 to 8, measuring levels of a byproduct of cigarette fumes in the childrens’ saliva to gauge smoke exposure and having parents fill out a questionnaire about the childrens’ emotional, behavioral and social problems.
The more secondhand smoke a child took in, on average, the poorer their mental health — particularly for hyperactivity and conduct disorder, or so-called “bad” behavior, the study said.
Overall, about three percent of all children received “abnormal” scores of 20 or more on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, a 40-point scale with the highest scores representing the poorest mental health.
Compared to the 101 children who breathed in the least secondhand smoke, the 361 with the most exposure scored an average of 44 percent higher on the questionnaire — 9.2 versus 6.4. Children were most likely to breathe secondhand smoke in their own homes.
The gap remained after researchers accounted for other factors that could affect mental health such as asthma, physical activity and the families’ income and housing situations, although they noted that some unmeasured factor also couldn’t be ruled out.
It also isn’t yet clear how secondhand smoke might trigger mental troubles, though researchers suggested it could be due to genetics or possibly related to smoke’s effects on chemicals in the brain such as dopamine, and Hamer noted further research is needed.
But Michael Weitzman at New York University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, said the results strengthen the evidence that secondhand smoke, and possibly prenatal exposure to tobacco, causes mental health problems in children.
“Many people now recognize that childrens’ secondhand smoke exposure increases their risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, ear infections and asthma,” he told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
“But secondhand smoke also poses a huge burden on the quality of life of children, their families and the larger society due to increased child mental health problems.”
SOURCE: http:/link.reuters.com/xev29q
(Reporting by Lynne Peeples at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)
Report: Growing mental health problems in military
Washington (CNN) — Mental problems send more men in the U.S. military to the hospital than any other cause, according to a new Pentagon report.
And they are the second highest reason for hospitalization of women military personnel, behind conditions related to pregnancy.
The Defense Department’s Medical Surveillance report from November examines “a large, widespread, and growing mental health problem among U.S. military members.”
The 31-page report says mental disorders are a problem for the entire U.S. population, but that sharp increases for active duty military reflect the psychological toll of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Most notably in this regard, the rate of incident diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increased nearly six-fold from 2003 to 2008,” the report says.
And new outreach and screening, as well as the military’s efforts to reduce the stigma attached to seeking treatment also contributed to higher numbers, according to the report.
The Army was hit hardest by the most common and long-lasting problems — post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence and substance dependence, according to the report.
“The Army was relatively most affected (based on lost duty time) by mental disorder-related hospitalizations overall; and in 2009, the loss of manpower to the Army was more than twice that to the Marine Corps and more than three times that to the other Services,” the report says.
“The Army has had many more deployers to Afghanistan and Iraq and many more combat-specific casualties; it is not surprising, therefore, that the Army has endured more mental disorder-related casualties and larger manpower losses than the other services.”
While most new diagnoses of mental illness were in the Army, the fewest were in the Air Force.
“The only exceptions to this observation were in 2007, 2008, and the first two quarters of 2010 when the incidence rates of new diagnoses of alcohol dependence in the Marine Corps were the highest of all the Services,” the report said.
But overall, the Marines were found to have fewer overall mental problems than the Army, Air Force and Navy with 4.3 percent of Marines versus 6.4-percent of the overall pool of active duty military.
Researchers call for additional study, and admit that tracking mental problems can be a moving target, as treatment and attitudes change.
“There are real and perceived barriers to seeking and accessing care for mental health disorders among military members. These barriers include shortages of mental health professionals in some areas and the social and military stigmas associated with seeking or receiving mental health care,” the report says. “The nature and effects of these barriers to care have likely changed.”