Recently in Mental Health Category

Source: Daniel Sgroi, VoxEU.org, 26 July 2010

Happiness economics typically looks at how macro-level variables such as economic growth affect happiness. This column turns such thinking on its head and asks whether a rise in happiness might change behaviour at the micro-level, looking specifically at productivity. Experiments suggest that happiness raises productivity by increase workers' effort. Economists may need to take the emotional state of economic agents seriously.

Source: Amy Norton, Reuters Health, May 31, 2010

Nurses who work in hospital wards that are usually filled to capacity may have a higher risk of depression than their counterparts in less-crowded hospitals, Finnish researchers suggest.

Their new study found that hospital staffers who worked in the most crowded wards were twice as likely to take sick leave for depression as staff who worked in wards with "optimal" numbers of patients. The large majority of workers in the study -- 93 percent -- were nurses.

The findings, published online May 4 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, don't prove that hospital overcrowding contributed to the nurses' depression. But they raise the possibility that chronic stress due to a heavy workload might impair some hospital workers' mental health, lead researcher Dr. Marianna Virtanen, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

Source: Sally J. MacKain, Bryan Myers, Lara Ostapiej, R. Arne Newman, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2010
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From the abstract:
There is growing demand for psychologists to work in correctional settings, and high vacancy rates indicate that efforts are needed to attract and retain employees. Job satisfaction has been associated with a variety of work-related outcomes such as productivity and turnover. In this study, 73 master's- and doctoral-level psychologists working in one state prison system responded to a job satisfaction survey based on one developed by Boothby and Clements (2002). Respondents rated their overall job satisfaction along with satisfaction of 18 individual job facets. Three general facets, (a) economics, (b) perceived organizational support, and (c) interpersonal relationships, all significantly predicted overall job satisfaction scores. Ratings of facet importance did not moderate the relationship between facet satisfaction and overall satisfaction with employment as a prison psychologist. Suggestions for the future use of the scale in other correctional systems are outlined, including supplementing ratings with open-ended questions to better target setting-specific sources of discontent.

Source: Greg A Greenberg, Robert A. Rosenheck, Psychiatric Services, Vol. 59 No. 2, February 2008

The relationship between homelessness and mental illness in jail inmates is examined. Inmates who had been homeless before incarceration made up 15.3% of the jail population, 7.5 to 11.3 times the rate of homelessness for the general public. Mental illness increased an inmate's probability of being homeless prior to incarceration.

Source: Steven K. Hoge, Robert B. Greifinger, Thomas Lundquist, Jeff Mellow, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Vol. 53, No. 6, published online December 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
Correctional facilities have become, by default, one of the largest providers of mental health care for patients with serious mental illness. In its 2002 Report to Congress, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care has reported that most facilities do not provide quality mental health care, nor do they conform to nationally accepted guidelines for mental health screening and treatment. This article describes the product of a consensus panel of correctional health care experts, charged to develop performance measures, based on nationally accepted standards, for selected elements of psychiatric treatment behind bars, aimed to improve the quality of care. Performance measures were developed for medication adherence, suicide prevention, mental health treatment planning, and sleep medication usage.

Source: Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience, August 28, 2009

Simply worrying about losing your job can cost you your health, a new investigation of data from two long-term studies finds.

Surprisingly, the effect is worse than actually losing your job, the research suggests.
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Perceived Job Insecurity and Worker Health in the United States
Source: Sarah A. Burgard, Jennie E. Brand and James S. House, PSC Research Report No. 08-650, July 2008.

Source: Gila M. Acker, Journal of Social Work, Vol. 9, No. 3, July 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
• Summary: This article presents findings of a quantitative study that illuminates the `sense of competence' of American social workers practicing in a new financial reimbursement and treatment health care system called `managed care'. Questionnaires completed by 140 social workers provided data about the relationships between self-perceived competence and outcome variables including burnout and role stress.

• Findings: A central finding was that social workers who felt competent in their abilities to practice in a managed care environment also reported lower levels of role stress and burnout. Other findings included that those working with clients with severe and persistent mental illness reported lower levels of sense of competence and higher levels of role stress and burnout symptoms.

Source: Justice Policy Institute, May 2009

As the United States grapples with harsh economic realities, states and localities continue to cut budgets, shed jobs, and trim institutions that are not cost-effective. Among the least cost-effective are prison and jail systems. Federal, state and local governments are spending a combined $68 billion dollars a year on a system that does not definitively improve public safety, but, instead, destabilizes communities, harms families, and derails the lives of individuals. Research has shown that over the last 10 years, states that have increased their prison populations have not seen concurrent decreases in violent crime. At the same time, the states that have reduced their incarceration rates have seen some of the largest drops in violent crime.

While system changes can be daunting, policymakers can save money and improve public safety by making incremental changes today which use existing, evidence based strategies to reduce correctional populations and spending. The primary findings in this brief include:
- The United States' prison system continues to grow every year.
- The United States spends billions of dollars on incarceration each year.
- Increasing the availability of parole could save government agencies millions of dollars.
- Improving parole services and supports could save states millions of dollars.
- Substance abuse treatment provided in the community is more cost-effective than
imprisonment.
- Community-based programs are cost effective and improve public safety.
- Incarcerating people with mental illnesses is expensive and ineffective.
- Reinvesting money now spent on incarceration in other social institutions will improve public safety in the long term.
- Some states have already started to reduce their prison populations to save money.

Source: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, May 2009

From the press release:
Substance abuse and addiction cost federal, state and local governments at least $467.7 billion in 2005, according to Shoveling Up II: The Impact of Substance Abuse on Federal, State and Local Budgets, a new 287-page report released today by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

The CASA report found that of $373.9 billion in federal and state spending, 95.6 percent ($357.4 billion) went to shovel up the consequences and human wreckage of substance abuse and addiction; only 1.9 percent went to prevention and treatment, 0.4 percent to research, 1.4 percent to taxation and regulation, and 0.7 percent to interdiction.

The report, based on three years of research and analysis, is the first ever to assess the costs of tobacco, alcohol and illegal and prescription drug abuse to all levels of government. Using the most conservative assumptions, the study concluded that the federal government spent $238.2 billion; states, $135.8 billion; and local governments, $93.8 billion, in 2005 (the most recent year for which data were available over the course of the study).

Source: Arthur Hughes, Neeraja Sathe and Kathy Spagnola, Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, 2009

From the press release:
A new report providing state-by-state analyses of substance abuse and mental illness patterns reveals that there are wide variations in the levels of problems like illicit drug use found among the states, but that every state suffers from these problems. For example, among those aged 12 and older, Iowa had less than half the current illicit drug use rate of Rhode Island (5.2 percent vs. 12.5 percent) - yet Iowa's population aged 12 and older also had one of the nation's highest levels of people experiencing alcohol dependence or abuse in the past year (9.2 percent).

Among the report's other notable findings:
-Vermont had the nation's highest incidence rate of marijuana use among people aged 12 and older (2.5 percent) while Utah had the lowest (1.6) percent.
-The District of Columbia had the nation's highest rate of past year cocaine use among those aged 12 and older (5.1 percent) while Mississippi had the lowest (1.6 percent).
-Utah had the nation's lowest rate of current underage drinking (17.3 percent) while North Dakota had the highest (40 percent).
-Tennessee had the nation's highest rate of people aged 18 and older experiencing a major depressive episode in the past year (9.8 percent) while Hawaii had the lowest (5.0 percent).
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