Mental Disability

March 27, 2019

Clinicians are facing up to the preventable harms that ICU’s inflict on many patients in the process of saving lives

Doctors and hospitals finally are owning up to and treating mental and physical damages inflicted on some of the sickest and most vulnerable individuals in their care—the 5 million or so patients who get helped in intensive care units, published research shows.

Although ICU patients may get dramatic emergency care that saves them from deadly infections, major disease, and significant accident or injury, experts only recently have begun to recognize and assist them with a condition associated with their stays: post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). A readable new study in the medical journal JAMA says that ICU patients may suffer a “constellation of symptoms” with PICS that hinders their recovery to their pre-hospitalization well-being, including: “muscle weakness, cognitive impairment, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

December 21, 2018

As assisted living facilities increase dementia care, resident safety risks rise

by Patrick A. Malone

They look like nursing homes, but they’re not. And for the health and safety of our elderly loved ones, we must know the difference.

These so-called assisted living facilities, operating with much less regulation and oversight than nursing homes, are raising concerns about the safety and quality of their dealings with a growing number of elderly Americans. That’s because they’re full not only of older residents but also difficult — and costly to care for — seniors with dementia.

Jordan Rau, of the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service, deserves credit for diving deep into rising complaints and documented harms to residents of facilities “originally designed for people who were largely independent but required help bathing, eating or other daily tasks.” These places, “unlike nursing homes … generally do not provide skilled medical care or therapy, and stays are not paid for by Medicare or Medicaid.”

September 6, 2018

As 2018 season kicks off, college football reckons with head trauma harms

by Patrick A. Malone

College football has kicked off its fall season with a flourish, but the signs are increasing that concerns about players’ health and safety may slash at the game’s size, spectacle, and importance.

Just as the pro leagues were forced to answer in court for the harms that athletes suffer due to repeated blows to their heads, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been hit with claims in the civil justice system, asserting wrongful deaths of players from the recent past.

Lawsuits, believed to be part of what will be a wave, were filed against the college sports conference on behalf of the survivors and estates of a onetime University of Southern California fullback and a University of California at Los Angeles running back.

August 24, 2018

Millions of teens suffer concussions as experts link head trauma to suicide risk

by Patrick A. Malone

Rigorous researchers avoid leaping to unfounded conclusions, but it’s hard not to look at two separate studies on areas of high current interest and just go “Hmmm ….”

In the first work, experts from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed available reports and surveys to find that 15.1 percent of American high school students or 2.5 million or so “reported having at least one of these concussions” in the most recent year, while 6 percent reported two or more concussions.

The researchers said:

July 31, 2018

Patients? We’re just profitable bit$ and byte$ to Big Pharma and insurers

by Patrick A. Malone

Big Data may be a business buzzword that puts most consumers into a big sleep, but big alarms are sounding for Americans about Big Brother intrusions into their lives via the collection and analysis of vast amounts of highly personal information. Of course, Big Pharma and medical insurers are at the fore of invasive practices — some of which patient-consumers themselves are helping, likely without knowing they’re doing so.

Millions of Americans may be little aware, for example, that they’re now working for GlaxoSmithKline, a global pharmaceutical conglomerate with $9 billion in revenues in just the most recent quarter. GSK just struck a $300-million deal with 23andMe, the company that has persuaded roughly 5 million consumers to spit in a test tube to get a glimpse of their genetic information, notably information about their ancestry and purportedly some of their genomic health risks.

Firms like 23andMe, with promotions at events like Baltimore Ravens pro football games, also have amassed highly personal genetic and medical data on millions of patient-consumers, promising to protect the information but also offering, casually and by the way, that this vital information could be shared — ostensibly for the betterment of public health.

July 6, 2018

NHL sells its players short by failing to acknowledge harms of head blows

by Patrick A. Malone

The 2018 Stanley Cup may rest for a bit as the pride and joy of enthusiasts in the nation’s capital and of its title-winning team. But as fans of the pro and amateur game look to the future, they may have reason to be downcast about hockey’s most important component: its players.

Author Ken Dryden (photo above, left) has important things to say about them, because he was a goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens and has been enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The onetime Canadian parliamentarian has pointed out that owners and bosses in the National Hockey League, as illustrated by videotapes of their sworn testimony in a long-running court case, are locking arms and taking a counter-factual position on the damages that players may suffer due to blows to the head they receive in games.

In “infuriating” fashion, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman (photo above, right), Boston Bruins owner and chairman of the league’s Board of Governors Jeremy Jacobs, other team owners, senior league executives and doctors are playing ostriches, Dryden wrote in a recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post. They’re sticking their head in the sand, insisting that hockey has no issue at all with “chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. That’s a degenerative brain disease that has been found in athletes including professional hockey and football players, as well as soldiers and others who have suffered repeated brain injuries. Symptoms of CTE include cognitive impairment, depression, emotional instability and suicidal thoughts.”

June 7, 2018

Stigma inflicts harsh toll on mentally ill, but society pays too

by Patrick A. Malone

Although Americans keep making progress toward ending the stigma associated with mental disorders, including trying to put public funding for the diseases’ treatment on a more even footing, patients with serious mental illness suffer unfairly and harshly still due to their conditions.

Dhruv Khullar, a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and a researcher at the Weill Cornell Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, has written a painful piece for the “Upshot,” an evidence-based column for the New York Times. His article, “The Largest Health Disparity We Don’t Talk About,” reports that:

Americans with depression, bipolar disorder or other serious mental illnesses die 15 to 30 years younge r than those without mental illness — a disparity larger than for race, ethnicity, geography or socioeconomic status. It’s a gap, unlike many others, that has been growing, but it receives considerably less academic study or public attention. The extraordinary life expectancy gains of the past half-century [for most in this country] have left these patients behind, with the result that Americans with serious mental illness live shorter lives than those in many of the world’s poorest countries.

June 1, 2018

Stars helping to shed a light on struggles with mental health

by Patrick A. Malone

With all the excesses, abuses, and nonsense that pro athletes and pop stars can get into these days, it’s gotten rarer that commentators can point to positive actions these influential personalities can take. But a growing number of them deserve credit for publicly discussing their struggles with mental health issues, helping to reduce widespread stigma about them and to better the lives of their young fans.

The list of outspoken and helpful athletes and performers includes: Olympic legend Michael Phelps, National Basketball Association All-Star DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors, and NBA Cleveland Cavaliers superstar Kevin Love, as well as five-time Grammy winner Mariah Carey and actresses Catherine Zeta-Jones and Demi Lovato, and the late Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher.

Phelps and DeRozan bravely have discussed their problems with depression, which affects an estimated 16 million Americans annually and may be one of the most common mental health disorders negatively affecting the nation.

May 31, 2018

A bit of optimism for the 65+: a dozen years on average of cognitive health

by Patrick A. Malone

As many as five million Americans already have Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related conditions, and their resulting loss of cognitive capacity and personal control rank among the top causes for health dread among those 55 and older, polls show. So it’s worth noting that new studies are showing that seniors 65 and older get on average a dozen years of good cognitive health ── and that span is expanding.

Further, the onset of problems typically may occur in relatively mild fashion, with the most serious cognitive decline occurring in a short but late period of 18 months or so, Judith Graham reported for the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service.

In her story for the KHNS feature “Navigating Aging,” Graham looks at an array of the latest and reliable research on seniors and cognitive decline, finding glimmers of optimism in what has been increasingly gloomy, evidence-based studies on how huge a challenge may be posed for our fast-graying nation by dementia, Alzheimer’s and their care.

March 25, 2018

Sick and injured battered by costs of hospitalization, long-term care, bad jobs

by Patrick A. Malone

Illness and accidents batter and beggar Americans worse than many of us realize. New studies show it’s not just the cost of medical services but also long-term care and loss of jobs staggering the lives and finances of too many.

Margot Sanger-Katz, writing in the data-driven New York Times column, “The Upshot,” reported that hospitalization can wreak havoc on Americans older than 50, with many suffering a significant loss in income from which they never recover. This is true, even if they have some financial protection through health insurance. That coverage may soften the blow of medical costs. It doesn’t help them if they can’t return to work, must spend long periods out of work, or must reduce their work hours so they are part-time or less, finds a new study, published in the American Economic Review.

As she wrote: