(Dec. 21, 2016) The Office of Research and Public Affairs (ORPA) in 2016 expanded its program of public education about treatment and public policy issues in severe mental illness (SMI) with its release of three original new studies and co-publication of a fourth:
- Released, relapsed, rehospitalized: Length of stay and readmission rates in state hospitals, a comparative state survey - Analyzed state hospital statistics to report that psychiatric patients with the shortest lengths of stay (LOS) in state hospitals were nearly three times more likely to be readmitted within 30 days or 180 days of discharge than patients in states with the longest LOS
- Raising Cain: The role of serious mental illness in family homicides - Analyzed 2013 federal death and homicide statistics to report that serious mental illness played a significant role in 29% of family homicides and 7% of all homicides in the United States
- Going, going gone: Trends and consequences of eliminating state psychiatric beds - Surveyed all the states to report that total state hospital beds in the United States had fallen by early 2016 to 3.5% of their historical peak numbers with nearly half the remaining beds designated for criminal offenders with mental health conditions
- Individuals with serious mental illnesses in county jails: A survey of jail staffs' perspectives, with Public Citizen's Health Research Group - Surveyed county jails nationwide to find 95.7% reporting their jails incarcerated some inmates with serious mental illness in 2010-2011 and 75% reporting "more or far more" mentally ill inmates compared with previous years.
Also New from ORPA in 2016
The Treatment Advocacy Center established ORPA in 2015 to address overlooked or underreported public policy issues involving SMI. In addition to its original surveys and studies, ORPA in 2016 released a fact sheet on the disproportionate impacts of SMI on women, two new background papers and 51 Research Weekly blogs summarizing news in mental illness. Find them here:
- 10 ways women with SMI are overrepresented and underserved: Women with serious mental illness, typically untreated, suffer more than the rest of the population and men with the same disorders.
- Serious mental illness prevalence in jails and prisons: Based on the prevalence of SMI behind bars and total inmate population, an estimated 383,000 individuals with severe psychiatric disease were behind bars in the United States in 2014 or nearly 10 times the number of patients remaining in the nation's state hospitals.
- Psychiatric bed supply need per capita: The Treatment Advocacy Center in 2008 published the most commonly cited bed target in the United States - 40 to 60 beds per 100,000 people - but no official effort has been made to validate or revise this number. New computer modeling holds promise for developing evidence-based targets in the future.
- Research Weekly - Weekly summaries of scientific and public policy research into the most serious psychiatric diseases written for general readers.
Coming in January 2017: Emptying the 'New Asylums': Computer Modeling to Reduce Mental Illness Behind Bars, another original study from the Office of Research and Public Affairs at the Treatment Advocacy Center.
You can now follow ORPA on Twitter at @TACResearch.
Doris A. Fuller
Chief of Research and Public Affairs
Next Week: Research Weekly resumes January 3, 2017, with How SMI Research Fails End Users
Research Weekly is a summary published as a public service of the Treatment Advocacy Center and does not necessarily reflect the findings or positions of the organization or its staff. Full access to research summarized may require a fee or paid subscription to the publications.
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