(July 31, 2018) Research Roundup is a monthly public service of the Office of Research and Public Affairs. Each edition describes a striking new data point about serious mental illness and summarizes recently published research reports or developments. This month's Weekly honors Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.
DATAPOINT of the Month
- Minority individuals with serious mental illness are up to 50% less likely to receive treatment
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, individuals with serious mental illness who are a minority race or ethnicity are significantly less likely to receive mental health care than those who identify as White or Caucasian.
RESEARCH of the Month
- Assisted outpatient treatment viewed as beneficial among clinicians.
Clinicians view outpatient civil commitment as beneficial to their patients, especially due to improvements in medication compliance, according to a newly published systematic review of academic and other more general literature.
Fourteen articles, representing six international countries and more than 700 clinicians were reviewed to determine overall themes surrounding clinicians' feelings about outpatient civil commitment. The authors found that despite tensions between physicians around the coercive nature of outpatient commitment, overall clinicians feel positive about the programs and find them to be beneficial. Medication compliance was identified as a key component of the programs and their success.
Corring, D. et al. (2018). What clinicians say about the experience of working with individuals on community treatment orders. Psychiatric Services. - Neuroanatomical maturity and future psychosis, the use of machine learning.
The differences in early versus later age of onset of psychosis may be explained and identified by the age of the brain determined by structural markers, according to new research published this month in JAMA Psychiatry.
For example, machine learning, a type of computer algorithm and statistical analysis that can be used to create predictive models, was used to look at the chronological age of individuals with schizophrenia and then contrast it with their brain age as determined by structural brain markers. The authors found that individuals who developed psychosis at early ages had much older brains than those who developed psychosis in adulthood. In addition, a larger difference between chronological age and brain age is associated with a higher risk for developing psychosis, according to the results.
Chung, Y., et al. (2018). Use of machine learning to determine deviance in neuroanatomical maturity associated with future psychosis in youths. JAMA Psychiatry. - Poor insight is identified as top reason for treatment nonadherence among individuals with serious mental illness
Poor insight, or anosognosia, was found to be the top reason for nonadherence to antipsychotic medications, according to research published last year. Authors from the Department of Psychiatry University of Texas conducted a systematic review that included 36 peer-reviewed articles. They found that poor insight was the reason why, in more than half of the identified studies, the subjects did not adhere to their medical treatment regimens. Co-occurring substance abuse was the next most prevalent reason.
Velligan, D., et al. (2017). Why do psychiatric patients stop antipsychotic medication? A systematic review of reasons for nonadherence to medication in patients with serious mental illness. Patient Preference and Adherence.
Elizabeth Sinclair
Director of Research
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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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