(January 30, 2019) 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.
DATAPOINT of the Month
- 30% of police officers who died in the line-of-duty are killed by someone with severe mental illness.
According to an analysis by a news outlet in Michigan, MLive, “How a broken mental health system has contributed to the loss of blue lives,” 13 of the 43 police officers who were killed in the state during the last twenty years were killed by an individual suffering from a severe mental illness.
RESEARCH of the Month
- Low availability of assertive community treatment programs in the United States.
Assertive community treatment (ACT) is an effective and evidence-based intensive service program for individuals with serious mental illness. ACT provides specialized wrap-around services with intensive case management and has been proven to reduce hospitalizations, arrests and other adverse outcomes associated with lack of treatment for one’s severe mental illness. However, there is significant variability in the availability of ACT or ACT-like programs in the United States. New research published this month in Psychiatric Services suggests that only 13% of mental health facilities provide ACT or ACT-like services. Of the facilities that did offer some form of ACT program, only 19% of those provided all of the core elements of ACT that have been shown to produce the greatest results. The authors suggest this large unmet need of ACT services calls for more funding from legislative appropriators throughout the country.
Spivak, S. et al. (2019). Distribution and correlates of assertive community treatment (ACT) and ACT-like programs: Results from the 2015 N-MHSS. Psychiatric Services. - Primary care connections post-discharge reduces hospital readmissions.
Last week we wrote about new research indicating individuals with serious mental illness have up to two-times higher readmission rates post-discharge from a non-psychiatric hospitalization compared to those without. New research from the Camden Coalition of Health Care Providers and published in JAMA Psychiatry provides a solution to such trends. The researchers analyzed the Camden Coalition’s hospital discharge program, 7-day pledge, in reducing hospital readmissions among individuals enrolled. The citywide program connects individuals discharged from a hospitalization for medical reasons to a primary care appointment within seven days. The authors found that hospital readmissions were significantly lower in the group that received a primary care appointment compared to those that did not. The results suggest that providing a continuity of care after discharge from a medical hospitalization is necessary to reduce readmissions among these high-risk populations.
Wiest, D., et al. (2019). Outcomes of a citywide campaign to reduce Medicaid hospital readmissions with connection to primary care within 7-days of discharge. JAMA Psychiatry.
- Targeted cognitive training for people with schizophrenia.
New research suggests targeted cognitive training is effective for patients with severe schizophrenia, contradicting previous assumptions about the effectiveness of such approach. Targeted cognitive training utilizes specialized computer games that target specific neural pathways to alter how an individual processes information. Although previously shown to be effective among individuals with mild to moderate schizophrenia under research-controlled conditions, its effectiveness among those with severe forms of the disease and in non-research settings was unknown.
Gregory Light and colleagues from University of California San Diego School of Medicine studied the effect of targeted cognitive training among chronic, treatment-refractory patients with schizophrenia who were deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to care for themselves and under the guardianship of an individual or government agency. The researchers found that after three months of targeted cognitive training in addition to the patient’s other treatments, patients had significantly improved verbal learning and reduced severity of auditory hallucinations. The results indicate that this treatment may be effective in reducing symptoms and improving quality of life among individuals with even severe forms of this debilitating disease.
Thomas, M., et al. (2018). Targeted cognitive training improves auditory and verbal outcomes among treatment refractory schizophrenia patients mandated to residential care. Schizophrenia Research.
Elizabeth Sinclair
Director of Research
Treatment Advocacy Center
Follow ORPA on Twitter at @TACResearch.
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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