RESEARCH WEEKLY: February Research Roundup
Research Roundup is a monthly public service of the Office of Research and Public Affairs. Each edition describes a striking new data point about severe mental illness and summarizes recently published research reports or developments.
DATAPOINT of the month
Suicide is the leading cause of death in jail, accounting for 31% of inmate deaths in 2016.
Suicide has been the leading cause of death in jail for many years, and 2016 is no exception, according to data released this month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice. More than 31% of all deaths of individuals incarcerated in state and local jails in 2016 were due to suicide. Approximately 40% of all deaths in jail during that year occurred during the first week of incarceration. More than one in five (21%) of all suicide deaths that occurred in a jail between 2000-2016 happened while the individual was in solitary confinement.
RESEARCH of the month
Veteran’s Health Administration successful in providing equitable care.
Too often does the research show how people with serious mental illness are disproportionately affected by a particular condition or have less access to quality care compared to people without. However, new research published this month in Psychiatric Services shows the success of the Veteran’s Health Administration to eliminate this disparity.
There are approximately 2.4 million adults living in the United States with chronic Hepatitis C virus (HCV), and veterans with serious mental illness are three to four times more likely to have HCV than those without mental illness. Importantly, people with serious mental illness have been shown to be less likely to have been screened, tested or treated for the virus.
Utilizing administrative health data, researchers analyzed data from more than 4,000 people with HCV, of which approximately 31% had received an evidence-based treatment for the virus. The researchers found no difference of treatment access for people with serious mental illness to those without. The authors conclude that “the VA should continue to provide equitable access to HCV treatments and support medication adherence.”
Gene and environment interactions in risk for developing schizophrenia.
As the Treatment Advocacy Center has called attention to previously, research studies on the interaction between genetics and environmental factors are needed to better understand risk factors to developing severe mental illness. Utilizing computing power and large population datasets on genome sequencing as well as environmental factors, such as exposure to different agents or where an individual lives, researchers can develop computer models that weigh all of the different risk factors and test what combination is able to best differentiate between people with or without a psychotic disorder.
In this study, researchers created an environmental risk score that included an individual’s ethnic group, urbanicity, paternal age, birth weight, cannabis exposure, and childhood adversity. They combined this data with a genetic risk score based on the individual’s genome sequence. Researchers then created algorithms that tested the interactions between people’s genetics and environmental factors and whether or not they had a diagnosis of first-episode psychosis. The algorithm allowed researchers to differentiate between people with a psychotic disorder compared to those without, based on these gene and environmental interactions. In addition, the algorithm shows that the higher the risk score, the more severe symptoms the individual experienced. The authors argue their results provide further evidence of the role of gene and environmental interactions in the development of psychosis.
Gut microbiota and psychiatric symptom severity.
Research has shown that the gut microbiome, the natural microbes found in all people’s digestive tract, is involved in psychiatric symptoms due to its influence on inflammation and neurotransmission. Researchers examined this relationship in a sample of more than one hundred individuals with serious mental illness who were hospitalized. The authors found that the diversity of organisms found in an individual’s gut is associated with psychiatric symptom severity. Specifically, the more richness and diversity found in an individual’s gut correlated with better treatment outcomes after release from the hospital, with greater depression remission rates.
