Skip to main content

Mental Health

Understanding the relationship between mental illness and medical comorbidity is an important aspect of public health surveillance. In 2004, an estimated one fourth of the US adults reported having a mental illness in the previous year (1). Studies showed that mental illness exacerbates multiple chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and asthma (2). BioSense is a national electronic public health surveillance system developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that receives, analyzes and visualizes electronic health data from civilian hospital emergency departments (EDs), outpatient and inpatient facilities, Veteran Administration (VA) and Department of Defense (DoD) healthcare facilities. Although the system is designed for early detection and rapid assessment of all-hazards health events, BioSense can also be used to examine patterns of healthcare utilization.



Objective:

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the associated burden of mental illness and medical comorbidity using BioSense data 20082011.

Submitted by Magou on

Hospitalization rates for mental health disorders provide important information to help us prioritize community needs for mental health and urgent care plantation. In Saint Louis County, there were over 13,000 hospitalizations for mental disorders between 2010 and 2014. For all age groups, depressive disorders, including major depression and mood disorder not-otherwise-specified, were the most common primary diagnostic grouping for hospitalizations among mental disorders, followed by bipolar disorder. In 2012, The Saint Louis County Department of Planning defined 5 geographic areas (Inner North, Outer North, South, West and Central) within and crossing Saint Louis County’s borders. Among them, the Inner North has the greatest poverty, as opposed to the West which has the least. These geographic areas, along with neighborhood poverty level, were analyzed to better understand the demographics of Saint Louis County residents experiencing mental disorders.

Objective:

We used hospitalization rates for mental disorders to determine utilization patterns and the need for community-based mental health services.

Submitted by elamb on

Between 2006 and 2013, the rate of emergency department (ED) visits related to mental and substance use disorders increased substantially. This increase was higher for mental disorders visits (55 percent for depression, anxiety or stress reactions and 52 percent for psychoses or bipolar disorders) than for substance use disorders (37 percent) visits. This increasing number of ED visits by patients with mental disorders indicates a growing burden on the health-care delivery system. New methods of surveillance are needed to identify and understand these changing trends in ED utilization and affected underlying populations. Syndromic surveillance can be leveraged to monitor mental health-related ED visits in near real-time. ED syndromic surveillance systems primarily rely on patient chief complaints (CC) to monitor and detect health events. Some studies suggest that the use of ED discharge diagnoses data (Dx), in addition to or instead of CC, may improve sensitivity and specificity of case identification.

Objective: The objectives of this study are to

(1) create a mental health syndrome definition for syndromic surveillance to monitor mental health-related ED visits in near real time;

(2) examine whether CC data alone can accurately detect mental health related ED visits; and

(3) assess the added value of using Dx data to detect mental health-related ED visits.

Submitted by elamb on

EDCC data provides an opportunity for capturing the early mental health impact of disaster events at the community level, and to track their impact over time. However, while rapid mental health assessment can facilitate a better understanding of the acute post-disaster period and aid early identification of persons at long-term risk,1 determining how wide a net to effectively capture the critical range of mental health sub-categories has not yet been clearly defined. This project creates a comprehensive set of mental health sub-category keywords, and applies them to evaluate short- and long-term trends in postHurricane Sandy mental health outcomes in New York State.

Objective

To define mental health keywords using daily hospital emergency department chief complaint (EDCC) data during and after Hurricane Sandy 2) To track short- and long-term trends in mental health EDCCs. 3) To compare mental health EDCCs in affected counties to the rest of the New York State population.

Submitted by uysz on

The 2014 outbreak of EVD is the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since 1976 affecting several countries in West Africa. The mental health and psychosocial implications of the 2014 Ebola outbreak are serious and multifaceted, impacting survivors, families, communities, healthcare providers, and the public health response. In addition, psychosocial support is a key priority to the Ebola response. CDC’s Ebola Mental Health Team (EMHT) was activated in September 2014. This study has been conducted to support the CDC’s EMHT tasks.

Objective

To present the summary results of a literature review pertinent to mental health and psychosocial aspects of Ebola virus disease (EVD).

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on

Major depressive disorder has a lifetime prevalence of 16.6% in the United States. Social media platforms – e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit – are potential resources for better understanding and monitoring population-level mental health status over time. Based on DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, our research aims to develop a natural language processing-based system for monitoring major depressive disorder at the population-level using public social media data.

Objective

We aim to develop an annotation scheme and corpus of depression-related tweets to serve as a test-bed for the development of natural language processing algorithms capable of automatically identifying depression-related symptoms from Twitter feeds.

Submitted by teresa.hamby@d… on
Subscribe to Mental Health