More Seniors With Mental Illness Than Dementia In US Nursing Homes
I don’t know whether to be discouraged by the following news (passed along by an eagle-eyed reader) or to consider it a trend that’s to the good yet filled with all kinds of tricky implications, but a study out this week in Psychiatric Services asserts that there are more people in nursing homes due to mental illness–depression in particular–than there are for dementia. What’s more, the number of people in nursing homes with mental illnesses grew quite a bit.
“The number of individuals admitted with mental illness increased from 168,721 in 1999 to 187,478 in 2005. The 2005 number is more than 50% higher than the number admitted with dementia only (118,290 in 2005). The increase was driven by growth in admissions of persons with depression—from 128,566 to 154,262 in 2005. Persons admitted with depression had higher rates of comorbid conditions than those admitted with dementia or with neither dementia nor mental illness. They also had high rates of antidepressant treatment and high rates of receipt of training in skills required to return to the community.”
An accompanying analysis gives some detail on the age groups involved.
“The NNHS produced the most valid national-level estimates of residents with a mental illness—nearly 102,000 with a primary diagnosis in 2004 (6.8% of residents), of which about 23,000 were under age 65 and 79,000 were aged 65 and older.”
For the last few years I’ve heard from nurses who work at nursing homes in the Pacific Northwest that there are loads of elderly people with depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in nursing homes, pretty much as a replacement for the old state hospital model. What it’s like elsewhere in the US isn’t clear. I’m not saying that this new study establishes that we are warehousing seniors with mental illness in this country, but it sure does make me wonder what’s going on here and what the implications are. (Maybe some Seroquel and Zyprexa.)
Thoughts?
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