RESEARCH WEEKLY: February Research Roundup
By Elizabeth Hancq
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
500,000 deaths from COVID-19
The United States reached a sobering milestone this month, surpassing more than 500,000 deaths due to COVID-19.
There is no data to know how many of those who died from COVID-19 are someone with a severe mental illness. Given recent data to show that people with mental illness are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and that schizophrenia is the second largest risk factor for COVID-19 mortality, only after age, there is no question that people with severe mental illness are overrepresented in this grim datapoint.
RESEARCH of the month
Virtual visits for people with serious mental illness during the COVID-19 pandemic
Virtual mental health visits, including telemedicine, expanded rapidly during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic to try to ensure continued access to mental health care while in-person interactions were limited. Despite the intentions, the transition of mental health care delivery to a virtual format may have had disproportionate effects on individual’s access to care.
Utilizing national data from the Veteran’s Health Administration (VA), researchers from VA health systems in California compared the number of visits for serious mental illness from January to September 2020 to the same time period from the previous year. They found that there was a significantly lower number of visits for people with serious mental illness during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–May, 2020) and that the rate of growth for video visits was slower for people with serious mental illness compared to other mental health diagnoses. However, after several months into the pandemic, visits for serious mental illness were at similar levels to the year prior. The authors suggest that a focused and nuanced adoption approach for virtual visits is needed to ensure people with serious mental illness maintain access to care.
Cancer rates and mortality among people with schizophrenia
People with severe mental illness die up to 25 years sooner than members of the general population. According to a review published earlier this month in Current Opinion in Psychiatry, patients with schizophrenia are at increased risk of dying of cancer, including breast, lung and colon cancer. The results were mixed regarding evidence of people with schizophrenia of being more likely to have cancer in the first place, but results indicate a modest increased risk of pancreatic, esophageal and breast cancer. Compared to the general population, patients with schizophrenia were at an increased risk of not being diagnosed or treated for cancer before their death, indicating underdiagnosis and undertreatment of cancer in this vulnerable population.
Preventing psychiatric hospital readmission through promoting health literacy
Psychiatric hospital readmissions, defined as admittance to an inpatient hospital within a short amount of time after previously being discharged, is a negative health outcome that is an indicator of a variety of mental health system failures and a significant problem for patients with serious mental illness.
The findings of a new study published in the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, suggest that low health literacy, or less of an ability to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services, is associated with psychiatric hospital readmissions in individuals with bipolar disorder. One-third of individuals with bipolar disorder categorized as having low health literacy were readmitted to an inpatient psychiatric hospital within two weeks, while only 5% of individuals with more health literacy were readmitted over the same time period. Although the study was small (30 participants), the relationship between health literacy and psychiatric outcomes should be explored to improve patient education and discharge planning.
