Mental Health

Individuals with serious mental illness have greater risk for contracting HIV, multiple morbidities, and die 25 years younger than the general population. This high need and high cost subgroup face unique barriers to accessing required health care in the current health care system. The effectiveness of an advanced practice nurse model of care management was assessed in a four-year random controlled trial. Results are reported in this paper.

A shortage of RNs is a problem that has reached crisis levels in the United States and many other countries. The inadequate supply of RNs translates into limited access for individuals who need health care. The U.S. psychiatric-mental health RN (PMH RN) workforce is virtually unstudied. The purposes of this article are to present a nationally representative demographic, education, and employment profile of PMH RNs, analyze issues associated with the supply of PMH RNs, and discuss options for building the PMH RN workforce.
 

In the last decade the US federal government proposed a transformation vision of mental health service delivery; patient-centered, evidence-based and recovery oriented treatment models. Health care reform brings additional expectations for innovation in mental/substance use service delivery, particularly the idea of creating systems where physical health, mental health and substance use treatment is fully integrated.

Exposure to adverse life events typically predicts subsequent negative effects on mental health and well-being, such that more adversity predicts worse outcomes. However, adverse experiences may also foster subsequent resilience, with resulting advantages for mental health and well-being. In a multiyear longitudinal study of a national sample, people with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity.

OBJECTIVE: People living in rural areas have the same incidence of mental illness but far less access to mental health services compared with people living in urban areas. This brief report describes the workforce of advanced-practice psychiatric nurses (APPNs) and explores their potential to ease the rural mentalhealth workforce shortage. 

Although acute inpatient psychiatric care has changed dramatically over the past 2 decades, little is known about how these changes have affected the quality of care, psychiatric nurse staffing, or patient outcomes. The purpose of this report is to explore the quality of care, quality of the practice environment, and adverse events as assessed by psychiatric nurses in the general hospital setting.

OBJECTIVE: Although general hospitals receive nearly 60% of

  This year's announcement of psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry as Australian of the Year has brought mental health into the spotlight.  In a public sense, the award represents a significant acknowledgement of mental health as a growing national concern. After all, 30 per cent of the Australian population experience a mental health problem at any given time.

 Patterns of mental health are clearly associated with life circumstances, including educational and economic opportunities, access to safe and supportive neighborhoods, socially structured exposures to stressors and to supportive relationships. In this article, we examine the social and economic correlates of depressive symptoms among African American women residing within a predominantly African American urban neighborhood in Detroit, USA, with relatively few economic resources.