There should be no doubt that mental illness represents one of the greatest burdens on the American health care system. A recent report published by HCUP (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project) tells us that 12.5% of ER visits in 2007 (12 million out of 95 million) were related to mental illness or substance abuse. While in many cases these were secondary diagnoses, over 4.1 million visits had mental illness or substance abuse as a first-listed or principal diagnosis. 40% of the 12 million resulted in hospital admission, making ER visits for mental illness and substance abuse 2.5 times more likely to lead to hospitalization than visits for all other conditions.
Two years ago, HCUP published a report about hospital stays related to mental health for the year 2006. 3.4% of all hospital stays (1.35 million out of 39.45 million) had a principal diagnosis of mental illness, with mood disorders and schizophrenia accounting for the overwhelming majority. Also significant is the fact that admissions with a principal diagnosis of a mental health condition had an average length of stay of 8.2 days, considerably longer than the average of 4.6 days for all stays.
Of course these are just a few of the many figures floating in the sea of statistics on the topic, but they seemed worth noting.
81 Words, a 2002 episode of NPR’s This American Life that was recently rebroadcast, tells the story behind the removal of the homosexuality diagnosis from the DSM-II in 1973. You can download the audio or read a transcript of the show here: part 1, part 2.
The report is given by Alix Spiegel, whose grandfather, Dr. [...]
There should be no doubt that mental illness represents one of the greatest burdens on the American health care system. A recent report published by HCUP (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project) tells us that 12.5% of ER visits in 2007 (12 million out of 95 million) were related to mental illness or substance abuse. While [...]
In an op-ed piece published last week in the New York Times, Steven Pinker weighs in on the question of whether technology is dumbing down society. Pinker likens this concern to instances of “moral panic” over new forms of media throughout history, and believes that “far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only [...]
The day after Dr. Rand Paul, son of congressman Ron Paul and darling of the Tea Party movement, won the republican nomination for senate in Kentucky, he got himself into some trouble on the Rachel Maddow show discussing the piece of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which banned discrimination by private businesses.
part 2 of the [...]
Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us (see my commentary), was on PRI the other day (listen to the audio here). I was pleased to get a prompt response to my comments, which I’ve copied below. Go here to follow the entire discussion in the PRI science forum.
Everybody has an opinion about Arizona’s new immigration law. Some have praised it as a reasonable attempt to fix a broken system that the federal government has neglected to deal with. President Obama and California’s legal immigrant Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have cracked jokes. The U.N has raised a critical voice. On Sunday, U.S Attorney General [...]
Exploring modern culture and its effects on the mind