From 2000 to 2014 nearly half a million Americans died from drug overdoses. Opioid overdose deaths, including both opioid pain relievers and heroin, hit record levels in 2014, with an alarming 14 percent increase in just one year, according to new data published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Drug overdose deaths are up in both men and women, in non-Hispanic whites and blacks, and in adults of nearly all ages. Rates of drug overdose deaths were highest among five states: West Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Ohio. A map of drug overdose deaths by state (2013 and 2014) is available athttp://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html.

In addition, heroin-related death rates increased 26 percent from 2013-2014, totaling 10,574 deaths in 2014. Past misuse of prescription opioids is the strongest risk factor for heroin initiation and use - especially among people who became dependent upon or abused prescription opioids in the past year. The increased availability of heroin, its relatively low price (compared to prescription opioids), and high purity appear to be major drivers of the upward trend in heroin use, overdoses, and deaths.

The new findings point to four ways to prevent overdose deaths:

• Limit initiation into opioid misuse and addiction. Opioid pain reliever prescribing has quadrupled since 1999. Providing health care professionals with additional tools and information - including safer guidelines for prescribing these drugs - can help them make more informed prescribing decisions.
• Expand access to evidence-based substance use disorder treatment - including Medication-Assisted Treatment - for people who suffer from opioid use disorder.
• Protect people with opioid use disorder by expanding access and use of naloxone - a critical drug that can reverse the symptoms of an opioid overdose and save lives.
• State and local public health agencies, medical examiners and coroners, and law enforcement agencies must work together to improve detection of and response to illicit opioid overdose outbreaks to address this emerging threat to public health and safety.

According to the resulting 33-page report, inmates with mental-health disabilities weren’t exempted, either, and the “harsh conditions” may have “resulted in two recent deaths,” DRC says in a release.

Specifically, the double-celling of inmates with mental-health disabilities may have contributed to a December 2014 homicide in which a bipolar inmate warned staff he was going to “beat up” his cellmate, a mentally ill sex offender who harassed him and soiled himself. The DRC report states: “Custody staff took no action, and the second prisoner was found dead the next day.

In a report published Friday in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, researchers from Brown University say those affected by PTSD from sexual assault, child abuse, natural disasters and other non-military incidents have limited access to helpful resources.

"There really isn't an organized body of research that generates guidance for how [civilians affected by PTSD] and their caregivers should deal with their PTSD," lead author Judith Bentkover said in a statement.

"The best PTSD treatment model we have can be found within the VA," Bentkover continues. "Kids have PTSD. Women have PTSD. It's not just a disease of veterans, although they are a very important and poignant cohort of people who have it. Sexual assault victims, abused children, survivors of natural disasters do not necessarily have a VA to go to. What do they do?"

MRI shows brain damage in a surprisingly high percentage of active duty military personnel who suffered blast-related mildtraumatic brain injury (MTBI), according to a new study appearing online in the journal Radiology.

In what represents the largest study using advanced brain imaging of active military ever performed, Dr. Riedy and colleagues used MRI to study 834 military service members with MTBI related to blast injuries. Slightly more than 84 percent of the patients reported one or more blast-related incidents, and 63 percent reported loss of consciousness at the time of injury.

The MRI scans revealed the presence of white matter T2 hyperintensities, which can be thought of as brain scars, in 52 percent of the MTBI patients.

"We were really surprised to see so much damage to the brain in the MTBI patients," Dr. Riedy said. "It's expected that people with MTBI should have normal MRI results, yet more than 50 percent had these abnormalities."

Pituitary abnormalities were identified in almost a third of MTBI patients. The pituitary, the so-called "master gland" that governs other endocrine gland functions, is located in the base of the brain. Previous research has shown a decline in pituitary function in soldiers who experienced MTBI, perhaps because of blast-related trauma.

"This paper is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "We have several more papers coming up that build on these findings and look at brain function, brain wiring, connectivity and perfusion, or brain blood flow."

According to the patients, substance abuse and social destitution were important background factors to the crimes. This is consistent with epidemiological studies of the relationship between violence and mental illnesses. The relationship which can initially be seen in these studies disappears if you take into account factors such as alcohol and social circumstances.

"Extremely few of the people who are mentally ill commit crimes. The connection between alcohol and violence is on the other hand clear, which means that anyone who wants to be safe should first and foremost beware of alcohol and not those who are mentally ill", says Pontus Höglund.

Having difficulty controlling one's actions and finding alternative measures was present in many of the patients' stories, regardless of their psychiatric diagnosis. Yet it is mainly the diagnoses that determine whether a person who committed a crime is considered to have done so because of a "severe mental disorder" and is to receive forensic psychiatric care rather than prison.

An estimated 32 percent of state and federal prisoners and 40 percent of local jail inmates reported having at least one disability in the 2011–12 National Inmate Survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Estimates of disabilities include six specific classifications: hearing, vision, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care and independent living.

A cognitive disability—defined as serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions—was the most common disability reported by prison and jail inmates. An estimated 19 percent of prisoners and 31 percent of jail inmates reported having a cognitive disability. An ambulatory disability was the second most common reported disability, with 10 percent of each population reporting difficulty walking or climbing stairs.

Prisoners were about three times more likely and jail inmates were about four times more likely than the general population (standardized to match the prison and jail populations by sex, age, race, and Hispanic origin) to report a disability. Compared to the general population, prisoners were about four times more likely and jail inmates were about 6.5 times more likely to report a cognitive disability.

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The study comes just as the FBI and Department of Justice have announced plans to expand and relaunch each of their individual efforts to collect data on fatal interactions between civilians and police. According to Tac, one of the primary roadblocks to addressing the issue is a lack of reliable government data.

“To some degree, the failure to track the role of mental illness in fatal police encounters is symptomatic of the failure to systematically track fatal police encounters, period,” the report reads.

The Guardian, the Washington Post and a former FBI investigator’s “True Crime”blog have all independently found that about 25% of fatal police incidents involve a mentally ill victim, the report notes. Currently there is no comprehensive government source for this information. The new DoJ program is expected to track mental health information. 

The startling statistic noting 16 times greater risk of a fatal encounter with law enforcement for people with mental illness was calculated using the 25% number reported by the Guardian and other publications, which Snook said made the estimate “very conservative”. 

The startling statistic noting 16 times greater risk of a fatal encounter with law enforcement for people with mental illness was calculated using the 25% number reported by the Guardian and other publications, which Snook said made the estimate “very conservative”. The Guardian’s Counted investigation monitors whether mental health issues are identified by family members, friends or police.