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  1. »  Study: People With Mental Illness Are Five Times More Likely to Be Murdered

    In the wake of highly-publicized acts of violence perpetrated by mentally ill individuals, many have found it necessary to emphasize that such events are incredibly rare. On the population level, mental illness is in fact exceedingly common, yet people with mental illness are responsible for only 5 to 10 percent of violent crimes.

    They are also nearly five more likely to be the victim of murder, according to a new study in BMJ.

    American and Swedish researchers were among the first to examine the murder rate among the mentally ill, evaluating a cohort of over 7 million Swedish adults over a period of seven years.

    They found that the risk of being murdered was highest, at nine-fold, for people with substance use disorders, a number that may of course be subject to confounding lifestyle variables. But it was also increased for people with other mental illnesses in a way that couldn’t be explained by substance use.

    Those with diagnosed personality disorders, for example, had a 3.2 times increased risk of being a victim of murder. For depression, the risk was increased by a factor of 2.6, for anxiety disorders, 2.2, and for schizophrenia, 1.8.

    These numbers represent overall risk. Unmarried males with low socioeconomic status were particularly likely to be victimized; they were also at a heightened risk for suicide or accidental death, as previous studies have already established.

    Substance abuse treatment, obviously, could help reduce the chance of mentally ill individuals becoming victim to violence. So too, say the authors, could improved housing and financial stability — those with mental disorders are more likely to live in high deprivation neighborhoods, a factor which they believe contributed to their findings. And among the general public, “feelings of uneasiness, fear, and a desire for social distance [from people with mental illness] are common and may increase the risk of victimization,” they write.

    The authors also point out that the U.S. has a much higher homicide rate than Sweden’s, and that Americans with severe mental illness are four times more likely than others to be non-fatally victimized. While no research currently exists on the murder rate for this population, it is unlikely to be much different than what was found in this study, and is perhaps even higher.

  2. »  Bisexual Women Almost Twice As Likely To Be Abused As Straight Women

    The first nationwide study to break down domestic violence rates by self-identified sexual orientation has found that lesbian and bisexual women are at higher risk than straight women, with bisexual women facing especially high rates.

    The study [PDF], conducted by the CDC in 2010 and released Friday, found that 35% of straight women had experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by a partner at some point in their lives. But 43.8% of lesbian women had experienced one of the three, as had a full 61.1% of bisexual women. Researchers interviewed a total of 9,709 women — 96.5% of them identified as straight, 2.2% as bisexual, and 
    1.3% as lesbian.

    Bisexual women were also the most likely to have been raped by anyone, partner or not — 46.1% of them had experienced rape at some point, compared with 13.1% of lesbian women and 14.7% of straight women. And they were more likely to report that domestic violence had negatively impacted their lives — 57.4% of bisexual women who’d experienced violence said they also suffered aftereffects like missing work or having symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Only 33.5% of lesbian women and 28.2% of straight women said the same.

    Most domestic violence against bisexual women appeared to be committed by male partners — 89.5% of bisexual participants who’d experienced such violence said the only perpetrators had been male.

    Mikel Walters, a behavioral scientist for the CDC, says the study didn’t examine the reasons why lesbian and bisexual women might experience especially high rates of violence. “Hopefully this research will spur more research” into causes, she said.

    A 2011 study found that bisexual women were at greater risk of depression and anxiety than women who were straight or gay, a result the study author attributed to stigma against bisexuality. “There tends to be this expectation or standard that a person picks one sexual identity and sticks with it. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about bisexuals,” the author told Huffington Post UK.

    Whether stigma makes it harder for bisexual women to get or seek help if they’re in abusive relationships is beyond the scope of the CDC study. The researchers did ask women whether they needed housing or victim’s advocate services or called a crisis hotline after experiencing violence, but the numbers of lesbian and bisexual women who said they had needed these forms of help were too small to be statistically significant.

    “We hope that these findings will be used by policymakers and practitioners to expand services to everyone who experiences intimate partner violence,” says Walters. “Intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking are widespread, and they affect every type of person, regardless of their relationship or sexual orientation.”

  3. »  Most Common Reasons For Seeing A Doctor Revealed In New Study

    If you’ve ever sat in the doctor’s office and wondered what, exactly, everyone else was there for, a new Mayo Clinic study might quench your curiosity.

    Surprisingly, researchers found that the most common condition people visit their health care providers for isn’t heart disease or diabetes — it’s skin disorders, like acne or dermatitis, which accounted for 42.7 percent of the doctor visits. The study is published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

    The study included data from 14,000 people in Olmsted County, Minn., who were part of the Rochester Epidemiology Project and who visited a doctor or other health care provider sometime between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2009.

    They found that the top 10 most common reasons for seeing the doctor were:

    1. Skin disorders, including cysts, acne and dermatitis.
    2. Joint disorders, including osteoarthritis.
    3. Back problems.
    4. Cholesterol problems.
    5. Upper respiratory conditions.
    6. Anxiety, bipolar disorder and depression.
    7. Chronic neurologic disorders.
    8. High blood pressure.
    9. Headaches and migraines.
    10. Diabetes.

  4. "Not only did the male pretend jurors prove “significantly more likely” to find the obese female defendants—rather than the slim ones—guilty, but the trim male participants were worst of all, frequently labeling the fat women “repeat offenders” with “awareness” of their crimes. And because the effect disappeared when the photographs depicted a man, the hypothesis that subjects were simply layering class-based assumptions—such as “poor people are more often overweight” and “poor people commit more crime”—on top of one another falls a bit short."
    Male Jurors More Likely To Find Fat Women Guilty, According to Depressing Study

  5. »  Teen Dating Violence: U.S. High Schools Unequipped To Handle The Issue, Study Shows

    A study out of Ball State University has found that most schools do not consider adolescent dating violence a high-priority issue, with 81.3 percent of high school counselors surveyed reporting that their schools do not have a protocol or procedure in place for responding to incidents of such violence.

    Adolescent dating violence (ADV) is defined as physical, sexual, or psychological/emotional violence within a dating relationship, and has garnered increased attention among administrators, health professionals and public policy makers.

    In the study, 90 percent of respondents reported that training to assist victims of teen dating abuse has not been provided to personnel in their schools in the past two years. Of the counselors surveyed, 43 percent pointed to this lack of formal training as themain barrier to helping these victims. Another 28 percent believed that ADV was a minor issue compared to all the other health issues counselors must address.

    Counselors who perceived dating violence as a serious problem in the United States were four times more likely to assist a victim of ADV.

    The study, which will be published in the August edition of Pediatrics, surveyed 305 counselors, all members of the American School Counselor Association. Sixty-one percent reported they had assisted victims of dating-related violence in the past two years — some despite a lack of formal training. In most cases, they helped the victim in question by calling parents/guardians, or referring the student to legal authorities. Slightly more than one in 10 school counselors aided a victim by referring a to child protection agencies and school nurses for legal and medical assistance.

    “[This is] the first research project to identify the need of formal training on adolescent dating violence for school personnel,” said Jagdish Khubchandani, a Ball State community health education professor and faculty fellow with the university’s Global Health Institute. “Hopefully, this study will be a pioneer in helping establish school policies, protocols and procedures for adolescent dating violence prevention.”

    According to the study, more than half of U.S. adolescents reported being involved in a special romantic relationship within the last 18 months. Additionally, nearly three in four eighth- and ninth-graders reportedly date by the time they are in high school, with one in every 11 adolescents reportedly being a victim of dating violence, according to a national study.

    Both males and females have been victims of partner aggression, though girls are overwhelmingly more prone to serious injury — be it psychological or physical — as a result of such violence.

    In 2010, Congress approved of nationally recognizing February as Teen Dating Violence and Awareness and Prevention Month, designed to draw attention toalarming statistics regarding abuse in adolescent relationships. Nearly 1.5 million high school students nationwide experience physical abuse from a dating partner in a single year.

    In Chicago, local anti-violence nonprofit Between Friends has worked to provide citywide counseling, legal assistance and health care education in an effort to combat domestic violence.

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