Tag: Chiu

Reading of the Week: More Demand, Less Physician Care? The New Chiu et al. Paper. Also, CAMH’s Really Big Donation

January 18, 2018 /

From the Editor

Canadians understand more about mental health and – with declining stigma – are more interested in services. So are they using more services and how have practice patterns changed with time?

In this week’s Reading, we consider a new paper from The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Chiu et al. try to answer these questions by looking at outpatient family doctor and psychiatrist visits from 2006 to 2014. They also look at ED visits and hospitalizations.

8b16181v-565x422Family docs and mental health: how much care do they deliver (and are all their patients this cute)?

They find that ED visits were up for mental health, as were hospitalizations, but physicians visits went down (all in terms of rates). They write: “The increasing acute care service use coupled with the reduction in outpatient visits suggest, overall, an increase in demand for mental health care that is not being met in ambulatory care settings.”

Also in this week’s Reading, we consider some good news: CAMH received a $100 million gift from an anonymous donor. Good news – but is it all good news for mental health charities?

DG

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Reading of the Week: Stressed & Expensive – the Chiu et al. Study on the Health-Care Costs of Distress and Depression

September 21, 2017 /

From the Editor

He isn’t able to work. He often can’t get out of bed. His partner is beside herself. And his diabetic management is poor.

He’s the sort of patient who we see often – in specialist offices (like mine) and in family medicine clinics, and also in emergency departments and on hospital wards. His depression is affecting his life, his family, his workplace – and, yes, his health. Here’s a quick question: how much higher are his health-care costs than those who don’t struggle with depression?

In this week’s selection, we look at a new paper by Maria Chiu et al., considering the costs of depression and distress.

business-comment_01_temp-1382010303-525fcdbf-620x348Distress and depression: Painful to patients – and costly to the system?

In this Reading, we review the paper, and consider the larger context.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Hospitalizations and Ethnicity (and Stigma)

August 25, 2016 /

From the Editor

Younger and sicker.

This week, we look at a new paper published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry considering ethnicity and hospitalizations. Drawing on Ontario data, researchers looked at psychiatric hospitalizations for people of Chinese and South Asian descent, finding that they were younger and more ill at the time of admission.

Hospitalizations, ethnicity… and access

Lead author Maria Chiu of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences told the Toronto Star:

Cultural factors play a big role in these findings. While Asian people tend to have stronger family support, they are also faced with a higher level of stigma and it prevents people from seeking help early. Families may try to cope and keep the illness within the family until there is no choice but to go to hospital.

This paper is well designed. It’s also important, speaking to larger issues about access, stigma, and ethnicity.

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