Frequency and cost of crashes, fatalities, and injuries involving disabled vehicles.

Objective: To quantify the total number and cost of crashes, fatalities, and injuries that could be addressed by improved conspicuity of disabled vehicles to approaching traffic.

Methods: Using the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) this study defines three crash scenarios where insufficient conspicuity of a disabled vehicle ("low conspicuity emergency") resulted in injury or death: Scenario 1) Moving vehicle strikes non-moving vehicle following an initial event; Scenario 2) Pedestrian (primarily a motorist who has exited their vehicle) is struck while tending to a disabled or stopped vehicle; and Scenario 3) A vehicle departs the roadway and crashes unnoticed and rescue initiation is delayed significantly.

Results: Annually, between the years 2016 and 2018, an estimated 71,693 people were involved in low conspicuity emergency events, including 566 fatalities and 14,371 injuries.

Severity of alcohol problems and readiness to change alcohol use in primary care.

Screening measures for hazardous alcohol use that are efficient and can provide clinically relevant information are essential for primary care providers (PCPs). This study examined the clinical utility of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and the AUDIT-Consumption (AUDIT-C) as predictors of readiness to change alcohol use in a primary care setting. In total, 114 veterans completed the AUDIT, readiness to change ruler, and an alcohol use disorders diagnostic interview.

Personality traits predict emergency department utilization over 3 years in older patients.

Background: Emergency department (ED) utilization by older patients has major implications for morbidity, mortality, and health costs, yet its behavioral determinants remain poorly understood. Powerfully tied to health in older adults, the "Big Five" personality traits of neuroticism, extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness may predict ED use.

Objectives: Investigate the role of personality in prospective ED use among older patients.

Medical comorbidity in patients with schizophrenia and alcohol dependence.

Background: Schizophrenia and alcohol dependence are major risk factors for a variety of medical problems, yet there has been little research on the medical status of patients in whom both conditions coexist.

Methods: We assessed the prevalence and severity of medical illness in 80 patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and comorbid alcohol use disorders who entered a controlled trial of monitored naltrexone treatment, and analyzed the relationship between medical illness burden and demographic variables, alcohol and other substance use, and psychosis. Participants underwent physical examination, laboratory tests, medical record review and standardized assessments of medical illness burden, alcohol and other substance use, and psychosis.

One-year outcomes of minor and subsyndromal depression in older primary care patients.

Background: Despite the high prevalence and morbidity of minor and subsyndromal depression in primary care elderly people, there are few data to identify those at highest risk of poor outcomes. The goal of this observational cohort study was to characterize the one-year outcomes of minor and subsyndromal depression, examining the predictive strength of a range of putative risks including clinical, functional and psychosocial variables.

Methods: Patients aged > or = 65 years were recruited from primary care medicine and family medicine practices.

Medical burden in late-life bipolar and major depressive disorders.

Background: Elderly patients with bipolar disorder have been found to have higher mortality than those with major depressive disorder. The authors compare medical burden in elderly patients with bipolar disorder with that in those with major depressive disorder.

Methods: Fifty-four patients with bipolar I or II disorder who were 60 years of age and older were equated 1-to-2 to 108 patients with nonpsychotic, major depressive disorder according to age, sex, race, and lifetime duration of mood disorder illness.

Cardiovascular disease and metabolic risk factors in male patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder.

The authors determined whether diagnoses of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD-related conditions differed by psychiatric diagnosis among male Veterans Administration patients from the mid-Atlantic region. Among 7,529 patients (mean age: 54.5 years), the prevalence of diagnoses ranged from 3.

Characteristics of depression in hemodialysis patients: symptoms, quality of life and mortality risk.

Background: Depression is often underrecognized in patients with end-stage renal disease. We interviewed outpatients at an urban dialysis facility using a criterion-based case-finding instrument to assess the rates, clinical correlates and outcomes of depression.

Methods: The Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders Mood Module and the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire were used to assess depression.

Outcomes of minor and subsyndromal depression among elderly patients in primary care settings.

Background: Although depressive conditions in later life are a major public health problem, the outcomes of minor and subsyndromal depression are largely unknown.

Objective: To compare outcomes among patients with minor and subsyndromal depression, major depression, and no depression, and to examine putative outcome predictors.

Design: Cohort study.

Somatic symptoms of depression in elderly patients with medical comorbidities.

Objective: Somatic symptoms of depression such as fatigue create a diagnostic dilemma when assessing an older patient with medical comorbidities, since chronic medical illnesses may produce similar symptoms. Alternatively, somatic symptoms attributed to medical illness may actually be caused by depression. These analyses were designed to determine if somatic symptoms in older patients are more strongly associated with chronic physical problems or with depression.