Findings on Dementia Described by Daiane B. Machado and Colleagues (Care-seeking as a proxy indicator of the mental health of elderly Brazilians)

2020 DEC 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Neurodegenerative Diseases and Conditions - Dementia is the subject of a report. According to news reporting from Salvador, Brazil, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “To assess a large set of metadata made public by the Brazilian Ministry of Health on older subjects who visited outpatient mental health services in Brazil from 2008 to 2012. We extracted data from the Brazilian Unified Health System Information Technology Department (Departamento de Informatica do Sistema Unico de Saude, DATASUS), then calculated rates of visits per population in each of the five regions of Brazil, using census data for each year.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research, “Finally, logistic regressions were performed with depressive disorders or dementias as dependent variables, controlled by age and year of visit, stratified by region. Mood disorders were the leading reason for visits to outpatient mental health services by older adults, followed by delusional disorders. The calculated rates were lower than the known prevalence of depressive disorders and dementias, but the regressions revealed typical patterns. Males were less likely to present with a depressive disorder, while older subjects were more likely to present with depression and dementia. Publicly available data from DATASUS may not enable inferences about the prevalence of mental disorders in elders, but inferential analyses match what is known about these conditions.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “This approach is supplemental to other more common ones and is of special importance for policymakers and health system managers.”

For more information on this research see: Care-seeking as a proxy indicator of the mental health of elderly Brazilians. Revista Brasileira De Psiquiatria, 2020;42(6):591-598.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Daiane B. Machado, Centro de Integracao de Dados e Conhecimentos para Saude (CIDACS), Salvador, BA, Brazil. Additional authors for this research include Luis F. Castro-de-Araujo and Mauricio L. Barreto.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)