Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie
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The immigrant population in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, is increasing. Our ecological study first assessed if there was an association between areas with proportions of first-generation immigrations and admissions rates for psychotic and affective disorders. Second, this study examined if area-level risks would persist after controlling for area socioeconomic factors in census-derived geographical areas-Forward Sortation Areas (FSAs)-in Ontario. ⋯ Our study provides insight about the influence of area-level variables on risk of admission for psychotic and affective disorders in high immigrant areas. There is a dearth of current Canadian research on immigrant admission for psychotic disorders at the individual or area level. Future area- and individual-level studies may better identify groups at risk and possible explanations.
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To investigate the association between the use of benzodiazepines (BDZs) and BDZ-related drugs and mortality among community-dwelling people aged 65 years and older in Finland. ⋯ Use of BDZs and BDZ-related drugs was associated with an increased mortality hazard in unadjusted analyses. However, after adjusting for age, sex, antipsychotic drug use, and diagnostic confounders, the use of BDZs and BDZ-related drugs was not associated with excess mortality.
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Despite high psychiatric comorbidities in adolescents with clinical diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), little is known about psychiatric comorbidities in their siblings. We investigated the psychiatric comorbid conditions in adolescents with ADHD, their siblings, and healthy control subjects from their school. ⋯ Our findings suggest that siblings of probands with ADHD have increased risks for ADHD and that the affected siblings have more psychiatric comorbidities than healthy school control subjects. It warrants early identification of ADHD symptoms and other psychiatric comorbid conditions as well in siblings of adolescents with ADHD.
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Advance planning for health care and research participation has been promoted as a mechanism to retain some control over one's life, and ease substitute decision making, in the event of decisional incapacity. Limited data are available on Canadians' current advance planning activities. We conducted a postal survey to estimate the frequency with which Canadians communicate their preferences about health care and research should they become incapacitated. ⋯ Advance planning has increased over the last 2 decades in Canada. Nonetheless, further efforts are needed to encourage Canadians to voice their health care and research preferences in the event of incapacity. Physicians are well situated to promote advance planning to Canadians.
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To assess whether social supports (proxies) can detect the presence of suicide ideation in a clinical sample of depressed adults 50 years of age or older, and to additionally assess the potential impact of depression symptom severity on patient-proxy concordance in reports of patient suicide ideation. ⋯ Our findings suggest that family and friends can broadly ascertain the presence of suicide ideation in depressed middle-aged and older adults, yet in doing so may largely be responding to their broad perceptions of depressive symptom severity in patients and not specifically to the presence of suicidal thoughts.