News Briefs – DECEMBER 2024
by INELDA
Nonpharmacological Support in Person-Centered Palliative Care
Psychosocial interventions are a critical part of palliative care, yet health care professionals routinely underuse these strategies for patients at end of life, conclude researchers and Admiral Nurses Rachel Daly and Diane Drain of Dementia UK in a new report. While pharmacological interventions can provide some of the relief promised by palliative care, it falls short of palliative care’s goal of maximizing quality of life and reducing distress.
Daly and Drain share psychosocial interventions that can be used at end of life to improve well-being. These include life story work, art therapy, animal-assisted interventions, relaxation techniques, and spiritual care—all of which are commonly used by EOLDs and can be provided by other health care practitioners.
In keeping with the concept of holistic care, the researchers note that psychosocial interventions have benefits beyond the direct recipient. “Involving family members and other care partners in the care plan and its delivery is not only essential for comprehensive support for the individual, but may benefit care partners’ well-being too,” they write.
Military Suicide Rate Continues to Rise
Despite ongoing prevention efforts, suicides among members of the armed forces rose in 2023. In 2022, 331 service members died by suicide; last year, that number rose to 363. In 2011, the suicide rate was 17 per 100,000 active duty service members. Today, that rate is 26 per 100,000. With the exception of 2021, when suicides decreased 15% from the previous year, the rate has been rising steadily for the past 12 years.
Suicide prevention is receiving more financial support in the 2025 fiscal year, with the Pentagon devoting about $250 million to the efforts. “A lot of the time where we’ve done initiatives during the past two decades, there’s been insufficient investment in making sure that those have staying power, that we’ve got a long-term implementation of those programs,” Dr. Timothy Hoyt, deputy director of the Office of Force Resiliency at the Defense Department, told CBS reporters.
Most service members who died by suicide in 223 were young, enlisted men. While the Department of Defense did not track suicides of family members in 2023, suicides among military spouses and dependents dropped somewhat in 2022 compared with 2021. Suicide remains a leading cause of death for veterans.
Hurricanes May Cause Up to 11,000 Deaths, Years After the Storm
Hurricanes and tropical storms may carry a death toll of thousands more than official reports indicate. A study recently published in Nature indicates that the average tropical cyclone triggers between 7,000 and 11,000 excess deaths. This as-yet undocumented death count may contribute to the higher mortality rates along the Atlantic coast of the United States and could account for up to 5.1% of all deaths.
Unlike the official death counts often cited after a natural disaster, such as the 103 North Carolina deaths attributed to Hurricane Helene, the deaths included in this study often take place years after the storm. Lead researchers Rachel Young and Solomon Hsiang write that “individuals may use retirement savings to repair damage, reducing future health care spending to compensate; family members might move away, removing critical support when something unexpected occurs years later; or public budgets may change to meet the immediate [post-storm] needs of a community, reducing investments that would otherwise support long-run health.”
The people most at risk for these post-storm deaths include infants, people age 65 and older, and Black people. Of the infant deaths, 99% happened nearly two years after the storm—meaning that the infants were conceived after the event yet suffered heightened mortality rates regardless. “This suggests that cascades of indirect effects following [tropical cyclones] rather than personal direct exposure to the physical event, generate this mortality,” Young and Hsiang write.