Global Health News

Date: November 18 2014 @ 12:30 - 1:30 pm
Location: CH&E Classroom #409, Centre for Clinical Research, 5790 University Avenue

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything - the prevalence of dental disease in people with severe mental illness and ways to improve outcome

Psychiatric patients have increased comorbid physical illness but there are less data on dental disease, especially tooth decay, in spite of risk factors in this population of lifestyle or psychotropic-induced dry mouth. Importantly, poor oral health can predispose to chronic physical disease leading to avoidable admissions to hospital for medical causes. This talk presents the results of a systematic search for studies from the last 25 years of the oral health of people with severe mental illness (SMI) using MEDLINE, PsycInfo, EMBASE and article bibliographies. Results were compared with the general population.

Steve Kisely is trained in psychiatry, public health and addiction medicine. His research and clinical interests are in epidemiology/pharmaco-epidemiology, chronic disease surveillance, consultation-liaison with both primary & secondary care, health services research (HSR), and physical & psychiatric co-morbidity. He is currently a Professor and the Director of Health LinQ at the University of Queensland and Adjunct Professor in Psychiatry, Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University.

Additional Information: Jodi.lawrence@dal.ca 494-3860