December 7th, 2005
If you suffer from mental illness or are a family member of a person who suffers from mental illness, we invite you to celebrate International Human Rights Day (December 10) by simply telling your story. The World Health Organization is focusing its concerns on the rights of the mentally ill. We suffer from ostracization, stigma, physical abuse, and poor medical treatment. When governments decide to “save a little money”, it is often us who find helpful programs cut or reduced. Even in advanced nations such as the United States we are treated like criminals. Instead of addressing our illness, we are imprisoned without treatment or are subjected to the death penalty.
This is a day to present ourselves as human beings, worthy of dignity. We, too, contribute and we can be proud of what we have to offer. Our personal struggles against mental illness are more than just alleviating our symptoms. Society — including, tragically, close friends and family — often seems to want to keep us sick. They deny us opportunity and respect. They use our diseases to mock us and others. Police officers mistake us for meth addicts and beat us. (They shouldn’t be beating the meth addicts, either) Judges sentence us to jail rather than treatment centers. And what treatment centers exist are often ineffective. Once out of them, medical support disappears. Here in the United States, we are 12 times more likely to be the victims of violence than the average person yet the average American believes that we are a threat to them. Regardless of our color or our religion or our politics, we must endure hatred and misunderstanding.
So on International Human Rights Day, tell your story. This time it is about you and about your problems. There are informed people out there who care and others who will care when you tell them what it is like.
Tell it like it is. Blog for Dignity.
Posted in Stigma | No Comments »
December 4th, 2005
Psychiatrists, mental health support groups, and Scientologists may advocate exercise as a way of coping with mental illness, but a new study suggests that when it comes to the brain, exercise may make little or no difference. Dr Maureen T. Sturman of Rush University Medical Center noted that exercise did little or nothing to slow seniors’ mental decline. Where exercise does help prevent stroke or heart disease, Sturman discovered, it does little to affect acuity:
Sturman and her team analysed 1993 to 2003 data from the Chicago Health and Aging Project, a large ongoing study of risk factors for chronic disease among elderly people. The 4,055 study participants, aged 73.5 years, on average, were black and white seniors who lived in the community.
They were followed-up for about six years, during which they participated in periodic assessments of their mental health. On average, they were engaged in nearly four hours of physical activity each week.
Such physical activity did not appear to be associated with higher mental function at the start of the study, however. And although increased hours of physical activity appeared to be associated with slower rates of mental decline, this association did not hold true when the seniors’ participation in mentally stimulating activities was taken into consideration, the report indicates. “It may be that those older individuals who participate in physical activity are also more likely to participate in cognitively stimulating activities,” Dr Sturman said.
She and her colleagues noted that lifetime participation in physical activity may be the key to preserving mental function in old age, rather than current activity levels. “For older adults, physical activity alone may not protect against cognitive decline,” Dr Sturman said.
Looks like we’d better start now….
Posted in Discoveries, Exercise | No Comments »
December 4th, 2005
Society critic and intellectual Jonathon Cott had a successful career as a writer for The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. Then his mother died and he was swept out of his intellectual high tower at the cost of fifteen years of memories after he underwent 36 ECT or electro convulsive therapy treatments.
The Belfast Telegraph tells his story:
Electroshock is probably the most controversial treatment for mental illness, having a lurid reputation among lay people. Many assume it is no longer used. But, while some mental-health professionals oppose ECT, others – and some patients – maintain that it can relieve depression rapidly and effectively, with few side effects.
Whatever the truth, its effects on Cott were catastrophic. ECT has caused him to forget 15 years of his life. He has almost no memory of the years between 1985 and 2000. Apart from a few snapshot-like scenes of highly emotional events, he has lost both his private and public memories of those years.
It’s all gone – the friends he made, the books he wrote, his travels – trips to Edmonton in Canada and Lhasa in Tibet, and four summers in a red-painted cottage on the coast of Sweden. News events are gone, too. The end of the Cold War? The end of apartheid? The Reagan and Clinton presidencies? Nothing.
In recent years, he has filled himself in on the news by reading, although he had to relearn how to use a computer, and learn to use the internet. He has reconstructed his personal history by looking at snapshots, journals and poems. Mostly, though, he depended on friends to tell him what he couldn’t remember.
“I was calling up names in my address book and asking, ‘How do I know you?’ ” he says. “Fortunately, I have a sense of humour about it now. I’m always amused and amazed.”
Posted in Depression, ECT & EMT | No Comments »
December 4th, 2005
Following allegations that county hospitals and suburban law enforcement agencies routinely “dump” mentally ill homeless patients in the Skid Row area, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moved to change how patients are released:
In a 4-1 vote with Supervisor Gloria Molina absent, the board ordered the health services, public social services, mental health and sheriff’s departments to report back in 30 days on protocols to ensure that homeless patients discharged from county-run hospitals have access to services….
Supervisor Mike Antonovich condemned the discharge practices and offered a motion to end them.
“These actions are unacceptable and inappropriate,” Antonovich told fellow board members. “Action needs to be taken to establish collaboration between the public-private sector and county agencies in addressing this critical need.”
Antonovich’s motion also called for a pilot program that would assign Department of Public Social Services caseworkers to each county medical center to help homeless patients about to be discharged.
Although Tuesday’s board action will affect only public hospitals, Antonovich called on private medical centers to also address the issue. He said more needs to be done to spread homeless and mental health resources across the region.
Antonovich and Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said officials need to establish a method of ensuring people on skid row are getting help for mental health problems. Antonovich said that could mean changing state law, which he said made it more difficult to commit mentally ill people who are not an immediate danger.
All this sounds fine until you get to the end.
Posted in Caregivers, Legislation | No Comments »
December 4th, 2005
Estrogen may be very important in stimulating the growth of fetal brains. A chemical used in a wide variety of products whose contents end up passing through the mouth — cans, milk container linings, water pipes and even dental sealants — called bisphenol A (BPA) can disrupt the developing brain:
In the absence of estrogen, Dr. [Scott] Belcher [of the University of Cincinatti] said, BPA alone was found to mimic the actions of estrogen in developing neurons, and very low doses of BPA completely inhibited the activity of estrogen. Because estrogen normally increases the growth and regulates viability of developing neurons, he said, these results support the idea that BPA may harm developing brain cells….
In earlier research, which showed estrogens could control the survival of maturing neurons in the brain region involved in movement and coordination, Dr. Belcher and his co-workers found the effects of estrogen were the same in both males and females.
“Estrogen’s actions on these neurons appear to be a double-edged sword,” he said. “During certain periods of development estrogen can kill specific subsets of neurons, but at a later developmental stage it actually appears to increase their viability.” Disruption of either of these actions of estrogen could be considered potentially harmful, he added.
“We have now shown that environmental estrogens like BPA appear to alter, in a very complicated fashion, the normal way estrogen communicates with immature nerve cells,” Dr. Belcher explained. “The developmental effects that we studied are known to be important for brain development and also for normal function of the adult brain,” he said.
What remains unclear, he said, is how inappropriate hormone signaling, or blocking the normal signaling at a critical time during development, will influence later life.
Hundreds of other studies have tied BPA to stimulated growth of breast cancer cells, prostrate cancer, and harm to the developing fetus. Yet the chemical and plastics industries have resisted banning BPA from plastics used in food and medical containers. Federal regulators just go along.
Posted in Discoveries | No Comments »
December 1st, 2005
This is one of those studies which I find more than a little problematic. One of the big problems is that it fails to take into account additional variables such as the presence of bipolar illness.
The more creative a person is, the more sexual partners they are likely to have, according to a pioneering study which could explain the behaviour of notorious womanisers such as poets Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas.
Both of these people were identified as bipolar sufferers in Kay Jamison’s classic “Tortured Fire”. A common symptom of bipolar illness is increased libido. Creativity is also considered a symptom: tragically, many psychiatrists overmedicate in an effort to stomp it out.
The authors also delved into the personalities of artists and poets and found they shared certain traits with mentally ill patients. These traits were linked with an increased sexual activity and are thought to have evolved because they contribute to the survival of the human species.
Oh duh. One study showed that 28 percent of all poets report that they are also bipolar. So they are mentally ill, but integrated into our culture. Being bipolar in no way reduces the value of a person’s contributions if the individual manages her or his illness.
And I am always dubious of the “traits evolved because” arguments because it suggests design. Evolution doesn’t give a damn what traits you evolve as long as you don’t die before you breed. It’s true that poetic and artistic creations stimulate minds outside that of the creator: this makes them short-term goods. But it is also true that bipolar disorder can be a painful and frustrating syndrome. We’re asked here to dump sound scientific theory for a fantasy and to ignore the seriousness of a debilitating disease.
On the whole, I found this oddly stigmatizing rather than liberating. First, the article makes a separation between artists and mental patients which can is misleading. Many artists do suffer from mental illness: it is one source of their vision. Second, by making this distinction — by removing from the consideration as mentally ill those who have succeeded despite their disease — it suggests that we who have the disease do not have anything to give others. But we do.
A final problem is this: the authors of the study found that creativity and promiscuity coexist. They jump to the conclusion that creativity inspires the libido. Here we obviously run into a statistical fallacy which is challenged by Galton’s Problem. Francis Galton was a 19th century mathematician who made the following observations about the conindence of two variables:
- It could be that A causes B.
- It could be that B causes A.
- It could be that A and B are caused by C.
- Or it could be that it is entirely a coincidence that they coexist.
The researchers have, in my opinion, gotten ahead of themselves.
Posted in Bipolar, Stigma | No Comments »
December 1st, 2005
A common over-the-counter pain medication has proven efficacious in helping sufferers of dementia. The silent sufferers of organic brain dysfunction also get to enjoy the added benefit of increased mobility due to the easement of arthritic and other kinds of pain:
Researchers found nursing home residents with moderate to severe dementia who were given acetaminophen became more socially active than those receiving a placebo.
“Nursing homes may want to consider the potential benefits of some kind of safe, routine, prophylactic analgesic for people with dementia who are at high risk for pain,” said John Chibnall, professor of psychiatry and lead study author.
“The assumption is that people with dementia don’t feel pain because they’re demented,” said Chibnall. “Actually, they do feel it; they just can’t tell you about it. Standard pain assessment requires levels of communication and language comprehension that people with advanced dementia, by definition, do not have.”
What a marvellous advance for those who cannot speak for themselves. How fortunate that these doctors realized the communication issue and did something about it.
Posted in Dementia | No Comments »
December 1st, 2005
December 10 marks International Human Rights Day. And the World Health Organization has stepped forward to put its focus on the rights of the mentally ill. This means you and me.
These rights go beyond the right to appropriate medication and appropriate medical care in well-designed facilities. They include basic human rights such as self-determination, freedom from fear, a meaningful livelihood, and dignified, inclusive treatment.
On this day, we ask you to blog about your rights as a human being and how they are affected — and unaffected — by your illness. December 10 is the day. Blog for Dignity.
Posted in News & Information, Stigma | No Comments »
November 28th, 2005
The sound of quacking ducks, rippling waters, the breeze blowing through the trees can be soothing and curative say British researchers:
Use of wildlife in some therapies is reported to improve quality of life, write the authors. Smaller animals (for example, squirrels, owls, and raccoons) have been used successfully in therapies for children with emotional and behavioural problems.
People who take part in conservation projects report subjective health benefits, ascribed to being outdoors and to feeling part of a greater system connecting beyond the individual. Such projects can help overcome social isolation, develop skills, and improve employment prospects, as well as provide the known benefits associated with exercise.
Life connecting to life?
Posted in Therapy | No Comments »
November 28th, 2005
Despite federal law, Congress and most states want to secure the right of the mentally ill to own guns. A sensationalistic article from the Associated Press makes much of homicides, but says little about the suicide risk:
In Alabama, a man with a history of mental illness killed two police officers with a rifle he bought on Christmas Eve. In suburban New York, a schizophrenic walked into a church during Mass and shot to death a priest and a parishioner. In Texas, a woman taking anti-psychotic medication used a shotgun to kill herself.
Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales – even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.
Most states have privacy laws barring such information from being shared with law enforcement. Legislation pending in Congress that has bipartisan support seeks to get more of the disqualifying records in the database.
In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.
One reaches a quandary: how do we maintain the confidentiality of patient records while sticking to the law? This is the question which dare not speak its name: rethink the Second Amendment. Guns don’t kill people. They just make it real easy.
Posted in Violence | No Comments »
November 28th, 2005
There’s a tradeoff when it comes to using antidepressants. You get higher levels of serotonins in the brain which eases the torment, but you may lose strength in your bones according to a Norwegian study
“Antidepressants impede activity in the bone building cells. At the same time, they increase production of signal substances that stimulate the breakdown of bone mass,” researcher Bjorn I. Gustafsson at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim told the online site forskning.no.
Some 400,000 Norwegians are estimated to use antidepressants daily.
Gustafsson’s research has focused on Fluoxetine, but other antidepressants are believed to have similar side effects.
Don’t break a leg.
Posted in Disorders | No Comments »
November 28th, 2005
Yes, we took a long weekend. Now back to the stories.
48% of all bipolars or nearly half of 737 so diagnosed in Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US
feel that bipolar disorder had a highly negative impact on their lives. More people in Australia (65%) than UK (37%) and US (45%) felt this negative impact.
For more information on the study which was released for World Mental Health Day, click here.
Posted in Bipolar | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2005
Even with no proof at all, patients facing the prospect of dementia in later life are turning to unorthodox and risky treatments in a desparate gambit to retain their minds:
Families battling Alzheimer’s disease and similar dementias increasingly demand a shot at riskier therapies that might bring bigger benefits than today’s relatively safe but largely disappointing drugs.
It’s a conundrum: Dementia robs its victims of the ability for full consent to medical experiments. When loved ones can do it for them varies in part according to how much risk is involved.
Critics say that’s one reason scientists and regulators generally have treated Alzheimer’s more like a chronic disease than the killer it is, tolerating fewer side effects than for, say, cancer therapies. Further chilling was the 2002 halt of a study of a vaccine designed to attack Alzheimer’s brain-clogging gunk that caused serious brain inflammation in a few patients.
Now the tide seems to be turning. Scientists are tentatively exploring a handful of bold, sometimes invasive, approaches – another vaccine attempt or a gene therapy that requires brain injections – which prompts an ethical debate about how to study a vulnerable population.
How to quantify that is the vexing problem of regulators like Katz. Does risk mean pain? Premature death? And what benefit justifies those risks, improved functioning or merely hope?
An experiment is just that: Nobody knows the full risks until participants have been treated, which is difficult for desperate families to grasp, cautioned Dr. Steven DeKosky, the University of Pittsburgh’s neurology chief.
Katz said the FDA ultimately allows most Alzheimer’s proposals.
Among the most invasive: Scientists at Rush University in Chicago recently injected six patients’ brains with a virus carrying a nerve growth factor that might reverse deterioration. A slightly different gene therapy approach, in California, produced promising preliminary results although two patients experienced dangerous bleeding in their brains. The Chicago researchers are tracking patient reactions, and a follow-up study could begin in a year.
Posted in Alzheimers | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2005
Contrary to established belief, sufferers of mild depression may be more aware of social cues than everyone else. When a team of researchers at Canada’s Queens University tested depressives against a control group, they discovered that the depressives were more aware of the social context than nondepressives. Those suffering from clinical depression, on the other hand, performed much worse:
To explain the apparent discrepancy between those with mild and clinical depression, the researchers suggest that becoming mildly depressed (dysphoric) can heighten concern about your surroundings. “People with mild levels of depression may initially experience feelings of helplessness, and a desire to regain control of their social world,†says Dr. Harkness. “They might be specially motivated to scan their environment in a very detailed way, to find subtle social cues indicating what others are thinking and feeling.â€
The idea that mild depression differs from clinical depression is a controversial one, the psychologist adds. Although it is often viewed as a continuum, she believes that depression may also contain thresholds such as the one identified in this study. “Once you pass the threshold, you’re into something very different,†she says.
Posted in Depression | No Comments »
November 22nd, 2005
Does exercise help depression? The December issue of The Harvard Mental Health Letter raises doubts about assertions that all one has to do is run around the block a couple of times to beat chronic depression or anxiety:
According to some surveys and observational studies, it could be that depression and anxiety prevent people from exercising, rather than the other way around. Or some feature of personality or upbringing might cause both depression and sedentary habits.
Even controlled trials on the subject often have problems, such as insufficient follow-up, the difficulty of correcting for the effect of expectations, and the fact that people who volunteer for exercise studies are not necessarily typical.
These doubts may not matter, because exercise has many health benefits and does little harm. But low motivation is a problem. People are often told to find an activity they enjoy, but depressed people don’t enjoy anything much.
Tom Cruise, are you reading this?
Posted in Depression, Exercise | No Comments »
November 21st, 2005
A Ugandan health official took a stand against those who attempt to cure through religious and supernatural means. Sheila Ndyanabangi, who oversees mental health in the health ministry, said to participants in a public forum organized by the Uganda Society for Disabled Children:
“There are some pastors and traditional healers who claim that they heal mental illnesses and after failing they (pastors and healers) accuse the victims for not having faith,†she said.
“Our people should know that some mental sicknesses can be healed through prayer, counselling, herbs and there those that need thorough medical attention.â€
Good job, Dr. Ndyanabangi. We can use a person of brave character like you here in America to stand up to the Scientologists, Witnesses, and Pentecostals who persist in putting their own efforts to gather more followers over the mental health of the ones they have. We have our witch-doctors and faith-healers, too, you see.
Posted in Society | No Comments »
November 21st, 2005
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle features an article about a man afflicted with Klinfelter Syndrome and Schizophrenia. Here’s an excerpt:
Boyle was diagnosed with Klinefelter’s as an adolescent when his parents entered him in a study about Attention Deficit Disorder at the National Institutes of Mental Health.
Researchers performed a karyotype of his cells, revealing that Boyle had more than 46 chromosomes, the typical number found in human cells. They also discovered he was producing minuscule amounts of male hormones.
As a result, Boyle was immediately given a full dose of testosterone, which his body needed to regulate his mood, build muscle mass and strengthen his bone density.
Posted in Schizophrenia | No Comments »
November 21st, 2005
It’s probably bad enough that a newspaper chain descended to the level of a teenager in reprinting “10 things never to mention on a date” (the authors were teenagers), but the absence of editorial oversight is apparent as well. Number 4 on the list:
Want to hear a joke my mental health consultant told me?
My response would “Yes. I’d love to.”
With the climbing suicide rate, do we really want to stigmatize those who seek help? Very stupid, kids.
Posted in Stigma | No Comments »
November 20th, 2005
There’s a very good article describing the stigma heaped upon the mentally ill at All Africa News. Here’s a peek:
ONE group that is particularly vulnerable to distress caused by emotional abuse and name-calling is people with mental health problems. Worldwide mental ill-health is stigmatised.
People with relatively minor mental health problems (e.g. anxiety and depression) – not normally viewed as minor by those enduring them – are often castigated as the ‘worried well’. People with a severe mental illness (e.g. paranoid schizophrenia) are at best treated with neglect and derision, at worse fear and violence.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the most visible and disturbing examples of people with severe mental health problems are all too often found walking the streets of capital cities. Dishevelled in appearance, ambling between the oncoming traffic, with no apparent awareness of the threats to their own well-being, they represent the caricature of the ‘mentally ill’.
Stigma against the mentally ill crosses national borders and color lines. Those of us who suffer from this complex of diseases feel a redemptive sense of family that others cannot fathom.
Posted in Stigma | No Comments »
November 20th, 2005
Good years for schizophrenics appear to lie ahead of us: UCLA scientists have added their voices to the rousing claims of advances that will alleviate the disease on the cellular level:
“I hope this is the opening salvo in a new molecular approach to fighting schizophrenia,” said Tyrone D. Cannon, UCLA’s Staglin Family Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Human Genetics. “If we’re able to identify people at risk for the illness through sequence variations in genes and know what biochemical pathways are affected by those variations, we’re much closer to the day when we can finally prevent schizophrenia.”
Cannon and his colleagues report unique genetic variations on chromosome 1, the largest human chromosome, in two regions of a gene known as DISC1, that are predictive of schizophrenia, neurocognitive deficits, memory impairment, and reductions of gray matter density in the brain’s frontal lobes and hippocampus. They found sequence variations within the DISC1 gene that relate to features associated with the underlying neural basis for schizophrenia.
The research is published in the November issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, the leading journal in psychiatry and psychopathology.
Posted in Schizophrenia | No Comments »