The iris list remixes announcements of conferences and news of interest to people who experience mood swings, fear, voices and visions, occasional forwards from other lists, some URL's, sometimes a quotation, some times a political call to action. Iris is goddess of the rainbow and a messenger of the gods.
UCLA and UCSF, have partnered with the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and Office of the California Surgeon General (CA-OSG) to lead a multi-campus initiative addressing the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and other causes of toxic stress on health.
The CDC added mood disorders including depression and schizophrenia to its list of conditions that put people at higher risk for severe COVID-19 yesterday. The move could potentially make millions more people eligible for booster shots in the U.S.
"People Who experience mood swings, fear, voices and visions"
"We argue that now is the time to start thinking of mental health metrics as 21st century tools to be co-owned and co-created by the mental health community, with support from dedicated infrastructure, coordinating bodies, and funders."
I'm reading "Empire of Pain" by Patrick Keefe about the opioid crisis. On page 251 I read about the public relations person for Purdue who "worked closely with a psychiatrist named Sally Satttel." Satel is quoted: 'When you scratch the surface of someone who is addicted to painkillers you usually find a seasoned drug abuser'. She didn't mention that she was citing an author who worked for Purdue or that Purdue was donating $50,000 to her group at American Enterprise Institute.
" ... schizophrenia not a disease and not a neurological problem, but rather that that process of craziness, eccentric painful thinking, has survival value for the culture at large. We create schizophrenia because we need it. There is a fine line, perhaps no line, between delusional thinking and creativity. I suspect we need to have 1% thinking about the world in absurd and disturbing ways to counter a tendency towards uniformity, sterility, and inhibited problem solving. "
WHO Guidance and Technical Packages WHO Press release in ENGLISH - SPANISH - RUSSIAN (Other languages will follow) WHO Feature story- Community-based mental health services using a rights-based approach Telegraph Article - Seclusion, restraint and coercion: abuse 'far too common' in mental health services across the world Video poem: The Power of Purpose - Community-based mental health care: the Power of Purpose YouTube livestream of the WHO Launch event
"Many zoos use Prozac and other psychoactive drugs on at least some of their animals to deal with the mental effects of captivity," writes Emma Marris in a NYT guest essay.
Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington
> From an Amazon review: "As made very clear in the last chapter of > this book, we do not know how a normal thought or emotion is > biologically generated, so how could we possibly presume to > understand how a pathological one is? As made very clear in the > last chapter of this book, we do not know how a normal thought or > emotion is biologically generated, so how could we possibly presume > to understand how a pathological one is?
As things stand, the media bias against antidepressants has the potential to put patients off filling the prescription or taking the antidepressants as prescribed. Ultimately, if this bias could be corrected, more people might seek treatment with effective antidepressants, thus improving the health and wellbeing of society.
" ... the growing endorsement of biological causation has continued to exacerbate the stigmatising of mental illness ... There is no evidence to justify the continued promotion of one-dimensional theories such as 'chemical imbalance'.
"In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, one in five survivors were recorded as having a first-time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia. "
"The study also found that people with a pre-existing mental illness were 65 percent more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those without one. " (Explanations for this? S.)
The finding that most mental disorder life histories involve different successive disorders helps to account for genetic and neuroimaging findings pointing to transdiagnostic causes and cautions against overreliance on diagnosis-specific research and clinical protocols.
Joseph E Davisis research professor of sociology and chair of the Picturing the Human Colloquy at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His latest book is <https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo48408677.html>Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery (2020).
" ... which aspects of our shared cultures might be contributing to the rise of mental illness ... " <https://psyche.co/ideas/chinese-philosophy-has-long-known-that-mental-health-is-communal?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1e877fe7f9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_06_04_06_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-1e877fe7f9-70344581>https://psyche.co/ideas/chinese-philosophy-has-long-known-that-mental-health-is-communal
>" We need to understand how this network is constituted in such a >way that it maintains this pattern of behaviours, thoughts and >emotions, despite being maladaptive for the person affected. We need >to understand how this network is constituted in such a way that it >maintains this pattern of behaviours, thoughts and emotions, despite >being maladaptive for the person affected. "
"To accompany the work, Babina created a short video with music by composer <http://www.elisabetraspall.com/>Elisabet Raspall. As the melody moves, so does each image, animating into its chosen illness. The result is a touching, and sobering, look at mental illness. " (Video is at the end of the link. S.)
Psychiatric diagnoses are imperfect, sketchy theories about how people's minds can give them trouble. ...The great intellectual challenge of clinical psychology is to integrate knowledge about reasons and people with knowledge about causes and mechanisms. We should avoid relying solely on diagnostic information, but we shouldn't discard it altogether.
Select researchers believe that the ties between vision and psychotic symptoms indicate there's something new to learn here. Could it be that within this narrowly-defined phenomenon there are clues for what causes schizophrenia, how to predict who will develop it, and potentially how to treat it?
"As well as implicating a specific gene, SLC6A1, for the first time in schizophrenia, our findings suggest that new mutations in genes that are important in brain development can be a major factor in some cases and that these mutations can also increase the risk of other disorders such as autism and developmental delay."
... the analysis found a significant link between depressive symptoms and the pursuit of happiness. Placing excessive emphasis on happiness also reduced a person's ability to savor positive experiences.
"Involving people with lived-experience in the identification of problems and conduct of research is vital to developing high-quality and relevant solutions. "
<https://www.c-span.org/person/?susannahcahalan>Journalist Susannah Cahalan talked about her book, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness, about David Rosenhahn's and the pretend-to-be-a-patient studty.
My daughter died this week. She had fast-moving end-stage lung cancer, discovered mid-March. No known exposure, use, cause. An anomaly. I've been in Colorado with her since May.
Welcome! We are a collaboration between emergency responders and the National Mental Health Innovation Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz campus. Our goal is to improve mental health supports for responders and their families through culture change; education and empowerment; and improvement of resources. We focus on EMS, Fire, Law Enforcement (including Corrections), and Dispatch but recognize that our content applies to other groups of emergency responders as well. Suicide is recognized as the leading occupational killer of responders. And we know that untreated stress injuries from the job can significantly decrease responders’ quality of life. We can change
Many states are going down the same road as Massachusetts strengthening their civil commitment laws to hold people against their will so they will get treatment.
To promote better practice, providers, researchers, and policy makers should first acknowledge psychiatry's dependence on public investment. The allocation of additional government resources to behavioural health will help to attract and retain providers and expand consumer access to long-term treatments. A robust supply of services is otherwise impossible to achieve.
Researchers found that patients who had been newly prescribed amphetamines, such as Adderall and Vyvanse, were more likely to develop psychosis than those who had received a prescription for methylphenidates, such as Ritalin and Concerta, according to the study published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
I watched a DVD yesterday about Emily Dickinson, which reminded me of this poem. S.
Much Madness is divinest Sense - To a discerning Eye - Much Sense - the starkest Madness - 'Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail - Assent - and you are sane - Demur - you're straightway dangerous - And handled with a Chain -
Psyche is a new initiative from the creators of Aeon Magazine. Psyche's mission is to promote psychological health and address mental illness by creating excellent educational content and events for the public
" ... the single largest cause of mental health problems is when a person experiences a psychological injury ... " https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/01/psychological-injury-model/ and link to .pdf Psycholgical Injury questionnaire (ACE + )
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" ... the results of psychology/psychiatry are also too good to be true. 91.5% of their research confirms the hypothesis of the researchers. For those reasons it should be at the bottom of the hierarchy of the sciences as the least scientific field. ... "
Nicholas Vasilogianis in a conversation about data, statistics, IQ, and the general misuse of numbers ...
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323562.php - new drug, not SSRI, but:
Ezogabine is no longer available in the United States after June 30, 2017. https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a612028.html
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323559.php - new categories
New research suggests that this form of treatment-resistant depression may be down to a deficiency of a molecule called acetyl-L-carnitine (LAC), and that measuring the blood levels of this molecule may prove to be an effective way of diagnosing the disorder. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322628.php?iacp
Anhedonia, or diminished pleasure, in schizophrenia is most apparent when it comes to anticipating future events. People with schizophrenia report expecting less pleasure from enjoyable activities, and experience less pleasure when anticipating future events, than people without schizophrenia. However, when actually doing these pleasant activities, people with and without schizophrenia report experiencing the same amount of pleasure. The example of anhedonia in schizophrenia illustrates that pleasure is not a single process. Instead, pleasure emerges from a host of interacting cognitive, affective and motivational systems, dysfunction in any one of which can lead to problems with pleasure.
"We are the brain. There's nothing besides it. If something is wrong, it's physical."
(I usually argue health is seamless from the cultural environmental trauma perspective. She argues from the brain perspective. Both paths lead to the same conclusion: health is seamless).
The results highlight the biological effect of early-life trauma and the importance of early preventive and therapeutic measures when it comes to depression and adverse childhood experiences.
... at least the one-quarter of people who are diagnosed as somehow non-neurotypical struggle with the structure and the method of modern education. People who are wired differently should be able to think of themselves as the rule, not as an exception.
"Previous studies have correlated T. gondii infections with impulsive and risky behavior, as well as with a higher risk of car accidents, mental health issues, substance abuse disorders, and suicide."
(This is the cat parasite that Torrey argues causes schizophrenia.)
"Indeed, research suggests that the embracing of biogenetic rather than social explanations of mental distress risks amplifying the very negative attitudes and discriminations which these campaigns ostensibly seek to eliminate."
The researchers put forward an analysis of stigma as a "political apparatus that enables and entrenches existing structures and systems of power that, in turn, legitimize inequalities and injustices."
The Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton is the only learning center in the country to use the graduated electronic decelerator to control the behavior of students with development delays.
Psychology has a view that the brain is the prime mover of our thoughts and actions. So we pay less attention to factors outside the head. Leading us to over emphasize the role of individuals and under emphasize the role of context in a range of cultural phenomena from criminal justice to creative innovation. But actually the brain provides a meeting point for influences both internal and external to every person. p 5 paraphrase
The brain, body and environment interact together. Cognition is embodied. Mental illness is context dependent, culturally defined. The broken brain model creates social rejection.
The Biological Mind, Janoff
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But for those with treatment-resistant depression where two different treatment options had failed ECT was shown to be the most cost-effective course of action.
The Power Threat Meaning Framework, is an over-arching structure for identifying patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubling behaviour, as an alternative to psychiatric diagnosis and classification.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/power-threat-meaning-framework-new-perspective-on-mental-distress/ link above includes summary of the paper and link to 400 page .pdf
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Many argue that the world is a harsh place, and that it is the stresses and misfortunes in life that make people depressed, not their thinking style. Wrong! Countless people suffer misfortunes and do not get depressed or anxious, while others seemingly suffer no misfortune at all, and are blighted with depression and anxiety. The Stoic philosopher (and former slave) Epictetus opined that 'men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them'. A sentiment that is totally, completely and absolutely correct.
Schaefer's research reveals that mental disorders are exceedingly common and often transient . Just one in five people will be lucky enough to avoid mental health problems throughout their life.
(I searched "anticholinergic drug with an ACB score of 3" and found several hits, .pdf files to download. I recognized many of the drug names. This is one more very distressing result of treatment. Sylvia)
A new study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, uncovers links between mental health and the "three A's": asthma, allergic rhinitis (or hay fever), and atopic dermatitis (or eczema).
In patients with first-episode psychosis with a full initial response to treatment, medication continuation for at least the first 3 years after starting treatment decreases the risk of relapse and poor long-term clinical outcome.
"... the use of psychotropic medication as the first line treatment for depression and other conditions is, quite simply, unsupported by the evidence. The excessive use of medications and other biomedical interventions, based on a reductive neurobiological paradigm causes more harm than good."
Steven Soderbergh's new film is the story of a women held in a psychiatric hospital. It shows how film-makers are doing a better job with mental health issues
Those who took antidepressants and who had the highest scores on a clinical screening test for depression were found to be at more than 30 percent increased risk for A-fib, compared with participants with low scores for depression and who did not take antidepressants.
"As long as the only organization of our people is offering a way to earn a living and even develop a career, it is hard to find people who will act voluntarily and conduct struggles that could take years to begin reaping tangible fruits. Our main fear is that even if an independent advocacy organization will be established, it will not succeed to survive alongside an association that offers jobs to its members.
The quest for ideal, or simply better, language is doomed to fail as such discussions are not, in fact, linguistic, but political. They are about preferred worldviews, forever leaving some people outside.
... patient and people were the preferred terms, with a total absence of phrases such as mental health problem, service user, and consumer ... It would enhance the quality of care, at no extra financial cost, if everyone engaged in mental health policy and service delivery were to commit to shaping and influencing a culture and standard of communication which diminishes stigma and promotes language that is
Had he been a student at the outset of the 21st century, he may have been put on the pharmaceutical regimen to alleviate his mood swings and attention deficit disorder. One need not subscribe to the artist-as-troubled-genius trope to believe we are fortunate that Leonardo was left to his own devices to slay his demons while conjuring up his dragons.
6 weeks of treatment with CBD in adjunct to antipsychotics was associated with signi cant effects both on positive psychotic symptoms and on the treating clinicians' impressions of improvement and illness severity, although effects were modest.
CBD may represent a new class of treatment for schizophrena.
Beliefs in a biological and genetic basis for difference are related to negative attitudes including perceptions that ''mental patients' are dangerous, anti-social, and unpredictable.
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Attempting to apply biomedical principles to the classification and treatment of psychological and emotional distress, psychiatry it seems, relentlessly pursued a disease base model of psychological functioning without the requisite physiological and biochemical evidence that other branches of medicine medicine so fundamentally relied upon. In doing so, psychiatry assumed an axiomatic stand on the biological origins of psychological abnormality and committed itself to a fixed and inflexible framework. Psychological functioning according to the reflected disease, biological breakdown, and malfunction, and if the available evidence did not support the underlying biology, it would reveal itself. The absence of evidence and
... extreme perceptual, belief and behavioural abnormalities such as hallucinations, delusions and mania often emerge in, and can be understood against, a context of extreme life trauma and adversity ...
https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/ja-murphy
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Community psychology goes beyond an individual focus and integrates social, cultural, economic, political, environmental, and international influences to promote positive change, health, and empowerment at individual and systemic levels.
In all instances, peer consultation and support should be available to persons receiving care. The availability of peers will help to assure that every effort is made to promote self-determination of one's life and self-management of one's behavioral health conditions, with the goal of full recovery.
" ... evolution is looking less like a gentle genetic stroll, and more like a frantic struggle by genes to keep up with strident developmental processes."
It is expected that half the presenters at plenary sessions will be people with lived experience of mental health/mental disability services. It is also hoped that at least one fifth of the delegates to the conference will have such lived experience.
Mental disability law (including both mental health law and mental capacity law) in the UK has come into its own in recent years, and there is now a wide range of researchers active in the field, in a variety of disciplines, along with people with lived experience.
Many Faces of Our Mental Health Temporary Exhibit : Open Through February 11
"This collaboration between the Museum and artist Lynda Michaud Cutrell, psychiatrist-scientist Dr. Bruce Cohen, and science journalist Dr. Rae Simpson shines a light on common misconceptions about mental health. ... View portraits of 99 individuals, including 33 people who have experienced symptoms of schizophrenia, 33 people who have experienced symptoms of bipolar disorder, and 33 people who love them."
"With this tender, beautifully written novel, Mira Lee seeks to erase the stigma of mental illness by portraying it as a debilitating malady whose sufferers should be treated with the same dignity and sympathy as any other victim of a chronic illness."
(I don't know if that's the reviewer's language or the author's. malady, suffer, sympathy, ... <sigh> S))
Ideas about persons with mental illness as violent often result from larger cultural and political anxieties.
People believe that psychiatric diagnosis is a predictive tool. It is not. Psychiatrists see many patients who fit the criteria for violent behavior: They're angry, threatening and sometimes paranoid. However, only a very small percentage of the patients ... are actually violent.*
Observation that in many (if not most) cases only a very small amount (the 'tip') of information is available or visible about a situation or phenomenon, whereas the 'real' information or bulk of data is either unavailable or hidden. The principle gets its name from the fact that only about 1/10th of an iceberg's mass is seen outside while about 9/10th of it is unseen, deep down in water.
Over 20 years ago, the psychiatrist Egon Haberfellner attempted to recruit patients for a planned clinical trial of antidepressant medication from his community practice. He discovered that only one of the 216 patients with depression that he treated over a 6-month period in his clinic was eligible to participate. As a diplomatic understatement, he concluded that "study results obtained under restrictive inclusion and exclusion criteria are probably only applicable to a proportion of patients treated under routine conditions".
" ... how NA's ideological approach blinds group members and the larger public to the complexity of addiction, turning addicts who struggle with recovery into failures, through internalized ideological trajectories that root responsibility in the self while discounting context."
CTO duration was not associated with improvements in patients social outcomes even over the long term. This study adds to growing concerns about CTO effectiveness and the justification for their continued use
Community treatment orders and social outcomes for patients with psychosis: a 48-month follow-up study
Vergunst, Francis; Rugkåsa, JorunAuthor Information View Profile ; Koshiaris, Constantinos; Simon, JuditAuthor Information View Profile ; Burns, TomAuthor Information View Profile . Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology; Heidelberg Vol. 52, Iss. 11, (Nov 2017): 1375-1384
Live & Learn, Inc. is a California-based, consumer-run and woman-owned social enterprise that provides research, technical assistance, and knowledge translation services to behavioral health system stakeholders. Live & Learn was founded because using science to improve mental health systems requires that the experiences of people who have used mental health services are represented by data.
" ... experiencing abuse in early life "may lastingly disrupt" the connectivity between the areas of the brain that are key in cognitive and emotional processes."
Vagueness in psychiatry / edited by Geert Keil, Lara Keuck, Rico Hauswald. Oxford University Press.
In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of subthreshold disorders and of the prodromal stages of diseases are notoriously contentious. Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, 'vague'. Although blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in many publications concerned with the
I'm reading a lot about artificial intelligence, robots and computer programs managing many task. Here's one I'd like to see developed:
A chatbot that would reply to all social media mentions of "untreated mental illness' explaining that this is a very successful marketing gimmick to support medication without consent.
Sylvia
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The analysis showed that, over the 20-year period, "individuals with schizophrenia experienced three times greater mortality rates, compared with the general population, even after adjustment for sociodemographic factors."
"Those with schizophrenia also died younger and lost more potential years of life," note the authors.
...
Dr. Kurdyak says that as well as revealing "astonishingly high mortality rates" for people with schizophrenia, their findings highlight an "equity issue."
The initiative offers a new approach to mental health care that is rights based and recovery oriented. Freedom from coercive interventions, respect for the right to legal capacity, and promotion of autonomy, choice, community inclusion and recovery are at the core of the initiative. The five main objectives of the initiative are to increase capacity to understand and promote human rights, recovery, and independent living in the community; create community-based and recovery-oriented services that respect and promote human rights; improve the quality of care and human rights conditions in mental health and related services; develop a civil society movement to
"People need to accept that they have pain and focus on their quality of life. Some approaches reinforce in patients that the only way you can function is if you reduce your pain, as measured on a pain scale from zero to 10.
We focus on how to get you back into your life ... "
The AHA recommend a daily limit of 6 teaspoons of sugar for women and 9 teaspoons for men. To put that into context, a can of Coca-Cola contains <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262978.php>8.25 teaspoons of sugar, while a small <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/271157.php>banana contains 3 teaspoons.
"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine."
" ... the crisis in mental health should not be managed as a crisis of individual conditions but as a crisis of social obstacles which hinders individual rights "
Manufacturer " Alkermes is pushing Vivitrol while contributing to misconceptions and stigma about other medications used to treat opioid addiction. ... using policy to promote its drug and, in some cases, hamper access to [other] medications that can help."
WHO QualityRights aims to improve the quality and human rights conditions in inpatient and outpatient mental health and social care facilities and empower organizations to advocate for the rights of people with mental and psychosocial disabilities.
SAMHSA: What Are Peer Recovery Support Services? https://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/SMA09-4454/SMA09-4454.pdf
Peer-based Recovery Support Services: The Connecticut Experience http://www.williamwhitepapers.com/pr/Interview_With_Phillip_Valentine%20Interview.pdf
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We are a group of people who have lived experience with psychosis and their families and friends. After witnessing firsthand the many difficulties associated with psychosis as a result of stigmas, we created an advocacy and support organization called South Bay Project Resource. This online Psychosis Summit is our 2017 initiative aimed towards strategically raising awareness on treatment methodologies, and support approaches, for helping peers dealing with psychosis and their families.
The Insane Asylum was completed in 1855 and operated until 1935. Before then, patients with mental illnesses were often kept chained in jails and attics of homes.
According to records, of the 1,376 patients admitted between 1855 and 1877, more than one in five died.
After the US Civil War the facility expanded dramatically, eventually housing about 6,000 patients during its peak.
As we reach the 100 day mark for the Presidential administration, we know that all of our communities have been attacked. We also know that together, there are millions more of us than there are of them. As the Women's March reaches the 10th of our 10 Actions / 100 Days campaign, we lift up the intersectional platform that we all created together. We must continue to send a clear message that our movements are all working together, that all the issues we work on are intersecting, and that we will no longer accept attempts to divide us and pit
Neurological biochemical analysis and behavioral tests carried out on the animals showed that only the genetically susceptible mice developed schizophrenia-related changes after being exposed to cannabis.
... people were shot so we could have the 8-hourwork day; homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; 8-year old victims of industrial accidents were beat down by the police and company thugs ...
Enhancing Patient Engagement Efforts Across the Food and Drug Administration Request for Comments
FDA is establishing a public docket to solicit input on ongoing efforts to enhance mechanisms for patient engagement at the Agency. Engaging with patients, their caregivers, and advocates has long been a priority of the Agency. In this tradition, FDA intends to enhance future patient engagement by providing a more transparent, accessible, and robust experience for patient communities. To achieve these goals, FDA is considering establishing a new Office of Patient Affairs.
" ... emotions are not universal but vary from culture to culture. They are not triggered; you create them. They emerge as a combination of the physical properties of your body, a flexible brain that wires itself to whatever environment it develops in, and your culture and upbringing. ... "We are, I believe, in the midst of a revolution in our understanding of emotion, the mind and the brain a revolution that may compel us to radically rethink our attitudes to mental and physical illness, our understanding of personal relationships, our approaches to raising children, and ultimately our view
" ... treatments that only focus on psychological aspects of PTSD have "not served patients well."
"The limited effectiveness of evidence-based psychological interventions in people with PTSD, particularly in veteran populations, highlights the need to develop biological therapies that address the underlying neurophysiological and immune dysregulation associated with PTSD," adds Prof. McFarlane.
"Our study provides compelling biological evidence that a specific genetic variant contributes to risk for schizophrenia, defines the mechanism responsible for the effect, and validates that nicotine improves that deficit."
?: symptoms and diagnostic categories arise from culturally standardized practices of classification
biomedicine and health promotion discourses structure the everyday organization, articulation, and experience of the body
a weighing of potentialities takes place when people experience bodily sensations, and we suggest that the outcome of this weighing is contingent upon the local moral world in which sensations are sensed
" ... cannabis may be particularly hazardous to people with schizophrenia ... "
Findings indicate that starting to use cannabis may increase the risk of schizophrenia, but especially that a person who is at risk of schizophrenia is more likely to use cannabis.
Women who have bipolar disorder may receive different treatment from men, according to the findings of a study of 7,000 patients.
The 2015 study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, found significant gender differences in the routine clinical treatment of bipolar disorders in Sweden.
Women with bipolar disorder were more likely to receive antidepressant treatment than men, but men were more likely than women to be treated with lithium.
Policy adequacy may be measured by its impact on population health.
Healthy public policies improve the conditions under which people live: secure, safe, adequate, and sustainable livelihoods, lifestyles, and environments, including housing, education, nutrition, information exchange, child care, transportation, and necessary community and personal social and health services.
http://jech.bmj.com/content/55/9/622.full
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(In Santa Cruz, we've had two deaths in the last month, men acting erratically, known to have a psych diagnosis, shot by the police. Some public dismay; some calls for outpatient commitment. S.)
With ICD-11 due to be finalised in 2018, the discussion on the merits of defining diagnoses versus the harms of creating stigmatising labels continues. Perhaps there needs to be a greater acceptance amongst psychiatrists that for some people the route to feeling better and living the life they want just isn't found within the realm of what mental health care can offer.
I agree with the author that the language is illogical, but the author too expands the scope of the psychiatric interventions for illness. If the DSM hadn't so expanded it's descriptions, and if the drug industry hadn't increasingly offered medication for any mood or symptom except bliss, then maybe health and illness would not have gotten conflated.
Workshop output: "scenarios in which the social aspect is central: mental health care will be patient controlled; it will target people's social context to improve their mental health; it will become virtual; and access to care will be regulated on the basis of social disadvantage."
"Healthcare providers and systems of care need to orbit around patients to truly deliver person-centered care."
"In the US we don't spend more on healthcare but rather on the healthcare industry (hospitals, big pharma, and administration of healthcare)."
"Social determinants of health (e.g. ability to meet daily needs of healthy food, safe environment; access to health care and education; access to economic opportunities) are incredibly influential on the health of a community."
"We propose that mind-wandering isn't an odd quirk of the mind," said Christoff. "Rather, it's something that the mind does when it enters into a spontaneous mode. Without this spontaneous mode, we couldn't do things like dream or think creatively."
www.peoplewho.org /documents, /readingroom and /lists pages are maintained at a basic level of usefulness. Materials that have no other home are uploaded. The website has not been modernized. There are occasional email requests for more information or referrals.
The IRIS email announcement list, launched in 2005, now hosted by ICORS, has 125 subscribers and has shifted content towards health in general, ways to organize, some politics, some technology, a bit of philosophy, displaced persons, poverty, surveillance. Since the focus has broadened, periodic reminders about the list's availability have not been sent. IRIS messages are short, URLs with a brief quote
A tough choice between these opposing positions becomes even more difficult in the absence of good information. As the authors amply document, while our government collects data on literally thousands of topics, it maintains no national database on the number of people who are committed against their will to psychiatric facilities each year. Even worse, many states don't track their own commitment data. As the authors note, "Given the loss of liberty, the personal distress, and the stigma involved, this lack of data is astounding."
