Author: The Fix

100 Million Texts from People in Crisis: What Have We Learned?
On Election Night 2016, Crisis Text Line received four times their average volume. The biggest surge came from people concerned about issues including LGBTQ+, sexual assault, and immigration.

Crisis Text Line, which is like the Suicide Hotline but with texting, recently processed its 100 millionth text. All the data they’ve recorded from the texting sessions since launching in 2013 has now been compiled into what they’re calling the biggest mental health data set ever collected. There are different ways of accessing the data including a visualization tool that allows users to see which issues are the biggest in which state (plus Puerto Rico), which issues co-occur with others, and when they occur (day of week and time of day). Plus, they made word clouds for each key issue such as anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm, and paired them with example texts.

I’m so nervous it’s making me nauseous

The Crisis Text Line is a free 24-hour texting service powered by volunteers who are trained to help texters process and get through any personal psychological crisis. It’s about much more than suicide; people are encouraged to text when they feel at a loss about their relationships, school problems, substance use, LGBTQ+ issues, or “health concerns.” To access the service, you just send a text to 741741 from anywhere in the U.S.A.

It’s no secret that younger generations prefer texting to talking on the phone. Sending a text, as opposed to making a call and actually speaking to someone, can take a lot of pressure off of someone who is already upset, so it’s not surprising that Crisis Text Line has grown so rapidly, especially among young people who make up the majority of the texters (75 percent are under age 25). In addition to providing a much-needed service, the company is dedicated to collecting and reporting data from the texts in order to help communities across the country better understand mental health and hopefully aid in the prevention of future crises and suicides.

The Data

There’s a lot of data to pore through with the Crisis Trends tool alone, but there are some key trends that stand out. The most common issue people contact the Crisis Text Line about is depression/sadness, followed by relationships. The number one state for depression is Montana. Looking at the timeline, you can see that depression/sadness calls weren’t always the most common, but there was a big jump in December 2017. It was certainly a volatile month, but it’s unclear why this trend has continued — depression calls peaked at over 35 percent in February 2019.

I’ve got recurring feelings of worthlessness, despair, and overwhelming sense of I can’t stop was [sic] going on in my head… Why can’t I be happy?!

For most issues, texters are more likely to contact the line at night. Which day of the week people reach out depends on the issue. Not surprisingly, depression calls dip on Friday and Saturday, increase on Sunday, and peak on Monday.

Substance use-related texts most often come from North Dakota. States like New York and California, where you might expect more drug use due to having large metropolitan areas, are low on the list. However, this type of text is also one of the least common to Crisis Text Line, hovering between 1.5 and 2 percent.

Ashley Womble, Head of Communications at Crisis Text Line, was able to offer more insight into drug use-related texts:
- People are more likely to text about substance use between 4-10 a.m. than texters with other issues.
- Mondays are the most common days for conversations about substance misuse.
- We see an increase in texters about substance misuse during the summer, from June to September.
- For all ages, the most common additional issues mentioned in conversations about substance abuse are, in order: Depression/sadness, relationships, suicide, anxiety/stress, and isolation/loneliness.
- For texters 24 and under, the most common issues mentioned in conversations about substance abuse are, in order: Depression/sadness, suicide, relationships, anxiety/stress, and school.
- Within the last seven days, Xanax and Ativan are on our trending topics list, meaning that many more people are using that word in texts than on average.
The word clouds provide some interesting insights as well. One of the most commonly used words across the board is “people,” which makes sense since the most common topic that comes up in addition to any of the main conversation topics is “relationships.” Some words you would expect to come up in substance use-related conversations are in there, such as “drugs” and “need” and “take” and “hard.” The word “cut” is also present, suggesting possible overlap between substance abuse and self-harm, though “cut” could also refer to cutting the dose of a drug or mixing in other ingredients.

I feel like going to buy them…just need anyone to talk to.

“Mom” is also a very common word across the word clouds, but not “dad.”

Crisis Text Line also published their own list of “100 Things We Learned From Our First 100M Messages,” which is full of fascinating tidbits. The season with the most texts about suicidal ideation? Surprisingly, spring. Others are a bit more expected, such as the fact that texters over 65 are the most likely group to contact the line about bereavement.

What Have We Learned?

Looking at the data brings up more questions than answers. Why is bullying such a big problem in the Dakotas? Why is Hawaii at the top of the list for every type of abuse? Why is there so much self-harm in the northern states and not in the southern?

It’s important to keep in mind that the data only keeps track of how many people are contacting Crisis Text Line about each issue, not necessarily how many people are actually experiencing it. Therefore, each bit of data warrants the question: “Is this a big problem in this state, or are people just more willing to reach out for help about the problem here?” Looking at additional statistics from other sources, we can make some educated guesses.

For example, Crisis Trends shows that they get the most texts about suicide from Montana. In 2016, suicide rates were highest in the country in Montana. We can therefore conclude that an aggressive campaign addressing suicide in this state is a good idea.

I don’t want to live anymore…

It’s also understandable that anxiety and stress texts went up across the nation shortly before November 2016 and have stayed up. Looking at data from Election Day, it’s pretty clear what happened there.

“During the November 2016 election night, we were swamped with 4X our average volume,” says Crisis Text Line. “The biggest surge we saw came from issues including LGBTQ+, sexual assault, and immigration.”

Turning Information Into Action

Through its Open Data Collaboration program, Crisis Text Line provided data to researchers at MIT, Purdue University, Yale, Columbia University, and elsewhere. Analyses have been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, PubMed, and the MIT Media Lab.

After analysis comes action. The great thing about the map function of Crisis Trends is that it shows exactly where specific targeted mental health campaigns should be directed. We need anxiety/stress relief in the Northeast. We need addiction treatment programs all down the Rocky Mountain area, plus Vermont and New Hampshire. Send bullying intervention advocates to the Dakotas and West Virginia. Figure out what’s up with the abuse problem in Hawaii. People are lonely in Florida and Puerto Rico, send them friends.

Also, while texters access the service from every part of the country, statistics show that a significant number are poor and from rural areas. Nineteen percent of texters are from the ten percent lowest-income zip codes; Fourteen percent are Latinx. And though only 1.6 percent of the U.S. population is Native American, they make up six percent of texters to the crisis line. Mental health resources are usually concentrated in big cities and services are more available to people with money or good insurance. More than anything, we need more and easier access to mental health services in rural and low-income areas and marginalized communities.

Hopefully, the big number of 100 million texts in six years combined with the visualization of the data will help inspire both individuals and governments to take action. Mental health in the U.S. has been declining, with rates of suicide, addiction, and PTSD reaching new highs. Part of the blame lies in our society continuing to treat mental health conditions as less important than physical health. Having a comfortable way to talk to a trained person is a good start, but it’s up to our leaders to fund the additional resources that we need, and it’s up to the rest of us to motivate them to do so.

View the original article at thefix.com
8 May 2019
Cocaine-Related Deaths Skyrocket

In 2017, one-third of drug overdose deaths involved cocaine, or psychostimulants like MDMA.

The number of overdose deaths involving cocaine has risen rapidly in recent years, increasing 52.4% between 2015 and 2016.

That’s according to recently-released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which tracked deaths involving cocaine and psychostimulants. The increase can be largely blamed on the presence of synthetic opioids in the drug supply, the CDC says, although that does not fully explain the increase.

“Death rates involving cocaine and psychostimulants, with and without opioids, have increased. Synthetic opioids appear to be the primary driver of cocaine-involved death rate increases, and recent data point to increasing synthetic opioid involvement in psychostimulant-involved deaths,” the authors wrote.

In 2017, one-third of drug overdose deaths involved cocaine, or psychostimulants like MDMA. Although most overdose prevention and intervention programs focus on opioids, this research shows that a more widespread effort is needed, according to the report.

“The rise in deaths involving cocaine and psychostimulants and the continuing evolution of the drug landscape indicate a need for a rapid, multifaceted, and broad approach that includes more timely and comprehensive surveillance efforts to inform tailored and effective prevention and response strategies,” the authors wrote.

They went on, “Continued collaborations among public health, public safety, and community partners are critical to understanding the local illicit drug supply and reducing risk as well as linking persons to medication-assisted treatment and risk-reduction services.”

According to NBC News, Hans Breiter, a psychiatry professor at Northwestern University, said that despite the fact that dangerous synthetic opioids are being found more commonly in the cocaine supply, many people still think cocaine is a safer drug to use.

“There’s been a lot of bad press about other drugs,” Brieter said, adding that today’s young people haven’t seen firsthand the dangers of cocaine like people saw during the 1970s, so they are more likely to believe it is safe.

“Absolutely, there is a generational piece to this,” Breiter said.

Daniel Raymond, deputy director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, said that drugs come in and out of style, and cocaine is becoming a popular choice on the party scene once again.

“Right now we’re seeing an uptick in cocaine use, and we’re hitting that point in the cycle where we’re starting to see more fatal overdoses,” he said.

Officials have also warned that more people are using cocaine in conjunction with heroin, known as a speedball, Breiter said.

“People will use heroin to blunt the severity of coming down from the high of cocaine. It can be quite severe.”

View the original article at thefix.com

8 May 2019
Johnson & Johnson Accused Of Marketing Opioids To Children

A rep for the company says Johnson & Johnson discussed children’s pain relief, but never targeted children with its drugs.

Johnson & Johnson contributed to the opioid crisis in Oklahoma in part by marketing opioid drugs to children, according to allegations made by the state of Oklahoma in a lawsuit against the company.

“In perhaps one of the most reprehensible documents produced by defendants, this shows the depths to which J & J would go to earn a profit on their products—target potential ‘replacement customers’ at an early age to get them using (and addicted to) opioids,” one court document reads, according to The Washington Post.

The company strongly denies this claim. A representative said that Johnson & Johnson, whose subsidiaries manufacture opioid products, discussed children’s pain relief, but never targeted children with its drugs.

However, Bradley Beckworth, an attorney who is representing Oklahoma in the lawsuit, said that targeting children with dangerous products is not unheard of.

“The recruitment of children… is the same kind of thing the tobacco industry did,” he said. “It’s the same kind of thing that other drugs companies do. Just marketing opioids to cancer patients and surgery patients was not enough. They wanted to expand the customer base.”

The allegations stem from a lawsuit that Oklahoma brought against Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and Teva Pharmaceutical, which makes and distributes generic opioids.

In March, Purdue Pharma settled with the state for $270 million without admitting wrongdoing.

Since then, the state has been focused on Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical. The lawsuit alleges that both companies, which provided materials for opioids, contributed quietly to the crisis behind the scenes.

“Johnson & Johnson helped create the worst public health crisis in United States history,” said Bradley Beckworth. “They grew the demand. They spread the lies and they fed it with their own product… We’ll show that at trial.”

The state’s lawsuit aims to hold the drug manufacturers liable for the harm caused by their products under the state’s public nuisance laws. University of Oklahoma College of Law professor Andrew M. Coats said that the case is fairly solid.

He said, “It has a good deal of merit to it, because our statute on public nuisance is pretty broad,” he said.

However, a representative for Johnson & Johnson said that the company was following the law.

“The production of raw materials and active pharmaceutical ingredients used to manufacture Schedule II medications in the U.S. is strictly controlled, limited and monitored by the DEA, FDA, and other regulators,” a statement from the company read. “The DEA sets quotas based on the agency’s assessment of the need for medicines containing these substances, and our businesses complied with these laws and regulations.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
Ayesha Curry, Willow Smith Open Up About Anxiety On "Red Table Talk"

Curry and Smith discussed how they manage their anxiety on the show’s latest episode.

On the latest episode of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Facebook series Red Table Talk, Willow Smith opened up about her struggles with anxiety.

The episode’s conversation was wide-ranging, but when the subject came to anxiety, Jada asked her daughter Willow, “What are some of the things that you do? What are some of your techniques to deal with your anxiety?”

Willow responded, “Recently I have been, like, I just get really frustrated and I just feel like there is so much energy. I get frustrated and then in my head I feel manic.” So when anxiety hits, Willow says she “[drops] down” and starts doing push-ups.

Chef Ayesha Curry, wife of NBA superstar Steph Curry who was a guest on the show, confessed that she suffers from anxiety as well. “I have anxiety too, really bad, to the point where I actually take medication for it. And I think it’s something that everybody, in some way, has moments. I think open communication and putting your feelings on the line, that helps me a lot, [and] just letting someone know, ‘I’m kind of having an anxiety attack now.’”

Last year on Red Table Talk, Willow also opened up to her mother about practicing self-harm. She experienced fame at a young age with her debut single “Whip My Hair,” and she confessed, “I feel like I lost my sanity at one point. It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?’ And after all of that kind of settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy, and I plunged into this black hole, and I was, like, cutting myself.”

It was a secret she apparently kept from her mother, and Willow added, “I never talk about it because it was a short, weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
Did "13 Reasons Why" Really Cause Teen Suicide Rates To Rise?

The results of a new study involving the show has sparked a heated debate about its complicated subject matter.

Ever since the debut of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why—about a high school girl who left behind audio tapes listing the 13 reasons why she ended her life—controversy has swirled over the graphic nature of the show.

Critics of the show accuse it of romanticizing suicide. Some school officials voiced concern around the show’s debut that it would produce a “contagion effect” among students already at risk of depression or self-harm.

The debate has reignited with the release of a new study in April that claimed the show “was associated with a 28.9% increase in suicide rates” among U.S. youth ages 10-17 in the month that followed the show’s March 2017 debut.

“The results of this study should raise awareness that young people are particularly vulnerable to the media,” said study author Lisa Horowitz, PhD, in a statement. “All disciplines, including the media, need to take good care to be constructive and thoughtful about topics that intersect with public health crises.”

However, as BuzzFeed News reported, the study determined correlation, not causation. Therefore, as some mental health experts say, it is not only unfair but also inaccurate to blame 13 Reasons Why for rising youth suicide rates.

“People tend to sort of read the headline and jump to some kind of conclusion, when these things are really complicated,” said Victor Schwartz, medical director at the Jed Foundation, a non-profit organization supporting youth mental health and suicide prevention.

“This is sort of the culmination of a series of reports that seem to corroborate some of the concerns that many of us expressed when the show came out,” Schwartz added. “But again, obviously, with any of these things, it’s always difficult to prove causation.”

The show, which will continue with the release of Season 3 sometime this year, has been dealing with this kind of backlash since the beginning.

Since then, Netflix has updated the trigger warnings that appear before episodes and created Beyond the Reasons, a behind-the-scenes documentary discussing the thought behind the show and why they chose not to shy away from difficult scenes.

Jay Asher, the author of the novel that the series is based on, said the difficult subject matter depicted on the show is worth talking about. “The whole issue of suicide is an uncomfortable thing to talk about, but it happens. And so we have to talk about it. It’s dangerous not to talk about it.”

Netflix also created the website 13reasonswhy.info where you’ll find suicide prevention resources.

Helen Hsu, a California-based clinical psychologist who served as a “mental health consultant of sorts” on the show, was not convinced by the findings of the new study. “Everybody wants a simple answer for a very complex social problem,” she told BuzzFeed News.

“Nobody’s randomly doing this show for shock value. I think we all feel really strongly that stigma has to be broken and these things have to be talked about,” said Hsu.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
Kim Kardashian Helps Free Man Serving Life For Low-Level Drug Offense

“He served too much time but it gives me so much joy to fund this life-saving work,” Kardashian West tweeted.

While Kim Kardashian West may be best known for being a social media star and for being married to Kanye West, she has also helped get low-level drug offenders out of prison.

According to People, Kardashian announced on Friday (May 3) that she helped release a man named Jeffrey Stringer, a low-level drug offender who has spent over 20 years in jail.

“We did it again!” she tweeted. “Had the best call w/ this lovely family & my attorney who just won release for their loved one Jeffrey in Miami. He served 22 years of [a] life sentence for [a] low level drug case. He served too much time but it gives me so much joy to fund this life saving work.”

Brittany Barnett, an attorney who worked with Kardashian to get Stringer released, told NBC Miami, “Someone’s life is in your hands. Their entire life. I don’t take it lightly. It’s an honor and a privilege for me to do this work and for Jeffrey to trust me with his life… To have served 22 years in prison, laboring under the dark cloud of dying there, and to get a second chance at life, it’s beautiful.”

Kardashian petitioned President Trump last year to help free Alice Marie Johnson, another nonviolent drug offender who was slapped with a life sentence. When Johnson was sentenced in 1996, she was a first-time drug offender, and she had no opportunity for parole.

Johnson told CNN she was “a telephone mule, passing messages between the distributors and sellers. I participated in drug conspiracy, and I was wrong.”

Once Johnson was free, a new piece of legislation, the First Step Act, was approved by Congress, and Trump signed it into law in December 2018.

As the First Step Act’s official website explains, “The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have voted overwhelmingly to pass the First Step Act… On December 21, 2018 President Trump signed the bill into law, bringing us one step closer to fixing a broken criminal justice system that has torn too many families apart and destroyed too many lives.”

“I never in a million years thought we would get to the point of getting laws passed,” Kardashian said. “That was really a turning point for me.”

Kardashian is currently studying to be a lawyer, and she hopes to take the bar exam by 2022.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
Ohio May Be First To Approve Medical Marijuana For Depression, Insomnia

The state is set to vote on whether to add depression and insomnia to the medical marijuana program’s qualifying list of conditions.

A diagnosis of depression or insomnia may qualify Ohioans for the state’s medical marijuana program.

In June, state officials will vote on whether to add five more ailments to its list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana—anxiety, autism spectrum disorder, opioid use disorder, depression and insomnia. If they vote to add depression and insomnia to the list, Ohio would be the first state to do so.

Currently 33 states have established medical marijuana programs, with a different set of qualifying conditions for each state.

Ohio’s list includes rare conditions, the Cincinnati Enquirer notes, such as sickle cell disease, fibromyalgia and Tourette’s syndrome. Ohio is also currently the only state that allows marijuana for the treatment of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease seen often in football players, boxers and military veterans caused by repeated head trauma.

Treating opioid use disorder with medical marijuana is already allowed in 4 states—Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Anxiety is a qualifying condition in New Jersey and West Virginia. Autism spectrum disorder is a qualifying condition in Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Utah.

Ohio approved medical marijuana in 2016 with 21 initial qualifying conditions that allow residents to obtain a medical marijuana card with a doctor’s recommendation. This is the first time since then that the State Medical Board has used its power to add to the list of qualifying conditions. The board will hold a final vote on adding the five conditions on June 12.

The Enquirer found that at least 3.5 million Ohioans suffer from at least one of the 21 qualifying conditions on its current list. If all five conditions are approved by the State Medical Board in June, the number of eligible Ohioans will nearly double.

The Enquirer’s report emphasized that there is little clinical research on marijuana “since the federal government considers marijuana as dangerous as heroin”—i.e., as long as marijuana remains in Schedule I, a category of drugs defined as having no medical value and a high potential for abuse, it will remain difficult to conduct research on it.

It seems inevitable that this will change, however. Ten states have decided to legalize marijuana for not only medical use, but recreational use as well. The state of Illinois may join them next. Governor J.B. Pritzker announced plans to legalize marijuana on Saturday (May 4).

And last week it was reported that Harvard and MIT alumnus Charles R. Broderick donated $9 million to both schools to study cannabis.

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
You Are What You Eat: How Chemicals in Food Affect Your Mood

Low-nutrient foods, plentiful in the American diet, are made of ingredients which can cause the same effects in the brain as mind-altering substances.

Lifestyle diseases include diabetes, obesity, stroke, heart disease, smoking, and substance use disorder. According to the CDC, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.

Trying to Quit Everything in Sobriety

When I finally quit rum and cocaine, I wanted to change everything about my lifestyle immediately. With close to no impulse control and without alcohol and drugs to distance me from my feelings, I was a revved up raw nerve of angst. My original plan was to quit smoking, lose ten pounds, and quit picking the wrong guys. Thankfully, when I was newly sober I made a new friend, let’s call her “Anne.”

“I’m getting fat,” I told Anne two weeks after we met. “I need to go on a strict diet. I can’t let myself put on even more weight now that I’m quitting cigarettes.”

Anne said, “Crash diets rarely work and smoking is one of the toughest habits to break. The way to get healthy is to tackle one problem at a time. For now, maybe putting down drinking and drugging is enough.”

Anne gave me that excellent advice decades ago. We’re still friends and it’s been educational watching her change over the years. Unlike me, she preferred living at a thoughtful and slower pace. Many of her great habits like meditation, mindfulness, and exercise rubbed off on me.

After two years clean, I met a woman who’d had throat cancer. She had a huge scar across her neck and talked like a frog. I ran home that night, threw out my brand-new carton of Newports and quit cigs cold turkey. I began going to the gym. Two years after that big change, I went to Weight Watchers and lost 12 pounds and I’ve kept it off. But I was still in love with sugar and picked up compulsively chewing Bazooka Joe. Anne didn’t like sweets, which I could never understand. She said they made her feel like she’d had too many cups of coffee. She also drank decaf.

Addicted to Sugar

I’d been a sugar addict since childhood; I used to sell my lunches to kids on line in the cafeteria and sneak to the corner store for Milky Ways and Snickers. Due to the high cost of dentists, I finally switched to sugar-free gums like Extra and Trident but when an old filling was pulled loose, I was done with gum.

Everyone knows that sugar isn’t good for you, right? I’d read Sugar Blues as a teen while dating a health nut. And I knew that diet soda wasn’t full of vitamins and nutrients, but I didn’t want to dig too deeply into its ingredients. Anne mentioned it a few times so I’d glanced at articles about aspartame here and there but the truth is, I avoided learning about it because I didn’t want to know. I love soda. I’ve tried to give it up many times without success. Based on Anne’s suggestion, I switched to water but couldn’t keep it going after a few short spurts. The longest I ever went was two weeks — water was boring. I always gleefully ran back to Diet Coke and Diet Cherry Pepsi.

In 2017, Donald Trump announced “We’re going to be cutting regulations at a level that nobody’s ever seen before.” Since then, I’ve wondered who is approving what and if anyone is checking anything anymore. For all we know, big companies are paying big amounts of money to keep us eating crap. That’s when it first hit me that I should become a more informed consumer; I knew it was stupid to keep ignoring what I was ingesting. But by that time, I was in the habit of making changes slowly and not in the informed way Anne did. I was putting off quitting anything else but it was starting to gnaw at me.

The Diet Soda Trap

At a recent work conference, I met a handful of health and wellness experts. While chatting I asked, “How bad is it that I’ve been addicted to diet soda for-like-ever?” Talking stopped, heads whirled toward me, jaws fell slack and I felt like an idiot.

“It’s full of toxic chemicals,” one said, finally breaking the silence.

“Aspartame is the worst,” said another.

A third woman chimed in with sarcasm. “It’s great if you love mood swings and gaining weight.”

That evening I googled articles about aspartame and additional sugar substitutes. The more I read, the more it reminded me of the immutable hold that cocaine had had on me. When I was in rehab I’d learned that my addiction had nothing to do with me being a “bad” person or having weak, wimpy willpower and everything to do with brain pathways and ingrained habits. By the time I left treatment, I had a newfound understanding that no matter how many times I’d tried to quit snorting sparkly white powder, my brain was as trained as any of Pavlov’s dogs. Through the repetition over many years, my brain had developed deep grooves and these ingrained patterns became triggers for my Pavlovian compulsion to sniff out and snort up rewards.

So here I am with all this knowledge that any self-destructive habit I want to break is going to take work. It means changing my lifestyle until I build new brain pathways or at least block off the old ones.

Soon after reading more about aspartame, I received a timely email from Jaya Jaya Myra (née Myra Rodriguez), with a link to her new TEDx talk. I remembered Myra’s strong background in neuroscience, which gave her opinion more weight in my mind. I knew she looked for solutions to her problems by studying her own brain, and that she sometimes found life-changing answers. Myra became a nutritionist, healer, Tedx-talker, and bestselling author of the book Vibrational Healing: Attain Balance & Wholeness. Understand Your Energetic Type, which I’d already read.

I was impressed by the new talk, so I asked her to meet me for lunch.

The Connection Between Trauma and Illness

“I cured myself of debilitating fibromyalgia,” she said as we sat in a diner. “Doctors couldn’t help me. The pain was debilitating and I lost everything—my job, my marriage, the bank foreclosed on my home, I couldn’t take care of myself or my three kids. When I was at my lowest point, I knew I had to figure out how I went from being totally healthy to completely debilitated.”

She described a long road to self-discovery that included meeting a Native American healer and Eastern medicine practitioners. “In Western medicine,” she said, “they focus on treating the symptoms, but fibromyalgia is a mysterious illness with no known causes or cures. Doctor after doctor treated me like I was an emotional female and it was all in my head.”

The only way to get better was to pinpoint the source of the problem. She went into therapy, worked hard, and found out she had repressed traumatic childhood memories. Her mother was an alcoholic who couldn’t take care of herself or of her daughter. Myra was neglected and traumatized and had developed self-destructive habits that made things worse.

I told her about my recent research. “Diet stuff can cause many more problems because of chemical sweeteners,” she said. “Aspartame is used in diet soda, sugar-free gum, yogurts, and so much more. It’s one of the worst sugar substitutes because it tricks your brain into thinking, ‘Ooh, sweet taste. I’m going to get a reward. But diet sodas don’t do that, they inhibit good hormones and neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. So you’re not satiated and it makes you crave more. It actually increases your appetite and wreaks havoc with your moods—depression, anxiety.”

Next I reached out to Emily Boller, author of Starved to Obesity, a self-help book about her journey out of food addiction. “Modern-day foods are completely abnormal,” she said. “They promote disease. I never chose depression. I didn’t want an addiction to food.”

Like Myra, Boller believes that eating disorders are symptoms of underlying conditions “like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.” And, like Myra, Boller had experienced her own trauma. “My son Daniel died by suicide in 2012, in part it was due to his addiction to artificial and processed foods. He had type 1 Diabetes.”

If Daniel’s blood sugar got too high, the avalanche of brain-damaging spikes would create a medical delirium called metabolic encephalopathy, with symptoms like psychosis. He was only 21 when he died. Losing her son sent her into shock, then a “suffocating depression.” She’d struggled with food since childhood—first with binge eating and weight gain which brought on cruel teasing in school. In her teens, she swung the other way, dangerously into anorexia. As an adult she became obese.

Craving Low-Nutrient Foods

“You know that you’re addicted to a certain food if you try to give it up but the cravings are so strong you cave,” said Boller. “Our bodies weren’t meant to eat artificially sweetened shakes, diet soda, sugar-free Jell-O, pudding or protein bars.”

Boller raves about her doctor, Joel Fuhrman, MD, a six-time bestselling author and president of the Nutritional Research Foundation who specializes in preventing and reversing diseases through nutrition. Boller credits Dr. Fuhrman for teaching her a whole new lifestyle. What she shared was in keeping with what Jaya Jaya Myra had said about aspartame, chemicals and nutrition.

Dr. Fuhrman taught Boller about addictive substances. “They activate the reward system and cause the brain to demand more and more.” Boller learned that willpower is no match for addictive drives and that low-nutrient foods — high in calories, intensely sweet, salty, or fatty — make up the majority of the standard American diet. “The ingredients cause the same effects in the brain that mind-altering substances do.”

Here’s one way to think of addiction: Imagine walking in a field of grass. When you walk to one spot, you make a connection that gives your brain a good feeling, just like when an opioid floods your brain with a rush of dopamine. Now, imagine going back to that spot so you can have that pleasurable experience again. With each repetition you have matted down the grass in the field into a pathway. It would be odd to walk any other way than along the pathway that directly leads to the brain’s reward. When your brain doesn’t get the expected reward, it keeps craving it and looking for it.

“That’s why whenever you want to change a habit,” said Myra, “you need to replace it with something positive until you build a new pathway.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
Walgreens To Train Staff In Mental Health First Aid

The 8-hour course will teach pharmacists mental health “literacy” and “how to help someone in crisis and non-crisis situations.”

Walgreens’ latest public health initiative aims to teach pharmacists and staff how to identify and respond to signs of mental health or substance use issues.

Through a partnership with the National Council for Behavioral Health and the American Pharmacists Association, the national drug store chain is training staff in mental health first aid—an 8-hour course on “mental health literacy, understanding risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, and strategies for how to help someone in both crisis and non-crisis situations,” the company stated.

“With the growing need for services and resources to help those living with mental health conditions, as well as substance use and addiction, we can play an important role by giving our pharmacists and certain team members the training to help those in crisis,” said Alex Gourlay, chief operating officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance.

More than 1.5 million people in the U.S. have completed the course.

“One in five people experiences a mental health or substance use issue in a given year and it’s likely that most of those individuals use a pharmacy’s services during that year,” said Linda Rosenberg, CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health.

This year, Walgreens will have installed safe medication disposal kiosks at all of its locations. It also offers naloxone without the need for a prescription.

In 2016, the company launched Walgreens.com/MentalHealth in collaboration with Mental Health America to provide a resource that connects people with treatment options, free screening tools and information such as “How to Manage Anxiety Medications” and “Helping a Family Member Who Has PTSD.”

Another major retailer, Walmart, is supporting community mental health by establishing a mental health clinic in a store in Texas.

Last year Walmart opened its first clinic in its Carrolton, Texas store, with plans to open more nationwide. The clinic is staffed by a licensed social worker and offers treatment for anxiety, depression, grief, relationship issues and more.

“People don’t know how to find a behavioral health or mental health professional. People don’t know where to go and what to do,” said Dr. Russell Petrella, president and CEO of Beacon Health Options, the company that collaborated with Walmart to open the clinic. “We’re trying to mainstream behavioral health services.”

View the original article at thefix.com

7 May 2019
New Law Allows Washington Students To Use Medical Marijuana On Campus

Prior to the passing of the new law, students would have to leave campus and miss school to take their medication.

The recent signing of a bill will allow students in the state of Washington to use medicinal marijuana at schools.

According to High Times, the signing of Ducky’s Bill by Gov. Jay Inslee will allow the use of medicinal marijuana in public schools, with a few provisions: it must be given in liquid form and can only be given by a parent of the student.

Previously, Inslee told K5 News that the goal of this bill is to keep students in school for more time rather than face losing that time because of having to be given their medication.

“Currently children who need medical marijuana… have to leave school. They’re missing valuable time,” he said.

According to High Times, the bill is named after 9-year-old River “Ducky” Barclay of Aberdeen, Washington. Barclay suffers from a genetic disorder referred to as Batten disease.

Because of this, she suffers from seizures. However, when the girl was in second grade, her parents found that the use of cannabis oil decreased her seizure activity and also lead to her being more focused during her classes.

As a result, Barclay and her father, John, began advocating for the use of such medications on school property. Her father was present at the bill signing, but reportedly said his daughter was too sick to be present.

According to her father, Ducky can no longer speak and is now blind. She is not expected to live past the age of 14. However, John says, she seemed to understand when he told her the bill had been passed.

“All I could say was, ‘I have the good news.’ She reacted very happily to it,” he said.

According to Washington state Rep. Brian Blake, who sponsored the bill, Ducky’s story has been inspiring.

“Like Ducky, there are other children in our state who struggle with seizures or other disorders and I am convinced that these bills will make their lives better,” Blake told KXRO. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can help these kids so they can have the same opportunity to learn and enjoy school as any other Washington student.”

For Ducky’s father, the chance to see the lives of other students improve due to his daughter’s action is meaningful.

“It’s humbling and overwhelming,” he said.

Similar bills have been passed in other states, the High Times reports, including New Jersey and Colorado.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 May 2019