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Tag: mental health disorders

  • Jane Pauley Talks Bipolar Diagnosis, Ending Stigma

    Jane Pauley Talks Bipolar Diagnosis, Ending Stigma

    “Words have power. The word ‘stigma’ is its own stigma. So every time you say ‘stigma,’ it is a reminder for people like me that I’m fighting two wars.”

    Veteran broadcast journalist, Jane Pauley, is something of a household name, since debuting on the Today show as Barbara Walters’ replacement at the age of 25. Now 68, the CBS Sunday Morning host has continued her advocacy for mental health awareness, since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder nearly 20 years ago.

    Pauley appeared on CBS This Morning to speak on the issue for the show’s “Stop the Stigma” segment.

    “When I was 49, I was not bipolar. When I was 50, I was,” she said. “I was switched, flipped…”

    “I Was In Pretty Deep Trouble”

    Pauley described how a bout of hives led to her diagnosis. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2001—a mood disorder that is characterized by dramatic mood swings.

    She had no family history of the mood disorder “that I know of,” so her diagnosis came as a surprise, especially in middle age. “It unmasked what doctors described as a genetic vulnerability to a mood disorder, and by that time I was in pretty deep trouble,” she said.

    A Cover Story From Her Doctor

    Pauley’s doctor was so reluctant about sharing Pauley’s diagnosis with others that he offered her a cover story to hide her bipolar disorder.

    “The only time in my life… that I experienced stigma was that day, day one, when I recognized that my doctor was giving me a cover story to tell my employers that I was being treated for a thyroid disorder, which was true, but I knew it was not the whole truth.”

    Instead of hiding her truth, Pauley wrote down her experience in her book published soon after her diagnosis, Skywriting: A Life Out of the Blue. (An excerpt can be read on NBC News.) Pauley said that her doctor “went pale” at her decision to write about it, but she went ahead and did it anyway.

    Ending Stigma

    “Words have power. The word ‘stigma’ is its own stigma,” she said on CBS This Morning. “So every time you say ‘stigma,’ it is a reminder for people like me that I’m fighting two wars. It’s not enough that I have a disorder that’s pretty serious, but I’m also fighting this front.”

    She added, “My goal is that we fight stigma, which is real, but we fight it with sophistication. It’s a medical disorder.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mental Health Disorders Rising Among Millennials 

    Mental Health Disorders Rising Among Millennials 

    Working long hours and stagnant wages may play a role in the rise. 

    Millennials are struggling with mental health at an alarming rate, according to Business Insider.

    In connection with World Mental Health Day, Business Insider spent time studying the state of mental health in millennials. Among the main takeaways of the research were the facts that both depression and “deaths of despair” are increasing among 23-38 year olds, and that the job market—specifically long hours and stagnant wages—is affecting their mental health. 

    Depression Diagnoses Increase By Nearly 50%

    When it comes to depression, a report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index indicates that millennials and teens are dealing with increased rates of depression in comparison to other generations. Since 2013, the report found, millennial depression diagnoses have increased 47%. 

    Going hand-in-hand with the increase in depression, more millennials are also dying as a result of drugs, alcohol and suicide, often referred to as “deaths of despair.” According to Time reporter Jamie Ducharme, deaths of despair have increased for all ages in the last 10 years, but have increased the most in the younger generations. In 2017 alone, about 36,000 millennial deaths were considered deaths of despair with drug overdoses as the most common cause. 

    Financial Pressure May Be A Factor

    Finances may be another factor contributing to the mental health of millennials, Business Insider reports. It’s thought that the financial stress of student loans, healthcare, childcare and housing may factor into the rate of mental health disorders in the generation.

    “Studies have found a correlation between people with debt and mental-health problems,” Business Insider reports. “While this research, by its nature, can’t identify causality, the likelihood of having a mental-health disorder is three times higher among those with unsecured debt… People who have died by suicide were eight times more likely to have debt.”

    As a result of financial stress, some millennials may not be able to afford treatment for such mental health struggles.

    Workplace Burnout

    Also contributing to deteriorating mental health are feelings of loneliness and burnout, both in and out of the workplace.

    “It’s a growing problem in today’s workplace because of trends like rising workloads, limited staff and resources, and long hours,” Business Insider states.

    Despite the obstacles they are facing, Business Insider reports that millennials are still more likely than other generations to attend therapy and as such, are starting to destigmatize it.

    According to Wall Street Journal reporter Peggy Drexler, millennials view therapy as a way to improve themselves, but also as a way to cope when they haven’t met their own expectations. 

    “Raised by parents who openly went to therapy themselves and who sent their children as well, today’s 20- and 30-somethings turn to therapy sooner and with fewer reservations than young people did in previous eras,” Drexler wrote. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Is Mindfulness Meditation A Viable Treatment Option For Depression, Anxiety? 

    Is Mindfulness Meditation A Viable Treatment Option For Depression, Anxiety? 

    Experts believe that the mental health practice can be beneficial to those dealing with mental health issues.

    There may be another treatment option for those struggling with mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, according to Psych Congress.

    Speakers at the 2019 Psych Congress discussed the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation as a treatment for such disorders, either on its own or alongside other treatment options. 

    In short, those who practice mindfulness meditation choose a “target,” which can be something like their own breath or a mantra. When they find their minds drifting elsewhere, according to Psych Congress, they acknowledge those thoughts and then redirect themselves to their chosen target.

    Hitting The Reset Button

    Psych Congress Steering Committee member Saundra Jain says mindfulness meditation helps “reset the balance” in the brain for those struggling with mental health disorders. She notes that people should “think about mindfulness as a way to soften, dampen, or quiet that internal chatter.”

    Jain also explored the scientific evidence for the practice, stating that brain imaging has demonstrated that mindfulness meditation is linked to an increase in the volume of gray matter in four different areas of the brain. She also noted that there was a connection between the practice and “beneficial changes in the activation of parts of the brain” and that the practice can still be beneficial to those patients who may already be on a medication.

    “Mindfulness meditation practices are effective interventions, and sometimes for mild to moderate conditions—depression and anxiety—super-effective as front lines,” Jain said.

    According to psychiatrist Michele Hauser, this practice has been around for about 3,500 years, with roots in Europe beginning in the 1700s. Such practices, according to Hauser, made their way west in the mid-20th century. She added that since 1999, the number of studies about mindfulness meditation have increased. 

    For Hauser, it’s important to note that the practice teaches its users how to respond to a situation rather than just react. 

    “Instead of spiraling downward into increasing anxiety and depression, we’re able to stop that spiral and respond in a more appropriate fashion,” she said.

    Practicing mindfulness meditation can be done in any moment, according to Mindful.

    “Mindfulness is available to us in every moment, whether through meditations and body scans, or mindful moment practices like taking time to pause and breathe when the phone rings instead of rushing to answer it,” the website states.

    The site also speaks about the importance of posture and positioning when practicing. 

    In order for the practice to be effective, Jain says that patients must practice it daily and cannot skip days. Research, she says, has shown the practice to be effective even if only for 10 minutes each day.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Could Microdosing Psychedelics Treat Mood Disorders?

    Could Microdosing Psychedelics Treat Mood Disorders?

    A new study investigated whether low doses of psychedelic drugs could have an antidepressant effect. 

    Individuals in and out of the medical community have long been fascinated with psychedelic drugs and their short- and long-term mind-altering effects.

    Some people with depression believe the drugs have the ability to treat mental health disorders, and new research indicates they may be right.

    A study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience found that rats who received tiny doses of the psychedelic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) experienced an antidepressant effect, but no negative effects on their memories. 

    “Taken together, the data presented here suggest that subhallucinogenic doses of psychedelic compounds might possess value for treating and/or preventing mood and anxiety disorders,” study authors wrote. However, they warned that more research is needed into the safety and effectiveness of microdosing in humans.  

    “Despite the therapeutic potential of psychedelic microdosing, this practice is not without risks, and future studies need to better define the potential for negative neurobiological or metabolic repercussions,” they wrote. 

    The data suggests that people who extol the virtues of using psychedelics to treat depression and trauma may be on to something. 

    “These antidepressant-like and anxiolytic-like effects are consistent with the anecdotal human reports regarding psychedelic microdosing providing strong supporting evidence that psychedelic microdosing might actually have therapeutic potential,” study authors wrote. “Compounds capable of enhancing fear extinction learning in rodents, such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) are excellent candidates for treating PTSD symptoms in humans.”

    With microdosing, an individual would receive enough of a drug to stimulate brain changes, but not enough to induce hallucinations. Finding the most effective amount may be time consuming, but researchers expressed “cautious optimism” that it could be done effectively.

    “The overall psychedelic microdosing load, which includes the amount of drug in each dose, the frequency of administration, and the length of treatment, is likely to be critical for achieving the beneficial effects of psychedelic microdosing without negative repercussions,” they wrote. 

    Proponents of psychedelics say that the drugs—even taken at high doses—can help alleviate symptoms of depression, addiction and other mental health conditions. In fact, during the 1950s and ’60s, psychedelics were a mainstream treatment option in Canada. Today, many people with addiction turn to ibogaine treatment, which is illegal in the United States, to help them heal from addiction and trauma. 

    Kevin Franciotti wrote for The Fix about his experience using ibogaine to treat his addiction: 

    “Each month throughout the year following my single dose treatment, an investigator called me to administer an outcomes interview measuring my addiction severity, and mailed me additional scales to fill out myself. At the end of my participation in the trial, ratings for depression, anxiety, and addiction severity had plummeted, reflecting the new lease on life ibogaine had brought me.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Are "Night Owls" More Prone to Depression?

    Are "Night Owls" More Prone to Depression?

    Researchers examined if burning the midnight oil could put you at higher risk for mental health disorders.

    New research has found that a genetic link may exist between individuals who prefer sleeping later, or “night owls,” and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and even schizophrenia.

    A study of genomic data—information culled from an organism’s genetic and DNA material—from thousands of participants in a UK health survey found that while differences in sleep timing did not impact sleep quality of “night owls” or “morning people,” it did reveal a causal link between night owls and the aforementioned conditions.

    While the reason for the connection remained unclear, researchers indicated that its presence underscored the need for greater research into genetics and mental health.

    The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, reviewed genomic data from nearly 700,000 participants culled from two sources: the private, U.S.-based genome analysis company 23andMe and the non-profit UK Biobank.

    Participants were given a health survey in which they would answer if they were “morning people” or “night owls” based on sleep timing and tendencies. The researchers compared information from the survey with data from wristband activity trackers worn by 85,000 participants in the UK Biobank.

    The data yielded two significant findings. First, the researchers determined a vastly larger number of regions in the human genome—351—associated with early rising than previously identified; prior to the study, only 24 of these regions were known to science. Study participants with more gene variants connected to early rising typically went to sleep up to a half hour earlier than individuals with fewer variants.

    These variants also appeared to be linked to both the retina and the body’s circadian clock, which is the body’s means of monitoring sleep, wakefulness, digestion and other bodily functions.

    As study lead author Samuel Jones noted, “Part of the reason why some people are up with the larks while others are night owls is because of differences in both the way our brains react to external light signals and the normal functioning of our internal clocks.”

    But what the scientists also found was that those individuals whose genomic data identified them as night owls also had a greater propensity for the risk of depression and schizophrenia, among other conditions.

    Sleep quality or lack of sleep did not appear to play a role in this causal link, and while the researchers were unable to determine a specific reason for the link, study co-author Jacqueline Lane suggested that a combination of physical stimuli, such as morning light, societal pressures—the need to feel awake in the morning and midday due to work schedules—and genetics may play a role.

    “Our current study really highlights the need for further study of how chronotype is causally linked to mental health and, until these studies are done, we can only speculate on the mechanism,” said Lane.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • AI May Soon Be Trained To Diagnose Mental Illness

    AI May Soon Be Trained To Diagnose Mental Illness

    Some scientists believe that AI-diagnosed mental illness will be a reality in the space of years, not decades.

    Scientists in multiple fields of psychology are actively gathering data and undergoing testing in an effort to teach artificial intelligence programs to diagnose mental illness in humans. This is according to a report in The Verge written by B. David Zarley, who himself has borderline personality disorder, as part of its Real World AI issue.

    Zarley met with multiple scientists who are each taking their own approach to machine learning in the service of finding a better way to diagnose psychological disorders.

    The current model, based on referring to the DSM to guide psychiatrists to make diagnoses around a patient’s self-reported symptoms, is inherently biased and considered by many in the field of psychology to be flawed. The current director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Dr. Joshua Gordon, feels that way himself.

    “We have to acknowledge in psychiatry that our current methods of diagnosis—based upon the DSM—our current methods of diagnosis are unsatisfactory anyway,” Gordon told Zarley in an interview.

    Diagnosing people based on purely physical data is not yet within reach the way that diagnosing people with physical illness is. With advances in computer science, however, it is finally possible to train AI software to compile data and recognize patterns in a way that a human brain simply could not handle.

    “Machine learning is crucial to getting [Psychologist Pearl Chiu’s] work out of the lab and to the patients they are meant to help,” Zarley writes. “‘We have too much data, and we haven’t been able to find these patterns’ without the algorithms, Chiu says. Humans can’t sort through this much data—but computers can.”

    Additionally, scientists envision using MRI technology to help discover the root of certain mental illnesses or their symptoms and even treat them by allowing patients to directly see the results of their thoughts and better understand how their brains function.

    “[Research coordinator Whitney] Allen was asked to project her brain into the future, or focus on the immediate present, in an attempt to help find out what goes on under the hood when thinking about instant or delayed gratification, knowledge which could then be used to help rehabilitate people who cannot seem to forgo the instant hit, like addicts.”

    Many of the scientists Zarley spoke with believe that AI-diagnosed mental illness will be a reality in the space of years, not decades. However, there are both practical and ethical concerns to be considered.

    AI built and taught by humans, who are biased, cannot help but be biased itself. Zarley points out that “different cultures think of certain colors or numbers differently.” Data for the AI program also must be collected from human samples, and that is much easier done from a developed nation in an area with a university. That leaves entire populations from poorer nations and even rural populations in the U.S. largely out of the picture.

    There are also numerous ethical concerns any time the idea of artificial intelligence is raised. In their paper The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute and Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute address multiple concerns. 

    “Responsibility, transparency, auditability, incorruptibility, predictability, and a tendency to not make innocent victims scream with helpless frustration: all criteria that apply to humans performing social functions; all criteria that must be considered in an algorithm intended to replace human judgment of social functions; all criteria that may not appear in a journal of machine learning considering how an algorithm scales up to more computers.”

    Regardless, AI is on its way, and the scientists Zarley interviewed are optimistic about future results.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • California Aims To Tighten Law That Diverts Suspects To Mental Health Treatment

    California Aims To Tighten Law That Diverts Suspects To Mental Health Treatment

    Prosecutors argue that a new law should restrict the type of suspects who can qualify for mental health treatment in lieu of jail.

    California prosecutors are fighting to amend a law aimed at diverting mentally ill suspects to treatment in lieu of the criminal justice system.

    The law, signed by Governor Jerry Brown in June as part of a budget bill, gives judges the option to divert a suspect to a mental health treatment program and dismiss charges if it is decided that mental illness “played a significant role” in the crime, NBC News reported.

    The diversion program was intended to reduce the backlog of suspects sent to mental hospitals, NBC News reported, because they are judged incompetent to stand trial.

    California law already allowed for the diversion of mentally ill suspects, but prosecutors argue that the new law extends the privilege to too many people, namely people charged with serious crimes.

    The new law allows the diversion of “any suspect with mental illness”—including bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, but excludes anti-social personality disorders and pedophilia, the LA Times reported.

    In response, Governor Brown submitted a proposal on Monday night to limit who can participate in the diversion program. The proposal allows judges to exclude a “much broader range of dangerous suspects,” specifically banning those charged with murder, rape and other sex crimes from participating in the program.

    Another part of the proposal prohibits suspects from owning firearms while participating in the program, and they may be required to pay restitution.

    El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson said the proposal is “a significant improvement from the original language that was passed and signed into law as part of the budget,” according to the Times.

    However, not everyone agrees with the proposal. One deputy public defender said the proposed revision “guts mental health diversion and goes far beyond a reasonable compromise,” allowing California counties to “continue to do what they have done for years—send sick people to prison instead of treatment.”

    “The end result is higher incarceration rates for ill Californians, lawsuits for ill Californians, lawsuits against counties for mistreatment of the mentally ill and higher recidivism rates for untreated offenders,” said LA County deputy public defender Nick Stewart-Oaten, who is a member of the California Public Defenders Association’s legislative committee.

    View the original article at thefix.com