Tag: News

Woman Aims To Open "Coffee Rehab," A Safe Space For Those In Recovery

“This is an opportunity to get out and to be around people and to not have the temptation of alcohol,” said the Minnesota entrepreneur.

If you’ve ever gone through the process of getting sober, you likely know how difficult it can be to find alcohol-free spaces to spend time socializing.

For this reason, one Minnesota woman in recovery is working on opening a new coffee shop aimed at the recovery community.

Katy Armendariz tells Fox 9 that the coffee shop, called Coffee Rehab, would have late hours and serve as a safe space for individuals in recovery.

“This is where the tables will be and everyone can come and gather and order their drink or food and play cards, socialize and have a sense of community,” Armendariz tells Fox 9.

Armendariz says she recently left treatment for substance use disorder and knows how important it is for those in recovery to have a judgment-free space to turn to.

“And so I have a very close and personal connection to the recovery world and I can see myself running this coffee shop and having it be a safe place for people in recovery, people trying to get sober,” she says.

“It is increasingly difficult to find spaces that are dry places and to talk openly about your addiction,” she adds.

Armendariz also works as a social worker and tells Fox 9 that down the line, she could see the coffee shop and her business somehow overlapping.

“Minnesota Care Partner offers mental health and chemical health services,” she said. “We have an outpatient program called Roots Recovery and I envision this being the offices and a place that we offer groups. So, anyone in the coffee shop wants additional support they are able to get it right next door.”

Though in the early stages of fundraising, Armendariz says she is hopeful that a Kickstarter campaign will help her reach her goal of $250,000. As an incentive, she is offering different rewards for different pledge amounts.

“Well, as we can see, this place needs a lot of work,” she tells Fox 9. “And, I’m hoping to get support from the community, especially the recovery community through a Kickstarter campaign and have people pledge ten dollars. If it’s $10, you get a free coffee when we’re open. If it’s $25, it’s two coffee drinks and two snacks. And there’s different pledge levels and my rewards are based on amount.”

In all, Armendariz says, it’s about creating a sense of community.

“This is an opportunity to get out and to be around people and to not have the temptation of alcohol.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
New Series "Pure" Explores Living With OCD, Porn Addiction

The British series Pure is based on a memoir by Rose Cartwright.

Pure is a new British TV series that is based on a memoir by Rose Cartwright. The show is about a Scottish woman transplanted in London named Marnie who has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and she is called a Pure O, or “pure obsessive state,” which is a variation of obsessive compulsive disorder where a person is plagued by intrusive, unwanted thoughts that involve something terrible happening.

While Marnie doesn’t have the physical rituals of OCD, her character constantly has intrusive thoughts where she sees people naked and having sex everywhere she goes.

In the show, Marnie explains her condition, “It’s like The Sixth Sense but I don’t see dead people, I see naked ones. Most people move to London to seek their fortune. I’ll settle for some answers.”

At first, Marnie thinks she’s a sex addict, but then she learns more about her condition when she meets people she hopes can help her.

The show also follows Charlie, who is addicted to porn. Charlie is played by Joe Cole (Black Mirror, Peaky Blinders), and as he tells Esquire, “I didn’t know about Pure O before I read the script, and then [I] started researching. Very few people seem to know that it exists, and know that it’s a form of OCD. I think it’s great that we’re shedding light on it, because when Rose was young she never had something like this that she could see and understand what she was going through.”

When asked how he’s seen mental illness being portrayed on TV before, Cole said, “I think these conditions have been previously expressed in comedies and comedy dramas as just, like, hysterical people. And we’re not actually trying to delve in and find out what it really is and try to give a true representation. Not just make a joke about it, but actually explore it in an interesting way and have fun along the way. I can’t really remember a mental health drama when I was growing up, watching teen shows.”

In playing a character who has an addiction to porn, Cole was asked if he was able to draw any conclusions about the condition from playing his character. “Nothing that I could give you in a neat little sentence,” he said. “I think compassion is key, and at the moment porn addiction is still quite taboo. Someone [with the condition] said they’d rather be addicted to drink—people have far more compassion and empathy [for it]. But they’re real conditions, and people are suffering with them.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Parents Should Ask Questions About Opioids For Kids, Teens

Doctors warn that while being mindful of addictive properties of opioids is important, it’s also critical that pain be controlled for young patients.

Despite concern about the risks for addiction, there remains a legitimate medical need for opioid painkillers to manage pain for children and teens in some cases, and doctors say that parents can encourage responsible use of opioids by talking with their child’s provider about how best to manage pain.

“Opioids are very potent relievers of pain, very effective,” Dr. Linda J. Mason, a professor of anesthesia and pediatrics at Loma Linda University and president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists told The New York Times. “But they have addictive properties, and also side effects, like respiratory depression.”

Mason suggests that parents ask their provider how the doctor plans to manage a child’s pain. This can even begin at a pre-operative meeting, so that everyone has the same expectations about pain management. Although opioids may be needed in the short-term following surgery or a broken bone, patients can usually transition away from them quickly. In other cases, like those involving burns or serious illness, opioids may need to be used for a longer period of time.

Doctors warn that while being mindful of addictive properties of opioids is important, it’s also critical that pain be controlled for young patients.

“Treating pain adequately helps recovery, reduces the downstream psychiatric and psychological effects,” said Dr. Elliot J. Krane, chief of pain management at the Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford and professor of anesthesiology and pediatrics at Stanford University. “In the absence of risk factors or concerns about the child’s home environment, I am more concerned about deleterious effects of untreated pain than I am about creating somebody with substance abuse disorder.”

Krane said that if patients are prescribed opioids “rationally and appropriately” there is little cause for concern about substance misuse. Krane has very few patients who are prescribed opioids for chronic pain, but some do need the strong medications, he said.

He described himself as “neither pro-opioid nor anti-opioid, but pro-patient.”

In addition to discussing pain management ahead of time, Mason recommends that parents ensure that any unused opioids are properly disposed of.

“You should not keep them for use for a future time,” Mason said. “These are for a specific surgery.”

Many doctors and pharmacies are conscious of prescribing opioids in a very controlled manner for children and teens, but parents still have an important role to play in helping prevent opioid abuse in patients.

“Parents who are well-informed can give the best care to their children,” Mason said.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Actor Kristoff St. John Found Dead Of Suspected Alcohol Poisoning

“He was able to overcome so many things, but the death of Julian was just a breaking point for him in a lot of ways,” said one source.

On Monday February 4th, prolific actor Kristoff St. John was found dead, and alcohol poisoning is suspected. The official cause of death is deferred pending further investigation, USA Today reports.

For almost 30 years Kristoff St. John starred in the soap opera, The Young and the Restless, as Neil Winters. Beloved by friends, family, and coworkers, St. John’s life had been struck by tragedy when in November 2014 his 24-year-old son, Julian St. John died by suicide while undergoing treatment at a mental health facility.

At age 18, Julian had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that comes with a 40% risk of a suicide attempt, with males being at higher risk than females.

After Julian’s suicide, Kristoff St. John and his ex-wife Mia St. John, a respected boxer and Julian’s mother, sued the mental health facility where their son died for negligence, and won an out-of-court settlement.

According to TMZ, in winter 2017, Kristoff St. John reportedly attempted suicide close to the time of the third anniversary of his son’s death. St. John was placed on a 72-hour suicide watch after threatening to shoot himself.

On January 21, St. John retweeted what now seems to be a terrible harbinger, a message that read: ‘Grieving the loss of a child is a process. It begins on the day your child passes, and ends the day the parent joins them.’

“He was able to overcome so many things, but the death of Julian was just a breaking point for him in a lot of ways,” Stephanie Sloane, editorial director of Soap Opera Digest, said of St. John, to PEOPLE.

St. John’s ex-wife, immediately following the announcement of Kristoff St. John’s death, blamed the mental health facility. She wrote on Twitter in a since-deleted tweet:

‘THAT HOSPITAL KILLED OUR SON THEN MY HUSBAND. THATS WHAT HAPPENED! THEY KILLED MY FAMILY.’

After the actor’s death was made public, friends and coworkers flooded social media with words of grief and fond remembrance of a man who seemed full of kindness and love. Actress Vivica A. Fox called St. John “a true gentleman.”

PEOPLE recounted St. John’s 2013 Soap Opera Digest interview, where he movingly discussed his son’s struggle.

“My son, Julian, has been suffering from a drug addiction for some years now and has also been diagnosed schizophrenic. Unfortunately, he doesn’t take his medication, which disallows a daily health routine,” he said. “Quite often, people who suffer from bipolar disorder self-medicate because they refused to take their pharmaceutical drugs, so we have had out issues. Poor boy felt that the local park was more of a home than his mother’s home or mine, based on the relationship he has with a certain female, and I can’t condone that relationship. I never thought my son would be the kid at the gas station with the gas can trying to get a couple of dollars out of somebody for a bogus story, and this is where Julian is.”

St. John discussed his son’s artistic abilities proudly, ending with, “There is hope.”

Kristoff St. John won two Daytime Emmys for his role in The Young and the Restless, playing an ambitious executive at a cosmetics company. Coworker and close friend Shemar Moore told PEOPLE, “This is not how he’s going to be remembered in his last days. He’s going to be remembered for his journey, for how much he loved his children — Paris, Lola, and Julian, his son who had a hard time and took his life.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Evan Rachel Wood Gets Candid About Psychiatric Hospital Stint At 22

The Westworld actress penned a powerful testimony about her time at a psychiatric hospital for Nylon magazine.

Evan Rachel Wood first broke through in the movie Thirteen, where she played a troubled teenager. Wood is currently starring on the hit sci-fi show Westworld, and now she’s revealed to Nylon that she checked into a psychiatric hospital when she was 22 years old.

Wood wrote about her experiences in an essay, where she states, “When I was 22, I willingly checked myself into a psychiatric hospital, and I have absolutely no shame about it. Looking back, it was the worst, best thing that ever happened to me.”

Wood realized she needed help after a suicide attempt. In the morning, she called her mother: “Mom? It’s me…I just tried to kill myself…I need to go to a hospital.”

At the time, Wood was more worried about how her mother would take her cry for help.

“This is how much I worried about others and not myself,” she says today. “I had almost died, but the guilt and responsibility I felt toward others was so extreme.”

Wood says, “I had collapsed under the stress and pressure of being alive.” She was suffering from PTSD, which she says was the result of suffering “multiple rapes and a severely abusive relationship that went on for years.”

Her mother asked her why she took what could have been a final step, and Wood told her, “I just wanted some peace.”

After some searching, Wood found a facility and checked in. She paid “a significant amount of money” for her hospital stay, and she says, “Mental health shouldn’t be a luxury for the rich. It felt like I barely made it by the skin of my teeth – and I am privileged. Imagine how hard it is with no health insurance or money or resources?”

Wood had seen movies that dealt with mental illness like Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, yet she thankfully realized getting help didn’t fit this Hollywood stereotype.

After several days of rest, she finally opened up to fellow patients and would later participate in group therapy. Once she started interacting with her fellow patients, she discovered, “…We were incredibly loving and empathetic to each other, even when we disagreed or someone lost their shit. We forgave, very easily.”

Looking back on this event, Wood says it was “the first time in my entire life” she “asked for help. I admitted I could not go on without someone intervening, to pick me back up off the floor.”

Wood is still in therapy, and admitted, “I still struggle with PTSD, but I know that I will get through it. I have better tools now to get through what seems like the impossible times, and most importantly, I know my worth.”

Wood writes, “There is no economic class, race, sexuality, or gender that is safe from their own mind. We know success doesn’t cure depression, we know that people telling you they love you doesn’t cure depression, we know that just thinking positively doesn’t cure depression. Depression isn’t weakness, it’s a sickness. Sometimes a deadly one. And sometimes all people need is to know that they are loved and that others are there for them. They may not take your hand right away, but knowing it’s there could save their life one day. Or who knows, you might help save your own.”

If you or someone you know may be at risk for suicide, immediately seek help. You are not alone.

Options include:

Calling the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-TALK (8255)

Calling 911

Calling a friend or family member to stay with you until emergency medical personnel arrive to help you.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Artie Lange Sobering Up In Jail Before Entering Long-Term Treatment

The comedian reportedly tested positive for cocaine and morphine prior to entering the correctional facility.

Comedian Artie Lange was booked into a New Jersey jail after testing positive for cocaine, and is expected to enter a long-term treatment program, according to his legal representative.

According to posts from “Team Lange” on his Twitter account, Lange entered the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark on January 30 after testing positive for both cocaine and morphine; the incident comes less than two months after he tested positive for cocaine and other substances during a court visit for probation violation in December 2018.

Lange’s lawyer, Frank Arleo, said that the Crashing actor could be at Essex County through February 6, and expected that Lange would be moved to an inpatient drug treatment program soon after.

The first post on January 30 from “Team Lange” read that Lange would be undergoing a long-term treatment program “starting today,” and promised updates before capping the post with the words, “It’s time.”

Lange had been booked into, but not sentenced, at Essex County Jail that same day, and remanded to state Superior Court in Newark, where he was given a drug test. Team Lange’s next post on January 31 noted that “the comments made by Artie’s lawyer have been taken out of context”—meaning that he had not been arrested or sent to jail, but had been booked for “a few days to sober up before transferring him to a long term treatment facility.”

The post concluded with the statement, “Artie needs us to be with him, not against him.”

Arleo said that his client “knows he shouldn’t have tested dirty, but he did. He knew what was going to happen.” Arleo added that Lange’s case is due to be evaluated on February 6, and going forward, the primary concern will be “finding a bed at an inpatient facility” for Lange.

Lange tested positive for cocaine, amphetamines, benzodiazepines and Suboxone during a December 14, 2018 court appearance for a 2017 probation violation. At the time, Arleo said that Lange had prescriptions for the amphetamines and benzodiazepines, and was using Suboxone to treat his opioid dependency. Lange avoided jail time when the presiding judge recommended that Arleo apply for Lange’s admission to drug court and complete community service in addition to the four years of probation for the 2017 violation.

In December 2017, Lange tweeted, “I feel now I can also stop Cocaine [sic]. But that’s arrogance and addiction. I’m accepting help. If I fail now I will go to jail. Jail is not for addicts. But I’d be giving them no choice. When I use illegal drugs I have to score them. That’s breaking the law.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Patriots Owner Robert Kraft Speaks Out About Josh Gordon's Addiction Struggle

“This wasn’t a troublemaker in the locker room. Unfortunately, he had some personal demons,” Kraft said.

New England Patriots wide receiver Josh Gordon should be enjoying his team’s victory at this year’s Super Bowl LIII, but instead he watched the game from rehab.

Gordon has had to endure a number of suspensions from the NFL because of drug violations, and he missed many games for failing drug tests. Gordon became a Patriot last September, and it seemed he was finally back with a vengeance, but last December he was suspended by the NFL indefinitely for failing another drug test.

Right before the Patriots won yet another Super Bowl on Sunday, the team’s owner, Robert Kraft, spoke candidly to Boston Sports Tonight about Gordon’s struggles.

Kraft appeared on the show with his son, Jonathan, the president of the Patriots. Kraft said Gordon was a “real good guy” with a lot of potential who was respected by his teammates. “It makes us sad,” Kraft said. “This wasn’t a troublemaker in the locker room. Unfortunately, he had some personal demons.”

Once he became a Patriot, Kraft was certainly aware of the player’s history. Gordon did a great job for the team until December, when he was suspended indefinitely after failing a drug test.

Jonathan explained that Gordon wasn’t raised with a support system. “He saw other people doing it, and it gets back to the original way we grew up. That doesn’t mean people don’t get addicted from all walks of life… but you get exposed to it in a whole different way when you come from where Josh Gordon came from.”

Robert Kraft added, “We gave him tremendous support on a daily basis, and he was worthy. But I think we as a society have to try to help these young people not to get addicted in the first place. And that’s the sad part of this. He’s a good guy—a really good guy.”

Gordon’s troubles with drugs began back in the seventh grade. In addition to marijuana, he also drank and regularly took Xanax, hydrocodone and oxycodone as well. He told Uninterrupted that one coach in college helped him cheat drug tests, and he said, “I’ve been enabled most of my life… everybody pretty much gave me a second chance because of my ability.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Mental Health Care Access Remains An Obstacle For Inmates

Across the country, facilities are struggling to provide the care needed for inmates with mental health issues.

For inmates like Ashoor Rasho, who has been diagnosed with severe depression, schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, seeking help for mental health issues while incarcerated proves difficult.

“Even if they would label us schizophrenic or bipolar, we would still be considered behavioral problems,” Rasho tells NPR. “So the only best thing for them to do was keep us isolated. Or they heavily medicate you.”

Rasho’s sentence, according to NPR, was extended numerous times due to him assaulting prison staff after being set off by various triggers.

In 2007, Rasho was among 12,000 other inmates who sued the Illinois Department of Corrections for not adequately treating those with mental health diagnoses, and instead punishing them.

In 2016, the case reached a settlement and the state decided to re-assess and improve its mental health care.

Even so, NPR reports that a federal judge maintains that such care is still “grossly insufficient” and “extremely poor.”

The issue isn’t just in Illinois. Across the country, correctional facilities are struggling to provide the care needed for inmates with mental health issues. State and federal prison data from 2011 through 2012 indicated that about 40% of inmates have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, yet only about half of those were received medication or counseling.

In Illinois specifically, providing adequate care has been a central area of struggle.

“Corrections in Illinois was a little slow to recognize we are the mental health system for Illinois,” John Baldwin, director of the state’s corrections department, tells NPR. “Whether we want to be or not, we are; and we have to start acting like it.”

According to Baldwin, change is in motion. He says that since he started in his position in 2015, more mental health staff has been hired and training has been implemented. He says most of the state’s inmates spend about eight hours per day outside their cells and see a therapist weekly.

He also notes that around 765 of the inmates with the most serious diagnoses have been moved to a residential facility for treatment.

The Joliet Treatment Center, located southwest of Chicago, is one of the prison facilities making strides in such care. A few years back, the prior youth detention center underwent a $17 million renovation to become the current mental health treatment facility for inmates.

Warden Andrea Tack tells NPR that inmates at Joliet dedicate about 30 hours weekly to activities and individual treatment plans.

Alan Mills, one of the attorneys from the 2007 lawsuit, says he has witnessed some transformations in inmates in such facilities.

“And it’s a difficult transition,” he tells NPR, “because you’ve been treated in a place where you’re continually traumatized, and then you get to a place where actually people care about you.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Alcohol-Related Liver Disease Is Affecting New Demographics

Alcohol-related liver damage used to be associated with older men but new statistics suggest that the disease is now increasingly affecting younger people.

A new troubling trend is on the rise with regard to alcoholic liver disease, or ALD.

Over the years, as young people began to drink more and more, related problems began to arise. College-aged-kids going into alcoholic comas, becoming injured or dying during drunken frat-house parties have become a pressing concern, and now doctors are seeing ALD in more younger Americans.

ALD used to be considered “an old man’s disease,” Michigan Medicine liver specialist Jessica Mellinger, MD, told Michigan Health. Onset symptoms of alcoholic liver disease include chronic fatigue, poor appetite, itchy skin and abdominal pain and swelling.

A national study led by Mellinger and colleagues looked at seven years of data from over 100 million U.S. residents with insurance. “One of the scariest statistics out there that my colleagues unveiled in a study is that cirrhosis mortality related to alcohol use increased the most in people 25 to 34 years old,” Mellinger said.

Between 1999 and 2016, there was an average increase around 10% every year of young people who died from alcohol-related liver damage.

“This is really dramatic and mirrors what we are seeing in the clinic,” Mellinger notes. “It signals that more alcohol abuse is occurring.”

The research found that more women than men had alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver over the seven-year study, with women at a 50% increase and men at 30%. Over one-third of cirrhosis cases in the study were related to alcohol.

Men and women absorb and metabolize alcohol differently, leaving women more vulnerable to liver damage. And women also have less body water, so women and men with the same amount of alcohol consumption will have different blood alcohol concentrations.

Mellinger also believes that American culture plays a part in women’s drinking. “There is this ‘mommy juice’ culture, this ‘mommy juice’ humor involving wine that’s normalizing drinking in a bad way,” she told Michigan Health. “There is nothing funny about alcoholic liver disease.”

In addition, Dr. Vijay Shah, head of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic, told NPR that the study’s emphasis on American youth is new.

“Alcohol-related liver cirrhosis used to be considered a disease that would happen after 30 years of heavy alcohol consumption,” Shah said. “But this study is showing that these problems are actually occurring in individuals in their 20s and 30s.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019
Doctor Reflects On Missing Depression Symptoms

“Psychiatrists are the experts in making the diagnosis, but primary care doctors like me are the ones who most frequently do make the diagnosis—although they may not catch it every time.”

Long before Dr. Keith Roach was helping others get better, he himself was depressed. Only, he didn’t know it at the time.

Despite being overwhelmed by feelings of despair, Roach, an associate professor in Clinical Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill-Cornell Medical College, never thought to ask for help, he wrote in a recent piece for Men’s Health.

“It certainly didn’t cross my mind to see a doctor: I was 17 years old and in perfect health. The idea I might not be in perfect mental health didn’t even cross my mind,” he said.

It was only in medical school that he realized that what he experienced was more than teenage angst—it was clinical depression.

“I finally realized that I had been through a pretty textbook case of major depressive disorder. It was a bit of a shock reading about it,” he wrote.

Doctors use diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V to determine whether a patient has depression. Although the criteria—which include “depressed mood most of the day” and “moving or speaking more slowly (or much more faster) than normal”—seem straightforward, they contain a lot of nuance, which can cause doctors to miss depression diagnoses, Roach said.

“Experience is essential because interpreting the answers to the questions requires judgment: it isn’t always a simple yes or no answer,” he wrote.

Oftentimes, primary care doctors, who don’t specialize in mental health, are the ones screening patients.

Roach wrote, “Psychiatrists are the experts in making the diagnosis, but primary care doctors like me are the ones who most frequently do make the diagnosis—although they may not catch it every time.”

In addition to helping educate doctors on the nuances of diagnosing depression, Roach reminds patients that it’s important to advocate for themselves and bring their symptoms to the attention of their medical provider.

“Even in 2019, there remains a stigma to mental illness, and many people (especially men) feel that depression is a sign of weakness, and they are loath to admit it, to themselves or to people who might help them. This is a barrier I have had to fight many times,” Roach wrote.

Sometimes, people with depression need to ask friends or family to help them seek medical care.

“One barrier to treatment of depression is the depression itself,” Roach wrote. “Some people have an overwhelming fatigue that prevents them from going to see someone about it.”

Although it has been more than 30 years since Roach experienced feelings of depression, he still monitors himself for signs and asks his loved ones to do the same.

He said, “If they recognize that I am not myself they can feel safe in letting me know so that I could get treatment sooner. I don’t want to feel that way, and my family, coworkers, and friends don’t want that for me either.”

View the original article at thefix.com

6 February 2019