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Tag: post traumatic stress disorder

  • Shia LaBeouf's New Movie Highlights Father's Heroin Addiction Struggle

    Shia LaBeouf's New Movie Highlights Father's Heroin Addiction Struggle

    LaBeouf wrote the screenplay for the semi-autobiographical film while in rehab.

    Shia LaBeouf’s latest film, Honey Boy, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25 to tell the world the story of the actor’s odd and tumultuous childhood that led to his struggle with addiction and mental illness.

    LaBeouf is known for his strange performance art as well as his acting and has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy during his long career.

    The boy who began as the star of the children’s TV show Even Stevens grew into the man who was twice arrested for disorderly conduct and conducted a performance piece in which he sat with a paper bag over his head and cried for six days.

    LaBeouf has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and has sought treatment for alcoholism, plus was ordered to attend an anger management program after going on a drunken tirade against the police who were arresting him for his second time.

    Honey Boy is a semi-autobiographical film that shows the verbal and emotional abuse which may have led to the actor’s PTSD. Fittingly, the actor wrote the script while he was in rehab in 2018, according to The Wrap. 

    LaBeouf himself plays James Lort, a clear representation of his real-life father, Jeffrey LaBeouf. James, like Jeffrey, is a Vietnam veteran and convicted sex offender with alcoholism who “pushed his son around while stumbling through a series of poor decisions,” according to film critic Eric Kohn of IndieWire.

    Meanwhile, Lucas Hedges plays a 20-something version of LaBeouf as his life quickly spirals out of control, culminating in a drunken car crash that lands him in jail and then rehab. While in therapy, he flashes back to the representation of LaBeouf’s childhood.

    Financial troubles result in a divorce between the representation of LaBeouf’s parents, ending in LaBeouf (“Otis”) living with his mother in a run-down motel and a world without warmth made worse by his “affection-averse” deadbeat dad.

    LaBeouf himself has opened up about his troubled past and his family’s history of substance abuse before.

    “When you’re 10 years old and watch your father going through heroin withdrawals, you grow up real fast,” he said in an interview with The Orange County Register. “You become the parent in the relationship. But I must give [Jeffrey LaBeouf] credit because he always told me that he didn’t want me to be like him.”

    The film’s director, Alma Har’el, told The Wrap that LaBeouf has “done the bravest thing anyone could do” by depicting his own father and called Honey Boy an “artistic exorcism” for all involved.

    “Obviously we all went through a lot of deep feelings while making the film, but nothing was too much. Everything was accepted. Whenever the demons came, we danced with them.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • "Hedge Fund Tycoon" Helps Fund Mental Health Clinic For Vets

    "Hedge Fund Tycoon" Helps Fund Mental Health Clinic For Vets

    The Cohen Veteran’s Network in Tampa, Florida will soon add another clinic to its ranks thanks to a “hedge fund tycoon.”

    Veterans in the Tampa area will soon have another option for mental and behavioral health treatment, as the Cohen Veterans Network plans to open a new clinic by March.

    The clinic, according to The Tampa Bay Times, is funded by “hedge fund tycoon” Steven A. Cohen. This will be the network’s 12th such clinic, and the concept behind them is to fill in the areas of mental and behavioral health that the Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t reach.

    This, according to the Times, will include services for veterans with “less than honorable” discharges as well as members of their families.

    The clinic is expected to serve about 500 patients in the first year of operation. To start, the clinic will be funded with $8 million in seed money, the Times states. The network covered the costs for the clinic buildout and the first three years of operation. By the six-year mark, clinic officials are required to have raised 50% of the operating costs.

    While both the American Veterans (AMVETS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs have expressed support, others aren’t so convinced. Marvin Southard, who was CEO of the Cohen Veterans Network’s first clinic at the University of Southern California, tells the Times that the clinics avoided treating more difficult patients for “commercial reasons.”

    “Both USC and NYU had problems with the Cohen program,” Southard said.

    Southard added that he feels “that what is required in a veteran-heavy locality like Tampa is a true convener organization or person who could bring the veterans service community together as collaborators rather than as competitors. I had hoped that the Cohen project could have served that role, but in Los Angeles, at least, they were inclined to do the opposite.”

    However, Anthony Hassan, the Cohen Veterans Network CEO and president, says the clinic’s mission is to simply fill the gaps in care. He says that since the first clinic opened in 2016, more than 8,600 patients have been treated through the network, and about half of those were non-veteran family members who were not eligible for treatment from the VA.

    According to the Times, US Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Trinity), who is the vice chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, is giving the clinics the benefit of the doubt.

    “Any entity serving the veteran community … should be held accountable for meeting the highest standard of care,” his spokesperson, Summer Robertson, told the Times via email. “If the Cohen Network helps meet an unmet need by providing mental health services in the Tampa area, that could potentially be a good option for some veterans.”

    Like the other clinics, Hassan tells the Times that the Tampa clinic will work with the VA and other local services to find patients needing care. He also says the clinics are not a method of privatizing care or profit-making.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Ben Foster’s “Leave No Trace” Tackles PTSD, Mental Health

    Ben Foster’s “Leave No Trace” Tackles PTSD, Mental Health

    In the critically-acclaimed movie, Foster plays a veteran coping with post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Ben Foster, star of X-Men: The Last Stand and 3:10 to Yuma, has received rave reviews and early Oscar buzz this year for his role Leave No Trace where he plays a veteran dealing with PTSD.

    Foster hopes the film will help reduce the public stigma around mental health, and as the actor told People, “Some wounds and illnesses are invisible to the naked eye. By sharing stories about our own unique experiences, we can allow a safe identification and hopefully a conversation. Any time we look past a bias or perceived stigma, for ourselves or others, we strengthen our own humanity. Practicing empathy is the first mighty step towards healing.”

    When Leave No Trace was coming together, Foster told Indie Wire that “the unseen scars of war” and how veterans cope with them “are things that have touched my life by having friends in the military, and I felt like I could ask these questions in an emotional way that I haven’t before, so that was exciting … Further than that, trauma is trauma, and war doesn’t get to own PTSD. Understanding that if you live long enough on this planet and you make it to a certain age we’re gonna experience things that go unresolved, leave a mark. We need to find ways to cope.”

    To prepare for the role, Foster consulted with Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a renowned psychologist who helps veterans. (In 2012, Van Dahlen made Time’s Most Influential People List.) Foster previously worked with Dr. Van Dahlen when he starred in the Chris Stapleton video for “Fire Away,” which also raised awareness for mental health awareness.

    Foster called Van Dahlen “one of [the] most beautiful compassionate humans I’ve had the good fortune of meeting. She helped guide us towards a more authentic expression of how depression manifests itself and affects loved ones, while at the same time suggesting hope and ways to connect.”

    Van Dahlen created a foundation for vets called Give an Hour, where therapists donate an hour of their time for free to help veterans cope after serving. (Since forming in 2005, the organization, through the work of 7,000 therapists, has reportedly given 250,000 hours of free help to vets.)

    With Leave No Trace, Van Dahlen feels it’s important “to tell authentic, accurate stories. We’ve had way too many in our history of sensationalized stories so, sadly, people think all veterans are broken, they all have post-traumatic stress. And that’s not true. ‘Leave No Trace’ is such a beautiful and compelling film … Ben really is such a student and was meticulous about getting it right and being authentic.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Keira Knightley Talks PTSD, Dealing With Early Fame

    Keira Knightley Talks PTSD, Dealing With Early Fame

    In a new interview, Knightley revealed the toll that sudden fame took on her mental health after the box office success of Pirates of the Caribbean.

    Keira Knightley first broke through to stardom with the film Bend It Like Beckham in 2002, then she hit the jackpot with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But early fame was very difficult for her to handle, and as she tells The Hollywood Reporter, she was diagnosed with PTSD after having “a mental breakdown at 22.”

    Knightley says the run of Pirates sequels “was completely insane – from the outside you’re like, ‘Whoa, that was hit after hit after hit!’ But from the inside, all you’re hearing is the criticism.”

    Knightley’s insecurities about being a young actress festered. “I was aware that I didn’t know what I was doing, you know? I didn’t know my trade, I didn’t know my craft. I knew that there was something that worked sometimes, but I didn’t know how to kind of capture that.”

    Being in the tabloids was hard to deal with as well. “I didn’t handle it well,” she reveals. “It was a really rude awakening to he world of misogyny…I never experienced that level of hatred on a day-to-day basis. There was a sense of, like, battle every day of leaving the house.”

    After Knightley suffered her mental breakdown at 22, “I did take a year off there and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of all that stuff.”

    Knightley traveled for a year, saying it “gave me that space I needed to be able to start again. I felt pretty much like I sort of didn’t exist and I was this weird creature with this weird face that people seemed to respond to in quite an extreme way, and I couldn’t quite figure any of it out.”

    Knightley also felt her family helped her through this dark time in her life, and she adds, “I can really enjoy things now. I look back and I just sort of want to give myself a hug and be like, ‘Oh, you’re doing all right, you’ll be all right.’”

    In 2015, Knightley spoke to Elle about therapy. “I highly recommended it. I don’t do it at the moment. But in my early 20s when I found everything completely overwhelming, 100%, I did it! I think when you’re in those moments in your life, and you want to get through them…you have to do whatever it is to help you get over it. You have to give it a go. Try anything that might help.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Mayoral Candidate Leaves Race To Deal With PTSD, Depression

    Mayoral Candidate Leaves Race To Deal With PTSD, Depression

    “I thought if I focused exclusively on service to my neighbors in my hometown, that I could fill the hole inside of me. But it’s just getting worse.”

    A Kansas City mayoral candidate and veteran of the war in Afghanistan has dropped out of the race in order to address his post-traumatic stress disorder. 

    Jason Kander, a rising Democratic star, reached a campaign milestone last week, but instead of celebrating the occasion he found himself reaching out for help.

    “Last Tuesday, I found out that we were going to raise more money than any Kansas City mayoral campaign ever has in a single quarter,” Kander wrote on Medium. “But instead of celebrating that accomplishment, I found myself on the phone with the VA’s Veterans Crisis Line, tearfully conceding that, yes, I have had suicidal thoughts. And it wasn’t the first time.”

    Kander served as an Army Intelligence Officer in Afghanistan before leaving the army 11 years ago. His book about his service Outside the Wire, became a bestseller this summer. However, about four months ago Kander says he reached out for help, saying “my tour over there still impacted me every day.”

    “I can’t have PTSD, I told myself, because I didn’t earn it,” he wrote. “But, on some level, I knew something was deeply wrong, and that it hadn’t felt that way before my deployment. After 11 years of this, I finally took a step toward dealing with it, but I didn’t step far enough.”

    Kander filled out forms online to get treatment from the VA. 

    “But I left boxes unchecked — too scared to acknowledge my true symptoms,” he wrote. “I knew I needed help and yet I still stopped short. I was afraid of the stigma. I was thinking about what it could mean for my political future if someone found out. That was stupid, and things have gotten even worse since.”

    Kander served as Missouri’s secretary of state from 2012 to 2016, defeating an incumbent Republican in the conservative state. Last year he started Let America Vote, a voting rights group. He will also be stepping back from day to day operations of that organization while he gets treatment. 

    “I’m done hiding this from myself and from the world. When I wrote in my book that I was lucky to not have PTSD, I was just trying to convince myself. And I wasn’t sharing the full picture. I still have nightmares. I am depressed,” Kander wrote. “Instead of dealing with these issues, I’ve always tried to find a way around them. Most recently, I thought that if I could come home and work for the city I love so much as its mayor, I could finally solve my problems. I thought if I focused exclusively on service to my neighbors in my hometown, that I could fill the hole inside of me. But it’s just getting worse.” 

    Kander said he knew that he wanted to be upfront about why he’s leaving the race. 

    “I decided to be public for two reasons: First, I think being honest will help me through this. And second, I hope it helps veterans and everyone else across the country working through mental health issues realize that you don’t have to try to solve it on your own,” he wrote. “Most people probably didn’t see me as someone that could be depressed and have had PTSD symptoms for over decade, but I am and I have. If you’re struggling with something similar, it’s OK. That doesn’t make you less of a person.”

    Read Kander’s full announcement here. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Tess Holliday On Postpartum Depression: I Wished I Could Disappear

    Tess Holliday On Postpartum Depression: I Wished I Could Disappear

    The model has been open about her struggles with postpartum depression on Instagram.

    Plus-sized model Tess Holliday opened up about her battle with postpartum depression to Cosmopolitan UK.

    The 33-year-old, who launched the body positive movement (#effyourbeautystandards) in 2013, struggled with postpartum depression after giving birth to her son Bowie, which lasted from January 2017 to the spring of 2018.

    “It felt like the water was boiling over and things were coming to the top again,” she recalled in a May post on Instagram. “I remember very vividly driving in the car with Bowie and I thought to myself, ‘I wish I could just disappear. I wish I could vanish.’”

    Holliday also confessed on Instagram, “I’ve never had suicidal thoughts, or self harm, but the thoughts of just wanting to stop hurting and feeling helpless were new and frankly overwhelming. I’ve been open about my struggles with Postpartum Depression, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized I had extreme PPD.”

    Holliday was afraid to turn to her family for help because she didn’t want to burden them. “I felt at that point like I was causing everyone around me so much pain,” she continued. “It felt like a never-ending black hole. I was so tired of hurting… I just didn’t want to be here any more.”

    Yet it was with the help of her family and antidepressants that she finally got out of the black hole. “Ask for help, talk to someone, find a support group or hell, message me. You aren’t alone and you don’t need to suffer alone.”

    Holliday confessed she still has tough days. “Some days are still filled with sadness, anxiety and helplessness,” she adds. “As I write this, I’m in the bath, crying to my life coach via text wondering how my life is so full of so many amazing things, but the good bits seem hard to reach… Moms are expected to ‘bounce back’ physically and emotionally. We are expected to ‘stay strong’ for the family. Yet most of us (myself included) still have days where we feel like a stranger in our bodies.”

    Holliday concluded, “I’m grateful to have support in my life, friends to talk to, but it got so bad that I had to take action and by doing so it potentially saved my life.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Vets Turn To Medical Pot, Despite The VA's Policy

    Vets Turn To Medical Pot, Despite The VA's Policy

    The VA remains focused on studying the drug’s “problems of use” instead of its “therapeutic potential.”

    Once a month, the veterans’ hall in Santa Cruz, California, is home to an unlikely meeting, where dozens of former service members line up to receive a voucher for free cannabis products from local distributors. 

    “I never touched the stuff in Vietnam,” William Horne, 76, a retired firefighter, told The New York Times. “It was only a few years ago I realized how useful it could be.” 

    The VA medical system does not allow providers to discuss or prescribe medical marijuana, since the drug remained banned under federal law, which governs the VA.

    However, up to a million veterans who get healthcare through the system have taken matters into their own hands, using marijuana to relieve symptoms of PTSD, pain and other medical condition associated with combat. 

    “We have a disconnect in care,” said Marcel Bonn-Miller, a psychologist who worked for years at the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, California, and now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania medical school. “The VA has funded lots of marijuana studies, but not of therapeutic potential. All the work has been related to problems of use.” 

    This means that veterans like those in Santa Cruz can end up self-medicating with cannabis without any medical oversight. 

    A bill proposed this spring would mandate that the VA study cannabis for treating PTSD and chronic pain. 

    “I talk to so many vets who claim they get benefits, but we need research,” said Representative Tim Walz, a Democrat from Minnesota, who introduced the bill along with Phil Roe, a doctor and Republican from Tennessee. “You may be a big advocate of medical marijuana, you may feel it has no value. Either way, you should want the evidence to prove it, and there is no better system to do that research than the VA.” 

    Still, VA spokesperson Curt Cashour said the bill is not enough to change the department’s policies. 

    “The opportunities for VA to conduct marijuana research are limited because of the restrictions imposed by federal law,” he said. “If Congress wants to facilitate more federal research into Schedule 1 controlled substances such as marijuana, it can always choose to eliminate these restrictions.” 

    Former Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs David J. Shulkin said that it’s time the system looked into the potential benefits of cannabis. 

    “We have an opioid crisis, a mental health crisis, and we have limited options with how to address them, so we should be looking at everything possible,” he said. Although two small studies are currently being done at the VA, Shulkin would like to see more. 

    “In a system as big as ours, that’s not much, certainly not enough,” he said.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Can Psychedelics Really Help Fight Addiction And Depression?

    Can Psychedelics Really Help Fight Addiction And Depression?

    New research explored whether psychedelics can “rewire the brain” and potentially cure a number of ailments.

    New research reinforces the idea of psychedelics’ potential to treat depression, substance use disorder and more, according to Science Daily.

    “People have long assumed that psychedelics are capable of altering neuronal structure, but this is the first study that clearly and unambiguously supports that hypothesis,” said lead author David Olson of the University of California, Davis.

    When a person is experiencing depression, anxiety, substance use disorder or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their neurites are affected. Neurites facilitate communication between neurons by bridging the gap between two neurons at the synapse, the point of communication. (Neurites become axons and dendrites.)

    However, when a person is suffering from any of the above, their neurites are not as active. “One of the hallmarks of depression is that the neurites in the prefrontal cortex—a key brain region that regulates emotion, mood, and anxiety—those neurites tend to shrivel up,” said Olson.

    But the research, published in the journal Cell Reports, observed that the psychedelics tested—LSD, DMT, MDMA, DOI (an amphetamine)— had the opposite effect.

    Instead, they promoted neurite growth, increasing both the density of dendritic spines and the density of synapses. In other words, the psychedelics had a positive effect on the brain’s neural plasticity, by making neurons more likely to branch out and connect with one another, according to Science Daily.

    The research observed these effects in rats and flies, but Olson and his team predict that the psychedelics will have the same effects in humans.

    “These are some of the most powerful compounds known to affect brain function, it’s very obvious to me that we should understand how they work,” said Olson.

    The findings offer a greater variety of potential antidepressant therapies. Previously, ketamine has shown promise in treating depression and suicidal ideation.

    According to Science Daily, some of the psychedelics tested in Olson’s research, including LSD, were even more effective than ketamine in promoting neural plasticity.

    “Ketamine is no longer our only option. Our work demonstrates that there are a number of distinct chemical scaffolds capable of promoting plasticity like ketamine, providing additional opportunities for medicinal chemists to develop safer and more effective alternatives,” said Olson.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Ariana Grande Opens Up About PTSD, Anxiety

    Ariana Grande Opens Up About PTSD, Anxiety

    The pop singer describes how the suicide bombing that occurred at her Manchester concert in May 2017 affected her.

    In May 2017, Ariana Grande had just finished performing at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England when a suicide bomb attack occurred in the foyer of the arena, taking the lives of 22 people and injuring many more.

    It was an event that she says fueled her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a subject she has a difficult time discussing today.

    As the singer told Vogue, “It’s hard to talk about because so many people have suffered such severe, tremendous loss. But, yeah, it’s a real thing. I know those families and my fans, and everyone there experienced a tremendous amount of it as well. Time is the biggest thing. I feel like I shouldn’t even be talking about my own experience—like I shouldn’t even say anything.”

    Grande added that looking back on the event, “I don’t think I’ll ever know how to talk about it and not cry.”

    Grande told Time, “The processing part” of her grief “is going to take forever.” She was reluctant to talk about the bombing because, “I don’t want to give it that much power.

    “Music is supposed to be the safest thing in the world. I think that’s why it’s still so heavy on my heart every single day. I wish there was more that I could fix. You think with time it’ll become easier to talk about. Or you’ll make peace with it. But every day I wait for that peace to come and it’s still very painful.”

    Grande admits she’s also been struggling with anxiety before the release of her new album, Sweetener. “I think a lot of people have anxiety, especially right now,” she says. “My anxiety has anxiety…”

    Grande then admitted, “I’ve always had anxiety. I’ve never really spoken about it because I thought everyone had it.” She told Time, “I never opened up about it, because I thought that was how life was supposed to feel,” but she added, “when I got home from tour it was the most severe I think it’s ever been.”

    Like a lot of artists, Grande threw her emotions into her music, saying that after going into therapy, “I felt more inclined to tap into my feelings because I was spending more time with them. I was talking about them more. I was in therapy more… When I started to take care of myself more, then came balance, and freedom, and joy. It poured out into the music.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com