Recovery Michigan

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A personal peer-support worker also improved satisfaction with mental health care.

Peer-supported self-management can help reduce readmission rates in individuals experiencing a mental health crisis, researchers reported.

Interestingly, there were also more adverse events reported among the control group, including two suicides.

"If the finding that repeat periods of acute care were reduced by around a quarter is replicated in routine settings, the burden on the acute care system could be reduced substantially, and service users would have greater opportunities for sustained recovery," the researchers explained. "This trial adds promising evidence for self-management interventions for people with significant mental health problems."

The analysis included 218 individuals randomly assigned to the peer-support intervention group compared with 220 in the control group. All participants were from six crisis resolution teams around England, who were recruited following a discharge by the crisis resolution team. Individuals were excluded if they were considered to be a high risk to others and unsafe for the peer-support workers.

The peer-support intervention included 10 sessions of 1 hour each led by a peer-support worker once a week. All had personal experience utilizing mental health services themselves, and could, therefore, relate to the individuals in the group. The aim was to assist the individual in completing a personal recovery workbook and provide encouragement and coping strategies. The workbook included information on "setting personal recovery goals, making plans to re-establish community functioning and support networks after a crisis, using the recent crisis experience to identify early warning signs and formulate an action plan to avoid or attenuate relapse, and planning strategies to maintain well-being once a crisis had abated," the researchers explained.

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The bacteria that live in our gut are as numerous as the cells in our body. As medical research progresses, the influence that these billions of tiny creatures have on our health is becoming ever more apparent.

It comes as no surprise that they might play a role in gastrointestinal issues, but the microbiome's influence flies much further afield.

Most recently, it has become apparent that there is a significant relationship between gut bacteria and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety.

A recent piece of research, published in The Journal of Physiology, takes a fresh look at how gut bacteria are involved in gut health problems induced by stress. The work was carried out at APC Microbiome Ireland at University College Cork and Teagasc Food Research Centre in Ireland.

The role of SCFAs

The team of scientists was interested in short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Gut bacteria produce SCFAs when they digest fiber; the cells of the colon then use SCFAs as their primary source of energy, making them vital for good gut health.

The researchers found that when they introduced SCFAs to the guts of mice, stress and anxiety-based behaviors were significantly reduced.

After demonstrating that SCFAs reduce anxiety, they wanted to understand how these small molecules influenced physical, stress-related gut damage.

Known as a "leaky" gut, high levels of stress over time increase the intestine's permeability. This means that particles, such as bacteria and undigested food, can move more easily into the bloodstream, which can cause damaging chronic inflammation.

The researchers found that by introducing SCFAs, they reduced the gut leakiness caused by persistent stress.

"There is a growing recognition of the role of gut bacteria and the chemicals they make in the regulation of physiology and behavior. The role of short-chain fatty acids in this process is poorly understood up until now."

What does it all mean?

Fruits, vegetables, and grains naturally contain high levels of fiber. Although this study was conducted on mice, the inference is that a high-fiber diet might prompt gut bacteria to produce more SCFAs — thereby bolstering our gut's natural defenses against the damage caused by stress.

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http://bit.ly/2naPeJ7

For more than a year, we have been investigating drug and alcohol rehab programs that offer a tantalizing promise: freedom from addiction for free.

In exchange for treatment, people with addiction are required to work full-time jobs and turn over their paychecks to the rehab center. But we found that some of these programs are little more than work camps for private industry.

Now we need your help to keep the investigation going.

At each rehab we dug into, we found unique problems: Former chicken executives who created a rehab to provide chicken plants with labor. A judge who had participants do his yard work. Fortune 500 companies and powerful politicians reaping the benefits of the cheap labor. Participants put to work as caregivers in an assisted living facility, dispensing the very drugs that landed them in rehab.

We have amassed a list of tips about other rehabs that merit more scrutiny. But it would take years for us to do a deep dive on each of them.

So we’re opening up our database of tips to reporters and editors who want to investigate these work-based rehabs in their own communities. And we’ve put together a reporting guide with our pointers on how to investigate programs in your area.

Do you have experience with a work-based rehab? Share your story.

http://bit.ly/2naPeJ7 

https://thebea.st/2KlrxXJ 

A U.K. panel found humanitarian groups more concerned about their reputations than stopping their own predators from exploiting the world’s most vulnerable women and children.

The sexual abuse of women and girls by international aid workers and peacekeepers has been “endemic” across the sector for years, targeting both staffers and locals, as perpetrators jump virtually undetected among humanitarian NGOs, according to a report by the U.K.’s House of Commons International Development Committee.

The inquiry was ordered in February after serious allegations of sexual misconduct were reported at Oxfam and other NGOs this year. A report came to light in February that Oxfam staff had paid for prostitutes during its Haiti earthquake-relief mission in 2010. The Red Cross announced that same month that at least 21 staff members were dismissed or resigned after “paying for sexual services” in the past three years.

“The exact scale [of the abuse] is currently impossible to define” due to “confirmed under-reporting,” according to the inquiry, which was published on Tuesday.

But atrocious stories are plentiful. In one example from Haiti in 2007: “There is a girl who sleeps in the street...They took her to a man who works for an NGO. He gave her one American dollar and the little girl was happy to see the money. It was 2 in the morning. The man took her and raped her. In the morning, the little girl could not walk.”

These stories are likely “the tip of the iceberg,” the inquiry claims.

“It is particularly horrifying to find evidence of personnel from the aid and security sectors perpetrating these abuses rather than combating them,” the report states. “There seems to be a strong tendency for victims and whistleblowers, rather than perpetrators, to end up feeling penalized.”

Stephen Twigg, a member of parliament and chairman of the committee, told CNN the report laid out “the collective failure over a period of at least 16 years by the aid sector to address sexual exploitation and abuse.”

http://bit.ly/2KjYcwM

These are five stories around different kinds of addiction that are illustrated like comic books.

https://stan.md/2KgQpQG

People with depression have low blood levels of a substance called acetyl-L-carnitine, according to a Stanford University School of Medicine scientist and her collaborators in a multicenter study.

Naturally produced in the body, acetyl-L-carnitine is also widely available in drugstores, supermarkets and health food catalogs as a nutritional supplement. People with severe or treatment-resistant depression, or whose bouts of depression began earlier in life, have particularly low blood levels of the substance.

The findings, published online July 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, build on extensive animal research. They mark the first rigorous indication that the link between acetyl-L-carnitine levels and depression may apply to people, too. And they point the way to a new class of antidepressants that could be freer of side effects and faster-acting than those in use today, and that may help patients for whom existing treatments don’t work or have stopped working.

In those studies, the animals responded to acetyl-L-carnitine supplementation within a few days. Current antidepressants, in contrast, typically take two to four weeks to kick in — in animal experiments as well as among patients.

Nasca’s animal studies suggest that acetyl-L-carnitine, a crucial mediator of fat metabolism and energy production throughout the body, plays a special role in the brain, where it works at least in part by preventing the excessive firing of excitatory nerve cells in brain regions called the hippocampus and frontal cortex.

The new study, also initiated by Nasca, recruited 20- to 70-year-old men and women who had been diagnosed with depression and, amid episodes of acute depression, had been admitted to either Weill Cornell Medicine or Mount Sinai School of Medicine, both in New York City, for treatment. These participants were screened via a detailed questionnaire and assessed clinically, and their blood samples and medical histories were taken. Twenty-eight of them were judged to have moderate depression, and 43 had severe depression.

In comparing their blood samples with those of 45 demographically matched healthy people, the depressed patients’ acetyl-L-carnitine blood levels were found to be substantially lower. These findings held true for both men and women, regardless of age.

https://stan.md/2KgQpQG 

https://n.pr/2LJuHdB

Was it hard to concentrate during that long meeting? Does the crossword seem a little tougher? You could be mildly dehydrated.

A growing body of evidence finds that being just a little dehydrated is tied to a range of subtle effects — from mood changes to muddled thinking.

"We find that when people are mildly dehydrated they really don't do as well on tasks that require complex processing or on tasks that require a lot of their attention," says Mindy Millard-Stafford, director of the Exercise Physiology Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. She published an analysis of the evidence this month, based on 33 studies.

How long does it take to become mildly dehydrated in the summer heat? Not long at all, studies show, especially when you exercise outdoors.

"If I were hiking at moderate intensity for one hour, I could reach about 1.5 percent to 2 percent dehydration," says Doug Casa, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, and CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute.

For an average-size person, 2 percent dehydration equates to sweating out about a liter of water.

"Most people don't realize how high their sweat rate is in the heat," Casa says. If you're going hard during a run, you can reach that level of dehydration in about 30 minutes.

And at this level of dehydration, the feeling of thirst, for many of us, is only just beginning to kick in. "Most people can't perceive that they're 1.5 percent dehydrated," Casa says.

https://n.pr/2LJuHdB 

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I write this as both a (former) mental health professional and a consumer. I am a survivor of childhood trauma, who has lived with PTSD (or what I like to call: the-normal-human-reaction-to-being-in-a-really-effed-situation) for many years.

A word about PTSD: post-traumatic stress (disorder) is a normal reaction. 

Here are my 6 (kind and humble) suggestions to help you through those moments.

1. Noticing

As I mentioned, if you haven’t yet taken an inventory of your triggers, this is a good place to start. It’s also super hard, so please do this with a therapist, group or friend. Do it in a way that feels safe, and only do a little at a time.

If you are starting to feel unsafe, or are getting physical and mental cues from yourself that you are unsafe (but the stuff around you seems pretty normal), it is time to tune in.

Simply notice.

From my point of view this is THE HARDEST part. I need to know that I’m having a reaction in order to do something about that reaction, but a lot of the time my brain and body trick me in those moments and it can be super hard to know that my anxiety is escalating and I’m feeling triggered.

And more through the link...http://bit.ly/2M4wQwC 

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When you’re on military exercise, sleep is a luxury. Maybe you can only snatch a few hours each day. So there’s nothing so frustrating as lying in your sleeping bag with your eyes closed, waiting for something to happen.

You’re totally exhausted. You have to be up in three hours for picket. You’re distracted by the noises around you. There’s a rock jutting into your hip bone. Or you’re replaying the day’s events on repeat in your head.

If you don’t sleep, you’ll burn out pretty quickly. You’ll make bad decisions. You’ll let people down and become a liability.

The U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School developed a scientific method to fall asleep day or night, in any conditions, in under two minutes. After six weeks of practice, 96 percent of pilots could fall asleep in two minutes or less. Even after drinking coffee, with machine gunfire being played in the background.

Which means if you follow these steps, falling asleep will be a piece of cake.

The message is, don't bang your head....

http://bit.ly/2v27sB3

More than 8 years of play linked to Lewy bodies, parkinsonism.

People who played football, ice hockey, boxing, or other contact sports for more than 8 years were over six times more likely to develop neocortical Lewy body disease -- and in turn, symptoms of Parkinson's disease and dementia -- than people who played for 8 years or less, reported Thor Stein, MD, PhD, of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues in Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.

"Other studies have shown that a single traumatic brain injury is associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson's symptoms and Lewy body disease in the brain at pathology," said Stein. "Our study looks at this in the context of contact sports play, looking at many years of repetitive concussive and sub-concussive hits."

While Lewy bodies can affect a number of different brain areas, "we were specifically interested in looking at the cortex because we think that's where a lot of the injury occurs," he told MedPage Today.