Recovery Michigan

Re: Autistic boy, 11, kills himself

I phrase it that way. I don't phrase it the way the article did. Blaming the autism and ADHD for suicide. This was a boy who befriended a locust in a tree. His mother said he felt like the adults at his school didn't care and could not make connections in his class. Had a gift with animals.

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Isolated and miserable, I managed to find refuge in certain places. The art room, where the art teacher encouraged me to explore with sharpies and gel pens and acrylic paints. The debate room. My 10th grade English teacher's classroom. The scene shop, where I would frenetically sweep and clean the entire area after school.

Unlike Shane Laycock, I had supportive adults in my high school. I don't know how, considering the story told by so many of us of being shunned by even the adults who are supposed to care. I don't know what would have happened without them.

I was going to kill myself two and a half weeks ago. Calm down, it’s cool; I didn’t. I’m sure most of you who follow me have seen me post about how long it’s been since I quit alcohol. It’s coming up on 21 months now and that’s pretty incredible for someone who was addicted to crack and heroin in their mid-20's. But I had a secret (not just the dolls buried underneath old man Wiggins’ abandoned cabin). I never said I was sober. I went out of my way never to use that word, because I wasn’t. I’ve been smoking pot since I was 18 and never stopped. Today, I have 15 days completely sober and I don’t think I should write these words which is exactly why I’m going to.

I’ve battled depression since I was a teenager. I’ve had two suicide attempts in my life. This last time was different. Before I get into that, let me talk about pot. Rather, here’s what pot did to me (instead of making sweeping generalizations): it slowly choked to death every good quality about me.

The last three years I have been a terrible human being. I didn’t remember people’s birthdays and, much like Janice in accounting, I just didn’t give a fuck. I stopped going out of my way to make drawings or music mixes for my friends. I started three different screenplays that I got two pages into then stopped. I was that guy that would post things like, “BIG THINGS HAPPENING!” “JUST YOU WAIT!” “HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY AND A VIETNAM VET!” (okay… maybe not that last one). I lost weight, which was scary because on a good day I weighed as much as a scarecrow full of wheat, because I was always worried. Worried about being found out as a fraud. My older brother and his amazing wife had a daughter and last week, after two years, I bought the first present I’ve ever gotten for her. That’s simultaneously pathetic and awesome (the fact, not the gift. The gift was a dope construction doo-hickey that she loves).

I started therapy today and am going to meetings again. I feel like my life has meaning and I have worth. I have an amazing job where I get paid to write jokes. 

Bright light treatment either alone or combined with an antidepressant was an effective and well tolerated treatment for adults with nonseasonal major depressive disorder (MDD) in a randomized clinical trial, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

MDD is among the leading causes of disability worldwide and is associated with impaired quality of life and an increased risk of death. Treatments include psychotherapies and antidepressants but remission rates remain low so more therapeutic options are needed. Light therapy has been effective treatment for seasonal affective disorder(SAD).

Raymond W. Lam, M.D., of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and coauthors conducted a double-blind and placebo-and-sham-controlled trial to test the efficacy of light treatment alone and in combination with fluoxetine hydrochloride compared with a placebo treatment involving an inactive device and a placebo pill.

The eight-week trial randomized 122 patients: light therapy (30 minutes/daily exposure to a fluorescent light box as soon as possible after awakening) and placebo pill (n=32); fluoxetine (20 mg/daily) and placebo device (a negative ion generator, n=31); combination light and fluoxetine treatment (n=29); or placebo device and placebo pill (n=30). The change in a common depression rating scale score was the study's primary outcomes.

The authors report combination therapy and light therapy alone were superior to placebo but fluoxetine alone was not superior to placebo.

Patients with no recent history of taking opioid pain medication had a 25 percent higher risk of chronically using the drugs if they received them when discharged from the hospital, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

"These drugs are highly effective for pain control, but also cause feelings of euphoria. For these reasons, patients may ask their physicians for additional opioid medication even after their acute issue is resolved," said study author Susan Calcaterra, MD, MPH and assistant professor of medicine at the CU School of Medicine.

The researchers, a collaboration of experts from across health care disciplines, looked at 6,689 hospital patients who were prescribed opioids when discharged. None of them had been prescribed an opioid in the year preceding their hospitalization. Of those, 1,688 filled a new opioid prescription within 72 hours of leaving the hospital.

"These patients were more likely to become chronic opioid users and had an increased number of opioid refills one year post-discharge, compared to patients without opioid receipt," said Calcaterra. "They were five times more likely to be chronic users after one year."

esearchers at Duke Medicine and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine were surprised to find that in a study of 1,420 children, those who bullied others were twice as likely to display symptoms of bulimia, such as bingeing and purging, when compared to children who are not involved in bullying. The findings are published in the December issue of International Journal of Eating Disorders.

"For a long time, there's been this story about bullies that they're a little more hale and hearty," said lead author William Copeland, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. "Maybe they're good at manipulating social situations or getting out of trouble, but in this one area it seems that's not the case at all. Maybe teasing others may sensitize them to their own body image issues, or afterward, they have regret for their actions that results in these symptoms like binge eating followed by purging or excess exercise."

Washtenaw County's mental health services budget was $80 million in fiscal year 2012.

Next year's budget, approved by the Board of Commissioners in late September, is $65.7 million and more than 230 of the approximately 3,700 patients served by the county have lost services in the past year.

What happened?

Two major changes in state policy combined with questionable decision making by the leadership of an organization functioning without direct county control led to the sharp decline, which will mean a loss of services for some and a change in the quality of services for others.

Because money comes into the county from different places, some funds can only be used for certain services, new programs have been created and old ones have been phased out, the numbers in the subheadings below are meant to represent approximate dollar values in determining where the $14.3 million went.