Recovery Michigan

For targets of workplace bullying who suffer severe psychological and social pressure, there are many resources and trained professionals to help them. But for targets of workplace mobbing, which is a form of group bullying that can have even greater impacts on one’s psychological well-being and career, there are far fewer resources. Moreover, few mental health professionals are trained to recognize mobbing, much less adress its impacts. 

As someone who receives phone calls and emails from mobbing targets on a regular basis, and having survived a particularly egregious case of workplace mobbing(link is external), I have come to see that how a mobbing target heals and recovers from mobbing varies, depending on the psychological stage of grief they are in when they seek help. 

Remarking upon the enormous caution she now takes before saying or doing anything in the presence of a loved one, local mother Sharon Powell, 64, told reporters Tuesday she knows any wrong move she makes could be interpreted by her family as a telltale sign of dementia.

Powell claimed that even the simplest memory lapse, such as momentarily forgetting a distant relative’s name or losing track of what day of the week it is, might cause her children to worry that her mental state is in decline, setting into motion an irreversible series of events that would end with her moving into an assisted-care facility.

For-profit long-term care facilities have significantly higher rates of mortality and hospital admissions than their not-for-profit counterparts, new research has found.

The study examined admissions at 384 for-profit and 256 not-for-profit long-term care facilities in Ontario, Canada, between January 2010 and March 2012. One year after admission, the for-profit facilities showed an overall mortality rate of 207.5 residents per 1,000 person-years, compared to a rate of 184 for not-for-profit facilities. The hospitalization rate for for-profit facilities at the one year mark was 462.4 per 1,000 person-years, while the rate for not-for-profit facilities was 358.0.

J.R. Robinson rubbed his hands together. A hollow sadness sits behind his eyes, punctuating a broken expression.

"I'm struggling every day," said the 51-year-old Holland resident; a Tennessee accent filling soft, steady words.

"Bipolar depression doesn't go away like a virus. There's only so much medications can do."

His appearance at the Holland Drop-In-Center on Sept. 29, was no easy feat.

Without scheduled classes two days a week at Community Mental Health of Ottawa County, motivating himself to leave his apartment is a battle.

"It kept me from isolating; it kept me from drinking," Robinson said. "We felt like we were somebody."

It's been six months since CMH dropped Robinson from services.

He's not alone. About 50 CMH clients in Ottawa County no longer receive treatment after the agency went through a round of budget reductions this spring.

Swift budget cuts made this year by the county meant reductions in services for clients with mental health and developmental disabilities, and staff layoffs.

Local officials have pointed to changes in their Medicaid funding, but regionally, there's more in play.

Women, and especially younger women, are much less likely than men to have good relief of chronic, non-cancer pain with long-term opioid use, with only one in five women reporting low levels of pain and high levels of function with chronic opioid therapy in a new study published in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In "Sex and Age Differences in Global Pain Status Among Patients Using Opioids Long-Term for Chronic Non-cancer Pain," Linda LeResche, ScD and coauthors, University of Washington School of Dentistry and School of Medicine, Seattle, and Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, CA, evaluated global pain status among chronic opioid therapy users. The researchers report that young and middle-aged women are at particularly high risk for unfavorable global pain status, and this population also faces unique risks from opioid use, such as reduced fertility and potential effects of opioids used during pregnancy on the developing fetus.

"Given the high rates of chronic opioid use in women along with evidence of poor relief from pain and concerning risks, particularly in reproductive-aged women, we need more effective and safer options for managing pain in this population," Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women's Health.

"Alcohol is not essential to the health or well being of a pregnant woman and is known to be harmful to her baby," argue Mary Mather, a retired paediatrician, and Kate Wiles, a doctoral research fellow in obstetric medicine at Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust.

They say "the only ethical advice that can be given is complete abstinence from alcohol in pregnancy."

Infants can suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, mental retardation, development and behavioural abnormalities, and low birth weight. But how and when fetal damage occurs is unknown and will vary according to each individual pregnancy, they explain.

"Pregnant women must know there is no evidence of a threshold level of alcohol consumption in pregnancy below which there can be certainty that exposure is safe," they argue. They also say that "current guidance flies in the face of evidence and international consensus," adding that these present a "contradictory, confusing barrage of mixed messages."

Cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol use cause epigenetic changes to DNA that reflect accelerated biological aging in distinct, measurable ways, according to research presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore...

"These new tools allow us to monitor smoking and alcohol use in an objective way, and to understand their effects quantitatively," Ms. Dogan said. "Furthermore, our methods could be used to analyze any set of 450 BeadChip data, which means that existing data can be used to identify new patterns and that all such results can be easily compared."

"Being able to objectively identify future smokers and heavy alcohol users when they are young, before major health issues arise, can help providers and public health practitioners prevent future problems, improve quality of life, and reduce later medical costs," Dr. Philibert added.

One in four young people have experienced chronic pain and a mental disorder. According to a new report in the Journal of Pain, the onset of pain is often preceded by mental disorders: an above-average rate of incidence of depression, anxiety disorders, and behavioral disorders occurs before the onset of headaches, back pain and neck pain. The report is based on the findings of researchers at the University of Basel and Ruhr-Universität Bochum, who analyzed data from around 6,500 teenagers from the USA.

Mental disorders and chronic pain have an adverse effect on quality of life and well-being in those affected and present a huge challenge for the health system. Studies on adults have already shown that mental disorders and chronic pain frequently occur together.

Now, a research group led by private lecturer Dr. Marion Tegethoff of the University of Basel's Faculty of Psychology has investigated how often and in what patterns - and, above all, in what chronological order - these connections occur in children and young people. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the project analyzed a representative sample population from the USA, consisting of 6,483 young people between the ages of 13 and 18.

The researchers found that more than a quarter (25.9%) of the young people had suffered from chronic pain and at least one mental disorder during their lifetime. At the same time, they identified connections between all of the investigated types of mental disorders (such as affective disorders, anxiety disorders, behavioral disorders, substance-induced disorders, and eating disorders) and chronic pain disorders (such as back/neck pain and headaches). The onset of pain was frequently preceded by mental disorders. For example, affective disorders such as depression occurred particularly frequently before headaches. Furthermore, anxiety disorders often occurred before neck and back pain, as well as before headaches. Finally, behavioral disorders such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders also indicated a risk of headaches.

Women who served in Vietnam have higher odds of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than women stationed during that era in the United States, and this effect appears to be associated with wartime exposures including sexual discrimination or harassment and job performance pressures, according to an article published online byJAMA Psychiatry.

During the Vietnam era, approximately 5,000 to 7,500 American women served in the U.S. military in Vietnam, at least 2,000 were stationed at nearby bases in Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Korea and Thailand, and 250,000 were in the United States. Most of the deployed women were nurses, although others filled clerical, medical and personnel positions. Although women were excluded from combat, women in Vietnam were still in a war theater and many of those stationed near Vietnam were exposed to casualties and other stressors.