Recovery Michigan

Across the U.S., nearly 20% of students report being bullied on school property. Bullying is associated with academic struggle, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and self-harm. Exercise has been widely reported to have robust positive effects on mental health including reduction in depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.

Using data from a nationally representative sample of youth who participated in the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (CDC), a group of researchers led by Dr. Jeremy Sibold of the University of Vermont, examined the relationship between exercise frequency, sadness, and suicidal ideation and attempt in 13,583 U.S. adolescents in grades 9-12. The authors hypothesized that exercise frequency would be inversely related to sadness and suicidality and that these benefits would extend to bullying victims.

Overall, 30% of students studied reported sadness for 2 or more weeks in the previous year; 22.2% and 8.2% reported suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt in the same time period. Bullied students were twice as likely to report sadness, and three times as likely to report suicidal ideation or attempt when compared to peers who were not bullied. Exercise on 4 or more days per week was associated with significant reductions in sadness, suicidal ideation, and suicidal attempt in all students. In particular, the data showed a startling 23% reduction in both suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt in bullied students who exercised 4 or more days per week.

Based on these findings, the authors concluded that exercise may represent a safe, economical, and potentially highly effective option in the response to bullying in schools. 

It’s an unfortunate statistic, but more than half of all U.S. residents have experienced a traumatic event, including domestic abuse, sexual assault, neglect, or a natural disaster.  For families and individuals who live in communities that are racially and ethnically diverse, or that are low-income or under served, these events are more familiar than they should be.

This presents an ever-mounting challenge to providing mental health care in those under served communities. The dilemma remains: While people who live in these communities often experience the most traumatic circumstances, they often have the fewest choices for specialty mental health care. Many also face an even more fundamental obstacle: They simply don’t know where to find such care. While this presents a great challenge for health care professionals, it also identifies an opportunity for change and growth.

It has been shown that trauma can affect an individual’s health in a variety of ways, contributing to chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, musculoskeletal pain, hypertension, depression and addiction. It’s a problem that should be and can be addressed.

Integrating elements of mental health care into primary care is a natural place to start.

The main purpose of the new study was to compare paroxetine (Paxil) and imipramine (Tofranil) with placebo for effectiveness and safety in treating adolescents with unipolar major depression. The original study had looked at 275 adolescents from 12 North American academic psychiatry centers from April 1994 to February 1998.

The revised results show that paroxetine and imipramine were neither statistically nor clinically significantly different from placebo. They also show that there were clinically significant increases in harms, including thoughts of suicide.

In an accompanying article to this new research, Peter Doshi, associate editor for The BMJ, says "for those who have been calling for a retraction of the Keller paper for many years, the system has failed."

Doshi then runs through a series of revelations concerning the errors made by the original investigators, the drug company staff and Keller's home academic institution.

A new protocol to treat babies born in withdrawal from drugs can be used widely to improve outcomes for these babies.

The protocol reduces length of stay and the duration of treatment with opioids that are used therapeutically to wean babies off of drugs.

"The incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome after an infant's in utero exposure to opioids has risen dramatically in recent years," says Eric Hall, PhD, a researcher in the Perinatal Institute at Cincinnati Children's and lead author of the study. "After adoption of the protocol, opioid treatment went from 34 to 23 days, and length of hospital inpatient stay dropped from nearly 32 days to about 24."

in 2013, hospitals in the Cincinnati area became the first to begin widespread universal drug testing of all expectant mothers. Ohio law does not require notification of law enforcement if a maternal test is positive, unless there is suspicion of criminal behavior that directly affects the safety or well-being of the newborn. This diffuses the possibility of drug tests leading to criminal charges and increases the likelihood of expectant mothers agreeing to provide a urine sample.

"Prior to this program, one of four women using opioids went undetected. Today we are detecting nearly all,"

In the trial, the authors tracked patients with BD following an acute depressive episode. They found that rapid-cycling patients who continued antidepressants following initial treatment for the episode experienced three times the number of depressive episodes the following year as those who discontinued use of antidepressants. RC patients who continued antidepressants were episode-free 52 percent of the time, while RC patients who discontinued antidepressants were episode-free 64 percent of the time.

Guides people through the first steps toward recovery and a hopeful future after a suicide attempt. Includes personal stories from survivors who share their experiences as well as strategies, such as re-establishing connections and finding a counselor to work with.

If you take a look at the advice on suicide warning signs the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (ASFP) provides, you’ll notice that it leads with analysing someone discussing suicide or depressive thinking. This is problem number one, regarding suicidal men — we’re trained not to talk, and thus a major source of warning signs for those who care about us are completely useless. So we need to address the problem — not talking — rather than attempt to fill in the gaps with guesses and prodding.

I’ve had friends, male friends, who are able to talk about a history of suicidal ideation. I’ve also had male friends who would, frankly, rather keep silent about it, even if the signs are so glaringly obvious it’s difficult not to panic as they obsess about death in public at two in the morning. So how do we break this wall down?

Sun Ra had his faith in this endeavor rewarded by the response of some of the patients. “While he was playing,” Szwed writes, “a woman who it was said had not moved or spoken for years got up from the floor, walked directly to his piano, and cried out ‘Do you call that music?’” Blount—just coming into his own as an original artist—was “delighted with her response, and told the story for years afterwards as evidence of the healing powers of music.” He also composed the song above, “Advice for Medics,” which commemorates the mental hospital gig.

It is surely an event worth remembering for how it encapsulates so many of the responses to Sun Ra’s music, which can—yes—confuse, irritate, and bewilder unsuspecting listeners. Likely still inspired by the experience, Sun Ra recorded an album in the early sixties titled Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, a collection of songs, writes Allmusic, that “outraged those in the jazz community who thought Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane had already taken things too far.” (Hear the track “And Otherness” above.) But those willing to listen to what Sun Ra was laying down often found themselves roused from a debilitating complacency about what music can be and do.

Insights from the forefront of addiction prevention, treatment and recovery approaches - from leading researchers to top advocates and treatment facilities.

Results indicate that 12 percent of the children and adolescents tried to harm or kill themselves in the month before the survey interview, 56 screened positive for depression, 33 percent for an anxiety disorder and 26 percent for PTSD.

Other results include:

• Nearly half of the boys (41 percent) and 19 percent of girls reported physical violence during trafficking.
• Sexual violence was reported by 23 percent of girls and one boy.
• During trafficking, children commonly worked seven days per week, with boys working an average of about 10 hours daily and girls about seven hours.
• Children symptomatic for PTSD, depression and anxiety were more likely to report self-harm, as well as children reporting suicidal ideation.