Recovery Michigan

ProPublica and The Virginian-Pilot are exploring the ways children of Vietnam veterans may be affected by a parent's exposure to Agent Orange.

The Department of Veterans Affairsacknowledges that direct exposure to Agent Orange and other defoliants may lead to negative health consequences for veterans. Some veterans’ service organizations, including the Vietnam Veterans of America, have expressed concern that exposure has also led to health issues in the children of veterans.

Are you a Vietnam veteran? You can help us learn more about this issue by completing the short survey below, which includes questions about your service, family and health. Please answer as completely as you can. Your personal information will not be shared with others without your permission, but reporters plan to aggregate statistical information and publish an overview about the results of the survey, without identifying specific individuals.

Are you the family member of a veteran?Please complete our survey for family members here. The more veterans we hear from, the better we can understand this issue. We hope you’ll consider responding or sharing this survey with other veterans. Thank you!

They called it the "shoe leather treatment" because that was exactly what it was: 10 or 11 guards, sometimes more, would form a circle around the patient and kick him unconscious. Then they'd drag him across the room, strip him naked and throw him in a tiny room with just one window to allow in the snow, and leave him there to freeze.

That was in 1961 in Pennsylvania's Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Twenty years later, the routine abuse that took place there became the subject of a memoir by Bill Thomas who survived 10 years in that institution before breaking out and eventually testifying before a Special State Senate Committee Inquiry on the practices of administrators, guards and even doctors at Farview State Hospital.

The facility has since been closed down, as were thousands of others like it during the wave of "deinstitutionalization" in the 1960s and '70s. Some state mental hospitals remain, but they are much less prevalent than they once were.

However, the shoe leather treatment lives on in jails and prisons around the country, which have become surrogate institutions for people with mental illnesses and where violence, neglect and abuse of prisoners labeled with psychiatric disabilities is on the rise.

For the report, a mobile phone application called “Purple Robot” was attached to the 28 participants’ phones for two weeks to collect GPS location and phone usage data. Half of the participants suffered from mild to severe depression and the other 14 had no signs of depressive symptoms.

The GPS data could be used to determine whether a person was in a stationary state, including at home or in the office, or in a transition state like walking in the street, the report said. It was also used to determine where participants spent most of their time.

Another factor that researchers looked at within the GPS data was to what extent a person’s movements followed a 24-hour or circadian rhythm. For example, a person who leaves for work and returns around the same time every day has a high level of circadian movement, according to the study.

Low levels of circadian movement are highly correlated with depression, the study showed. 

Other features detected by Purple Robot included transition time spent traveling from one place to another, total distance moved, phone use frequency and phone use duration, the report said.

The report found that the average daily phone use duration among participants — whose average age was 28 years old — was 41 minutes, with daily frequency of use averaging 14.2 times. The average daily phone usage for depressed individuals was about 68 minutes, whereas it was about 17 minutes for non-depressed people.

"People are likely, when on their phones, to avoid thinking about things that are troubling, painful feelings or difficult relationships — it’s an avoidance behavior we see in depression,” Mohr said in the press release.

Also, people who had mild to severe symptoms of depression were found to move around less and have a less regular schedule, the report found. It added that their findings were consistent with the patterns of loss of motivation, decreased activity and social withdrawal that characterize depression.

“When people are depressed, they tend to withdraw and don’t have the motivation or energy to go out and do things,” Mohr said in the release.

The data on circadian movement, location variance, home stay, phone-use duration and phone-use frequency were “significantly different between participants with no signs of depression and the rest,” the report said.

By scoring individuals on these six features, researchers said they were able to estimate depression on unseen participants with 87 percent accuracy.

A plan to ensure that evidence-based psychosocial interventions are routinely used in clinical practice and made a part of clinical training for mental health professionals was released by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

The NAM report, titled, "Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders," points to a strong need to strengthen evidence on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions, and to develop guidelines and quality measures for implementing these interventions in professional practice. Though medications undergo a systematic review of their efficacy, no similar process has existed for psychosocial treatments. The report sets forth a detailed program that identifies the steps needed to close this problematic quality gap.

Mental health and substance use disorders affect approximately 20% of the U.S. population, and frequently occur together. The rate of comorbidity of these disorders with physical disorders is also high. Psychosocial interventions for mental and substance use disorders include psychotherapies, community-based treatments, vocational rehabilitation, peer support services, and integrated care interventions. These are delivered in individual, group and even virtual settings, and may be administered as stand-alone treatments or combined with other interventions such as medications.

The NAM report proposes an iterative process that engages consumers at every step of a cyclical framework to 1) strengthen the evidence base for interventions; 2) identify elements of effective intervention; 3) conduct independent systematic reviews to inform clinical guidelines; 4) develop quality measures; 5) and implement interventions and improve outcomes.

More than 80 percent of people with depression in the general population aren't eligible for clinical trials of antidepressantdrugs, according to a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

At least five patients would need to be screened to enroll just one patient meeting the typical inclusion and exclusion criteria for antidepressant registration trials (ARTs), suggests the new research by Drs. Sheldon Preskorn and Matthew Macaluso of University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita and Dr. Madhukar Trivedi of Southwestern Medical School, Dallas. The study highlights some major differences between patients with depression seen in everyday clinical practice and those enrolled in ARTs--the studies of antidepressants that lead to FDA drug approval.

Tumblr is fast-becoming the home of peer-led suicide prevention networks for teens who have, for years, used the microblogging platform to publicize plans for self-harm.

As a reaction to previous trends, anonymous volunteers are now running hundreds of unofficial suicide hotline-style blogs, which welcome emergency chats and questions, as they prowl the site for suicidal users with hashtags like #help, #depression, #suicide and #anxiety.

Nicole Krawsek, 15, started her own blog that functions much like a “suicide anonymous” group. The teenager answers over 15 questions a week from strangers who suffer from depression. She is offline friends with four of the 60 Tumblr users she communicates with regularly and she follows over 200 similar, teen-run blogs. Krawsek places a high value in having suicidal teens get advice from their own peers.

“I know one girl who got professional help because of our Tumblr network,” she said. “Connecting with my followers have given me hope and confidence that we can all be helped together.”

Davis’s story is typical of those uncovered by an unprecedented two-year research project by the University of Kent’s Tizard Centre that explores the experiences of former victims as well as the attitudes and practices of professionals who support such women.

Women with mild to moderate learning disabilities were interviewed for the research. They described physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and financial abuse. Researchers say some of the women’s experiences differed from those of their mainstream counterparts including “play-fighting” in which the perpetrator prepares their victim for later violence. Only four of the 15 interview subjects knew refuges existed.

What term is used in the Michigan anti-bullying laws?

Bullying.

Do these laws cover cyberbullying?

Yes.

What groups are listed under Michigan state law?

There are no specific groups listed under Michigan anti-bullying laws. The law states that all pupils are protected and that bullying is equally prohibited without regard to subject matter or motivation.

Schools that receive federal funding are required by federal law to address discrimination on a number of different personal characteristics. Find out when bullying may be a civil rights violation.

Is there a state model policy I can use to create anti-bullying policies at my school or district?

The Michigan state model policy  is available on the Michigan Department of Education website .

Which of the key components can be found in Michigan anti-bullying laws and policies?

We need to do what we can to help new mothers recognize their struggles so that they can help themselves heal. Part of that is getting rid of the stigma that surrounds mental health disorders, making moms feel they are failing when every part of their experience doesn’t come easy.

By spreading awareness about perinatal mood disorders, we can help open up the conversation about what is not an uncommon experience for many women in their new role as mothers.

Here are 8 things you probably didn’t know about perinatal mood disorders: