Recovery Michigan

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Recently, however, investigators at Emory University observed that individuals diagnosed with PTSD, and who happened to also be treated with ARBs or ACE inhibitors, exhibited fewer PTSD-like symptoms.

This led the researchers to investigate the underlying mechanisms using an animal model of PTSD in order to expand upon this clinical finding.

Dr. Paul Marvar, first author and Assistant Professor at The George Washington University, explains their findings, "Our current preclinical results show that the ARB losartan, given acutely or chronically to mice, enhances the extinction of fear memory, a process that is disrupted in individuals with PTSD. Overall these data provide further support that this class of medications may have beneficial effects on fear memory in PTSD patients."

Fear extinction is a process by which a memory associated with fear is gradually 'overwritten' in the brain by a new memory with no such association.

Lead author Colleen Loo is a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where she specializes in psychiatry and neurosciences. She describes the finding as a "game-changer in treating depression," and says:

 Lexington, Ky., doctor has struck a critical agreement to get a life-saving product in the hands of emergency room workers and paramedics across the country as they battle the nation's heroin epidemic.

Dr. Daniel Wermeling, a professor of pharmacy at the University of Kentucky, has signed an agreement with Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals Inc. to accelerate production and marketing of intranasal naloxone, a drug designed to treat heroin and opioid overdose. 

Nationally, more than 16,500 Americans die each year from prescription opioids, which include prescription painkillers such as hydrocodone, methadone, oxycodone and oxymorphone. The drugs are chemical cousins to heroin, and the spike in their abuse has fueled the recent heroin addiction crisis.

Estimates on the number of U.S. heroin addicts range from 300,000 to 500,000, up about 75 percent from five years ago, according to the National Institute on Drug Addiction.

In the past 10 years, heroin and related opioid pain pills have killed more than 125,000 Americans, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Pain medicines often lead to constipation for patients seeking long-term pain relief, but an investigational once-daily drug may help, according to study led by the University of Michigan Health System.

Globally, approximately 28 million to 35 million, or nearly half, of patients taking opioids for long-term pain develop constipation. Laxatives provide sub-optimal relief.

The results of two pivotal Phase 3 studies - KODIAC-4 and KODIAC-5 of naloxegol, an investigational treatment for opioid-induced constipation (OIC) - were published online first in theNew England Journal of Medicine.

A 25 mg dose of the investigational drug naloxegol safely increased bowel movements among opioid-induced constipation sufferers, compared to a placebo, and the effects were maintained over a 12-week treatment period.

Wessler’s reporting showed that in dozens of states, courts have the power to sever parents’ connection to a child if authorities conclude that a mental illness might render them incapable of proper care – even if there’s no evidence of actual harm or neglect.

A cost-analysis of post-traumatic stress disorder treatments shows that letting patients choose their course of treatment - either psychotherapy or medication - is less expensive than assigning a treatment and provides a higher quality of life for patients.

In a recent study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, PTSD patients allowed to choose between therapies ended up costing about $1,622 less on average per patient per year compared with patients who were assigned treatment. Among patients not given a choice, treatment with prolonged exposure psychotherapy cost less on than sertraline.

State governments are permanently taking hundreds of children from their parents—under a bizarre theory that they might, in the future, be too mentally ill to care for the young.

The question in Mindi’s case is not about what authorities did when she plunged into a mental health crisis—nearly everyone involved in the case, including Mindi’s own attorneys, agrees it was likely appropriate to remove her baby that day. Instead, the issue is whether a mental health diagnosis itself, in the absence of any harm, should be enough to keep Mindi from ever getting her daughter back.

Under a concept sometimes called “predictive neglect,” Missouri and about 30 other states allow courts to terminate a parent’s connection to a child if authorities conclude a mother or father has a mental illness that renders them incapable of safely raising the child. Officials usually must present evidence that the illness poses a threat. Most cases involve significant mental illness, not run-of-the-mill depression or anxiety. Yet there need be no evidence of actual harm or neglect, just a conclusion that there is a risk of it.

A new study finds people with compulsion disorders such as substance abuse, binge eating and obsessive compulsive disorder have similar patterns of decision making and brain structures.