Recovery Michigan

http://goo.gl/j47HXq

Core77 reports that Cheng was part of a 2-day workshop on design addressing mundane problems, and she came up with this—a way to keep strangers at bay in crowded situation.

This is a project dealing with everyday realities: wishes left unsaid, ideas unexpressed. What *would* be the right amount of space granted, and the right amount of flexibility for those around you? It's hard to say, exactly, but these devices start to imagine that negotiation.

Made from pre-fabbed strips of material designed to keep pets away from plants, these are wearable defensive mechanisms, for those brave enough to use them. More from Siew Ming Cheng.

Images: A woman wears a green mesh "vest" of perforated material, complete with spikes out the sides to ward off fellow commuters on a train. Sharp ends extend from shoulders and arms to indicate personal space. Renderings exhibit the scale and operation of the material.

This person lacks a peer community, and that may be a general problem in her community.....

http://goo.gl/bCAIIS

2012 was the first time I told anybody that I suffered from depression, it was only a few people and I was pretty offhand about it. I told them it was something I’d had, something that was gone, it was past tense. This was a lie, I’m not sure if it was a lie to them or to myself.

Later in the year was the first time I told someone I was actively depressed. When they asked how I was, I felt like it was the first time that someone wanted a real answer. I was able to tell them how I felt and they would have seen what would have looked like me at my saddest. In fact it was the happiest I’d been in more than a decade. It felt like a release, I felt safe to be me for the first time. Outside of that space I had to maintain the false me that I had practiced and perfected over years. My happiness started to change in a more permanent fashion, not taking me all the way to happy, but closer than I’d ever been.

http://goo.gl/Wk8sDN

The president’s signature Affordable Care Act includes mental health care andsubstance abuse treatment among its 10 “essential” benefits, which means plans sold on the public health care exchanges must include coverage.

In addition, rules to fully carry out an older law — the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 — were issued in November, after a long delay. The parity law says that when health insurance plans provide coverage for mental ailments, it must be comparable to coverage for physical ailments. For instance, plans cannot set higher deductibles or charge higher co-payments for mental health visits than for medical visits, and cannot set more restrictive limits on the number of visits allowed.

The new parity rules apply to most health plans and are effective beginning July 1, although many plans will not have to comply until January of next year.

http://goo.gl/NDTGcG

"Early adversities have far-reaching consequences. The average time to recovery from depression was 9 months longer for adults who had been physically abused during their childhood and about 5 months longer for those whose parents had addiction problems" says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair in the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

"Numerous studies have shown that childhood abuse and parental addictions make individuals more vulnerable to depression," says co-author and MSW graduate Marla Battiston. "Our research highlights that these factors also slow the recovery time among those who become depressed."

http://goo.gl/VRs5iD

The researchers examined the involvement of microglia brain cells in the development of depression following chronic exposure to stress. Comprising roughly 10% of brain cells, microglia are the representatives of the immune system in the brain; but recent studies have shown that these cells are also involved in physiological processes not directly related to infection and injury, including the response to stress.

The researchers mimicked chronic unpredictable stress in humans - a leading cause of depression - by exposing mice to repeated, unpredictable stressful conditions over a period of 5 weeks. The mice developed behavioral and neurological symptoms mirroring those seen in depressed humans, including a reduction in pleasurable activity and in social interaction, as well as reduced generation of new brain cells (neurogenesis) - an important biological marker of depression.

The researchers found that during the first week of stress exposure, microglia cells undergo a phase of proliferation and activation, reflected by increased size and production of specific inflammatory molecules, after which some microglia begin to die. Following the 5 weeks of stress exposure, this phenomenon led to a reduction in the number of microglia, and to a degenerated appearance of some microglia cells, particularly in a specific region of the brain involved in responding to stress.

When the researchers blocked the initial stress-induced activation of microglia with drugs or genetic manipulation, they were able to stop the subsequent microglia cell death and decline, as well as the depressive symptoms and suppressed neurogenesis. However, these treatments were not effective in "depressed" mice, which were already exposed to the 5-weeks stress period and therefore had lower number of microglia. Based on these findings, the investigators treated the "depressed" mice with drugs that stimulated the microglia and increased their number to a normal level.

Prof. Yirmiya said, "We were able to demonstrate that such microglia-stimulating drugs served as effective and fast-acting antidepressants

http://goo.gl/XtuWNF

In a preternatural example of tone-deafness, an administration under fire for snooping into Americans’ privacy is now proposing to waive federal privacy laws so psychiatrists can report their gun-owning patients to the government.

The Department of Health and Human Service’s “notice of proposed rule-making,” floated by the White House in a Friday media dump, would waive portions of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to allow psychiatrists to report their patients to the FBI’s gun-ban blacklist (the NICS system) on the basis of confidential communications.

The 1968 Gun Control Act bans guns for anyone who is “adjudicated as a mental defective or … committed to a mental institution.” Unfortunately, under 2008 NICS Improvement Act, drafted by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and its regulations, that “adjudication” can be made by any “other lawful authority.” This means a diagnosis by a single psychiatrist in connection with a government program.

http://goo.gl/IEwImv

The following medications should be used cautiously in people with current or prior depression, or those who are otherwise at high risk for depression:

• Barbiturates
• Vigabatrin (Sabril)
• Topiramate (Topamax)
• Flunarizine
• Corticosteroids
• Mefloquine
• Efavirenz (Sustiva)
• Inteferon-alpha

The review also covered drugs that may cause depression — the evidence was not as strong as the prior list.

For those of you who follow MindFreedom, an update about David and his SCI...

http://goo.gl/zfvGEI

In fact, the 58-year-old Oaks, who now gets around in an electronically controlled wheelchair, engineered a bit of a protest rally last month.

He headed downtown to the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce with a half-dozen fellow activists, including Nuñez, to bestow the dubious Golden Ostrich Award upon the organization, “because of their support for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its blockade of progress on addressing the climate crisis.”

Oaks speaks more laboriously than he used to — he uses a voice amplifier because of damage he sustained to his vocal chords from a combination of nicks incurred during surgery and a 107.8-degree fever he contracted during his stint in ICU — but nothing masks his excitement at still fighting the good fight for the causes he believes in.

“I’m still an activist,” he said proudly. “I was one of the speakers when we gave the Chamber of Commerce the award for not responding adequately to the climate crisis.”

Interesting. I have no idea if the commercially available versions of this do anything.....

http://goo.gl/5QdWVQ

A plant used by the Chinese for centuries in a traditional concoction to relieve pain has been found to contain a strong natural analgesic.

The compound works against the three types of pain including acute, inflammatory and neuropathic or chronic pain.

The discovery of the painkilling chemical dehydrocorybulbine (DHCB) was made as part of the Herbalome project, an effort to catalogue all of the chemical components of traditional Chinese medicines.

“Our study reports the discovery of a new natural product that can relieve pain,” says Olivier Civelli of the University of California, Irvine.

The Corydalis plants that were the focus of the new study grow mainly in central eastern China, where underground tubers are harvested, ground, and boiled in hot vinegar. The concoctions are often prescribed to treat pain, including headaches and back pain.

Self-Medication is a critical and often overlooked aspect of chronic health problems and poses a significant barrier to recovery...

http://goo.gl/BBhMik

The paper analysed smoking, drinking and drug use in nearly 20,000 people. That included 9,142 psychiatric patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or schizo-affective disorder - an illness characterised by psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, and mood disorders such as depression, said the paper published in the journal Psychiatry.