Recovery Michigan

Thanks and a hat tip to Pam W.

http://goo.gl/KMRjca

With the implementation of the ACA and integrated care systems, the role of peer supporter has the potential to undergo very significant expansion. Most dramatically, an opportunity will exist for a peer to serve persons who have no behavioral health conditions. Some will be persons with conditions ranging from simple medical ailments to diabetes or heart disease. Others will be people without any disease condition who are seeking to facilitate their own wellness through prevention and promotion services. Perhaps almost as dramatic, an opportunity will exist for peers to help improve wellness interventions for persons who do have behavioral health conditions, especially in a whole-health oriented integrated care system.

http://goo.gl/EhaZp1

There were steps that my husband and I took that reduced some of the frustration around my mental health triggers:

1. Let your care team know that you deal with depression or other psychological condition and if you have known mental health triggers and how those might play out in your responses. This includes every medical person who might touch you. That self-advocacy goes a long way to keep you from experiencing unnecessary trauma.

2. Keep a current medication list in a document and have copies available when you go to the doctor or hospital. If you are unable to communicate, they can look at and input information from that document. I couldn’t speak because I was coughing and wheezing too badly. There were questions that my husband could answer and others that he didn’t know the answers to.....

We all know people whose medical condition was ignored as a symptom of their mental illness...

http://goo.gl/tEIiGn

He ordered a brain MRI and quickly discovered the probable reason for her dementia: the meningioma, roughly the size of a peanut when it was discovered four years earlier, had grown to the size of a lime. The tumor was pressing on her left frontal lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for speech, movement, emotional regulation and reasoning.

Most alarming was the evidence of “mass effect”: The tumor appeared to be exacerbating her previously manageable depression, causing personality and mood changes. Doctors were most worried about herniation, an often fatal condition that occurs when the brain is squeezed and shifts out of position.

“She was deteriorating,” Gawronski recalled, “and if the downward pressure from the tumor increased, she could have lapsed into a coma.” Gawronski estimated that Bahnsen was “possibly days away from that.”

http://goo.gl/nlVy7m

The experiment in Raleigh is being closely watched by other cities desperate to find a way to help mentally ill patients without admitting them to emergency rooms, where the cost of treatment is high — and unnecessary.

While there is evidence that other types of health care costs might be declining slightly, the cost of emergency room care for the mentally ill shows no sign of ebbing.

Nationally, more than 6.4 million visits to emergency rooms in 2010, or about 5 percent of total visits, involved patients whose primary diagnosis was a mental health condition or substance abuse. That is up 28 percent from just four years earlier, according to the latest figures available from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Md.

By one federal estimate, spending by general hospitals to care for these patients is expected to nearly double to $38.5 billion in 2014, from $20.3 billion in 2003.

http://goo.gl/LVjY69

People who tell themselves to get excited rather than trying to relax can improve their performance during anxiety-inducing activities such as public speaking and math tests, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

“Anxiety is incredibly pervasive. People have a very strong intuition that trying to calm down is the best way to cope with their anxiety, but that can be very difficult and ineffective,” said study author Alison Wood Brooks, PhD, of Harvard Business School. “When people feel anxious and try to calm down, they are thinking about all the things that could go badly. When they are excited, they are thinking about how things could go well.”

Several experiments conducted at Harvard University with college students and members of the local community showed that simple statements about excitement could improve performance during activities that triggered anxiety. The study was published online in APA’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General^®.

Thanks and a hat tip to Marty R....

http://goo.gl/37NyM2

Aminotransferase surveillance is the most useful tool for detecting DILI, Moreover, early detection and prompt drug discontinuation are critical, the researchers stated. “Surveillance of liver function in clinical trials and careful evaluation of reported abnormalities could make a major contribution to the early detection of antidepressants associated with a high risk of causing DILI. Finally, further research is required before rigorously founded recommendations can be established for clinical practice.”

http://goo.gl/uuEsjb

I remember feeling a bit like the Lone Ranger while striving to model an approach consistent with nursing standards of practice, especially within what seemed to be traumatized systems. There were the norms of using restraints to promote safety and reduce the risk of falls in geriatrics, and well-meaning staff that used a reality orientation with people experiencing dementia (which only resulted in increased agitation for both parties). There was a time when those at the end of their lives were sedated if observed talking to or seeing loved ones who had passed. Working with consumers who were treated as "broken"—whom we had to "fix"— was typical. One client was unable to verbalize her needs as she was found several times a day in hysterics under the bed or in a closet. Restraints were used to keep her safe. 

As I reflect on my nursing journey, I feel hopeful. I see creative preventive alternatives to restraints that promote safety and decrease the risk of falls. I see the comforting use of validation rather than reality orientation for geriatric populations. I've learned the benefits of partnering with consumers as they realize they do not need to be "fixed." I've had the honor of collaborating with and learning from interdisciplinary teams. Finally, I have had the extraordinary experience of witnessing that recovery in a maximum security forensic unit is certainly possible. Now a nursing consultant, I'm confident when I tell people I am completely convinced that sanctuary can be created in any setting, and that recovery can and does happen! 

http://goo.gl/9zSTGm

Fifty million Americans experience chronic ringing in the ears, a condition known as tinnitus. But new research from the University of Michigan Medical School may soon provide solace to those suffering.

The discovery helps to explain what is going on inside the brains of those with tinnitus and may provide a new approach to treat the nagging noise. The research team already has a patent pending and device in development.

The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, explain that a process called stimulus-timing dependent multisensory plasticity is altered in animals with tinnitus and the results have revealed the relationship between tinnitus, hearing loss and sensory input.

This fits my experience with depression, and signs of my recovery as well....

http://goo.gl/SOSIEn

Mathematically, it turns out, the shift from a healthy state to a depressed state resembles other so-called tipping points—moments of critical mass where a system, such as changes to Earth’s climate or a social trend—shift rapidly from one state to another. Theories on tipping points suggest that as a system nears a tipping point, it becomes less resilient.

“In any system, if you push the system a little bit out of equilibrium, then the closer it is to the tipping point, the longer it takes to return to equilibrium after that perturbation,” explains Ingrid van de Leemput, an ecologist at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands who led the new work. Indeed, the longer a patient took to recover from feelings of sadness and anxiety, the more likely they were to be more depressed by the end of the study, suggesting that they were closer to a tipping point between health and depression, her team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The results matched with a mathematical model that the researchers had previously created to represent how emotional swings could signal an impending tipping point.

http://goo.gl/2EqTrQ

While Madenes talks about the benefits of altruism, gratitude and satisfying relationships, it is her sarcasm and lack of empathy for those who can’t so easily be transformed by the Robbins-Madanes approach that enraged people. The reality is that we human beings can sometimes become so trapped by overwhelmingly oppressive forces—financial, interpersonal, and otherwise—that lecturing us into behaving more joyfully only creates more pain. This leads to the first of 10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People: