Recovery Michigan

Nearly 1.2 million patients and their family members (down to second-cousins) were examined for the current study. All subjects were compared with healthy controls, Swedish residents from the most recent decades. The information could not be associated to anyone studied because the data was anonymized.

Analysis provided evidence for the researchers' prior report, that bipolar disorder is more common in all individuals with artistic or scientific jobs, including researchers, dancers, photographers, and authors.

The majority of the other psychiatric diseases, such as depression, anxiety syndrome, schizophrenia, and substance abuse, were more prevalent among authors in particular.

Authorized by the Florida legislature, a state-funded program known as Florida Self-Directed Care gives persons with mental illness a quarterly allowance to purchase mental health and wellness services at their own discretion, with the goal of better integrating these individuals into their communities. With the help of life coaches, participants create a recovery plan and individual budget for traditional mental health recovery services (including psychotherapy, counseling, and medications) and other, nontraditional goods and services that facilitate recovery and successful living in the community (e.g., self-help services, exercise classes, transportation, dentistry services). The program has allowed participants to spend more time living in the community (instead of in psychiatric facilities or criminal justice settings), enhanced their ability to function, and increased their satisfaction with access to services and progress toward established goals.

Doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre, reinforced by Stuart Armstrong, is calling attention to what might be the worst, biggest example of intentional confirmation bias in recent history, that is killing and harming many of us. This is the problem of much medical drug research.

Writes Goldacre:

"Negative data goes missing, for all treatments, in all areas of science. The regulators and professional bodies we would reasonably expect to stamp out such practices have failed us. These problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a soundbite. This is why they've gone unfixed by politicians, at least to some extent; but it's also why it takes detail to explain. The people you should have been able to trust to fix these problems have failed you."

Goldacre is referring to the way we conduct medical trials on drugs.

Healing touch combined with guided imagery (HT+GI) provides significant clinical reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for combat-exposed active duty military, according to a study released in the September issue of Military Medicine.

The report finds that patients receiving these complementary medicine interventions showed significant improvement in quality of life, as well as reduced depression and cynicism, compared to soldiers receiving treatment as usual alone.

"Despite the anticipated end of large-scale military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the effects on the mental health of active-duty service members, reservists, and veterans is only just beginning to be felt," Dr. Lineberry says. "Moreover, the potential effect on service members of their war experiences may manifest indefinitely into the future in the form of emerging psychiatric illnesses."

The researchers' goal with this new study was to determine if stopping inflammation could help a large spectrum of people whose depression is hard to treat, or only individuals who have high inflammation levels.

During the trial, the experts used infliximab, a biological drug recently manufactured with the intent to fix inflammatory diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis.

Biological drugs mimic the way that substances made by the body's immune system work. Infliximab works by blocking tumor necrosis factor (TNF), which is involved in inflammation and has been found to be higher in certain depressed patients.

According to the study, which was published at the Scandinavian Physiological Society's science conference in Helsinki, bright light administered through the ear canal improved the cognitive speed of students.

Administering the Valkee bright light through the ear canal increased the motoric reaction speed of National League professional ice hockey players, compared to a placebo group, results showed in a different study earlier in the year.

Both studies further support findings published in May that revealed that trans-cranial bright light clearly increases functional activity in specific regions of the brain

Thanks to a new analysis released today by the Center for Investigative Reporting, we can get a sense for how long those wait times are.

In our area, veterans applying for disability benefits wait an average of 319 days for a decision from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regional office in downtown Detroit. That's longer than the national average of 257 days.

Many people experience extreme mental and emotional distress at some point in their lives. Too often they lose hope, because they get a message that there is no recovery from this distress — it will be lifelong. We know this is not true, because so many people emerge from their distress well or even "weller than well" and go on to lead satisfying lives. We are collecting stories that will let people know the truth: recovery is possible and mental wellness is a reachable goal.

I attended a 16-session MCT program at Midtown Mental Health Team led by two staff members. The program is designed to help people to improve cognitive skills through interactive powerpoint presentations. They led the group through different exercises involving memory, logic, reasoning, and awareness. For example, we viewed a picture of an individual and tried to figure out things about him based on his appearance. But one can’t always judge a book by its cover. I discovered my perception was based on my own biases or experience. Through the program, I discovered how I might misinterpret an event, which if left unchecked, may contribute to my anxiety or false belief systems.