Recovery Michigan

The study found that USASOC personnel reported clinical levels of PTSD symptoms in 12 percent of concussions from blunt trauma, 23 percent from blast trauma and 31 percent from combination blast-blunt trauma. By contrast, only 6 percent of those who experienced clinical PTSD had never been diagnosed with a concussion. PTSD reactions were more likely as concussions increased: in 22 percent of personnel after one blast concussion, 29 percent after two and 34 percent after three.

"The findings regarding the clinical PTSD-symptom levels highlight the importance for military medical personnel to screen for and treat PTSD as well as concussion in personnel exposed to concussions, particularly those exposed to multiple-blast traumas," said Kontos, the corresponding author on the paper. "The dose-response relationship between the number of blast concussions and residual concussion and PTSD symptoms supports the notion that exposure to blast head trauma has lingering effects."

New evidence reveals the possibility of mood-enhancing effects associated with some flavors, stemming at least in part from natural ingredients bearing a striking chemical similarity to valproic acid, a widely used prescription mood-stabilizing drug, scientists reported. This effect joins those previously reported for chocolate, teas and some other known comfort foods.

Recovery from mental or emotional distress is possible! 

Despite the all-too-common message of hopelessness our society sends to consumer/survivors, their allies, and mental health providers, we know that mental wellness is a reachable goal.

It's time to make a change, from hopelessness to HOPE!

Researchers have found elevated levels of inflammation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a key region in the brain that is affected by schizophrenia in 40% of schizophrenics.

Senior researcher Prof Cyndi Shannon Weickert from Neuroscience Research Australia and UNSW, explains: "To find this immune pattern in nearly half of people with schizophrenia raises the possibility that this is in fact a new root cause of the disease."

In a new proof-of-concept study, researchers from three South Korean universities and the University of Utah report that women with major depressive disorder (MDD) who augmented their daily antidepressant with 5 grams of creatine responded twice as fast and experienced remission of the illness at twice the rate of women who took the antidepressant alone. The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry online, means that taking creatine under a doctor's supervision could provide a relatively inexpensive way for women who haven't responded well to SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants to improve their treatment outcomes.

During the last 4 years, I and 20 other persons with lived experience of recovery have been developing a method for assisting persons in acute crisis to transition back from a state of monologue to dialogue. We call this approach emotionalCPR or eCPR. This activity involves a person Connecting with another person in a manner which facilitates their experience of emPowerment, and Revitalization.  The person assists the person in monologue to return to dialogue through heart-to-heart resuscitation on an emotional heart level. This is analogous to CardioPulmonaryResusitation or CPR for the physical heart. In the figure above, the elements of eCPR are shown as vital to restoring a person’s engagement in dialogue.

From August 15 to October 7, 2004, James P. Miller was enrolled in a residential treatment program at the Ferndale, Michigan-based Kingwood Hospital, an inpatient psychiatric facility. As a man who is deaf whose sole method of communication is American Sign Language, Miller asked the hospital repeatedly to provide an interpreter.

At least 5.6 million to 8 million – nearly one in five – older adults in America have one or more mental health and substance use conditions, which present unique challenges for their care. With the number of adults age 65 and older projected to soar from 40.3 million in 2010 to 72.1 million by 2030, the aging of America holds profound consequences for the nation.

For decades, policymakers have been warned that the nation’s health care workforce is ill-equipped to care for a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse population. In the specific disciplines of mental health and substance use, there have been similar warnings about serious workforce shortages, insufficient workforce diversity, and lack of basic competence and core knowledge in key areas.

Thanks and a hat tip to Hollis T.

Welcome to Crazy Meds, where you can learn what’s good, what’s bad, what’s interesting, and what’s plain weird and funny about the medications used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, migraines, anxiety, neuropathic pain, or whatever psychiatric and/or neurological condition you might have. The information on this site is to help you work with your doctor(s) to find the right treatment options. Too many of us get nothing more than 15-minute appointments with overworked doctors or nurse-practitioners, so we need all the help we can get. We need to talk to our prescribers about the best medication¹ to treat our conditions, and not the most profitable ones, or the cheapest ones². OK, in reality “best” usually translates to “least bad.” .

If you know the name of the medication(s) you’re looking for, you’ll probably want our list of drugs by name. There’s also our much larger list of all the meds we know about to treat various conditions, including all the brand/trade names we can find for every med.

We also have the drugs sorted into broad categories with lots of overlapping memberships:

• Mood Stabilizers, such as Lamictal and Seroquel, for the treatment of bipolar disorder³.
• Antidepressants, like Celexa and Effexor, for the treatment of depression (duh), anxiety, and other conditions.
• Antipsychotics, such as Invega and Abilify, to treat schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression.
• Anxiolytics - in English: drugs to treat anxiety. These are mostly SSRIs like Lexapro, benzodiazepines, and a few specifically anxiolytic meds like BuSpar.
• Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), also known as anticonvulsants, which are used to treat one or more of epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and migraines. Depakote and Stavzor even have FDA approval to treat all three.
• Medications for Migraines and Neuropathic Pain - which should also be self-explanatory. These are primarily AEDs, like Topamax and Neurontin, and some antidepressants, like Cymbalta.

In the Archives of General Psychiatry study, people carrying two copies of a variant gained about three times as much weight as those with one or no copies, after six to 12 weeks of treatment with atypical antipsychotics. (The difference was approximately 6 kg versus 2 kg.) The study had four patient groups: two from the U.S., one in Germany and one from a larger European study.

"The weight gain was associated with this genetic variation in all these groups, which included pediatric patients with severe behaviour or mood problems, and patients with schizophrenia experiencing a first episode or who did not respond to other antipsychotic treatments," says CAMH Scientist Dr. Daniel Müller. "The results from our genetic analysis combined with this diverse set of patients provide compelling evidence for the role of this MC4R variant. Our research group has discovered other gene variants associated with antipsychotic-induced weight gain in the past, but this one appears to be the most compelling finding thus far."