Recovery Michigan

Dion Thomas-Hodges, BA, CADA, a Community Outreach Worker the Capital Health Tobacco Intervention Program in Halifax, delivers the Butt Out for Better Health program at both New Beginnings Dartmouth and Connections Halifax.  Dion has worked to support individuals living with a mental illness to become tobacco free and this session will be an opportunity to engage in a broader discussion about smoking and mental health

"Recovery to Discovery" is catchy. Our Canadian peers at work on health.

Of the five stages of recovery, the fifth stage is possibly the most important. As opposed to having reached an end, this stage is actually a beginning step on the road to recovery. It is at this stage in a person life when we are deciding whether or not we are willing to take charge of our own destiny. At this time, self–worth plays a vital role and is why studies often refer to this stage as a potentially dangerous time. We have done most of what has been asked of us by the system, graduated certain programs, and are ready to take on the responsibility. However, if we are around staff still treating us the same, as when we were in ‘Program’, it is easy to think, “Why should I keep trying”? When Joyce Whitworth graduated from Detroit East’s Co-Occurring program she was in fifth stage recovery, but no quite ready to be totally separated. Her hopes and dreams were to be a writer, so with the support of the Co-Occurring program director, Shirley Calhoun, Joyce started a Detroit East Newsletter. The entire staff was pleasantly surprised as she did this completely on her own, from the design of the newsletter, the interviews, and the articles. We would like to thank Ms. Calhoun for her personal support of Ms Whitworth’s efforts to take charge of her life. Ms Calhoun’s approach is in line with those of the Department of Health & Human Services and most other recent studies relating to system transformation. She has the dedication, transparency, and integrity consumers need to be able to once again trust the system of treatment. In she is doing a workshop on the recovery-centered environment at the IDDT conference in Dearborn on the 25th, and I am encouraging those interested in seeing system transformation in action to attend. Gerald Butler Peer Specialist.

Thanks and a hat tip to Gerald Butler

Welcome to issue five of BeingWell! BeingWell is a quarterly newsletter on issues relevant to disability and health. This issue includes information on Seasonal Affective Disorder, an update on a recent inclusiveness training offered to fitness professionals, and an upcoming conference on Universal Design on March 22. We introduce the nutrition evaluation system NuVal, offer new data on the health of people with disabilities in Michigan, and showcase a new online training for health professionals. Please send feedback, suggestions and articles for the newsletter to Candice Lee at LeeC@Michigan.gov, and forward it as you feel appropriate.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-2 Tuesday a watchdog state agency may sue state officials to get information about deaths at state mental hospitals.

Two federal laws offer states money to improve medical care for people with mental illness or developmental disabilities. If a state accepts the funding, the laws require the state to set up a "protection and advocacy" system.

The system may either be a private non-profit entity or a state agency, but if it is a state agency the U.S. laws say it must have the authority to sue other state agencies or officials, and must be free from the control of other agencies.

AH-HA!!

Bipolar anger mania is mania triggered by anger. This is often diagnosed as type II bipolar. Coping with bipolar type 2 takes effort but is not impossible. In the typology here, It is the third of the six types of mania outlined in the first post on bipolar recovery. Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
My first understanding of mania was of bipolar anger mania.
For medical reasons I began to work with my psychiatrist to lower my mood stabilizer dosage. He is a meditator and has encourage my Zen practice and development of Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Meditation Links. In this case bipolar recovery.

Best Tweets for Trauma and PTSD Survivors is a weekly Friday feature. My selections are entirely subjective, and I know it will never be possible to include every great resource tweeted. But I can try! I’ve personally read all tweeted links, and believe them to be of great value.

Recovery Garden

This is a power point of a workshop. It is about me. So it is principle about schizophrenia recovery. I have many other symptoms as well. This is a gift as i have been able to find ways to transform them all.

Compared to controls, at immediate postintervention and at 6-month follow-up, WRAP participants reported: (1) significantly greater reduction over time in Brief Symptom Inventory Global Symptom Severity and Positive Symptom Total, (2) significantly greater improvement over time in hopefulness as assessed by the Hope Scale total score and subscale for goal directed hopefulness, and (3) enhanced improvement over time in QOL as assessed by the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF environment subscale. These results indicate that peer-delivered mental illness self-management training reduces psychiatric symptoms, enhances participants’ hopefulness, and improves their QOL over time. This confirms the importance of peer-led wellness management interventions, such as WRAP, as part of a group of evidence-based recovery-oriented services.

There was more, a lot more, in Pigott’s paper. That’s why I suggest you take a look at it on your own. Just a few pieces from the mound of evidence. Every infraction, every change, every omission, even down to how the rounded off their numbers, moves the results in the same direction – towards increasing the apparent efficacy of their antidepressant treatment. In spite of squeezing out some seventy published papers, they’ve never published the outcome data pre-defined by their protocol – the before and after HRSD or ISD scores at the different levels. He found evidence of bias in the American Journal of Psychiatry‘s handling of the study, and at the NIMH as well.

More about how to alter "scientific" research to produce the outcome you want-in this case a positive effect for antidepressants.

he NIMH funded STAR*D trial [Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression] was initiated in 2001. The theme of the American Psychiatric Association Meeting in New Orleans that year was Mind meets Brain [though the Brain clearly won the meet]. Charles Nemeroff had recently been nicknamed the "boss of bosses" and was the newly appointed Editor of Neuropsychopharmacology. Around that same time, he helped get David Healy fired from a new position in Toronto for reporting that Prozac could cause suicidal ideation [Let Them Eat Prozac was still three years in the future]. Alan Schatzberg, Chairman at Stanford, published his first trial of Mifepristone in Psychotic Depression with promising results. Zyprexa sales topped $2 B and Seroquel was coming on strong. It was the dawn of a new century, and a time when clinical neurochemistry was the paradigm du jour.

Requires a willingness to contend with statistics and the darkness that is big pharma, but a very interesting blog.