Recovery Michigan

A new method of treating incarcerated opioid users led to fewer overdose deaths after inmates were released, a retrospective analysis in Rhode Island found.

Unintentional overdose deaths of recently incarcerated individuals declined 60.5% after the state's Department of Corrections began providing medication-assisted addiction treatment (MAT), reported Traci Green, PhD, MSc, of Brown University and co-authors in a research letter in JAMA Psychiatry.

The downturn appeared to have contributed to overall population-level declines in overdose deaths in Rhode Island.

While the findings are consistent with other studies of addiction treatment in prison, "it is remarkable that the reduction in mortality occurred in the face of a devastating, illicit, fentanyl-driven overdose epidemic," the researchers wrote.

The motto of Rutland, England is multum in parvo: Much in little. Rutland is England’s smallest county, 16.3 miles from north to south, home to quaint cottages, green hills, and the World Championship of Nurdling (competitors throw pennies into a narrow hole in a wooden bench).

So if fresher air and a pastoral environment help boost life expectancy in the U.K., why isn’t the same true the United States? In the U.K., rural residents live about two years longer than city dwellers; in the U.S., it’s the opposite: Urbanites live two years longer than their rural counterparts. And the gap is growing—in 1969, just four months separated the two.

In some U.S. counties, life expectancy has even declined—dropping by 13 months since the early 1990s for women in rural Kentucky, according to a 2016 National Rural Health Association (NRHA) report. And rural Americans are also more likely to die from five leading causes—heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke—than those living in urban areas, a 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found.

Sometimes, it’s in the form of inappropriate comments.

An author wrote, “An editor who was considering my work commented very thoroughly on my body type as a possible personal advantage of working with me.” For her now, “it makes submissions feel like a minefield.”

For an author/illustrator, it was at a book party with a famous illustrator; “I introduce myself to him,” she writes, “and he makes a crack about my breasts.” After enough incidents like these she’s “completely stopped socializing in this business because each time it becomes another abuse story.”

Sometimes the comments are more pointed, like for the publicist who says her supervisor told her he had a crush on her and if he wasn’t married and twice her age he would ask her out. Or a writer’s conference attendee who says that a faculty member asked her if she was “kinky” at the opening mixer. Or the aspiring illustrator who won a mentorship contest, and at the end of her meeting with the mentor she said she had to go get a drink of water because she was hot. According to her, “he said ‘Yes, you are.’ And squeezed my arm. And raised his eyebrows in a suggestive way.”

These are the sort of events we’re told to brush off — they’re jokes, they’re flattering, no big deal. But when you believe you are a professional and someone informs you they see you as a sex object, it can shatter your sense of self and your sense of safety.

Sometimes, it’s inappropriate touching and groping: as in “a senior editor of a division I don’t work in being a tad too handsy;” or the author who says another author groped her while taking pictures at a conference; or an agent who says she was sitting in the backseat with a bestselling author during a conference, and as he pretended to be searching for his seatbelt, he fondled her.

Sometimes, it’s stories of women being invited to a networking opportunity only to get propositioned; or of male conference faculty and staff acting like all female paying attendees are potential and willing conquests; or of powerful men trying to ruin the reputations of women who won’t sleep with them.

Man’s best friend has been lending a helping paw since time immemorial, and most people will be aware of the roles they play as guide dogs, sniffer dogs, even search and rescue dogs.

But have you ever head of a dementia dog?

An elderly couple in Scotland said they have been given their lives back after they were partnered up with two-year-old golden Labrador Kaspa – who is one of the first dogs in the UK to receive special training to assist dementia-sufferers.

Kaspa’s skills include fetching medicines when a reminder alarm goes off, waking up his owners at the right time and carrying items between them.

Mr Will, 79, was diagnosed with vascular dementia three years ago, and his wife Mrs Will, 66, took on the role of carer.

And she explained how challenging her husband’s condition became, saying:

“We’ve been married 48 years but often I’ve sat and looked at him and thought, ‘I don’t know who this person is’.”

That all changed with the arrival of Kaspa. As well as helping out around the house with his practical training, the family pet has relieved a great deal of stress for the couple and encouraged them to get out and about.

Mrs Will said:

“Kaspa has totally given us our lives back. Ken is much happier because he’s got the dog and we can go out now. We can go shopping together, we can even go on holidays.

“We are a lot more relaxed since the dog came because if Ken gets in a mood and angry, the dog comes and nudges him and he forgets his problems. I’ve got a good bit of him back again.”

The team behind the project said that carers find they spend less time giving reassurance to their partner because the dog provides a ”calming“ new focus.

Speaking about the first time the couple went shopping with Kaspa, Mr Will said:

“I was tensed up and after two or three steps he just brushed against me and looked up as if to say, ‘am I doing OK?’ and the stress just went.

“Kaspa was joined in his training by Oscar, a two-year-old golden retriever who now helps another Arbroath couple, Frank and Maureen Benham.

Mrs Benham, 69, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and her husband said:

“Maureen and I can’t imagine going back to what it was like before we got Oscar.

Rumination has been the "highlight" of my severe depressions and is still an issue, though much less of one....

https://goo.gl/xqBxKo

People suffering from depression frequently find themselves preoccupied with shameful, guilty, or self-defeating thoughts for large parts of their day. Not only these thoughts distract from other activities, but also may prevent the resolution of the underlying life issues. The ideas that receive focused attention in these depressive ruminations are also quite distorted and often lead to more distress.

Because the way that depressed people repetitively attend to these negative thoughts in an unproductive manner calls to mind the repetitive chewing of cud by ruminants like cows or goats, psychologists use the term ruminations.

The tendency towards rumination in depression has been well documented. However, a new study by Dr. J. Paul Hamilton at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research and his colleagues at Stanford University sheds light on the brain mechanisms giving rise to these symptoms.

Brain Region Interplay

The work, by Dr. J. Paul Hamilton at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research and his colleagues at Stanford University, highlights the interplay of a brain region implicated in depression, the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC) and a brain network involved in reflection, sometimes called the default mode network (DMN).

The default mode network becomes activated when the brain’s task-oriented circuits are not engaged, for example, during times of self-referential thought.

Through a re-analysis of existing studies, the researchers show that depressive ruminations are more likely to emerge in depression when the firing of the sgPFC, signaling depressed mood, is more highly synchronized with the firing of the DMN.

The Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex and The Default Mode Network

They propose that the observed increased connectivity reflects a functional integration of sgPFC and DMN processes which, in turn, support rumination in depression.

Gene expression patterns in the brains of people with autism are similar to those of people who have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, according to a large study of postmortem brain tissue. The findings appear today in Science.

A preliminary study led by researchers in the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine has shown that overall symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are lower among war veterans with service dogs. The pilot study was co-funded by the Human Animal Bond Research Institute(HABRI) and Bayer Animal Health.

The study was led by Maggie O’Haire, assistant professor of human-animal interaction, with the help of K9s For Warriors, an accredited nonprofit organization that provides veterans with service dogs. The pilot research project provides scientific evidence of mental health benefits experienced by veterans with PTSD who have service dogs.

“We found that the group of veterans with service dogs had significantly lower levels of PTSD symptomology than those who did not have a service dog,” O’Haire says. “They also had lower levels of depression, lower anxiety and increased social participation, meaning a willingness to leave their house and go engage with society in different activities.”

Imagine sitting next to a bored stranger fidgeting with a pen. The room is silent, except for that pen. Quiet amplifies—it makes everything sound louder. Yet for people who suffer from misophonia, every tap of that pen is louder than a chisel removing tile. The man on the train breathes with more force than a motorcycle. And that co-worker chews gum as if she were a cow in front of a microphone. 

Misophonia—an emotional, decreased tolerance to sound—can make some situations feel uncomfortable, or even unbearable: anger, disgust, anxiety, avoidance. But the first trial for the condition, published recently in the Journal of Affective Disorders, claims to have found an effective treatment: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

“Despite the high burden of this condition, to date there is no evidence-based treatment available,” first author Arjan Schröder wrote in the abstract. Schröder and a team of Dutch researchers treated 90 patients with CBT for eight group sessions, every other week, and found that CBT was effective for half of the patients. What’s more, patients who had more severe symptoms were more likely to respond to treatment.

“We started this project because hardly anything was known about [misophonia], yet the patients we talked to suffered significantly. So together with the first patients, we decided to investigate it… and tried to figure out if and how it could be treated,” Schröder said. The results of the experimental therapy they decided to implement—combining four techniques individualized to what worked best for each patient—were strong early on, he added. “We know patients who, after successful treatment, noticed at the end of a meeting the core of an apple lying on the table,” Schröder said. “Someone had been eating an apple during the meeting, and they hadn’t noticed it!

“So they had managed to focus on the presentation or questions, not having been distracted or anxious.”

The trial used a set of clinical interview questions called the Amsterdam Misophonia Scale (PDF), according to specific diagnostic criteria and five symptoms. However, misophonia isn’t recognized by the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Various peer-reviewed studies suggest that misophonia could arguably be categorized as a disorder, a syndrome, a symptom, or even a physiological state. It’s associated with many neuropsychiatric disorders and conditions, including autism, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD, and tinnitus.

Until now, the automatic assumption has been that platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp only pose a risk for this vulnerable group.

But social media can help young people living in state care maintain healthy and appropriate birth family relationships and friendships, make new connections and ease transitions between placements and into adult independence.

The research is published today in the British Journal of Social Work, ahead of Safer Internet Day 2018 Tuesday, February 6, 2018.

Researchers investigated how young people living in state care can benefit from social media use.

Lead researcher Dr Simon Hammond undertook more than 100 visits to four residential care settings in England over seven months. During this period, he conducted in-depth observations on how 10 young people routinely used social media in their everyday lives, as well as conducting focus groups and interviews with the young people and their social care professionals.

Dr Hammond said: "Young people in care face harder, faster and steeper transitions into adulthood with fewer resources than their peers.

"Placement instability often leads to young people feeling abandoned and isolated at points in their lives when they are at their most vulnerable.

"The young people we worked with talked about how many friends or followers they had on social media. And it was the contacts outside their immediate state care environment that young people saw as their most precious commodity."