Recovery Michigan

More than 60 percent of people killed by opioid overdoses were driven to the addictive pills by a chronic pain condition, according to a major report.

The number of opioid-related deaths quadrupled between 1999 and 2015, from around 8,000 to more than 33,000.

The Columbia University study - the largest ever on opioid deaths - analyzed the prescriptions of 13,000 victims through Medicaid to find almost two-thirds of them had been diagnosed with chronic pain, and a significant proportion of them also suffered depression and anxiety.

Around a third of victims had been diagnosed with their pain condition within 12 months of their death.

Mark Olfson, MD, professor of psychiatry at the university's medical center and lead investigator of the study, said the data provide a clear picture of the American healthcare system: big on pills, vague on alternative methods. 

'The frequent occurrence of treated chronic pain and mental health conditions among overdose decedents underscores the importance of offering substance use treatment services in clinics that treat patients with chronic pain and mental health problems,' he said. 

Contrary to what you may think, it’s not always easy to spot when someone is suffering from anxiety.

Anxiety can manifest in many forms, such as waking up in the dead of the night or having to cope with drastic mood swings.

Brittany Nichole Morefield, a 23-year-old makeup artist from Nashville, USA wanted to try to explain in her own way what it’s like to live with anxiety.

“For as long as I can remember, I have always had anxiety,” Morefield told The Independent.

Morefield decided to take to Facebook to speak out about the issue while in the midst of a panic attack. “I wrote that post as a coping mechanism,” she explained.

“Anxiety isn’t just having a hard time catching your breath,” she wrote in her viral post. “Anxiety is waking up at 3am from a dead sleep because your heart is racing.

“Anxiety is uncontrollable shaking and twitching. Anxiety is crying, real and painful tears. Anxiety is nausea. Anxiety is crippling. Anxiety is dark.”

Morefield's post has deeply resonated with thousands of people all over the world. So far, her post has received 185K reactions and almost 420K shares on Facebook. 

Many people feel that Morefield was able to accurately articulate the crippling and unpredictable nature of anxiety.

One Facebook user, a woman called Izabela Skowrońska, commented: “This is the best thing I ever read about anxiety. I’m with you with my whole heart.”

Morefield couldn’t believe the incredible response she’s received on Facebook. 

“I never ever expected for my post to get this big,” she admits. “It’s been really crazy but I’ve gotten the most amazing messages and comments.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can affect many parts of the body, including the skin, joints, blood cells, kidneys, heart, lungs, and brain. Around 1.5 million people in the United States have some form of lupus.

Lupus is a condition that is difficult diagnose, due to its many associated sign and symptoms mimicking other ailments. The most distinctive characteristic of lupus is a butterfly rash that develops across both cheeks.

Although lupus affects mostly women of childbearing age, the disease can also develop in men, children, and teenagers. Most individuals develop lupus between the ages of 15 and 44 years.

Whether you have just been diagnosed with lupus or have been living with the condition for many years, dealing with lupus on a daily basis is not an easy task. Lupus experts and those living with the disease are at hand to provide advice and tips through lupus blogs.

Here are Medical News Today's choices of the 10 best lupus blogs.

Beneficial treatment effects of E2 and IMP therapy compared to placebo were seen among early perimenopausal women, but were not seen among postmenopausal women. The authors suggested that one possible underlying mechanism to explain this finding might be attributed to the stabilization of fluctuating estradiol levels.

A significant interaction between treatment and recent stressful life events on depressive symptoms reported by the CES-D scale was also noted. Among women who reported high amounts of stressful life events prior to study inception, CES-D score was significantly lower among the TE+IMP group compared to placebo.

Elisheva Adler was 20 years old, sitting in pajamas in her childhood bedroom in Long Island, the first time she saved someone's life via text message.

Adler had just started volunteering as a counselor for Crisis Text Line. The 4-year-old nonprofit provides free crisis intervention through a medium that is increasingly favored by young people: texts. Using the code 741741, counselors have exchanged more than 50 million messages with people who are facing issues from stress at school to self-harm. Out of those exchanges have come thousands of "active rescues" where first responders are called to a scene.

Adler heard about Crisis Text Line when she watched a TED talk by founder Nancy Lublin. Lublin had been running a text-based volunteer organization for teens, called DoSomething. One day, Lublin tells NPR, the platform got a text that read, "'he won't stop raping me. It's my dad. He told me not to tell anyone. r u there?' "

We shouldn’t wait until mental health awareness month to talk about these issues. I wanted to share my story because I grew up in a place where talking about mental health was unheard of. In the past year I’ve been struggling to find something to explain my feelings and my days to people that want to love me despite this disease. Every story I’ve read isn’t exactly like mine and if more people were open about it, maybe I could have found something that helped me communicate or made me feel like less of an outsider. By writing this, maybe I can help someone else. The description below is probably a mix of all my mental health struggles: borderline personality disorder, depression, and OCD.

Every minute of my day is an effort. From the minute I wake up I have to convince myself that putting my feet on the ground is worth it, that I’ll be able to find something in this day that will reassure me that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing: existing, living where I live, working where I work, filling my time with what I choose to. Every move I make is a conscious decision and nothing feels normal or like a routine and all I want is that normalcy and the feeling that I know what’s going to happen next.

I think of my mental stability as a pie chart–when I’m completely full, I’m totally stable. When I’m not full, even the littlest things can deplete me down to almost nothing and cause a state of emergency. I haven’t been full for almost 2 years. I can be going through my day and feeling okay and then one little thing, that would seem like nothing to the average person, mashes me into the ground and triggers, what I like to call, a freak-out.

During this freak-out I’ve lost all control of myself. It presents itself in many ways: anger, sadness, loss of the will to live–but in all of these ways, I’m watching from the outside. I don’t know who this person is. She says things I would never say. She acts in ways I would never act. My brain has total control and even though I’m fighting, I’m almost never strong enough to stop it once it gets on a roll. I’m a tiny being existing in this strong mind and body that has fully taken over as someone that’s not me.

Deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide are projected to increase 44 percent in Michigan during the next decade, according to a study released Tuesday.

The report, called “Pain in the Nation: The Drug, Alcohol and Suicide Epidemics, and the Need for a National Resilience Strategy,” projects that 1.6 million Americans could die from drugs, alcohol or suicide between 2016 and 2025, a 60 percent increase over the previous decade.

The study, from Trust for America’s Health and the Well Being Trust, was based on new state-by-state data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and projects numbers for the next decade based on current trends. The groups called for a comprehensive national plan to combat the upsurge in deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide in the United States.

“These numbers are staggering, tragic – and preventable,” Trust for America’s Health President and CEO John Auerbach said in a Tuesday press release.

“There is a serious crisis across the nation and solutions must go way beyond reducing the supply of opioids, other drugs and alcohol. Greater steps — that promote prevention, resiliency and opportunity — must be taken to address the underlying issues of pain, hopelessness and despair.”

If current trends hold true, Michigan would rank 20th in the nation for drug, alcohol and suicide deaths by 2025, with a combined rate of 65.9 such deaths per 100,000. Michigan currently ranks 22nd in the country with a rate of 45.8 such deaths per 100,000.

Michigan’s drug overdose death rate was 20 per 100,000 in 2015, or 16th highest in the nation, according to the study.

People with Cluster B personality disorders may have trouble in social situations — one of the hallmarks of Cluster B disorders is overdramatic behavior that doesn’t make sense to people who aren’t in our heads. It is important to note, however, that a lot of us in treatment (on our own or with the help of professionals) actively work to generate empathy within ourselves. Empathy can be learned — which is something I still have trouble grasping sometimes, even though I myself had to learn it and I repeat this fact to others on a daily basis.

Rudy’s Story

I have been forcibly hospitalized three times. The first time was while serving in the army in 2009, and the second and third times were in 2014 about a month apart. All of these hospitalizations were traumatizing for a variety of reasons, but the third time was by far the worst.

In 2014, I was in community college and was experiencing a great deal of stress due to pushing myself too hard. As a 26-year-old college student, I felt like a failure for having taken so long to begin college. I also felt ashamed of having a mental health diagnosis and being discharged from the army for that reason. I never felt like I quite fit in with my classmates or with students taking part in the extracurricular activities I participated in, such as my theater group. I was scared that I would never fit in or be normal.

One day, as I was driving to rehearsal for my theater group, I began to panic. I felt intense anxiety due to not being able to learn my lines as a result of the psychiatric medications I was taking. When I arrived at the theater, I became catatonic. The director called the ambulance, and I was put in restraints and taken to the emergency room. Although I was only in the emergency room for a few hours, the experience felt traumatizing and further isolated me from my peers.

Wanting to put that experience behind me, I continued with school and theater. However, the pressure kept building up. I started to feel like I couldn’t handle it, and I didn’t see a solution. I did not wish to drop out of school, but I also could not see myself making it to the end of the semester.

One day, just a few hours before rehearsal, I isolated myself in my room, hiding under my covers, feeling like everything in the outside world was just too much. A friend came to check on me, and I was unresponsive. My friend then called my roommate, who called the police.