Researchers found that people who exhibited higher levels of autistic traits were more likely to try to end their lives than people without the traits because they felt they were excluded from society, were a burden on friends and family, and because they experienced depression.

Previous research has already suggested a link between autistic people and an increased risk of suicide.

However, this is the first study to suggest those who have not been diagnosed with autism but had certain traits typical of autistic people were also more at risk of attempting suicide.

This is the full paper that the news items from the last 2 days referred to.....

https://goo.gl/VGd2OD

This report describes a psychological approach to experiences that are commonly thought of as psychosis, or sometimes schizophrenia. It complements parallel reports on the experiences commonly thought of as bipolar disorder and depression.

• Hearing voices or feeling paranoid are common experiences which can often be a reaction to trauma, abuse or deprivation. Calling them symptoms of mental illness, psychosis or schizophrenia is only one way of thinking about them, with advantages and disadvantages.
• There is no clear dividing line between ‘psychosis’ and other thoughts, feelings and beliefs: psychosis can be understood and treated in the same way as other psychological problems such as anxiety or shyness. Significant progress has been made over the last twenty years both in understanding the psychology of these experiences and in finding ways to help.
• Some people find it useful to think of themselves as having an illness. Others prefer to think of their problems as, for example, an aspect of their personality which sometimes gets them into trouble but which they would not want to be without.
• In some cultures, experiences such as hearing voices are highly valued.
• Each individual’s experiences are unique – no one person’s problems, or ways of coping with them, are exactly the same as anyone else’s.
• For many people the experiences are short-lived. Even people who continue to have them nevertheless often lead happy and successful lives.
• It is a myth that people who have these experiences are likely to be violent.
• Psychological therapies – talking treatments such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) – are very helpful for many people. In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that everyone with a diagnosis of psychosis or schizophrenia should be offered talking therapy. However most people are currently unable to access it and we regard this situation as scandalous.
• More generally, it is vital that services offer people the chance to talk in detail about their experiences and to make sense of what has happened to them. Surprisingly few currently do. Professionals should not insist that people accept any one particular framework of understanding, for example that their experiences are symptoms of an illness.
• Many people find that ‘antipsychotic’ medication helps to make the experiences less frequent, intense or distressing. However, there is no evidence that it corrects an underlying biological abnormality. Recent evidence also suggests that it carries significant risks, particularly if taken long term.
• The British Psychological Society believes that services need to change radically, and that we need to invest in prevention by taking measures to reduce abuse, deprivation and inequality.

This is the second part of MIA’s coverage of the British Psychological Society’s recent report challenging the current paradigm for the diagnosis and treatment of psychosis.

The authors of the report expand upon the traumatic and sociopolitical factors underlying presentations of psychosis and “schizophrenia” and call for new ways of understanding these experiences.

The authors warn against conceptualizing voice hearing and other “unusual” experiences as indications of an unwanted “brain disease.” Most notably because this view uniformly pathologizes an otherwise heterogeneous experience that some find non-distressing and conducive to their lifestyle. Furthermore, they argue that these approaches privilege internal explanations for distress in a way that conceals the effects of trauma and structural violence.

They cite compelling evidence that mental health problems, and distressing experiences often labeled as “psychosis,” can be reactions to stressful life events, such as poverty, abuse, and different forms of trauma. Survivors of child abuse, for example, may hear voices resembling their former abuser. One review found that between one-half to three-quarters of individuals in psychiatric inpatient units were victims of childhood physical or sexual abuse.

Alongside flashbacks, intrusive images, and dissociation, hearing voices might similarly arise as a natural response in the aftermath of trauma. Refugees, for example, may hear voices or have visions related to personal experiences. The authors write:

Published last week in Cell, a study by Santamaria and Kathy McCoy, PhD, from the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) reveals a new mechanism in the gut microbiome that regulates pro- and anti-inflammatory cells. “We found that a protein expressed by gut bacteria called Bacteroides works to prevent IBD by rapidly recruiting white blood cells to kill a cell of the immune system that is responsible for orchestrating IBD,” says McCoy. “We think that this mechanism is likely involved in preventing most people from developing IBD.”

A report, published by the British Psychological Society (BPS), critiques the current state of knowledge of psychotic symptoms and the harmful implications of standard treatments, and makes suggestions for what needs to change.

One week following the government’s announcement of its review of mental health legislation, the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology published an open-access report challenging the existing framework conceptualizing “psychosis.” The authors attempt to dismantle the notion that schizophrenia is a “brain disease” which results in violent behaviors best regulated by medical intervention.

Aiming to impact service providers, users, and policy-makers, the report comprehensively reviews the current paradigm surrounding treatment for “psychosis,” as an updated version of a previous report, published in 2000. The authors include distinguished psychologists, representing eight universities and six NHS trusts, and people who identify with having experienced symptoms associated with “psychosis.” More than a quarter of the contributors come from the second group, referred to as “experts by experience.”

After we drove her home, Sam told me: “I can’t do this anymore.” I’d been her apologist for so long, but I couldn’t argue. I was exhausted. I respected her visions, but in the face of so much scorn and fear, she really started to slip away. And it didn’t help that throwing up in a shot glass became a routine for her. I don’t know if she did it to shock people, or if she was genuinely nauseous, and I never asked. She did it again, the second time, at Sammy’s bar. After that, it became regular. Everyone avoided her.

I can’t help but wonder about how McGough has managed to accomplish so much, when Kathy struggled so profoundly. Perhaps it’s the meds; the drugs they diagnose people with today for schizophrenia are far less debilitating than the lithium that was used to sedate Kathy. Or maybe it’s McGough’s extensive social network, which “helps her through” her visions.. Perhaps together, this modern collectivism, along with better meds, have allowed her to move through this world in a way that Kathy, born in the wrong place and time, could not.

Somewhere along the way, we had all failed her. It was partly the shame of our immigrant community where everybody knew everyone else’s business, or thought they did. It was also a time in the culture when mentally ill teenaged girls were hidden from the rest of the world; a mid-century version of the madwomen in the attic. Unlike McGough, she didn’t have a community who would try to understand the unique wiring of her brain.

Even I, her greatest advocate, couldn’t be exonerated from leaving her behind. In my last days in town, she had frightened me. I didn’t think she was tapped into a greater reality anymore. I saw how sick she had become. I wish I’d taken the time to speak candidly with her mother. I think we both hoped that the girl we once loved would spontaneously reappear. Neither of us ever said schizophrenia. As Campbell suggests, there wasn’t anyone to help her through: simply by listening, not judging. That was my role, but I had abandoned it.

About 15 years later, I went back to my hometown for my grandmother’s funeral. Taking a break from the service, I went outside and smoked a cigarette on a bench, when a middle aged woman with a bad perm sat down next to me. I thought she was a relative. She didn’t say a word, just smoked in silence. Later, my sister said, Kathy saw you at grandma’s funeral. Why didn’t you say hi?

TED Talk on Youtube...

https://goo.gl/cipoek

Kate Nicholson served in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for more than 20 years, practicing health-related civil rights law and securing powerful victories including in the U.S. Supreme Court. She is currently writing a book about her personal experiences with severe chronic pain. Kate is also an arts writer and enthusiast who helped found the new non-profit, Tilt West, www.tiltwest.org, recently named by Westword as the “best think tank for arts and culture” in the area. Kate was a Senior Fellow at Dartmouth College and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

As a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), I am profoundly grateful for my 10 years in recovery from opiate addiction. As detailed in my memoir Free Refills, I fell into an all too common trap for physicians, succumbing to stress and ready access to medications, and became utterly and completely addicted to the painkillers Percocet and Vicodin. After an unspeakably stressful visit in my office by the State Police and the DEA, three felony charges, being fingerprinted, two years of probation, 90 days in rehab, and losing my medical license for three years, I finally clawed my way back into the land of the living. I was also able to return, humbled, to a life of caring for patients.

There is one question that I invariably get asked, by my doctors, colleagues, friends, family members, and at lectures and book talks: now that you are in recovery from opiates, what are you going to do when you are in a situation such as an accident or surgery, when you might need to take opiates again? I have blithely answered this question with platitudes about how strong my recovery is these days, and how I will thoughtfully cross that bridge when I come to it. In other words, I punted consideration of this difficult issue into some unknown future time.

Unfortunately, that future is now, and that bridge is awaiting my passage.

Last week I slipped on my top outside step, which was covered in ice, went into free fall, and managed to completely tear my left quadriceps tendon. This required a surgical repair in which doctors drilled three holes into my kneecap and then tethered what was left of my quadriceps muscle to the kneecap. Taking Tylenol or Motrin for this kind of pain is kind of like going after Godzilla with a Nerf gun. I was sent home with a prescription for one of my previous drugs of choice: oxycodone.

My leg was hurting beyond belief. I literally felt as if it were burning off. But, I had spent the last 13 years of my life conditioning myself, almost in a Clockwork Orange kind of way, to be aversive to taking any and all opiates.