Recovery Michigan

Although the examples in the article are terrible, I remember in the 70's the fairly common practice of sexually exploiting women in residential rehab who faced prison or jail unless they participated. There seemed to be no way to stop it since any complaint by the women was dismissed as lying by a drug addict, and grounds for revoking probation. No real rights protection....

https://goo.gl/m3CZqG

While out on a pass — an outing permitted by the treatment center’s staff — to attend his son’s first birthday party, McLoone received a phone call. It was the treatment center telling him to come back to the facility immediately. “What happened?” McLoone asked. “You have to come back now,” was all they said. McLoone put down his slice of birthday cake and promptly left his son’s party.

“I got back that night, and they put me on ‘the bench.’”

McLoone was condemned to sit on the bench — literally, just a wooden bench — for three consecutive days with no explanation as to why. From 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., McLoone was ordered to sit: He was not allowed to attend any group therapy sessions or interact with any of his peers, and staff had ordered them not to speak with him. When it came time to eat, McLoone had to sit alone in the cafeteria. “By day two or three, I thought, what the fuck is this? This is therapeutic? This is treatment?”

I asked McLoone why he sat without protest. He told me that at any moment the staff could cease his treatment, call his probation officer, and send him back to jail. With a second-degree felony pending against him, he had no choice but to submit.

Research by the University of Exeter, published in the journal Psychological Medicine found that a new onset mental disorder may be a consequence of exclusion from school.

The study, also found that -- separately -- poor mental health can lead to exclusion from school.

Professor Tamsin Ford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Exeter's Medical School, warned that excluded children can develop a range of mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety as well as behavioural disturbance. The impact of excluding a child from school on their education and progress is often long term, and this work suggests that their mental health may also deteriorate.

The study is the most rigorous study of the impact of exclusion from school among the general population so far and included a standardised assessment of children's difficulties.

Consistently poor behaviour in the classroom is the main reason for school exclusion, with many students, mainly of secondary school age, facing repeated dismissal from school. Relatively few pupils are expelled from school, but Professor Ford warned that even temporary exclusions can amplify psychological distress.

Professor Ford, who practises as a child and adolescent psychiatrist as well as carrying out research, said identifying children who struggle in class could, if coupled with tailored support, prevent exclusion and improve their success at school, while exclusion might precipitate future mental disorder. These severe psychological difficulties are often persistent so could then require long-term clinical support by the NHS.

Professor Ford said: "For children who really struggle at school, exclusion can be a relief as it removes then from an unbearable situation with the result that on their return to school they will behave even more badly to escape again. As such, it becomes an entirely counterproductive disciplinary tool as for these children it encourages the very behaviour that it intends to punish. By avoiding exclusion and finding other solutions to poor behaviour, schools can help children's mental health in the future as well as their education."

Furthermore, none of the comparator groups included a placebo arm, nor an arm that compared adding psychotherapy for the many participants who were not receiving it at baseline. At present, we still don't know if augmentation with an antipsychotic to treat major depressive disorder is any better than placebo or additional behavioral therapy.

Hallejulah.....

https://goo.gl/ehUxeb

Four cups of coffee cuts risk by 65 percent/

The team used Cox regression models to adjust for potential confounding factors - such as age, sex, or adherence to the Mediterranean diet - and zoom in on the link between coffee consumption and death risk.

The study found that participants who had at least four cups of coffee every day had a 65 percent lower risk of dying from all causes, compared with those who said they never or "almost never" drank coffee.

Moreover, for every two additional cups of coffee consumed every day, the risk of premature death decreased by 25 percent.

Dr. Navarro and colleagues also found that for adults aged 45 and above, coffee seemed to have an even more positive impact, as the two additional daily cups of coffee decreased mortality risk by 30 percent in this age group.

The lead author summarizes the findings, saying:

"In the SUN project, we found an inverse association between drinking coffee and the risk of all-cause mortality, particularly in people aged 45 years and above. This may be due to a stronger protective association among older participants."

An enormous prospective study of food intake in adults, reported here, challenges several staunchly held beliefs about dietary components and their association with health risks: finding, for example that diets rich in fats, including saturated fats, don't increase mortality risk, but high-carbohydrate diets do.

In sum, the results suggest that nutritional guidelines and conventional wisdom regarding these basic dietary elements may be seriously mistaken.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning of impulse control problems associated with the atypical antipsychotic aripiprazole (Abilify, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co, Ltd; Abilify Maintena, Otsuka; Aristada, Alkermes, Inc; and generics).

The drug has been associated with compulsive gambling, eating, shopping, and sexual activity. According to an FDA release, these urges reportedly cease when the drug is discontinued or the dose is reduced. The FDA also notes that although these effects are rare, they have the potential to cause harm to patients and others if they go unrecognized.

"Although pathological gambling is listed as a reported side effect in the current aripiprazole drug labels, this description does not entirely reflect the nature of the impulse-control risk FDA identified.

"In addition, FDA has become aware of other compulsive behaviors associated with aripiprazole, such as compulsive eating, shopping, and sexual actions. These compulsive behaviors can affect anyone who is taking the medicine. As a result, FDA is adding new warnings about all of these compulsive behaviors to the drug labels and the patient Medication Guides for all aripiprazole products," the FDA notes in its release.

The level of variation in the gut microbiome between different people and locations across the globe is astonishing.

While over 1,000 different bacterial species have been found to exist in the human gut, each individual is thought to harbor only around 160 of these.

Today, some believe that a core set of metabolic and molecular processes are at the heart of a healthy gut. Which species support these processes is less relevant than how well they are working together.

The hallmark of this functional core of gut bacteria is a set of genes that promote long-term residence in the gut and active contribution to human metabolic function.

Specifically, these microbes aid digestion, as well as the production of vitamins, hormones, and essential amino acids.

Diet is a major player in determining which microbes take up residence in our guts long-term. A Western diet, high in fat and refined sugars but low in fiber, is thought to reduce microbial diversity.

This can have detrimental effects on health.

A study published in the journal Nature investigated the mechanism.

When mice were fed a low-fiber diet for 4 weeks, the levels of 60 percent of microbial species decreased significantly. About half of these returned to normal levels when the mice were switched back to a high-fiber diet.

But even a short burst of such an unhealthful diet left long-lasting effects, or "scars," on the microbial diversity, as the researchers pointed out.

Duh!...

https://goo.gl/S5J5hc

People who use methamphetamine are almost five times more likely to have a stroke caused by a bleed in the brain, many of which are fatal. “We can add stroke to the list of terrible and devastating things that methamphetamine does,” says Damian Zuloaga, of the University at Albany, New York.

Beyond the signature tooth decay known as “meth mouth”, methamphetamine also increases heart rate and blood pressure, and can trigger heart attacks. The drug can lead to psychosis, and has been linked to anxiety disorders, depression, and problems with movement similar to those seen in Parkinson’s disease.

A handful of studies have also linked methamphetamine use to strokes. To explore further, Julia Lappin and her colleagues at the Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney sifted through published research on the topic.

The team specifically looked for research into people under the age of 45 – a group less likely to be affected by age-related causes of stroke. They assessed the results of 77 studies in total. Most of these studies were conducted in the US, where, in 2012, around 1.2 million people reported using methamphetamine in the past year.

Dismal outcomes

Several of the studies the team looked at reported that strokes are responsible for between one and five per cent of methamphetamine-related deaths. And other studies found that methamphetamine was to blame for between two and six per cent of all strokes caused by a blockage in the brain’s blood flow in under 45s.

But strokes caused by a brain bleed were more common  – methamphetamine use accounted for between six and 13 per cent of all cases of this type of stroke in under 45s.

Overall, methamphetamine use increases a person’s chance of having a stroke caused by a brain bleed by almost five times. This increased risk is more than double that associated with cocaine or tobacco – both of which are also known to increase stroke risk – say the researchers.

'Observe the mind without judgment'

Mindfulness training teaches people to heighten their "moment-to-moment awareness" of what is going on in the mind without judging it.

Thus, when a craving arises, mindfulness training teaches you how to just observe the sensations, thoughts, and feelings of that moment without evaluating or analyzing them.

"As such, this process is antithetical to the fixation upon and elaboration of desire states that characterize addictions," note the authors.

One theory is that by suspending judgment, mindfulness helps individuals to become more aware of their automatic responses to stimuli and that alternatives are possible, even if it is just to observe without reaction. This, in turn, leads to "uncoupling between drug-taking and automatic motivational tendencies."

For the study, the UCL team recruited 68 men and women who drank heavily but were otherwise healthy; their drinking had not reached the point where they had developed severe alcohol-related problems.

All participants were given a brief training session delivered using an 11-minute audio recording that described techniques on reducing alcohol use. They were also encouraged to practice the techniques over the following week.

The mindfulness recordings instructed the drinkers on how to pay attention to their bodily feelings and sensations, so that they concentrated on observing their cravings instead of suppressing them.

In contrast, the relaxation recordings were "designed to downregulate craving by reducing arousal."

During the week following the brief training session, the drinkers instructed in the mindfulness approach drank 9.3 fewer units of alcohol - the equivalent of around three pints of beer.