Recovery Michigan

Trends in both the rate and cause of drug overdose deaths among U.S. teens have varied from 1999 to 2015, according to a National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) report.

Deaths involving opioids more than tripled from 1999 (0.8 per 100,000) to 2007 (2.7 per 100,000) but leveled off between 2007 and 2011 until they increased between 2014 and 2015 (2.4 per 100,000).

However, the majority of overdose deaths were accidental (80.4%), followed by suicide (13.5%), undetermined intent (5.2%), and homicide (0.9%).

The researchers found that heroin overdoses -- which were three times higher in 2015 (1.0 per 100,000) than in 1999 (0.3 per 100,000) -- were of particular concern. Other leading causes of overdose deaths included:

• Cocaine increased between 1999 (0.3 per 100,000) and 2006 (0.7 per 100,000), declined to 0.2 per 100,000 in 2009, and stabilized before increasing between 2013 (0.1 per 100,000) and 2015 (0.3 per 100,000).
• Benzodiazepines increased from 2000 (0.1 per 100,000) to 2009 (0.7 per 100,000), declined to 0.4 per 100,000 by 2012, and then rose again to 0.6 per 100,000 in 2015.
• Psychostimulants with abuse potential increased from 0.1 per 100,000 in 1999 to 0.4 per 100,000 in 2015.

An indicator of how you might respond to ketamine for depression....

https://goo.gl/bPL6iA

In the study, first author Dr. Wallace Duncan and his colleagues from the Experimental Therapeutics and Pathophysiology Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland used wristwatch activity monitors to examine measures of circadian timekeeping systems, including the timing and levels of activity. The 51 patients included in the study had either major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, and all of the patients had depressive symptoms that had not responded to previous treatment attempts.

Duncan and his colleagues showed that patients who responded to a single infusion of ketamine initially had more activity earlier in the day and lower activity later in the day than patients who did not respond to ketamine. “In other words, their daily activity clock was shifted forward,” said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Responders also had advance-shifted timing of their activity on the first day after the treatment, and increased overall activity levels on the third day, consistent with the notion that activity levels are part of the clinical response to ketamine.

In response to the growing heroin epidemic in the United States, the National Library of Medicine’s Specialized Information Services has created a portal to provide resources and information on prescribing, overdose, medication-assisted treatment, and recovery. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, addiction is defined as:

“A primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.” 1

An estimated 88,000 individuals die annually from alcohol-related causes, which makes alcohol the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.

Sober Grid

Android: Free

Sober Grid is designed to connect those who want to get sober or are in recovery from alcoholism with thousands of other people who are focused on sobriety. Some individuals join the app to receive support, while others join to give support. No matter the motive, Sober Grid serves as an opportunity to stay dry while helping others on the network to do the same.

If you need help and need to speak to someone right away, you can reach out to Sober Grid's virtual sober community for support by selecting the "Burning Desire" button. Users of Sober Grid can also find sober friends while traveling away from home, be it in an airport or a new city. The network connects people both locally or from anywhere in the world.

Anxiety can do many things to the body, including increasing blood pressure and heart rate. But a new study suggests that it does not stop there.

Researchers from the University of Bristol suggest a heightened state of anxiety affects the ability to read facial expressions, with some people unable to distinguish between happy and angry. The study, State anxiety and emotional face recognition in healthy volunteers, was published in the journal of Royal Society Open Science.

Alcohol use, high-risk drinking and alcohol dependence all increased dramatically in the United States from 2002 to 2013, researchers reported, with spikes in overall drinking and problem drinking highest among women, the elderly, and minorities.

"These are the largest alcohol increases we have seen in three decades," lead author Bridget F. Grant, PhD, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told MedPage Today. "The focus has been on opioids, heroin, and marijuana use, but these are low prevalent disorders. Thirty million Americans now abuse alcohol."

Grant and colleagues compared data from two editions of the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions -- one covering 2001-2002 and the other 2012-2013 -- which track alcohol consumption patterns to identify changes in 12-month alcohol use, 12-month high-risk drinking, and 12-month alcohol use disorder (AUD).

The survey data comparison revealed that:

• Alcohol use in the U.S. grew from 65.4% in 2001-2002 to 72.7% in 2012-2013
• High risk drinking grew from 9.7% of the adult population (20.2 million Americans) in 2001-2012 to 12.6% (29.6 million Americans) in 2012-2013
• DMS-IV diagnosis of AUD prevalence was 8.5% of the total adult population (17.6 million people) in 2001-2002 and 12.7% (29.9 million people) in 2012-2013
• Prevalence of high-risk drinking and AUD among women rose 57.9% and 83.7%, respectively, during the study period
• Among men, prevalence of high-risk drinking and AUD increased 15.5% and 34.7%, respectively

The researchers called these increases "alarming" and said the same of highly significant increases in alcohol use and abuse among the elderly and racial and ethnic minorities.

Prevalence of alcohol use among adults who were ages 65 and older increased by 22.4% between the two surveys, while high-risk drinking and AUD among the elderly increased by 106.7% and 61.9%, respectively.

Alcohol consumption is a recognized global public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "5.1 percent of the global burden of disease and injury is attributable to alcohol."

In 2010, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution urging countries to "strengthen national responses to public health problems caused by the harmful use of alcohol."

The U.K. government recently tightened their guidance on alcohol consumption, following new evidence of links to cancer.

In their study paper, in which they discuss the rationale for their investigation, the researchers explain that a link between heavy drinking and adverse brain health - including dementia and degeneration of brain tissue - has already been well established.

However, fewer studies have examined the relationship between moderate drinking and brain health, and their evidence is largely inconsistent.

Therefore, the team decided to investigate whether or not there is a link between moderate alcohol consumption and brain changes by analyzing 30 years worth of data (collected between 1985 and 2015) on 550 healthy men and women who took part in the Whitehall II Study.

The participants were aged 43 on average when they started the study and none of them were alcohol dependent.

The data included information about weekly alcohol consumption and regular measures of brain function and mental performance. The participants also had an MRI brain scan at the end of the study.

The first time I read this idea was in the early 70's. It was true then for me and it is true now.....

https://goo.gl/Kp2yLN

In 2002, a study of overall sugar consumption per person in six different countries (Canada, France, Germany, Korea, New Zealand, and the United States) - published by Dr. Arthur Westover, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas - implicated sugar as a factor in higher rates of major depression.

Since then, several other research teams have investigated the effect of diet on mental health. For example, consumption of processed and fast food - including hamburgers, pizza, and fried foods - was found to be higher in both youngsters and adults with increased rates of depression.

Likewise, female U.S. seniors with high levels of sugar in their diet had greater rates of depression than those who consumed less sugar.

Sugar-sweetened beverages, especially soft drinks, have increased in popularity and are now consumed around the world. But a study of Chinese adults - who traditionally drink unsweetened tea - showed that those who drank soft drinks had higher rates of depression.

Lead study author Dr. Jose Montoya and his colleagues published their findings yesterday, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and they suggest that that the concentration of cytokines in the bloodstream is relevant to the acuteness of CFS/ME symptoms.

A hyperbolic title, but important read since covers a huge difference in the development of social skills from past generations...

https://goo.gl/GtVdMZ

I’ve been researching generational differences for 25 years, starting when I was a 22-year-old doctoral student in psychology. Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. Beliefs and behaviors that were already rising simply continue to do so. Millennials, for instance, are a highly individualistic generation, but individualism had been increasing since the Baby Boomers turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation.

Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.

At first I presumed these might be blips, but the trends persisted, across several years and a series of national surveys. The changes weren’t just in degree, but in kind. The biggest difference between the Millennials and their predecessors was in how they viewed the world; teens today differ from the Millennials not just in their views but in how they spend their time. The experiences they have every day are radically different from those of the generation that came of age just a few years before them.

What happened in 2012 to cause such dramatic shifts in behavior? It was after the Great Recession, which officially lasted from 2007 to 2009 and had a starker effect on Millennials trying to find a place in a sputtering economy. But it was exactly the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent.