Satisfaction with life, global disability, neurobehavioral symptom severity, psychiatric symptom severity and sleep impairment were worse in patients with concussive blast TBI compared with the combat-deployed service members without TBI, although performance on cognitive measures was no different between the two groups at the evaluation after five years, according to the article.
Risk factors for poor outcomes after five years appear to be brain injury diagnosis, preinjury intelligence, motor strength, verbal fluency and neurobehavioral symptom severity at one year, the authors report.
"Together these findings indicate progression of symptom severity beyond one year after injury. Many service members with concussive blast TBI experience evolution rather than resolution of symptoms from the one- to five-year outcomes. Even a small percentage of combat-deployed controls appeared to experience worsening over time. In both groups, this finding appears to be driven more by psychiatric symptoms than by cognitive deficits. ... We believe that by being informed from longitudinal studies such as this one, the medical community can be proactive in combatting the potentially negative and extremely costly effect of these wartime injuries," the article concludes.
Anybody have experience with this? It is FDA approved so it can be prescribed. It runs $600-700.......
The Fisher Wallace Stimulator® is cleared by the FDA to treat depression, anxiety, and insomnia and has been proven to be safe and effective in multiple published studies, including a study of bipolar depression conducted at Mount Sinai Hospital and published in 2015. The following chart from the Mount Sinai study shows a lowering of depression symptoms from active treatment (blue line) versus a return to baseline in the placebo group (red line).
Dr. Kolar writes that “ECT is one of the most controversial treatments in medicine, particularly because of the still unknown mechanism of action and uncertainty about cognitive side effects.”
Researchers, including Dr. Kolar, found that patients routinely receive inadequate informed consent that does not mention the risk of permanent impairment. For instance, the consent forms provided by the licensing body, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), state that “Most patients report that memory is actually improved by ECT.” But researchers say that statement “is contradicted by all service-user research” as well as many findings in the research literature. The researchers identified that over a third of patients experience permanent memory loss. This contradiction may account for why they also found that “Half of people given ECT say they did not receive an adequate explanation of the treatment.”
In recent years, doctors have attempted to mitigate the possibility of memory loss and cognitive impairment by modifying the ECT technique (for instance, stimulating only one side of the brain at a time). However, these findings indicate that the treatment still carries considerable risk. Additionally, these modifications tend to make the treatment far less effective, further skewing the risk/benefit ratio.
Dr. Kolar acknowledges the utility of ECT for certain populations but suggests that the risks of the treatment have been minimized. He writes, “There is no doubt that ECT is effective and life-saving for a selected population of patients. However, a good balance of sustained benefits and possible risks or serious cognitive side effects is not always reached.”
He suggests that better tools for assessing memory loss and cognitive impairment need to be used throughout the course of treatment, and that informed consent practices need to be updated to include the very real risk of permanent side effects.
Duh.....
Food insecurity (FI) affects nearly 795 million people worldwide. Although a complex phenomenon encompassing food availability, affordability, utilization, and even the social norms that define acceptable ways to acquire food, FI can affect people's health beyond its impact on nutrition. A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine determined that FI was associated with poorer mental health and specific psychosocial stressors across global regions (149 countries), independent of individuals' socioeconomic status.
Nearly one in three individuals (29.2%) globally experience a common mental disorder during their lifetime, such as depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom disorders. FI may be a key contributor to common mental disorders through several different mechanisms. First, by generating uncertainty over the ability to maintain food supplies or to acquire sufficient food in the future, FI can provoke a stress response that may contribute to anxiety and depression. Furthermore, acquiring foods in socially unacceptable ways can induce feelings of alienation, powerlessness, shame, and guilt that are associated with depression. FI may also magnify socioeconomic disparities within households and communities that could increase cultural sensitivities and influence overall mental well-being.
Dr. Jones found that FI was associated with poorer mental health status in a dose-response fashion, comparing NEI vs. FI for multiple age ranges. An inverse effect was found for PEI vs. FI data.
The consistent dose-response trend suggests a causal association between FI and mental health status. According to Dr. Jones, "This trend suggests that the psychosocial stressors that underlie the mental health indices examined may be amplified with increasing FI. For example, anxiety related to one's ability to acquire sufficient food in the future may be provoked even under conditions of mild FI, and is likely to increase with moderate and severe FI. Alternatively, multiple pathways from FI to poorer mental health may be invoked with increasing severity of FI. Under conditions of more severe FI, for example, individuals may resort to acquiring food in socially unacceptable ways as a coping strategy. The feelings of shame and guilt associated with this behavior could compound pre-existing anxiety precipitated by mild FI to yield even poorer mental health conditions."
Misophonia, a disorder which means sufferers have a hatred of sounds such as eating, chewing, loud breathing or even repeated pen-clicking, was first named as a condition in 2001.
Over the years, scientists have been skeptical about whether or not it constitutes a genuine medical ailment, but now new research led by a team at the U.K.'s Newcastle University has proven that those with misophonia have a difference in their brain's frontal lobe to non-sufferers.
This is a webinar recorded on Adobe Connect. It takes a while to load, but both the slides and the audio are available for review....
Also, has a captioned version of the webinar on screen.
Gee-they forgot to mention this.......
The once-active sailor, who ran marathons and deployed in 2009 to East Africa, reported stumbling frequently, arguing with his family and needing significant support from his staff while on the job due to cognitive issues.
Physicians diagnosed the service member with anxiety, PTSD and a thiamine deficiency. But after months of treatment, including medication, behavioral therapy and daily doses of vitamins, little changed.
The patient continued to be hobbled by his symptoms, eventually leaving the military on a medical discharge and questioning his abilities to function or take care of his children.
It wasn’t until physicians took a hard look at his medical history, which included vertigo that began two months after his Africa deployment, that they suspected mefloquine poisoning: The medication once used widely by the U.S. armed forces to prevent and treat malaria has been linked to brain stem lesions and psychiatric symptoms.
While no test is available to prove the sailor suffered what is called "mefloquine toxicity,” he scored high enough on an adverse drug reaction probability survey to tie his symptoms to the drug, also known as Lariam.
In new research published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior,Hobbs found that they did, thereby representing a paradigm of social network resilience.
Hobbs, who led the study while at the University of California San Diego, collaborated with Facebook data scientist Moira Burke. The researchers found that close friends of the deceased immediately increased their interactions with one another by 30 percent, peaking in volume. The interactions faded a bit in the following months and ultimately stabilized at the same volume of interaction as before the death, even two years after the loss. This insight into how social networks adapt to significant losses could lead to new ways to help people with the grieving process, ensuring that their networks are able to recover rather than collapse during these difficult times.
