Recovery Michigan

U.S. health officials are unpacking mortality data amid efforts to better understand the country's recent surge in drug overdose deaths, and a new report ranks the drugs that are most frequently involved in these fatalities.

Schizophrenia affects around 1 percent of the population worldwide. Most of those affected are men.

The debilitating mental health condition includes severe symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, but also cognitive dysfunction and agitated body movements. Additionally, so-called negative symptoms range from not taking pleasure in daily activities anymore, to reduced speaking, reduced emotional expression, and the inability to engage in activities.

Available treatment options focus on eliminating the symptoms rather than the disease, as what causes the condition remains unknown. Antipsychotics, together with psychosocial treatments, are commonly prescribed to schizophrenia patients.

Antipsychotic drugs appear to be effective within the first few months of treatment, but long-term outcomes seem to be poor. Nearly 80 percent of patients experience a relapse of symptoms such as hallucinations and delusional thinking.

A new - and first of its kind - meta-analysis of current research suggests that in addition to these standard treatments, a high dose of B vitamins may be more helpful in reducing schizophrenia symptoms than conventional treatments on their own.

The new research was led by Joseph Firth, from the Division of Psychology and Mental Health at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom - and was published in the journal Psychological Medicine.

Firth and colleagues reviewed all of the randomized trials available that examined the effects of supplemental vitamins and minerals in schizophrenia patients. This amounted to 18 clinical trials and a total of 832 psychiatric patients that were under antipsychotic treatment.

The research indicates that taken in high doses, B vitamins - such as B-6, B-8, and B-12 - can significantly reduce schizophrenia symptoms. Additionally, a combined dose of several vitamins was shown to have the same beneficial effect. However, low doses of the vitamins were revealed to be ineffective.

Furthermore, the analysis showed that vitamin B supplements are most effective when taken early on in the development of the disease. The studies reviewed showed B vitamins to be most beneficial in patients whose illness lasted the shortest amount of time.

Joseph Firth comments on the study he led:

"Looking at all of the data from clinical trials of vitamin and mineral supplements for schizophrenia to date, we can see that B vitamins effectively improve outcomes for some patients. This could be an important advance, given that new treatments for this condition are so desperately needed."

However, Firth cautions that the studies reviewed yielded significantly different results. He also adds that "there is some indication these overall effects may be driven by larger benefits among subgroups of patients who have relevant genetic or dietary nutritional deficiencies."

Evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a potential cause of dementia caused by repeated blows to the head, has been found in the brains of former association football (soccer) players examined at the UCL Queen Square Brain Bank.

The study, funded by The Drake Foundation and published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica, looked at 14 retired footballers with dementia who were referred to the Old Age Psychiatry Service in Swansea, Wales, between 1980 and 2010. Permission from their next-of-kin was provided to perform post-mortem examinations, which were carried out in six ex-players. Post-mortem analysis of the brain was carried out by researchers from UCL and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

The team identified CTE pathology in four of the six brains examined, and all six also had signs of Alzheimer's disease. The rate of CTE identified in the footballers' brains exceeds the 12% average background rate of CTE found in a previous survey of 268 brains of an unselected population at the Queen Square Brain Bank. Like Alzheimer's disease, CTE can cause dementia and they are both characterised by a build-up of abnormal tau protein in the brain, but CTE causes tau to accumulate in a distinctive pattern.

Previous studies have found evidence of CTE in the brains of contact sports players, most notably boxers and American football players. Footballers are exposed to repetitive blows to the head from heading the ball and from head-to-player collisions. However, football is unique compared with boxing and American football in that blows to the head are commonly more minor and footballers are less likely to experience significant neurological symptoms or loss of consciousness.

"This is the first time CTE has been confirmed in a group of retired footballers," explains lead author Dr Helen Ling (UCL Institute of Neurology), senior research associate at the Department of Molecular Neuroscience and neurologist. "Our findings of CTE in retired footballers suggest a potential link between playing football and the development of degenerative brain pathologies in later life. However, it is important to note that we only studied a small number of retired footballers with dementia and that we still do not know how common dementia is among footballers."

The government thinks that disabled people need a nudge to get back to work, dropping the money and making life difficult will send us all back into employment. What they fail to realise is that there are many people who can’t work no matter what you do to make life on welfare hard and unbearable.

An ambitious U.S. federally funded study is enrolling at least 1,100 service members and veterans who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan to learn more about mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) and how it can be best evaluated, and perhaps prevented and treated.

Though ongoing funding is not guaranteed, the researchers hope to follow the cohort 20 years or more to better understand the long-term neurologic effects of mild TBI and other deployment-related conditions.

The research group reported recently on the first stages of the study in the journal Brain Injury. As of today, more than 700 volunteers are participating.

About 80 percent of those being enrolled have a history of at least one mild TBI, while the others have no TBIs. That will allow the researchers to compare the two groups. The focus is strictly on mild TBI; those with more severe brain injuries are excluded.

There's certainly scientific evidence that young transgender people can be at greater risk for depression and anxiety than their cisgender peers. But these studies often don't take into account whether or not their subjects have support from family or friends.

For transgender children, that support is crucial, suggests a new study published in the journal American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle surveyed 63 transgender kids between the ages of nine and 14 and their parents about the kids' mental health — measuring depression, anxiety, and self-worth. 

Each of the kids surveyed in this study have full support from their families and had already transitioned socially. Unlike many transgender people, who may struggle for years trying to conform to the gender they were assigned at birth or face backlash from family and friends when they come out, the kids in this study are already using the pronouns and wearing the clothing appropriate to their gender, with support from their families. 

And it makes a huge difference. Compared to both their peers and their siblings, children who have been allowed to transition socially are at no greater risk of depression. This study confirms findings of a similar study done in February of 2016. 

Both studies also found that kids who are able to transition have marginally higher risk of anxiety than their cisgender peers. This isn't too surprising, since even familial support doesn't diminish the oppression transgender kids face in a world where they often can't even go to the bathroom in peace. 

Of the 265,000 women who served during Vietnam, nearly 10,000 military women served in-country during the conflict. Barred from combat, these women served in healthcare, communications, intelligence, and administrative positions. Civilian women served as foreign correspondents for news agencies, worked for organizations such as the American Red Cross and the USO, or served in other government agencies, such as USAID or at the embassy.

Like the men who served in combat, many female veterans of the Vietnam War era returned home to battle post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while others may have suffered the effects of exposure to chemical agents. 20 percent of women experienced PTSD at some point after the war, according to the 2015 study published in JAMA Psychiatry, a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most of these women were nurses and many are still living with the condition, researchers found.

VVMF’s In Memory program recognizes veterans whose lives were cut short as a result of their service in Vietnam but are not eligible for inclusion on The Wall as a result of Department of Defense (DoD) guidelines. Examples of causes of death that do fit the criteria for inclusion in VVMF’s In Memory program include PTSD related illnesses / suicide and exposure to Agent Orange and similar chemicals.

Lynda Van Devanter Buckley, Margaret Ann Haskins-Rose, Suzanne Margaret Ciscoe, and Bonnie Jean McWilliams served during the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. They are the only four women to be honored through the In Memory program

A new trial from Deakin University has shown for the first time that improving diet quality can treat major depression.

Director of Deakin's Food and Mood Centre Professor Felice Jacka said the results of her team's new study offered a possible new treatment approach to depression, one of the world's most prevalent and costly medical disorders.

"We've known for some time that there is a clear association between the quality of people's diets and their risk for depression," Professor Jacka said.

"This is the case across countries, cultures and age groups, with healthy diets associated with reduced risk, and unhealthy diets associated with increased risk for depression.

"However, this is the first randomised controlled trial to directly test whether improving diet quality can actually treat clinical depression".

In the study, adults with major depressive disorder were recruited and randomly assigned to receive either social support, which is known to be helpful for people with depression, or support from a clinical dietitian, over a three-month period.

The dietary group received information and assistance to improve the quality of their current diets, with a focus on increasing the consumption of vegetables, fruits, wholegrains, legumes, fish, lean red meats, olive oil and nuts, while reducing their consumption of unhealthy 'extras' foods, such as sweets, refined cereals, fried food, fast-food, processed meats and sugary drinks.

The results of the study, published in the international journal BMC Medicine, showed that participants in the dietary intervention group had a much greater reduction in their depressive symptoms over the three-month period, compared to those in the social support group.

At the end of the trial, a third of those in the dietary support group met criteria for remission of major depression, compared to 8 percent of those in the social support group.

"These results were not explained by changes in physical activity or body weight, but were closely related to the extent of dietary change," Professor Jacka said.

"Those who adhered more closely to the dietary program experienced the greatest benefit to their depression symptoms."

A new and disturbing report in The Lancet, based on data collected from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, shows an increase in the death rates from 1999 to 2014 for young Americans, driven substantially by a shocking increase in the mortality of white women aged 25 to 35.

All other ethnic groups, with the major exception of American Indians/Alaska Natives, experienced declines in mortality for all ages from 1999 to 2014. 

What explains this? According to the report, there has been a surge in suicides and accidents among young white people, with the latter being largely due to drug overdoses. This is consistent with another recent report, which showed that, among Millennials aged 25 to 34, the death rate from heroin overdoses has quadrupled from 2010 to 2015. In addition to suicide and accidents, liver disease was a major driver for the increase in mortality among Indians/Natives.