Recovery Michigan

When I arrived at my first psychiatric ward, at George Washington University, I was crying. Instead of helping me to alleviate stress, the hospital gave me sedative pills to make me quiet. I took the pills, terrified of being seen as noncompliant—I had read so many stories about people’s experiences. These places almost always view us as noncompliant if we want alternatives to the treatment plan.

A more recent psych ward stay, at Georgetown Hospital, felt safer; Georgetown staff actually seemed to care, did their jobs to try and make me feel less distressed, and listened to me when I rejected the idea of adding an extra medication. And the medication they gave me finally felt like it was working. When I talked about the difference in treatment quality with my friend Sara Luterman, an autistic advocate and editor of NOS Magazine, their response got me thinking. They said, “There needs to be a Yelp for psych wards.”

Mental health activists are mourning the loss of Robert Dellar, a “tenacious force for good in an uncaring world” and one of the founders of Mad Pride, who died at the weekend.

Dellar avoided the media limelight, but had been a driving force behind the user-led campaign, which was set up to celebrate mental health culture.

Dellar, who leaves a partner, Shirley, was also an active member in recent years of the user-led campaigning organisation that grew out of Mad Pride, the Mental Health Resistance Network.

Through Mad Pride, he helped organise countless gigs, compilation CDs and direct action protests, and was a key figure in protests against the last Labour government’s plans to introduce community treatment orders (CTOs).

But he also worked tirelessly to support mental health service-users in a professional capacity for many years, and his last paid work was as an advocate for prisoners with experience of mental distress, in Brixton Prison.

One of his earliest successes was his pioneering work in setting up a patients’ council and advocacy department at Hackney Hospital, a mental health institution in east London.

In 1997, Dellar was appointed as a development worker at Southwark Mind, which had just been transformed into a user-led charity thanks to the efforts of survivor activists Pete Shaughnessy and Denise McKenna.

Dellar set up another “user council” in Southwark, which, said McKenna, was a radical move because it “shifted the power imbalance usually found in service user involvement within services”.

Mrs. M would never forget that day. She was walking along a busy road next to the vegetable market when two goons zipped past on a bike. One man’s hand shot out and grabbed the chain around her neck. The next instant, she had stumbled to her knees, and was dragged along in the wake of the bike. Thankfully, the chain snapped, and she got away with a mildly bruised neck. Though dazed by the incident, Mrs. M was fine until a week after the incident.

Then, the nightmares began.

She would struggle and yell and fight in her sleep every night with phantom chain snatchers. Every bout left her charged with anger and often left her depressed. The episodes continued for several months until they finally stopped. How could a single stressful event have such extended consequences?

A new study by Indian scientists has gained insights into how a single instance of severe stress can lead to delayed and long-term psychological trauma. The work pinpoints key molecular and physiological processes that could be driving changes in brain architecture.

The team, led by Sumantra Chattarji from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem), Bangalore, have shown that a single stressful incident can lead to increased electrical activity in a brain region known as the amygdala. This activity sets in late, occurring ten days after a single stressful episode, and is dependent on a molecule known as the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor (NMDA-R), an ion channel protein on nerve cells known to be crucial for memory functions.

Pegi Scarlett had just returned from her husband’s grave this past Memorial Day — the first since his death — when, on a whim, she decided to search online whether other Vietnam vets had died of the same aggressive brain cancer.

With a few keystrokes, she found a Facebook group with a couple hundred widows like herself, whose veteran husbands had died of glioblastoma. She also found an intriguing article: A widow in Missouri had fought for almost eight years before convincing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that she was entitled to benefits for her husband’s fatal brain cancer because of his exposure to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.

“Shocked is probably the word,” Scarlett said, describing her reaction to what she found. “Story after story after story.”

Many Vietnam veterans are battling the VA to compensate them for a growing list of ailments they believe are caused by their exposure to Agent Orange. But because of the seriousness of glioblastoma multiforme — which is often fatal within months — widows are the ones left to fight.

Carrie Fisher, who died at age 60 following a heart attack, was known to many fans as the bun-haired Princess Leia and little else. But the actress had a career that spanned a variety of media, from movies to TV shows, from books to plays. Fisher touched lives through her work in Star Wars and other major projects, but it was what she did off-screen that really established her as one of our most cherished icons.

Fisher struggled with mental illness for much of her life, something she was outspoken about at a time when depression, anxiety and other diseases were heavily stigmatized. It took Fisher years to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and even longer for her to accept it, as she told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in 2000.

“I thought they told me I was manic depressive to make me feel better about being a drug addict,” she said, one of her first times speaking publicly about living with the disorder. “It’s what you think. If you could just control yourself … You had an indulged childhood … You were a child of privilege … I don’t know, that’s what I thought. You’re just a drug addict.”

Fisher’s struggles with addiction were public knowledge in the 1980s, and a stint in rehab marked a turning point for her in myriad ways. She wrote a novel about the experience, Postcards from the Edge, her first of several books; and she began to come to terms with living with a disease not yet well understood by the masses.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced an agreement Monday with Princeton University to better address the needs of students with mental-health disabilities.

The department launched a compliance review shortly after a federal lawsuit was filed in 2014 by a student alleging discriminatory treatment.

The student said that when he was hospitalized after ingesting 20 tablets of a prescribed antidepressant, the university barred him from his dorm room and classes, even from setting foot on campus. He was told to submit to "voluntary" withdrawal.

He fought the university, but eventually did withdraw.

Although he was later readmitted, the student alleged that he suffered from the experience of being forced out, and from being away for a year.

In a statement late Monday, the university said the department "did not make any findings of noncompliance, but asked Princeton to update its policy language to better explain university procedures and options available to students with disabilities, which Princeton has agreed to do."

"Princeton has worked for years to make the University more accessible to and supportive of students with disabilities. The Department of Justice agreement focuses on better explaining what we are doing. This is an opportunity to restress and raise the profile of policies we have in place," said Michele Minter, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity.

That suit remains pending and is not affected by the agreement, which states that the university has revised its policy on leaves of absence and reinstatement for undergraduate students, and will further update the policy to be consistent with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Under the agreement, the university will evaluate requests to modify policies, rules, and regulations to accommodate students with disabilities.

It took a lot of convincing for John Evard to go to rehab. Seven days into his stay at the Las Vegas Recovery Center, the nausea and aching muscles of opioid withdrawal were finally beginning to fade.

“Any sweats?” a nurse asked him as she adjusted his blood pressure cuff. “Last night it was really bad, but not since I got up,” replied Evard, 70, explaining that he’d awakened several times with his sheets drenched.

Even for him, it was hard to understand how he ended up 300 miles away from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., at this bucolic facility in the suburbs of Vegas. “This is the absolute first time I ever had anything close to addiction,” he said. He prefers to use the term “complex dependence” to describe his situation: “It was, shall we say, a big surprise when it happened to me.”

As the nation grapples with a devastating opioid epidemic, concerns have primarily focused on young people buying drugs on the street. But America’s elderly also have a problem. Over the past several decades, physicians have increasingly prescribed seniors pain medications to address chronic pain from arthritis, cancer, neurological diseases and other illnesses that become more common in later life.

As the nation struggles with an ongoing epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse, misuse, and overdoses, a new Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that one in three (34%) of those who recently used such drugs for at least two months report being addicted or dependent.

Featured in Sunday’s The Washington Post, the new survey examines the views and experiences of long-term users of strong prescription painkillers, defined as adults who have taken the drugs for at least two months at some point during the past two years, other than to treat pain from cancer or terminal illness. These long-term users represent an estimated 5 percent of adults nationally.

Most long-term users are battling significant health problems, including seven in ten who say they have a debilitating disability or chronic disease. Almost all (98%) long-term painkiller users cite relieving pain as a reason for using the medications, but some also report other reasons:

• One third (34%) say they take the painkillers for fun or to get high;
• One in five (22%) say they take them to deal with day-to-day stress; and
• One in ten (12%) say they take them to relax or relieve tension.

Nearly all (97%) long-term users say they started taking the painkillers through a prescription from a doctor, and most say they discussed with their doctor the possibility of addiction or dependence and alternative ways to manage pain. However, only a third (33%) say their doctor discussed a plan for getting off of the medication.

Some long-term users also report misuse of prescribed medications, including:

• 20 percent say that they have known or suspected that someone else was using, taking, or selling their painkillers;
• 17 percent report taking painkillers not prescribed for them; and
• 14 percent say they’ve shared their painkillers with a family member or friend.

Introduction

Children and teens, who are just learning to navigate social relationships, often find themselves in social situations that are fraught with awkward exchanges. When the line between normal, even acceptable, playful teasing crosses into bullying, problems arise. It’s often difficult for them, and even adults, to discern when teasing becomes bullying, and when a laughing together becomes laughing at someone else’s expense.

Simply put, bullying can be boiled down to unwanted social attention. While it can be subtle or blatant; take place online, or in public; be physical or aggressive; there are a few characteristics that can help define bullying.

What Defines Bullying?

RIP is a good mnemonic to help remember the key elements of defining bullying behavior:

Terry Beasley can barely get out of bed. He keeps an ice pack on his head and a cloth over his eyes to keep out the light. The excruciating headaches never go away.

Beasley, a star receiver at Auburn University, spent three years in the NFL playing for the San Francisco 49ers. He’s one of thousands of retired pro players who will soon benefit from a multi-million dollar concussion settlement with the NFL.

As research has expanded, links have been found between blows to the head football players sustain and several degenerative brain diseases.

The money will finally be distributed to players after the Supreme Court announced this week that it will not hear an appeal of the case.

Players had sued the league, claiming the NFL hid the risks of brain injury. The settlement could award up to $5 million each to players who retired before July 7, 2014.

For Beasley, 66, and his wife, Marlene, the money can’t come soon enough.

“It’s going to help us buy the medicines he needs, get the physical help he needs from remodeling our house to make it handicap accessible to having someone with him 24 hours a day,” Marlene said.

She met her husband when he was in the hospital and she was working as a psychiatric nurse. Eventually, she stopped working to care for him.

“My job is Terry 24 hours a day,” Marlene said.

While in the NFL, Beasley went up against some of the most formidable players, including Dick Butkus. His style of play put him in the perfect position to take “numerous bad hits,” according to Marlene.

Beasley suffered more than 40 concussions over his career, and is on more than 10 medications. He’s essentially confined to his bed and has short seizures every day.

“He has trouble speaking,” said Marlene, who spoke with CNNMoney in Beasley’s stead. “Terry gets injections for the pain, but it never goes away. He sleeps for a couple hours when he can until the pain gets so bad that it wakes him up.”