Recovery Michigan

UCLA doctors have found what may be an earlier and easier way to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a disorder that is thought to affect some former football players and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma.

Using a new software tool for analyzing MRI scans, the researchers detected the shrinkage of several key brain regions in a former football player with cognitive problems. The same pattern of brain changes is commonly seen in CTE cases that have been confirmed by autopsies after a person’s death.

While the findings from this single case report are preliminary, they raise the possibility that MRI scans could be used to diagnose CTE and related conditions in living people. At present, CTE can be diagnosed only by direct examination of the brain during an autopsy.

Some 640,000 U.S. military veterans live in Michigan and many are not taking advantage of benefits they've earned through their service.

But AARP Michigan and the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency are teaming up to get the word out to veterans about what's available. 

Melissa Seifert, associate state director for government affairs with AARP Michigan, explains available funds are going unused for things such as health care, education and vocational training because veterans may not know how to apply, or are unaware they exist.

"Some of those could be aid and attendance where you could be able to stay at your home and have a home aid worker come and take care of you if you're homebound,” Seifert points out. “There's also a trust fund if you need additional money to put a new roof on your house or a ramp on your house you can apply.”

Education and outreach events around the state over the next several weeks will connect veterans to benefits and resources. 

This weekend, AARP volunteers will be in the fan plaza at the Michigan International Speedway. 

According to federal data, Michigan ranks fifth to last among states for federal spending per veteran, with only 22 percent of veterans using their health benefits in 2013.

Representatives from the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency will also be available to answer questions. Seifert says it's a natural partnership, given the agency's "no wrong door" approach to helping veterans.

Monti said the researchers expected the positive result, but he cautioned that the procedure requires further study on additional patients before they determine whether it could be used consistently to help other people recovering from comas.

“It is possible that we were just very lucky and happened to have stimulated the patient just as he was spontaneously recovering,” Monti said.

A report on the treatment is published in the journal Brain Stimulation. This is the first time the approach has been used to treat severe brain injury.

The technique, called low-intensity focused ultrasound pulsation, was pioneered by Alexander Bystritsky, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior and a co-author of the study. Bystritsky is also a founder of Brainsonix, a Sherman Oaks, California-based company that provided the device the researchers used in the study.

That device, about the size of a coffee cup saucer, creates a small sphere of acoustic energy that can be aimed at different regions of the brain to excite brain tissue. For the new study, researchers placed it by the side of the man’s head and activated it 10 times for 30 seconds each, in a 10-minute period.

Some of the richest opportunities for improving educational outcomes may emerge from initiatives that prevent and address mental health issues in children.

Interventions like the Good Behavior Game or the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Program have proven to be effective in improving academic, mental health, and substance use outcomes with impressive returns on investment, but they are not widely adopted around the country.

Why? What might be done to encourage more effective, earlier interventions to promote academic success and healthier outcomes for children?

Those questions are being explored by experts brought together by the National Collaborative on Education and Health and Mental Health America (MHA), with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) in a grant to MHA. The answers can influence both practice and policy in education and mental health in the coming years.

The working group discovered that many of the interventions and implementation models used to promote mental health were almost identical to those previously examined in the substance misuse working group. Program implementation models such as PROSPER and Communities That Care, and policy recommendations around collective impact model approaches, braiding funding, and sustainabilityin the substance use prevention area, all appeared to overlap with strategies and initiatives that promoted mental health among children.

So, the working group went in a different direction and began to explore a world of other initiatives seemingly related to prevention for mental health, but under a number of different names—such as social and emotional learning, mindsets, school climate, and trauma-informed schools.

Veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange or other herbicides during military service may be eligible for a variety of VA benefits, including disability compensation. To learn about locations where herbicides were used, visit www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/agentorange/locations/index.asp. 

The entire issue was devoted to just one story, that of Patsy D., a woman with a hard life that she made harder. I’ve always thought every life is worthy of documentation, and everyone should write down their story. That’s exactly what Patsy did.

Her diary is candid and engrossing. It is not filtered. She is not pitiful, and she is not seeking pity. She isn’t trying to atone or justify. She’s just letting us know that she was here for a little while and that she was drunk and hurting for most of it.

If I had met Patsy, I don’t think I would have liked her: She was a bad friend, a bad mother and quite often she was teetering on the edge of a blackout. But when you read someone’s diary, it’s different. You see more of the person. Patsy at the Silver Dollar bar is different from Patsy out fishing or Patsy in her room, decompressing into her journal. I would’ve liked that Patsy, the one who spent her life seeking love, both from others and for herself. “I enjoy this writing,” she wrote after her son died. Grieving the death of her mother, she wrote, “You know I’ve tried to kill my mother with a butcher knife.” And a few sentences later, “No matter how much I hated her then, I love her now. … I miss her terribly.”

"I can recall when my uncle used to babysit with us kids. I always thought he was a little crazy myself. He had sex relations with me and I guess I’ll always remember that. I used to run and hide in the bushes after that happened. He told me never to tell anyone because if I did I would be punished and God would put me in hell. Big deal. I didn’t have to worry about that because he had already put me there. I was really glad when he died. I should be ashamed of myself for being that way but I’m not."

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States. From 2000 to 2014, it was the third most common cause of death among 10 to 24 year olds, the second most common cause of death among 25 to 34 year olds, and the tenth most common cause of death for all ages. The medical and work-loss costs of completed suicide are estimated to be over $51 billion. Suicide can have a devastating effect on the family and friends of the deceased. Depending on their relationship to a person who has committed suicide, those left behind are at greater risk for mental illness, substance use, and suicide.

Self-inflicted injuries not resulting in death are also common and costly. There were nearly 500,000 visits to the emergency department in 2013 for injuries where the patient caused self-harm. Those encounters cost over $10 billion in medical cost and lost productivity.

To better understand the health care system use of individuals experiencing suicidal or self-harm behavior, we examined MarketScan commercial and Medicaid health care insurance claims data. We identified individuals who had an emergency department visit in calendar year 2014 that was due to suicide or self-inflicted injury. We then examined the services they received in the 90 days prior to the emergency department visit separately by whether the person had commercial or Medicaid insurance.

These statistics demonstrate that some individuals who engage in self-harm behavior have contact with the health care system and are receiving behavioral health treatment. Over 40 percent had an antidepressant or anxiolytic prescription drug filled; 19 percent of the patients with commercial insurance and 14 percent of the Medicaid patients saw a primary care physician for a behavioral health condition. Those individuals might benefit from the provision of more intense services from their providers to prevent a self-harm event requiring emergency department services from occurring. The people who saw a primary care physician for a reason other than behavioral health might particularly benefit from screening.

There are a number of barriers that could be keeping individuals from receiving services that would reduce their likelihood of engaging in self-harm behavior. The differences in the use of services by individuals with commercial and Medicaid insurance indicates that access to care is one of those barriers. The commercially insured were more likely to have a primary care visit, specialty care visit, and prescription drug filled for a behavioral health medication prior to an intent-to-harm-self emergency department encounter. People with Medicaid were more likely to have an emergency department encounter.

People living in Flint are experiencing mental health issues caused by the ongoing water crisis, including stress, anxiety and fear over what the future holds as they continue to rely on bottled water and filters more than two years after problems first surfaced with the drinking water.

A widespread concern for residents throughout the lead-poisoned city is not knowing how they, or their children and grandchildren, may be impacted because of exposure to the contaminated water.

“You try to keep going like everything’s OK,” Angie Thornton-George said of living with the water crisis that still has no known end date. “But … it’s not OK.”

Thornton-George, like others in town, wonders what effect the water will have on her down the road.

“It’s not so much that you’re like just walking around in fear, but it’s always in the back of your mind — what will happen to me in later years that may be a result of the drinking of this water?” said Thornton-George, 48.

Health care workers and community leaders said they’ve seen increased anxiety in all ages — kids through senior citizens — because of the situation. They point out there are more resources to help families and if people take advantage of them, their children are much more likely to have positive outcomes.

Meanwhile, many residents in the city of 98,000 are living the same way they’ve been living for months: picking up cases of free bottled water from distribution centers for daily use, stacking them up at their homes and questioning how much longer they have to live this way.

Combining insights from psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience, University of Oregon researchers have found converging signs of pure altruism and behavior that increase with age in the brain.

Their goal was to find a sweet spot where altruism is done for the simple joy of seeing others benefit without expecting personal rewards or recognition, said Ulrich Mayr, head of the UO Department of Psychology and lead author on a paper online ahead of print in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

General benevolence is more strongly expressed in the second half of the life span, the researchers found. People older than 45 receive more neural reward from seeing others better off, they give more money away and they score higher on pro-social personality traits than those under 45.