Recovery Michigan

The Supreme Court decided Thursday that the Department of Veterans Affairs must set aside more contracts to be filled by veteran-owned small businesses.

The court was unanimous that the department has not fulfilled its obligation to steer more business to small companies owned by veterans or service-disabled veterans simply by meeting its annual goal.

The decision is likely to help more veteran-owned businesses compete for the billions of dollars in contracts the department awards.

The court was considering a law passed by Congress — and then amplified after the legislation failed to produce enough results — to give preference to small businesses owned by veterans. It came up with a “Rule of Two.”

That means that competition for contracts should be limited to veteran-owned small businesses when the contracting officer concludes that at least two such businesses would bid on the contract and “the award can be made at a fair and reasonable price that offers best value to the United States.”

An already-approved muscle relaxant may offer relief for U.S. military veterans and first responders suffering from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The Phase 2 trials of the drug, TNX-102 SL, which contains the same chemical property as Flexeril, identified a dose and administration method that statistically improved participants’ PTSD symptoms among several mental health indices.

TNX-102 SL, which is the chemical cyclobenzaprine, blocks certain neurotransmitters in the brain and receptors that scientists believe causes arousal responses and recurrent thinking, two signs of PTSD. The drug blocks the histamine receptor, too, which causes the side effects dry mouth and day sedation.

For the study, Croft’s team randomized 230 patients to take either 2.8 milligrams or 5.6 milligrams, or a placebo once a day for 12 weeks, sublingually, before bedtime. Flexeril is typically taken at a 30 milligram dose and orally. Neither researchers nor the patients knew which dose they received, making it double-blinded.

Periodically, researchers assessed patients’ CAPS scores. At the outset they found those patients who received the higher dose resulted in statistically significant PTSD symptom improvement. Those patients’ CGI scores, which evaluate how an individual’s health changes over time, showed similar results to that of effective antidepressants.

Not only did TNX-102 SL help patients sleep better, but it also reduced arousal and reactivity, anxiety, hypervigilance, and trouble concentrating— all symptoms of PTSD— Croft said.

“The good news is because it goes directly into the bloodstream at a much smaller dose than the oral medication used for muscle relaxation, it seems to be well tolerated, and it was well tolerated in this study,” Croft said.

Study participant Mark Bratton was deployed five times overseas, two that were combat related, during his service in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2004 to 2013. His personal relationships suffered and he began coping with depression in 2007, when he returned home to Harlingen, Texas, from Iraq. But he pushed his discomfort aside because he didn’t want to be perceived negatively in the military or risk not being deployed again, he said.

He was diagnosed four months before he was discharged from the Marines, and since then he’s tried several approaches— from Zoloft to cognitive behavioral therapy, to Wellbutrin, a mood stabilizer— to ease his symptoms.

Therapy helped for a while, as did the Wellbutrin, but Zoloft made him feel “cloudy” and “zombie like,” he said.

TNX-102 SL, along with his service dog, a yellow Labrador retriever named Benny, has helped Bratton feel safer in crowds by reducing hypervigilance, and has helped him sleep better at night with fewer nightmares.

“My depression started to ease up, and all these feelings of worthlessness, and just not feeling good about myself, started to subside,” Bratton, 30, told FoxNews.com of his experience with the drug.

A PDF of slides from a SAMHSA Webinar. A bit medicalized, but interesting info...

The Utilization of Technology in the Recovery Process by People Living with Schizophrenia

Despite growing interest in the use of digital technology by people living with schizophrenia, little is actually known about how these individual relate to, own and use technology in their daily life and with their symptoms. • What types of technology are people living with schizophrenia using? How are they are using it? How does technology help someone cope?

Exercise, even a small amount, can help alleviate symptoms of ADHD in adults, according to a new study by University of Georgia researchers.

The study, released this month in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, found a single bout of exercise has psychological benefits for adults with these elevated ADHD symptoms. About 6 percent of American adults report symptoms consistent with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which lead to anxiety, depression, low energy and motivation, poor performance at work or school and also increased traffic accidents.

"Exercise is already known as a stress reducer and mood booster, so it really has the potential to help those suffering with ADHD symptoms," said the study's senior author Patrick O'Connor, professor in the UGA College of Education's kinesiology department. "And while prescription drugs can be used to treat these symptoms, there's an increased risk of abuse or dependence and negative side effects. Those risks don't exist with exercise."

The study tested 32 young men with elevated ADHD symptoms who cycled at a moderate intensity for 20 minutes on one day, and on another day sat and rested for 20 minutes as a control condition. The participants were asked to perform a task requiring focus both before and after the different conditions, and researchers noted leg movement, mood, attention and self-reported motivation to perform the task.

As a result, researchers found that it was only after the exercise when the participants felt motivated to do the task; they also felt less confused and fatigued and instead felt more energetic. Interestingly, leg movements and performance on the task did not change after the exercise - rather, the exercise helped the young men feel better about doing the task.

The package from my father arrived in 2009, a few months after my latest heart surgery. The yellow envelope contained a two-inch stack of documents: handwritten notes, old photographs, newspaper clippings, medical files and military service records.

Together, they told the story of a man I barely knew. I hadn’t heard from my father, Al Weigel, in more than 20 years.

At first, I didn’t read any of it. Why would I want to rip open that wound? I tossed the envelope onto a shelf in a closet, and there it sat for years, forgotten behind a pile of clothes. I didn’t know it held information that would link my life — and health — to a war waged before my birth.

It wasn’t until 2012, not long after I’d become a father, that I remembered the envelope. I pulled it back out, figuring someday I would want to tell my son where he came from.

The package also delivered a warning: A handwritten note attached to a stack of Veterans Affairs medical records. During the war, before I was born, Al had sprayed Agent Orange along riverbanks in Vietnam, often soaking his uniform in the herbicide. The exposure, he wrote, had caused him serious health problems, including a neurological disorder, and he believed it also might have harmed me.

My mind raced as I thought of my own troubled medical history. A heart defect diagnosed at birth. An underactive thyroid. Problems with my nervous and immune systems. More recently, type–2 diabetes, hypertension and a nerve disorder that severely limits the use of my right hand.

I’m now 46. A lean 6-foot–2 and 190 pounds. I don’t smoke. I try to eat healthy. But the number of pills I swallow everyday would make you think I’m twice that age. As a teenager, I was sick so often, I joked that my healthy brother and I couldn’t be related. He’d been born before the war, before Agent Orange.

“There really is nothing that can be done now, as far as I know,” Al had written in 2009, “except be aware of the ravages of A.O.”

What my father didn’t know was that I’d already become familiar with Agent Orange and its consequences.

I’d made several trips to Vietnam by then, photographing people with much worse health problems than my own. They were descendants of the Vietnamese who’d come in contact with the chemicals — those on the other end of my young father’s fire hose.

Crisis Text Line, a free, around the clock text-messaging support line for people in crisis, is getting a massive new round of grants from notable technology names including Melinda Gates, Steve Ballmer, Reid Hoffman, and Pierre Omidyar.

The total donation amount was $23.8 million led by Hoffman, who had previously backed the non-profit. Gates, Omidyar Network, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and his wife and One Kings Lane founder Ali Pincus, along with Steve Ballmer’s foundation, The Ballmer Group, are among the other backers in this round. The organization has a total of $35 million in grants.

Crisis Text Line was founded by Nancy Lublin, who was formerly the CEO of DoSomething.org and the creator of non-profit Dress for Success, as a way for teens to talk with counselors about problems through their primary form of communication— mobile phones. For many teens today, making a phone call is a foreign concept. Messaging through apps like Snapchat and Facebook Messenger and texting is their primary way of communicating with friends and family.

Teens who contact the organization talk by text with counselors about issues like suicide, bullying, depression, and anorexia. To use Crisis Text Line, teens send the organization a text with the word “START” to connect with the non-profit’s 1,500 volunteer crisis counselors. Since introducing its service in 2013, the organization has processed more than 18.5 million messages from teens about suicide, depression, and LGBT issues. The service continues to grow with the number of text messages sent from April to May increasing 35% month over month.

About one in 13 young adults in the United States had serious thoughts of suicide in 2013-2014, federal officials reported Thursday.

That rate of 7.4 percent translates into 2.6 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 25, researchers said.

"Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young adults, and it is preventable," said Kana Enomoto. She's principal deputy administrator at the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which released the report.

"We need to reach out to young people with the message that help is at hand, and promote effective programs for saving lives by treating people at risk whenever and wherever they need it," Enomoto added in an agency news release.

One expert said help is out there for the troubled, but more must be done.

With more than 1.65 billion members worldwide posting regularly about their behavior, Facebook is planning to take a more direct role in stopping suicide. On Tuesday, in the biggest step by a major technology company to incorporate suicide prevention tools into its platform, the social network introduced mechanisms and processes to make it easier for people to help friends who post messages about suicide or self-harm. With the new features, people can flag friends’ posts that they deem suicidal; the posts will be reviewed by a team at the social network that will then provide language to communicate with the person who is at risk, as well as information on suicide prevention.

The timing coincides with a surge in suicide rates in the United States to a 30-year high. The increase has been particularly steep among women and middle-aged Americans, reflecting widespread desperation. Last year, President Obama declared a World Suicide Prevention Day in September, calling on people to recognize mental health issues early and to reach out to support one another.

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Live & Learn, Inc. has launched a research study on the experience of people labeled with mental disorders who have tried to stop taking psychiatric medications.