Recovery Michigan

As a teenager, Bianca Marshack often flew into rages over seemingly minor problems — as when her mother, Kathy, didn’t bring her favorite chicken dinner home from the grocery store. Her anger would quickly spiral out of control, and she would threaten to kill herself.

These are shock devices used on kids. They are attached to the kids so that adults can shock them whenever and for whatever they want. They are primarily used on kids with autism....

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is extending the comment period for the proposed rule that appeared in the Federal Register of April 25, 2016. In the proposed rule, FDA requested comments for a ban on electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) used for self-injurious or aggressive behavior (SIB or AB). The Agency is taking this action in response to requests for an extension to allow interested persons additional time to submit comments.

A state agency is reviewing a request to investigate a local mental health agency's handling of an interview with a Charlotte teenager less than a day before he took his own life.

Ian Hartley, who had been suffering from depression for months, told his parents he planned to kill himself May 1, his mother, Julie Hartley, said. She and Ian's father James drove the 16-year-old to Community Mental Health in Lansing that night.

Julie Hartley said Ian told staff there he planned to kill himself, but a doctor informed the family CMH services aren't covered through private insurance and that they would need to pay out of pocket for treatment.

Julie said the doctor advised them that any emergency room would offer the same care and that care would be covered by their insurance. They took him to the closest emergency room at McLaren Greater Lansing Hospital, where he was released after a short visit, Julie Hartley said.

The next day, May 2, Ian jumped from the Otto Road bridge above Interstate-69 and later died at a local hospital.

The first of the two studies, which involved researchers from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BCCfE) and the University of B.C., looked at the impact of BZD use on mortality rates and established that use of BZDs was linked to a higher risk of death than illegal drugs.

“There’s a lot of research that’s been done on more traditional drugs of abuse, other illegal drugs like heroine, cocaine, amphetamines — but not a lot is known about the abuse of this kind of drug,” said Dr. Keith Ahamad, a clinician scientist with the BCCfE and an addictions physician at St. Paul’s Hospital.

The study followed a cohort of 2,802 drug users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside between 1996 and 2013. Participants were interviewed semi-annually over a median duration of just over five-and-a-half years each. By the end of the study, 527 (18.8 per cent) of the participants had died.

Researchers found that the mortality rate was 1.86 times higher among the drug users who used BZD, compared to those who did not. Ahamad noted that even after researchers isolated other factors that could influence mortality, such as use of other drugs, infections, and high-risk behaviours, the mortality rate remained high among BZD users.

A second study conducted on a smaller group within the same cohort examined the link between BZD use and hepatitis C (HCV) infection. Of the 440 HCV-negative individuals who participated in the study, 158 reported prescribed or illicit BZD use, and 142 participants contracted HCV during the course of the study.

A new study, released as a Web First by Health Affairs, estimated health spending by medical condition for the entire US population and found that in 2013, $201 billion were spent on mental disorders — more than on any other medical condition. These estimates, developed under contract to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, include health spending by the military and institutionalized populations and are benchmarked to the National Health Expenditure Accounts.

The study, by Charles Roehrig, which covers the period  1996–2013, updates a 2009 Health Affairs study that used the same methodology and covered the period 1996–2005.  The 2016 study highlights the low rate of increase in spending on heart conditions and cerebrovascular disease during this period. According to the study, the slow spending growth is explained by reductions in smoking and better control of risk factors such as hypertension and hyperlipidemia, credited with declining death rates for these conditions.

A study by researchers at New Zealand's University of Otago, Wellington shows that smokers who used a nicotine inhaler were twice as likely to quit smoking as smokers using a placebo inhaler.

The researchers developed and tested a novel nicotine inhaler to see whether it helps smokers to quit smoking. Participants in the study were randomly assigned to receive either a nicotine inhaler plus a nicotine patch, or a placebo inhaler plus a nicotine patch.

The results of the New Zealand study funded by the Health Research Council appear in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

Study team leader Professor Julian Crane from the University of Otago, Wellington, says the findings are the first evidence that inhaled nicotine from a simple standard inhaler is highly effective and substantially increases a smoker's chances of quitting compared to the best current nicotine replacement treatment.

"Currently most smokers use nicotine patches to help them stop smoking. This study shows that if you add a nicotine inhaler to a nicotine patch, it doubles the chances of quitting over a nicotine patch alone," says Professor Crane.

Findings show that pure green light is least likely to exacerbate migraine.

Most migraine and post-traumatic headache sufferers find their headaches get worse in light, leading them to quit their most fundamental daily tasks and seek the comfort of darkness. A new study from Harvard Medical School reveals that exposing these headache sufferers to pure-wavelength green light significantly reduces their photophobia, or sensitivity to light, and can even reduce the severity of their headaches. The results have been published in Brain.

Photophobia, associated with more than 80% of migraine attacks, gives migraine sufferers little choice but to isolate themselves in dark rooms, unable to work, care for their family, or pursue everyday activities.

Although hotophobia is not as incapacitating as the pain of the headache itself to migraine sufferers, "it is their inability to endure light that most often disables them," says Rami Burstein, Professor of Anesthesia at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study.

The new study shows that a narrow band of green light exacerbates migraine significantly less than all other colors of light and that at low intensities it can even reduce the headache itself.

Burstein and his colleagues devised a way to study the effects of different colors of light on headache in patients without visual impairment, after discovering that only blue light hurts blind migraine patients

They asked patients undergoing acute migraine attacks to report any change in headache when exposed to different intensities of blue, green, amber and red light. At high intensity of light (as in a well-lit office) nearly 80% of the patients reported intensification of headache - in all colours but green. Burstein and his colleagues found, unexpectedly, that green light actually reduced their pain by about 20%.

A new study by the University of Liverpool's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease has identified food stuffs that can help prevent chronic inflammation that contributes to many leading causes of death.

Inflammation occurs naturally in the body but when it goes wrong or goes on too long, it can trigger disease processes. Uncontrolled inflammation plays a role in many major diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes andAlzheimer's disease.

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables, which contain polyphenols, protect against age-related inflammation and chronic diseases.

Cell-to-cell communication

Polyphenols are abundant micronutrients in our diet, and evidence for their role in the prevention of degenerative diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases is already emerging. The health effects of polyphenols depend on the amount consumed and on their bioavailability.

Sian Richardson, said: "The results of our study suggest that (poly)phenols derived from onions, turmeric, red grapes,green tea and açai berries may help reduce the release of pro-inflammatory mediators in people at risk of chronic inflammation.

"Older people are more susceptible to chronic inflammation and as such they may benefit from supplementing their diets with isorhamnetin, resveratrol, curcumin and vanillic acid or with food sources that yield these bioactive molecules."

Family rejection increases the risk of two critical health outcomes that are common among transgender individuals-suicide attempts and substance misuse-according to a new study published in LGBT Health, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the LGBT Health website until June 16, 2016.

The findings presented in the article "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Suicide Attempts and Substance Misuse Among Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Adults," by coauthors Augustus Klein, MSW and Sarit Golub, PhD, MPH, City University of New York, are based on data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Overall, more than 42% of the individuals who self-identified as transgender or gender nonconforming reported a suicide attempt, and over 26% had misused drugs or alcohol to cope with transgender-related discrimination. The researchers report the increased risk of these health outcomes for individuals who experienced high or moderate levels of family rejection compared to little or no rejection.

"Gender minority stress and stigma contribute to the increased rates of depression, anxiety disorders, suicidality, and substance abuse in the transgender population. This study underscores the importance of family support and acceptance in mitigating that stress," says LGBT Health Editor-in-Chief William Byne, MD, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY).

In a Veterans Affairs study of more than 300 enlisted Army National Guard and Army Reserve members who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, a majority reported symptoms consistent with a condition known as chronic multisymptom illness (CMI). The data were collected a year after the soldiers returned home.

The results suggest that deployment to these conflicts could trigger symptoms consistent with CMI.

The ailment presents as a combination of medically unexplained chronic symptoms, such as fatigue, headache, joint pain,indigestion, insomnia, dizziness, breathing problems, and memory problems.

The study, by researchers with VA's War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center (WRIISC) in New Jersey, appeared online Feb. 22, 2016, in the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development.

"As a whole, CMI can be challenging to evaluate and manage," said lead author Dr. Lisa McAndrew. "CMI is distinct from PTSD ordepression. It contributes to significant disability."