Recovery Michigan

An international evidence review has found that certain nutritional supplements can increase the effectiveness ofantidepressants for people with clinical depression.

Omega 3 fish oils, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe)*, methylfolate (bioactive form of folate) and Vitamin D, were all found to boost the effects of medication.

University of Melbourne and Harvard researchers examined 40 clinical trials worldwide, alongside a systematic review of the evidence for using nutrient supplements (known as nutraceuticals) to treat clinical depression in tandem with antidepressants such as SSRIs**, SNRIs^ and tricyclics^^.

Head of the ARCADIA Mental Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne, Dr Jerome Sarris, led the meta-analysis, published today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

"The strongest finding from our review was that Omega 3 fish oil - in combination with antidepressants - had a statistically significant effect over a placebo," Dr Sarris said.

"Many studies have shown Omega 3s are very good for general brain health and improving mood, but this is the first analysis of studies that looks at using them in combination with antidepressant medication.

"The difference for patients taking both antidepressants and Omega 3, compared to a placebo, was highly significant. This is an exciting finding because here we have a safe, evidence-based approach that could be considered a mainstream treatment."

The University of Melbourne research team also found good evidence for methylfolate, Vitamin D, and SAMe as a mood enhancing therapy when taken with antidepressants. They reported mixed results for zinc, vitamin C and tryptophan (an amino acid). Folic acid didn't work particularly well, nor did inositol.

Mental Health America's (MHA) new National Certification will set new standards in the field. It is designed to meet and exceed the standards used in public behavioral health around the country and will require enhanced training and substantial work experience. A major purpose of the credential is to meet the needs of private health insurers and private practitioners. Expansion of peer support into the private sector will open up new career paths and opportunities, which have previously been unexplored.

MHA is asking for public comment on the first draft of their core competencies report. Please visit their webpage to view a short introductory video and links to provide them with your feedback about their blueprint for the certification.

This certification has been peer initiated and conceived. They have worked with a stellar group of subject matter experts, most of whom are accomplished leaders in the peer community. They have endeavored to create a credential that will expand the knowledge and skill sets needed in peer support and adhere to the core principles of shared experience, empathy, mutuality, and motivation that have made it so successful.

We look forward to your assistance in designing this next step in peer support.

Age 14, a sharp, distinct, intentional before and after: Before seizures, I was the shy, quiet girl drowning in baggy kitten sweatshirts and Wrangler jeans; after seizures, I showed up to school in fishnets, combat boots, heavy black eyeliner, and dyed red-platinum-orange-pink-black (whatever fit the mood that week) hair. While the other kids whispered Karrie is on drugs, Karrie is nuts, Karrie pisses her pants, Karrie is faking, Karrie is a freak, I said fuck it. I will show them a freak. My clothes got weirder. My writing got weirder. My musical tastes got weirder. My art got weirder. I got weirder.

I didn’t know until years later that Prince did the same damn thing. Prince had epilepsy, too. Prince gotfreaky as survival strategy.

In 2009, he talked about his epilepsy publicly for the first time on PBS with Tavis Smiley. “From that point on,” he said, “I’ve been having to deal with a lot of things, getting teased a lot in school. And early in my career I tried to compensate by being as flashy as I could and as noisy as I could.”

Prince was a walking disability poetics.

After that, when I listened to his music, I thought: Prince has a Sparkle Brain. 

Sparkle Brain. My term for my Epileptic, Bipolar, Chiarian, PTSD-brain–for any neurodivergent brain. Sparkle Brain is big tent. Autistic brains are sparkly. Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizure brains are sparkly. Sensory disordered brains are sparkly. Neurodiversity in all its forms is sparkly.

I mean sparkle literally: my brain is extra electric. When my brain lights up, it sparkles like it’s 1999.

But I mean it figuratively, too: sparkly, like a disco ball. A Sparkle Brain is shiny. A Sparkle Brain is beautiful.

Cocaine use has increased substantially among African Americans in some of the most underserved areas of the United States. Interventions designed to increase connection to and support from non-drug using family and friends, with access to employment, the faith community, and education, are the best ways to reduce substance use among African Americans and other minorities in low-income, resource-poor communities, concludes a study led by a medical anthropologist at the University of California, Riverside.

The study, which analyzed substance-use life history interviews carried out from 2010 to 2012, focused on urban and rural locations within the Arkansas Mississippi Delta - a region characterized by strained race relations, a stagnant economy, high unemployment, low incomes and high emigration, and where the population is predominantly African Americans living in poverty.

"African Americans within such contexts often face multiple obstacles to accessing formal drug treatment services, including access to care and lack of culturally appropriate treatment programs," said lead researcher Ann Cheney, an assistant professor in the department of social medicine and population health in the Center for Healthy Communities in the UC Riverside School of Medicine. "Despite these obstacles, many initiate and maintain recovery without accessing formal treatment. They do so by leveraging resources or what we refer to as 'recovery capital' - employment, education, faith community - by strategically connecting to and obtaining support from non-drug using family and friends."

In support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announcement to issue a ban on the use of electrical stimulation devices (ESDs) intended to reduce aggressive or self-injurious behaviors that disproportionately are used on people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc. (COPAA) issued the following statement:

“I read this news with tears in my eyes and warmth in my heart to know that the end to this barbaric practice is finally in sight” stated Denise Marshall, COPAA executive director. “Too many labeled individuals have repeatedly suffered torture and abuse on the basis of their disability. We know this announcement cannot erase their pain, so in the words of Albert Einstein we must ‘Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.’ Thank you to the FDA for taking this strong stance in protection of the rights of individuals with disabilities to be free from abuse.”  

Marshall continued, “COPAA has been at the forefront of this issue since 2008 with the release of our Declaration of Principles calling for every student in this country to be treated with dignity and respect and affirming that no person with a disability should be subjected to abusive treatment under the guise of providing [educational] services. We have repeatedly and unequivocally pushed for a ban because aversive techniques should never be used as planned consequences of their behavior or symptoms of their disability. Congratulations to all of our colleagues and the families whose relentlessness advocacy has made this happen!” 

For more information, please view the Federal Register display notice and the FDA Medical Device Bans webpage.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or we) is proposing to ban electrical stimulation devices used to treat aggressive or self-injurious behavior. FDA has determined that these devices present an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury that cannot be corrected or eliminated by labeling. FDA is proposing to include in this ban both new devices and devices already in distribution and use.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

“It’s really stunning to see such a large increase in suicide rates affecting virtually every age group,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser for health care at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who has identified a link between suicides in middle age and rising rates of distress about jobs and personal finances.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, researchers examined whether or not antipsychotic drugs, which are sometimes used to prevent or treat delirium, are effective. Delirium, a psychiatric syndrome that is the direct result of a medical problem, is a sudden change in ability to think and pay attention. It can cause people to become confused, potentially aggressive, agitated, sleepy, and/or inactive. Delirium also is a psychiatric syndrome that is a direct result of a medical problem.

Most often, delirium occurs in the midst of illness during admission to the hospital or after recovery from surgery. Factors that can contribute to delirium include:

• Acute illness
• Infection
• Immobilization (not being able to get out of bed)
• Medications
• Underlying cognitive problems such as dementia

The researchers examined data from 19 different studies that included several thousand hospitalized patients. They reported that, when looking at all the causes of delirium, antipsychotic medications (treatments used for certain mental health conditions) did not lessen the number of new cases of delirium, and that using antipsychotic medication may not make much difference to the duration, severity, hospital length of stay, or mortality associated with delirium. However, the researchers caution that their findings may not cover particular situations where antipsychotics might prove useful for delirium treatment. More studies are needed in this area, say researchers.

The key to what Curran is talking about is pain. In a place like Fall River, there’s a lot of pain—the personal kind, the social kind, the kind born of generations of either physical labor or joblessness. It’s a ready-made set piece, all empty, faded-brick buildings. The kind of town that has had an opiate epidemic for decades. To Curran, providing patients here with addiction medication is something akin to being a doctor with malaria pills in a jungle.

“What does the Hippocratic Oath say?” he asks me. Before I can answer he does: “It says that if you can provide them something to make them feel better, you provide it.”

Curran was an early adopter of buprenorphine, a medication for the treatment of opiate addiction that, unlike methadone, was approved for use in a general office setting. A doctor can take an eight-hour course and apply to get a waiver to prescribe buprenorphine, and, for the first time ever, could treat someone suffering with addiction. Instead of waiting in line at a clinic each morning for a dose, patients could visit their doctors monthly, receive a prescription, and medicate like anyone else.

The difference between the drugs is chemical—methadone is a full opiate agonist, the way heroin is. It binds to your opiate receptors and produces euphoria without any ceiling, until overdose. Buprenorphine is a partial agonist: it binds much longer and tighter to the opiate receptors than methadone (blocking other opiates from binding) and it stimulates them, but only to a ceiling of 47 percent stimulation. So, those consistently using buprenorphine experience a limited or nonexistent high, and are unable to feel the effects of any other opiate. In the US, buprenorphine is most commonly combined with naloxone, an anti-overdose drug, creating a medication (usually called Suboxone, though there are other brands) that’s extremely difficult to abuse: it produces withdrawal symptoms the moment someone attempts to use it intravenously.