Recovery Michigan

Back before there was a national special education system (early 70's), there was a long discussion among advocates and families about the best way to structure education and social support for students with disabilities. One strategy was to make the responsibility part of the separate responsibilities of all support systems in the community (what we would later called wrap-around services). The other was to hold schools solely responsible for all delivered support services. The second of the two was chosen, I think, largely because of the success of civil rights litigation at the time, and the civil rights legal model seemed the best one to embed in law and rule.

Examples like that are what the lawsuit refers to as “complex trauma,” citing studies that show a child’s brain will change after a severely disturbing event. The ability to focus and reason can be drastically scaled back, inviting more frustration, misbehavior, and even violent outbursts. Subsequently, the student could be pushed further away from education, toward a vicious cycle of punishment that can end behind bars, what some teachers and school officials call “the school-to-prison pipeline.”

The lawsuit contends that complex trauma “limits major life activities… including ‘learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, [and] communicating,'” and estimates that a quarter of CUSD’s 22,000 student population have suffered such violent episodes. That’s about 5,500 pupils.

“Because the student plaintiffs and the class members have experienced complex trauma, they meet the definition of ‘individuals with disabilities'” under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, the lawsuit goes on to claim.

“These children are, as a matter of brain science, not able to learn,”lead attorney Marc Rosenbaum told CNN. “They are unable to get access to equal opportunity and to fight for their right to be recognized in the same way as if they didn’t have teachers or books in their classrooms.”

One of the Compton teachers suing the district, Armando Castro, told CNN, “These kids sometimes overreact to the smallest things. Or they keep their heads down and get real quiet. Then I know something is wrong.”

Micah Ali, president of the CUSD school board, doesn’t dispute the brain science referenced in the lawsuit, but sees the lawsuit as frivolous, telling CNN it will not “get solutions for the students and families who are dealing with violence either at home or in the neighborhood.”

Implementing all the lawsuit demands would cripple the district’s budget, Ali said. Even defending against the lawsuit could do so, he claimed.

“It would decimate the school district and adversely impact people who the individuals have filed the lawsuit are asserting they would like to help,” Ali said.

The lawsuit was initiated by lawyers who then sought out the students and teachers who joined. It asks the district to train teachers and staff to identify those suffering from complex trauma, then for the district to provide them with supplementary help and resources.

The scars of childhood abuse and neglect affect adults' brains for decades to come - including their ability to process and act on information both quickly and accurately, new research suggests.

That kind of quick "go or don't go" thinking is crucial to everyday situations like driving or rare events like reacting to an emergency. And it appears to be less accurate and more impulsive in adults who suffered physical, emotional or sexual trauma in their early years than in those who did not, the study finds.

The new findings about impulse control add to a growing body of evidence about the lasting scars that traumatic childhood experiences can leave.

The researchers, led by a University of Michigan Medical School neuropsychologist, say adults who suffered trauma as children may benefit from talk therapy or other options to combat the effects.

They set out to see if people with bipolar disorder had more impulsive and inaccurate responses on a quick task than others without the condition, as measured on standard timed tests called a "Go/No-Go" test. But to their surprise, they found no differences between the two groups.

Instead, when they looked closer, they found a common thread running through nearly everyone with more impulsive responses.

Among the more than 320 people in the study who took the tests, 134 reported a history of childhood trauma in surveys. This included physical abuse or neglect, emotional abuse or neglect, and sexual abuse. It did not include one-time traumatic events. None of the participants had active substance abuse issues, and the participants without bipolar disorder did not have other mental health conditions.

Those with bipolar disorder and a history of trauma performed significantly worse on the "Go/No-Go" test, than those with bipolar alone. But those without bipolar disorder who had a history of trauma performed just as poorly.

As I have written before as a physician who saw too many dire results of intravenous drug abuse, I was amazed how narcotics were pushed as the treatment of choice for chronic pain in the 1990s, with the result that the US was once again engulfed in an epidemic of narcotic abuse and its effects.  In mid-December, 2015, as reported in the Washington Post,

I repeat, the evidence that narcotics are effective for chronic pain other than that due to terminal cancer is very weak.  The evidence that opioids have multiple side effects, some fatal, and can cause addiction, which has more side effects, and bad societal consequences, is strong.  So the evidence that narcotics have benefits that are worth their harms, both to individuals and society, in this setting is essentially non-existent.  So why did these guidelines go too far?  Why invoke low quality evidence, when the evidence that is low quality is about the benefits of the drugs?  Who should be sued?  Furthermore, why did the CDC cave in so readily to these critics?

The new study - led by researchers from VA Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington (UW), both in Seattle - shows that a brain region known as the cerebellum is particularly vulnerable to repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in both mice and humans and concludes that more attention needs to be paid to changes in this region.

The authors hope the finding will help the search for more effective treatments for mTBI, which they note is often referred to "as the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Reporting in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes how mild blast-exposed mice also lose neurons in the same brain regions as the veterans, and that the pattern of loss is similar to that first seen in retired boxers 40 years ago.

Opioids may cause short-term improvement in mood, but long-term use imposes risk of new-onset depression, a Saint Louis University study shows.

"Opioid-related new onset of depression is associated with longer duration of use but not dose," Scherrer wrote. "Patients and practitioners should be aware that opioid analgesic use of longer than 30 days imposes risk of new-onset depression."

"Findings were remarkably consistent across the three health care systems even though the systems have very different patient characteristics and demographics," Scherrer said. In all three patient populations, longer duration of opioid analgesic use was associated with new-onset depression after controlling for pain and daily morphine equivalent doses.

Psychiatrists investigating depression have been energized in recent years by reports of rapid, successful treatment with drugs that interfere with the brain chemical glutamate, such as the anesthetic ketamine.

New research from Emory University School of Medicine is providing hints as to which forms of depression may respond best to drugs that target glutamate.

High glutamate and myo-inositol levels in the basal ganglia were associated with patients' reports of anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure, and slow motor function, as measured by finger tapping speed.

"We focused on the basal ganglia because we had previously seen that a treatment for hepatitis C virus that arouses inflammation and can trigger depressive symptoms could also increase glutamate levels there," Haroon says.

If you are someone who loves the hustle and bustle of the holidays, then you know that it can also be a stressful time. Shopping, decorating, baking, cooking,wrapping, and even more shopping fill your time and keep you busy.

But, now that the holidays are over it is time to relax and de-stress and there are several great tools for Chrome that can help you do this. So, sit back, unwind, and enjoy your browsing with these calming apps and extensions.

Millions of Americans suffer from mental illness. Many seek therapy, but racial background influences availability and quality of treatment. In 1999 and 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General's Office issued reports highlighting racial inequities: Racial minorities have less access to mental health services than Whites.

A new summary of research representing over 4.7 million individuals has provided data on the severity of the racial inequities: Asian Americans were less than half as likely as Whites to use mental health services, Hispanic/Latino(a) Americans were 25% less likely, and African Americans were 21% less likely. In a finding that is particularly troubling, African Americans suffering from mental illness were found in mental health services less often when they most needed help.

Joseph E. Trimble, research co-author and Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Western Washington University stated, "We felt grateful that the racial inequities were actually smaller than we imagined them to be. Except for Asian Americans, race accounts for relatively smaller differences in mental health service utilization."

The racial inequities remained after accounting for alternative explanatory factors such as socioeconomic status. However, public assistance for mental health services eliminated racial inequities for African Americans and other clients of color.

"Access to mental health treatment is a major public health issue," said researcher Timothy B. Smith of Brigham Young University. "Conditions such as depression and anxiety have been increasing in recent decades. Making mental health treatments accessible for all populations will benefit society through associated decreases in suicide, substance abuse, and physical illness." Beyond the psychological benefits, financial savings from equitable access to mental healthcare services include decreased medical and insurance costs and fewer missed work days.

For decades, if someone on Medicaid wanted to get treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, they almost always had to rely solely on money from state and local sources.

Now, in a dramatic shift, the federal government is considering chipping in, too. The agency that governs Medicaid is proposing to cover 15 days of inpatient rehab per month for anyone enrolled in a Medicaid managed care plan.

But in Pennsylvania, those who work in the addiction field are not happy with that news. While it’s a good start, they say, 15 days of residential care isn’t nearly enough time for many people addicted to heroin, opioids, alcohol or other drugs to get clean and stay that way.