Allow a laboratory mouse to run as much as it likes, and its brainpower improves. Force it to run harder than it otherwise might, and its thinking improves even more. This is the finding of an experiment led by researchers at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and placed online in May.
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/what-sort-of-exercise-can-make-you-smarter/
In doing some online research today, I found the following impressive article. In the current economic times, most non-profits are making huge cut-backs. Many face bankruptcy.
Read about a California event that worked. Could we replicate it here in Georgia? We certainly have the musical talent.
The Staglin Family Raises Funds, Announces International Mental Health Research Organization and Facilitates Research Symposium at 15th Annual Music Festival for Mental Health
RUTHERFORD, Calif.–(Business Wire)–
On September 12, the 15th Annual Staglin Family Music Festival for Mental Health raised $2.1 million to support pioneering mental health research. Additionally, leveraged funds provided to scientists as a result of the Festival’s initial research funding reached $4.9 million in 2009, bringing the combined 15 year total in direct and leveraged funds approaching $95 million dollars to date.
The Staglins also announced the formation of the International Mental Health Research Organization (IMHRO), and presented a preview of a national anti-stigma campaign that is scheduled to launch in October of 2009.
California Lt. Governor John Garamendi addressed the participants and Congressman Mike Thompson read congratulatory statements from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, (D-RI).
A noontime symposium was presided over by Dr. Helen Mayberg of Emory University along with the three $250,000 IMHRO Rising Star Award recipients for 2009:
Francis Lee, M.D., Ph.D., Weill Cornell Medical College;
Andrew Pieper, M.D., Ph.D., University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; and
Hongjun Song, Ph.D.. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“We are feeling more confident each year that we are going to be able to the find the answers to and cures for mental illness,” said Shari Staglin.
Over 70 world class wineries, including Abreu, Colgin, Opus One, Harlan, Scarecrow, Shafer, Lewis, Bond and Staglin Family Vineyard poured their finest vintages, paired with passed hors d’oeuvres by Cyrus Restaurant chef Douglas Keane.
Comedian Bob Sarlatte welcomed Rock & Roll queen Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo to center stage for her classic hits “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, “We Live For Love” and “Heartbreaker” followed by a post concert Italian-style dinner by renowned chef Staffan Terje of San Francisco’s Perbacco Restaurant.
In connection with the Music Festival, IMHRO also sponsored a conference with 30 of the top neuroscientists in the world to share data and discussions on DISC1, one of the genes most likely to be disrupted in psychiatric disorders.
Tom Insel, Director of the NIMH, co-chaired the Conference, and cited the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle in which “clearly DISC1 is an edge piece, and something we want to build on.” The conference was held over 3 days at the Westin Verasa Napa hotel and was conducted to serve as an example of how to develop strategies that may generalize to other risk genes.
“With our combined funding nearing $100 million, we will continue to support the remarkable work being conducted by the world’s leading brain researchers. If we keep focused, ask the right questions, and fund the right research, cures for mental illness are possible in our lifetime,” Garen Staglin added.
Next year‘s festival will be held on September 11, 2010 at the Staglin Family Vineyard, Rutherford, Calif. Attendees will once again be treated to a celebrity chef, the world’s best wines, and the Staglins announced Country Music Superstar Dwight Yoakam as the 2010 Festival headliner.
Donations to the Music Festival for Mental Health may be made on-line at www.music-festival.org, or by sending a check to IMHRO, a 501 © (3) non-profit organization that sponsors the Music Festival. Please mail donation to: P.O. Box 680, Rutherford, Calif., 94573.
Does your club, church, civic group or other gathering need a speaker?
We can shape our message to fit your audience and the time available. We can do presentations on topics for children to senior citizens, from work-place mental health to history of treatment to overviews of current issues.
Call our office to schedule a speaker: 706-549-7888.
This article comes from the seekingAlpha.com website:
by Kristi Eaton
The high number of foreclosures as a result of the collapse of the housing market has become not only a financial problem, but a mental health one as well. A new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study shows that nearly half of the people studied undergoing foreclosure reported symptoms of depression, and 37 percent met the criteria for major depression. Many also reported an inability to afford prescription drugs and skipping meals.
“The foreclosure crisis is also a health crisis,” says lead author Craig Pollack, who conducted the research while working as an internist at Penn. “We need to do more to ensure that if people lose their homes, they don’t also lose their health.”
The research, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that compared to residents in the general public, those in foreclosure were more likely to be uninsured — 22 percent compared to 8 percent — though similar health problems were seen among both the insured and uninsured. Nearly 60 percent reported that they had skipped or delayed meals because they couldn’t afford food, while 48 percent of people undergoing foreclosure opted not to fill a prescription because of the expense during the preceding year, compared to 15 percent of the general public.
For some, health issues were the cause of the foreclosure problems. The study revealed that a medical condition in their family was the primary reason for 9 percent of respondents to undergo a home foreclosure. Also, more than a quarter of those surveyed said they had significant unpaid medical bills.
Pollack says the prolonged period of time that most homeowners spend in foreclosure could have a serious effect on health because the financial hardships of foreclosure may lead homeowners to cut back on healthcare spending that they consider discretionary, such as preventive care visits, healthy foods, or drugs for chronic conditions such as hypertension. Moreover, the stress of undergoing foreclosure may exacerbate unhealthy behaviors. For instance, among the participants who smoke, 65 percent said they had been smoking more since they received notice of foreclosure.
The exceptionally high rate of depressive symptoms found in the study is especially concerning, Pollack says. Previous research showed that only about 12.8 percent of people living in poverty met criteria for major depression.
“When people purchase homes, they are buying a piece of the American Dream,” says co-author Julia Lynch, the Janice and Julian Bers assistant professor in the Social Sciences in Penn’s Department of Political Science. “Losing a home can be especially devastating because it means the loss of this dream. When this happens, there is reason to worry not only about the health of the homeowner but also that of family members and the broader community they live in.”
The authors say that the data collected in Philadelphia may be modest when compared to other cities that have experienced a sharp spike in housing foreclosures. Although foreclosure filings nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008 in Philadelphia, other large cities have higher unemployment and foreclosure rates.
To combat the health problems revealed in the study, Pollack and Lynch suggest that healthcare workers and mortgage counseling agencies coordinate their efforts to help people at risk of foreclosure access both medical and housing help. Doctors, they suggest, should ask their patients about their housing situation and steer them toward mortgage relief resources. Mortgage counselors, meanwhile, can provide information about how to access safety net healthcare, enroll in public insurance programs like State Children’s Health Insurance Program or Medicaid, or apply for nutritional assistance programs for pregnant and nursing mothers and their children.
“This study raises the stakes of the housing crisis,” Pollack says. “The policy push to get people into mortgage counseling should be combined with health outreach in order to fully help people during this tremendously difficult period in their lives.”
The authors studied 250 Philadelphia homeowners undergoing foreclosure. The participants were recruited with the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley, a non-profit, U.S. Housing and Urban Development-approved mortgage counselor.
from PsychCentral.com:
It’s no wonder mental health stigma still exists surrounding issues like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Physicians who are the front-line treatment providers for mental health issues don’t always recognize the value of mental health professionals for their own mental health needs. Or they recognize the value, but don’t use them because of concerns about privacy and confidentiality. In a just-published survey of 3,500 doctors in the UK, researchers found:
Nearly three quarters of respondents said they would rather discuss mental health problems with family or friends than seek formal or informal advice, citing reasons such as career implications, professional integrity, and perceived stigma of mental health problems.
Let’s go through some of those reasons. Career implications? If an organization is going to deny you career advancement because you’re being honest about a mental health condition, perhaps that’s a sign you need to find another organization to work for. Or work to change such mid-century, backwards thinking from within the organization. Would an organization rather a doctor work while depressed, potentially harming his or her patients because they aren’t as interested in the patients’ complaints and rigorous diagnosis?
Professional integrity? What kind of doctor has any integrity if they are not being honest with themselves about their own lack of treatment for treatable mental disorders? Could you imagine a doctor walking around with a broken arm, because getting it treated would somehow impact their integrity? Really?
And stigma. This is what it all really boils down to. I guess doctors don’t realize they are only perpetuating the cycle of stigma, by avoiding such treatment themselves. And whether they admit it or not, such thinking can’t help but influence the way they portray behavioral health treatments to their patients.
The researchers suggest that one of the big concerns amongst these UK physicians is the doctors’ privacy and confidentiality. In the UK, doctors are members of the National Health Service, and so they may be afraid that by seeking treatment within the same system, it will be used against them in the future. That’s a legitimate concern, and one that could be easily corrected by adding additional privacy protections for such professionals.
I know this is the same reason many in the military do not seek out treatment — because it can affect their career advancement, security clearance, and their perceived reliability or stability by others in their unit. In a system where such information is too readily available to others, and the group of people is dependent upon the system for their own career, well, you can see how the two will inevitably clash.
But none of this is of much concern when it comes to most (but not all) physical diseases. Which suggests that this is, at the end of the day, primarily about our old friend stigma. Career advancement would not be an issue of others did not stigmatize those with mental health issues. Science now recognizes that mental health concerns don’t come from people’s personal weakness, but rather from a complex interaction of biology, brain, genes, psychology, and social connections.
It’s high time for organizations like the UK’s NHS and others to work toward ridding our world of such stigma and ignorance, and stop the discrimination against professionals who have a mental health concern. If you lead, others will follow.
from the Mental Health Association of Morris County, NJ:
The recent tragedy in Morris Township, New Jersey, in which Jenny Erazo-Rodriguez allegedly killed one of her daughters and attempted to harm her other daughter and herself truly touches the heart of our community. At the same time, we cannot let this incident give rise to the negative stereotypes and myths that are too often associated with mental illness. According to a 2003 report from the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, 61% of Americans think that people with mental illness are likely to be dangerous to others. Recent headlines, such as “Morris Township Mom Charged with Killing 4-year-old Daughter May Have History of Mental Illness,” and “Mom Who Killed Daughter Was in Psych Ward,” work to fuel misguided perceptions.
The facts show that the correlation between mental illness and violent behavior is not high. According to the American Psychiatric Association, studies indicate that the vast majority of people who behave violently do not have a mental illness. Moreover, the National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that acts of violence by people with mental illness are exceptional, and in fact, people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime. In reality, people living with mental illness are less violent than the general population.
Mental illness does not discriminate, but people do. Stigma is a major barrier for those in need of mental health services. It is important for the public to learn the facts about mental illness so that we can end stigma, discrimination, and violence against those with mental health needs, thus creating healthier communities. Mental illness is more common than one might think; one in four adults (nearly 60 million individuals) is diagnosed with a mental illness in America, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Furthermore, according to industry publication, Social Work Today, some 60% of these individuals have children and successfully raise their children while also managing their mental illness.
Mental illnesses can be successfully treated and people do recover. The Mental Health Association of Morris County believes that all individuals living with mental illness should be able to lead meaningful lives in the community free from stigma and prejudice. When we stigmatize an individual living with a mental illness, we are likely discriminating against our mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, friends, or neighbors. We urge the public to learn the facts about mental illness. A high correlation between mental illness and violent behavior is most certainly not one of these facts.
Julia Wimmer, MSW, DRCC
Associate Director
Andy Germak, MSW, LSW
Executive Director
Please take a look at this excellent article:
I found this article on the NPR website: www.npr.org.
by Allison Aubrey
Not sleeping well? It’s a common complaint. Sixty-four million Americans report at least occasional bouts of insomnia. And the anxiety of waking up in the middle of the night can be maddening.
Psychiatrist Thomas Wehr has one consoling message for those who wake up at 2 a.m.: This is likely the way our ancestors slept.
“There are historical records of people sleeping in two bouts at night,” Wehr explains. They called the first bout dead sleep, and the second bout was called morning sleep. The wakeful period in between was referred to as watch or watching.
Before the days of artificial lighting, a winter day could bring 14 hours of solid darkness. People lived from sun to sun.
Wehr was curious as to what might happen if he put busy Americans into that environment. How would they sleep? He organized a study to find out.
He and his colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health recruited 15 young, healthy adult volunteers. They went about their normal business during the day, then reported to a sleep lab in the early evening.
“We had our subjects go into the dark at 6 p.m., lie down and rest,” Wehr says. “The lights didn’t come back on until 8 the next morning; it was a simulated winter day.
The sleep study found that the long night led to two bouts of concentrated sleep — with a wakeful period in the middle, lasting a few hours. The study was published in the American Journal of Physiology in 1993.
“You might think that lying awake for two hours would be a kind of torture,” Wehr says. “But it wasn’t at all.” The people in the sleep study described it as a kind of quiescent, meditative state.
Researchers found similar results in a more recent study of adolescents. The longer night seems to give rise to a sort of “midnight comfort.”
Sleep Patterns
To many of us, the notion of staying in bed — or in the dark — for 12 hours may seem ridiculous or a waste of time. In modern culture, we’ve adapted to a more efficient way of sleeping: consolidating it into one long stretch.
This works for many people, but as we age, sleep changes.
“Sleep tends to be more fragile in general as we age,” says Mary Carskadon, who directs chronobiology and sleep research at Brown University.
One way to assess the age-related changes in sleep is to look at brain waves.
“When we’re little, we have a lot of very high, slow brain waves at the beginning of the night,” Carskadon says. “And that seems to be the best, most restorative kind of sleep.”
But as the decades go by, these peaks diminish. If adolescent brain waves are the Himalayas, then by early adulthood, they’re Rocky Mountain peaks. And in the elderly: think Appalachians or just foothills.
As we age, it’s easier to wake us, Carskadon explains, “because those high, slow waves are very protective for disturbances in the environment” — things such as a snoring partner, or a barking dog.
Getting Enough Zzzzzzzz
So, if interruptions in sleep are to be expected, what’s the best strategy for getting enough of it?
One option is to embrace a longer night. This may work for people who have very flexible schedules, or for those who are retired.
“They can afford, arguably, to spend more time in bed,” says Jack Edinger, a sleep expert at Duke University. He says the middle-of-night wake time may not be anxiety-provoking if you know you’re going to get another bout of morning sleep.
There’s also the siesta model — with naps in the afternoon. But for those of us who need to get up and work all day? There are strategies that can help people consolidate sleep.
One technique, according to Edinger, is to tightly restrict the number of hours in bed. This encourages more efficient sleep.
Edinger stresses that sleep requirements vary from person to person. Six to nine hours is the normal range. But “there are people who fall outside that range and do just fine,” he says.
The important thing is to get a good handle on the dose of sleep YOU need, he says. Set your pattern — and stick with it each night.
Most of us will find that’s seven or eight hours. Recent studies suggest that people who get less than seven hours each night tend to be more susceptible to the common cold and weight gain.
Psychiatric Times ran a great article recently on the status of mental health on our college and university campuses:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1430329
A Board member found this editorial online and shared it with me. It was written by Mike Adams and posted at townhall.com.
YOU AREN’T BIPOLAR, YOU’RE JUST A JERK
It’s getting old, isn’t it? Everyone these days is bipolar or has some other chic mental disorder that he feels excuses his self-centered conduct. Like the guy who once walked into my class twenty minutes late. I told him it was his last time to come in late. He said, “But you don’t understand, I’m bipolar.” And he said it in front of the whole class.
Having a mental disorder used to be a source of embarrassment. But, now, it’s often a request for special treatment, which, when granted, fuels self-centered conduct. That’s why a pastor friend of mine now hears the claim “But, I’m bipolar!” in approximately 80 percent of his marital counseling sessions. This means that approximately 40 percent of the people he counsels are claiming to be “bipolar.”
Is there something in the water that is causing a massive outbreak in manic-depression and other mental disorders? Or is it possible that we live culture of entitlement, which gives us strong incentives to claim some sort of disability rather than face the consequences of our freely chosen actions?
Just about everyone who really suffers from some form of depression (manic or otherwise) has something in common: He is engaged in self-centered conduct, which either a) actually caused the disorder (real or perceived), or b) greatly exacerbates the disorder (real or perceived).
People who suffer from, or claim to suffer from, some form of depression usually respond in one of two ways:
1) They seek psychological counseling, which focuses largely on “talk therapy.” During these talk therapy sessions the patient pays a doctor to listen to him talk at length about himself and his problems. Since this is just another exercise in self-absorption, it rarely works.
2) They seek psychiatric care, which usually results in a drug prescription. Paying someone to give you mood altering drugs, rather than addressing your behavior, involves a degree of self-absorption that simply cannot be ignored. But it usually is ignored. And that’s why the drugs usually don’t do the trick. In fact, they often lead people to suicide.
Behind the two generally misguided approaches to curing depression is the common fallacy that our emotions are usually the causes, not the effects, of our behavior. But, in reality, it is our behavior that usually shapes our attitudes and our emotions.
If you don’t believe what I’m saying I want you to try a little exercise the next time you wake up in a bad mood. All it involves is simply forcing yourself to smile and exchange simple pleasantries with every stranger you see during the morning hours. That simple act of saying something nice and seeing a return smile will kill any bad mood in less than half a day. It has a success rate of about 100 percent. And simple variants of the exercise work for more prolonged cases of the blues. Let me provide an example.
A few weeks ago, I had a strong compulsion to ask a neighbor to church. He was going through serious legal and financial struggles. I kept hearing that “you should” voice telling me to ask him to attend church with me. On July 4, the voice was really strong. But I ignored it and simply waved at my neighbor as I drove by his house.
On July 6, police cars surrounded his home. Just before noon they carried his lifeless body out on a stretcher. I was simply devastated by the thought of how things might have been different had I acted.
The next week was one of the saddest I’ve had in many, many months. And it was brought on by the same thing that always brings on sadness or depression. I had acted like a self-absorbed jerk. Rather than reach out to someone who was suffering I went on about my business. I was more worried that having a talk with him might be awkward or might cut into my time smoking cigars with my friends.
And this is where things begin to get dangerous. When we screw up – due to our own self-absorption – the chances are that we’ll screw up again by allowing the negative energy of one bad decision to fuel another similar bad decision. That’s often the way mild depression turns to serious depression. It is an unhealthy cycle that must be broken.
After a few days of kicking myself, I took out a sheet of paper. On it, I wrote the letter “A” and stared at it until I could think of someone who was hurting whose name began with the letter “A.” After a few minutes, I remembered a woman whose husband died of a heart attack last spring. I picked up the phone and called her and told her a funny story about her husband. I shared some things about him that brought back some memories and made her laugh out loud. Before I hung up I told her that many people loved her and were praying for her. The call made the day brighter for both of us.
And then I picked up my pen and wrote down the letter “B.” I don’t have to tell you that by the time I reached the letter “F” I was feeling like I was on top of the world.
The truth is that changing one’s behavior with an exercise in other-absorption, rather than self-absorption, will cure what most people label as depression. If that fails they should talk to a professional. If that also fails they should consider an experiment with prescribed medication.
But people who shout “I’m bipolar” usually don’t want to be helped. And if we feed their sense of entitlement we hurt them very badly.
