Behind a Big—and Rare—Foundation Grant for Mental Health. By any measure, the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care is unique in the funding space. First, there’s its bold mission to match the passion of private philanthropy with the world’s top researchers and programs to bring recovery-based care to every community. Second is its international focus. And finally, there’s the funder’s willingness to incubate new donor-advised initiatives. Mental illness is surprisingly common, and costly to patients, families and society at large: one in four people have mental health issues serious enough to warrant treatment. But while funding for this issue is critical, it’s also in short supply. As Yana Jacobs, chief Program Officer at the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, explained to us back in 2015, there is still much misunderstanding around mental health challenges, making donors wary of association with this funding area.
Related: Hope on Mental Health, With an Unusual Funding Model. Lady Gaga's Suicide Op-Ed: Read It Here. Lady Gaga joined with the director general of the World Health Organization on Tuesday (Oct. 9) to pen an urgent essay for The Guardian about the lack of reliable mental health support services around the world and the need to stop stigmatizing treatable conditions. "By the time you finish reading this, at least six people will have killed themselves around the world," begins the essay by Gaga and Dr. Tedros Adhanom entitled "800,000 People Kill Themselves Every Year. What Can We Do?
" "Those six are a tiny fraction of the 800,000 people who will kill themselves this year – more than the population of Washington DC, Oslo or Cape Town," it continues. "Sometimes they are famous names such as Anthony Bourdain or Kate Spade that make headlines, but they are all sons or daughters, friends or colleagues, valued members of families and communities. " "I have struggled for a long time, both being public and not public about my mental health issues or my mental illness," Gaga said at the time.
Why Mental Health Is Crucial for Men - Mental Health Awareness Month. Our mission at MensHealth.com has always been to help men build themselves into better men. Stronger men. Healthier men. Rooted in science and expert opinion, our content translates dense topics into easily digestible, actionable health advice. Piecemeal, the concepts are sound and effective. But overall health must be viewed holistically. One of the most integral components is your mind. Your mental health is inseparable from your physical health. Men who are vocal about any kind of mental issues can be dismissed as weak.
Or worse: we nonchalantly respond, “Well, that sucks,” then change the subject because talking about feelings is just too real. What’s real is the fact that 9 percent of men experience depression on a daily basis. Male suicide is rising at such an alarming rate that it’s been classified as a “silent epidemic.” Our mental problems are literally killing us. This macho attitude of stuffing your feelings down, or ignoring them, is antiquated and downright dangerous.
Major mental illnesses unexpectedly share brain gene activity, raising hope for better diagnostics and therapies. Mental illness affects one in six U.S. adults, but scientists' sense of the underlying biology of most psychiatric disorders remains nebulous. That's frustrating for physicians treating the diseases, who must also make diagnoses based on symptoms that may only appear sporadically. No laboratory blood test or brain scan can yet distinguish whether someone has depression or bipolar disorder, for example. Now, however, a large-scale analysis of postmortem brains is revealing distinctive molecular traces in people with mental illness.
This week, an international team of researchers reports that five major psychiatric disorders have patterns of gene activity that often overlap but also vary in disease-specific—and sometimes counterintuitive—ways. The findings, they say, might someday lead to diagnostic tests and novel therapies, and one has already inspired a clinical trial of a new way to treat overactive brain cells in autism.
Outsiders say the data mark a milestone in psychiatry. Depression warning signs: Pay attention to the words they use. From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this “language of depression” can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and song lyrics of Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, who both killed themselves after suffering from depression.
Scientists have long tried to pin down the exact relationship between depression and language, and technology is helping us get closer to a full picture. Our new study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, has now unveiled a class of words that can help accurately predict whether someone is suffering from depression. Traditionally, linguistic analyses in this field have been carried out by researchers reading and taking notes. Content Language can be separated into two components: content and style. More interesting is the use of pronouns. Style Practical implications. Anxiety Neurons Found In Brains. Scientists zeroed in on specific neurons in the brains of mice to gain insights into how anxiety is triggered and suppressed. SPL/Science Source hide caption toggle caption SPL/Science Source Scientists zeroed in on specific neurons in the brains of mice to gain insights into how anxiety is triggered and suppressed.
Scientists have found specialized brain cells in mice that appear to control anxiety levels. The finding, reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to better treatments for anxiety disorders, which affect nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. "The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks," says Mazen Kheirbek, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an author of the study.
But the research is at an early stage and lab findings in animals don't always pan out in humans. "If we can learn enough, we can develop the tools to turn on and off the key players that regulate anxiety in people," Gordon says. Access to nature reduces depression and obesity, finds European study | Society. People living close to trees and green spaces are less likely to be obese, inactive, or dependent on anti-depressants, according to a new report. Middle-aged Scottish men with homes in deprived but verdant areas were found to have a death rate 16% lower than their more urban counterparts. Pregnant women also received a health boost from a greener environment, recording lower blood pressures and giving birth to larger babies, research in Bradford found.
Overall, nature is an under-recognised healer, the paper says, offering multiple health benefits from allergy reductions to increases in self-esteem and mental wellbeing. A study team of 11 researchers at the Institute for European environmental policy (IEEP) spent a year reviewing more than 200 academic studies for the report, which is the most wide-ranging probe yet into the dynamics of health, nature and wellbeing. Ealth researchers pinpoint area of brain linked to bipolar disorder - Media Relations - UTHealth. Molecular Psychiatry - Abstract of article: Hippocampal subfield volumes in mood disorders. Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication 24 January 2017; doi: 10.1038/mp.2016.262 B Cao1, I C Passos2, B Mwangi1, H Amaral-Silva1, J Tannous1, M-J Wu1, G B Zunta-Soares1 and J C Soares1 1Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX, USA2Graduation Program in Psychiatry and Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil Correspondence: Dr B Cao, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center, 1941 East Rd, Houston, TX 77054, USA.
E-mail: CloudBoCao@gmail.com Received 4 May 2016; Revised 8 December 2016; Accepted 19 December 2016Advance online publication 24 January 2017 Top of page Abstract Volume reduction and shape abnormality of the hippocampus have been associated with mood disorders. Obamacare's Repeal Is a Looming Disaster for Mental Health. Look at a map of states president-elect Donald Trump won in November alongside a map of states with the highest rates of opioid prescriptions, and you’ll see they mostly overlap. Look more closely at the data, as one Penn State professor recently did, and you’ll find that Trump outperformed his Republican predecessor Mitt Romney the most in counties where opiate and suicide mortality rates are highest.
It’s little wonder, then, that mental health and substance abuse issues have become a key talking point for Trump, who has promised to crack down on drug cartels and called America’s mass shootings an issue of mental health—not guns. He’s not the only Republican to adopt behavioral health as a priority. House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed for mental health legislation in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose home state of Kentucky is a leader in opioid deaths, recently penned an op-ed titled “More Must Be Done on Heroin – soon.” Mouse v. What Happens When Depression and Anxiety Coincide With Minor Injury – Neuroscience News. Summary: Researchers find people with anxiety and depression experience poorer work performance and more ‘bed rest’ 12 months after a minor injury. Source: University of Pennsylvania. When someone breaks a leg or fractures a rib, injuries considered relatively minor, providers often don’t look beyond what’s initially required to help that person heal.
But new research from Therese Richmond and Sara Jacoby of the University of Pennsylvania shows that may not be the best approach. Their work, published in the International Journal of Nursing Studies, revealed that someone who arrives in the emergency department needing help for a minor injury and who also expresses symptoms of depression and anxiety at that time will likely experience poorer work performance and increased health-related time in bed 12 months out. “If an injury is not life-threatening, we tend to patch people up and send them home,” said Richmond, the Andrea B.
About this psychology research article Abstract. What Happens When Depression and Anxiety Coincide With Minor Injury – Neuroscience News. Bipolar Disorder and Epilepsy Linked to Turning Down an Inhibitory Switch in Brain Circuits – Neuroscience News. Summary: A new study looks at how a gene associated with bipolar disorder affects the balance between inhibition and excitation; revealing a link with epilepsy. Source: Baylor College of Medicine.
People with bipolar disorder suffer from excessive emotional highs and lows that can cycle uncontrollably, severely distorting their awareness of self and others, impairing social and work ability and causing high risk of suicide. Current treatments are only partly effective. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have used mouse models and advanced molecular mapping studies in both mouse and human to learn how a gene associated with bipolar disorder controls the balance between brain excitation and inhibition and shown for the first time that it also is linked to epilepsy. The findings, appearing recently in the early online edition of Molecular Psychiatry, open new treatment strategies for both bipolar disorder and epilepsy. Proteins coded by ANK3. About this neurology research article. Bipolar Disorder and Epilepsy Linked to Turning Down an Inhibitory Switch in Brain Circuits – Neuroscience News.
Antipsychotic-like Effects of M4 Positive Allosteric Modulators Are Mediated by CB2 Receptor-Dependent Inhibition of Dopamine Release. Medscape Access. Medscape Access. Medscape Access. Mental Health Care Gets A Boost In Health Care Bill. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., Sen. Chris Murphy D-Conn., Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, Rep.
Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Sen. Toggle caption Alex Wong/Getty Images Rep. The 21st Century Cures Act that gained congressional approval on Wednesday has been championed as a way to speed up drug development, but it's also the most significant piece of mental health legislation since the 2008 law requiring equal insurance coverage for mental and physical health. The bill includes provisions aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic, strengthens laws mandating parity for mental and physical health care and includes grants to increase the number of psychologists and psychiatrists, who are in short supply across the country.
It also would push states to provide early intervention for psychosis, a treatment program that has been hailed as one of the most promising mental health developments in decades. "It is time to fix our broken mental health care system," says Sen. Sen. But Rep. Medscape: Medscape Access. Medscape: Medscape Access. Infections and Antibiotic Use Linked to Manic Episodes in People With Serious Mental Illness – Neuroscience News. Summary: A new study appears to add to the growing evidence that the immune system may play a vital role in some psychiatric disorders. Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine. In research using patient medical records, investigators from Johns Hopkins and Sheppard Pratt Health System report that people with serious mental disorders who were hospitalized for mania were more likely to be on antibiotics to treat active infections than a group of people without a mental disorder.
Although the researchers caution that their study does not suggest cause and effect, they note that it does suggest that an infection, use of antibiotics or other factors that change the body’s natural collection of gut and other bacteria may individually or collectively contribute to behavioral changes in some people with mental disorders.
Yolken says his team’s study grew out of an interest in long-observed connections among infections, the microbiome and symptoms of mental illness. About this psychology research article. Winter solstice: the importance of daylight As it... Mitochondria, an exciting new target for the... Milbank: The problem with Obamacare's mental-health 'parity' Obamacare provides mental-health "parity," meaning mental health is covered as well as any other condition — in theory, an important advance. But in practice, parity was meaningless for Isabella. She is enrolled in one of the CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield plans from the Obamacare exchange, but when my friend and I searched for psychiatrists within 30 miles of Washington that take her plan, the CareFirst website returned none.
Next, we took Isabella to Metro Immediate & Primary Care, an urgent-care clinic; after a two-hour wait, a doctor said "I can't do anything for you. " A nurse provided a list of psychiatrists who, we learned after calling them, also didn't take her insurance. We tried various other places experts suggested: The 35 K Street Clinic: No good, because Isabella lives in Maryland, not the District. Finally, we found something called Holy Health Care Services, which said Isabella could see a social worker now and a psychiatrist in the middle of next month.