Mental Health News

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Those suffering with hardcore drug addictions often find that the treatment can be worse than the addiction when they are going clean.  This usually results in a lot of addicts going back to the drug, just to stop the withdrawal symptoms.  A meth addiction can be one of these terrible addictions that leave sufferers with horrible withdrawal symptoms and the cravings.

A controversial drug treatment program called, ‘Promenta’ is now being offered through some of the Adult Probation Departments in Texas.  This program claims to have a very high success rate, although studies by major drug companies are still underway.  Not many studies have been completed and those that have show mixed results or complicated answers.   One study did indicate an 80% success rate.

Promenta got its start in the 1990s when a Spanish psychologist combined three proven drugs for addiction therapy into one treatment.  From there Promenta protocol was picked up and developed by Terren Peizer and the process and stet-by-step procedure sold to doctors for a price.  Promenta now contains a combination of vitamins and withdrawal drugs that many addicts claim works wonders in removing the cravings for meth. 

Now, Texas is looking to see if Promenta will help keep addicts out of their drug courts.  The state has created a pilot program with $2 million funding for this little known medical treatment that may cure the worst of methamphetamine addictions. 

The courts and departments offering the program for drug addiction will allow inmates or defendants of drug related crimes early release in exchange for taking part in the Promenta program.  The theory being, that if they can get the addict clean and without cravings, the addict won’t show up in drug court again, potentially saving the system millions of dollars. 

However, despite the millions in funding, few of the courts and departments in Texas are applying for it.  They would rather wait and see how the Promenta program works out for those who are trying it.  For more information check out: Counties not sold on meth cure.

Bipolar depression affects 10 million people in the United States and it, like many other mental health disorders, causes many of them to turn in desperation to drugs for self medication, which in turn can lead them to a life of crime in order to pay for those drugs.  Many find themselves so confused, in pain, desperate, depressed, and anxious and more about life that they attempt to commit suicide. 

This happened to Charles Slaughter Junior, 43 of Colona, Ill.  He had been diagnosed with bipolar depression and ended up in the correctional system because of the crimes he committed in an attempt to get drug money.  He had been found unfit to stand trial for his crimes, but had been forced to remain in jail for 5 months without any kind of medical treatment.  In the end, he hung himself in his cell with a bed sheet. 

Slaughter’s suicide became a wake up call for Judge Ray Conklin.  He read the news about Slaughter’s death in the paper and realized that there were many people in the criminal justice system that didn’t need to be there.  They, like Slaughter, suffered from mental health disorders that caused them to behave erratically, break the law, and take illegal drugs and even attempt to kill themselves in desperation. 

Conklin came up with the mental health court.  It’s a special court that people with mental health disorders who are picked up by the police can be shunted into.  Whether they commit a crime or are found to have missed a court ordered dose of medication, the mental health court in Rock Island County handles it.  The system is able to move people through faster, meaning they’ll get needed treatment faster.  Plus, a person with a mental health disorders has the attention of the court and will even be watched and supervised to make sure they are doing well and getting the treatment they need.

Drug addiction is always a serious matter, even when it’s just a cigarette every now and then.  It’s possible to develop symptoms of withdrawal even when you only few a few cigarettes a week.  And if you’ve been smoking regularly for years your body will have built up a significant amount of toxins as well as having a nicotine addiction. 

Millions of people have realized what a monkey on their backs, the nicotine addiction can be.  It not only affects your body, but your mental health, because there is more to an addiction than just the physical effects.  You’ll also have the psychological addiction, which experts have said is the hardest to break.

There are some things to be aware of when you first attempt to break your cigarette drug addiction.  Nicotine will stay in your system for up to five days after you stop, but as this slowly breaks down and moves out of the body you’ll start to experience the withdrawal symptoms. 

Classic Symptoms of Physical Withdrawal are:

• anxiety,
• food cravings,
• lethargy,
• increased sinus inflammation and runny nose and
• bad breath.

Don’t worry too much over these symptoms as they don’t last more than a couple of weeks.  After that you’ll just be dealing with the urge to smoke that can occur in situations that are similar to when you used to smoke or specific times of day when you would smoke.  It can take a long time to retrain the mind and body not to have that urge after even this ‘common’ drug addiction.

Just be aware of your triggers and work on keeping your mental health positive.  When an urge strikes you, go and do something else to help take your mind of off it.  Most urges only last a few minutes so if you can make it through that moment you’ll be okay. 

Drug addictions come in all forms, but the oft made fun of addictions can be the most slippery to get control of.  Readers may remember that the FDA recently announced many children are given too much Cough and Cold medicine, which can be detrimental to their health.  This caused a lot of supermarkets to place warnings on their shelves and many even removed certain brands of Cough Syrup and medicine from their shelves. 

Well, this isn’t the only problem with Cough and Cold Medicine.  Newly analyzed data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicates that way more young people than previously thought have used Cough and Cold medicine to get high.  The NSDUH survey found that 3.1 million people between the ages of 12 and 25 have used over the counter cough and cold medicines to get high at least once in their lifetimes. 

An overdose of Cough and Cold medicines such as is done by those with drug addictions can induce severe dissociative experiences that are much like an ‘Out-of-Body’ experience.   Although non-prescription Cough and Cold medicine is generally quite safe when taken as directed and for medicinal purposes.

One addiction quote at MedicalNewsToday http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/93735.php states that, ‘Females aged 12 to 17 were more likely than their male counterparts to have misused these drugs within the past year (2.3 percent vs. 1.5 percent). But among those aged 18 to 25, more males had misused these drugs in the past year than females (1.8 percent vs. 1.3 percent). Among all persons aged 12 to 25, the rate of past year misuse among whites (2.1 percent) was three times higher than among blacks (0.6 percent) and significantly higher than among Hispanics (1.4 percent).’

Recent mental health news concerning the death of a young 22-year-old woman in Adelaide, South Australia is causing local hostels to watch out for those with mental health problems.  This young woman had been mentally ill and staying in an Adelaide backpacker hostel.  The woman’s, Toby Garratt, body was found over New Year’s Eve in the Adelaide Parklands near where she’d been staying.  Another person is currently facing murder charges for her death.

However, this piece of mental health news along with the news concerning the death of a man in his 50s who had also been staying at a hostel in Adelaide is causing concern over the numbers of mentally ill people staying in the local hostels.  In Southern Australia, it’s not uncommon for a mentally ill person to be referred to a backpacker’s hostel from the mental health system when accommodations are limited.

Now, people are concerned that this practice could be exposing the public and other international or interstate travelers to some danger.  Plus, the hostel may not be the safest place for the mentally ill with no other place to go.

To make the hostels safer, South Australia’s Director of Mental Health Operations Derek Wright says that training will be given to staff at backpacker’s hostels to help them recognize and deal with people suffering from mental illness.  He also stated that the staff at hostels will also be given access to a mental health triage hotline.  However, Michelle Lensink of the South Australian Opposition MP stated that these measures fail to address the shortage of accommodations for the mentally ill, which leads to them being referred to the backpacker’s hostels for a place to stay.

Medical researchers find that for many, the problem of drug addiction and mental illnesses occur together.  It has long been known that people with mental illnesses ranging from anxiety disorders to bipolar depression commonly struggle with addictions.  These can be addictions such as nicotine, alcohol and cocaine or others.  In fact, Andrew Chambers, MD, cited that at least half of all people who seek help for their addictions are also diagnosed with a co-occurring mental health disorder. 

For a long time previously, doctors had assumed that the addictions were a kind of ‘self-medication’ for those suffering with mental illnesses who just slid into addiction.  However, Andrew Chambers decided to find out if this was the cause through the scientific method. 

He and his team at the medical school of Indiana University compared the adult mood- and drug addiction related behavior of two groups of adult rats.  One group underwent surgery to purposely damage their amygdalas and another group underwent a fake surgery to simulate the same conditions. 

The rats that underwent the real surgery were found to be significantly more sensitive to cocaine and developed an addiction to the drug when addicted to it much faster. 

Dr. Chambers theorized that the reason the amygdalas are damaged in humans can vary.  Sometimes there are relatively rare cases of temporal lobe epilepsy, tumors or early brain injury.  However, these co-occurring drug addictions and mental illnesses are more common than that.  Chambers believes they could also be the result of developmental damage to the amygdale during early childhood.  An early emotional trauma combined with certain genetic backgrounds can alter the early development of the neural networks involved in the amygdala leading to brain disturbances.

Its official, 14 millions workers abuse drugs and have some type of alcohol addiction.  A recent study has found that of this group 11 million are abusing or dependent on alcohol alone!  Well, I guess we found proof that work is mind numbing.  The areas most affected by the abusive problems are Construction and Food Service. 

This federal addiction quote further found that 8% of those tallied represented the full-time workforce although there some industries with far greater substance abuse.  In fact, the director of the division of population surveys at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration stated that they considered these millions with alcohol addiction and other abuses to be an underestimate.  This is because the survey asked workers to reveal their own drug use habits to researchers, and many may have chosen to hide drug.

Since drug use is linked to lower income and lower education levels in the populace the Administration stated they didn’t come to any conclusions as to why there were higher rates of substance abuse in Food Service and Construction jobs.  Mining and Drilling workers also reported a higher rate of substance abuse too.

In addition those who admitted to alcohol addiction and substance abuse were also found to have more missed days from work during periods of abuse.  About four of every 10 employees work for someone who requires drug or alcohol testing during the hiring process.  These workplaces do tend to have fewer drug users on the payroll, but researchers state that this may not have much to do with whether certain people in certain careers are less likely to do drugs.  It may simply be that those addicted were weeded out during testing or never got past hiring in the first place.  Remember kids, don’t do drugs and stay in school.

Hey, it looks like there may be a better way out there to take down major depression!  The newest treatment for clinical depression may be a rave drug known as ketamine.  In addition it appears to help people for a range of issues from addiction to Post Truamatic Stress Disorder and some kinds of chronic pain.  It’s starting to be thought of as the nest big thing for those suffering from symptoms of depression and these other conditions. 

How Come?
This drug has commonly been used for anesthesia, until one psychiatrist, John Krystal set up a mini study on seven of his patients by giving them Ketamine for their clinical depression symptoms.  The results were great.  Most of his patients disliked the high feeling that the drug gave them, but once it wore off the depression that they lived with was gone. Other researchers have been able to duplicate the results in their own trials and it seems to work. 

Ketamine has even been called a ‘reset button’ for the brain in a dysfunctional rut.  It acts in only a few hours to relieve a patient’s clinical depression symptoms and seems to work for most of those who take the drug to relieve their symptoms.  Keep an eye out on the market because I have a feeling that drug companies are going to try and take advantage of this one.

Side Note:
As many as 850,000 people kill themselves around the world as a result of their clinical depression each year.  There are thought to be around 13 percent of Americans who suffer from major depression each year and it can take someone suffering from long term clinical depression months to find the one drug or combination of drugs that will work to set their brains in balance again.

The term, Internet Addiction, started out it’s life as a bit of a joke created by one Ivan Goldberg, M.D to parody and compile all the other compulsions and addictions out there.  However, other scientists and researchers have picked up on it in recent years and are starting to take a closer look.  Some of them believe it’s possible to become an Netaholic. As of current there aren’t many Mental Health Services designed specifically for dealing with an addiction to the internet.  There are more researchers performing studies on the potential problem.

Ivan Goldberg, the originator of the disorder, said in 1996 Wired Article:

‘There’s no such thing as Internet addiction. The Internet is about as addictive as work: Sure, there are workaholics, but they’re simply working to avoid the other problems in their lives.’

It is possible that those who compulsively use the internet are really suffering from other conditions or under extreme stressers for which they should take advantage of their nearest Mental Health Services.  However, isn’t this about true for many other addictions too?  There is an addictive component, but plenty of addicts use their addictions as an escape from the problems they face in daily life. 

There may also be different kinds of internet addiction.  Two in particular that are getting noticed are MORPG Addictions and Compulsive use of Online Pornography.  MORPGs are multiple online player games that some people admit to playing for up to 10 to 12 hours a day.  So much so that it interferes with their daily lives.

An addiction usually hosts most if not all of these criteria, so if you think you meet several of the following you should probably seek out the help of your nearest Mental Health Services facility to reevaluate your daily activities. 

(summarized from Griffiths, 1997)

Here is a more tongue in cheek list of internet addiction qualities called, Is Webaholics Anonymous for You?  You can also find more on this at About Mental Health.

As far as drug addiction goes its recently been found that using low doses of the party drug Ecstasy can cause a decline in one’s verbal memory.  Mental health does not rely alone on one’s ability to tell the difference between the voices in their head and the voices of people talking to one.  After all the brain is a vast microcosm, kind of a contradiction I know, of chemicals, nerves, and electrical signals that depends on a fine balance.  Drugs have been known to upset that balance and here’s just one more example. 

Scientists at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam followed 188 volunteers at high risk of trying ecstasy for the first time.  Of that number it turned out that about 60 individuals did indeed start using. All of the volunteers were tested on different kinds of memory skills including; attention span, verbal memory, and visual memory.  Over three years of follow up tests and observations they found that those who used ecstasy developed delayed verbal recall and verbal recognition issues.  Meaning: drug addiction can mess up your ability to remember words and their meanings.  Bad news for any writers out there using the stuff. 

So anyone who happens to come across certain people in their lives who have some trouble with a limited vocabulary.  Now you know why…well, okay not everyone with a limited vocabulary is an ecstasy user.  Maybe they all just had test anxiety? 

The researchers believe that these verbal recall problems are caused by a decrease in Serotonin which is important in several cognitive functions in the brain.  A serotonin imbalance may also lead to depression so there’s another drawback to drug addiction to that Ecstasy stuff.

On the plus side, since this is a Serotonin problem it may be completely reversible so people can get their smarts back.  Scientists are still looking into the problem.