PsychHealth

Medical student, aspiring psychiatrist, and passionate mental health advocate. My blog features all things mental health-related but with an emphasis on science, research, and advocacy efforts. Browsing for a particular topic? Use the tag cloud or topic list link below.

[psychhealth]

I spend my days fantasizing about dying and feeling ashamed of myself for taking a spot from someone who would be infinitely more grateful to be in my position. I’m barely passing my classes and am tired of the “How’s medical school going? You’re so smart, I bet you’re doing so well!” from well-intentioned friends and family. I’m not smart, I’m not special, I’m just me.

[psychhealth]

I don’t know if it’s normal to be as unmotivated and uninterested in medical school as I am. Everyone is telling me it’s only been a month, and they’re right, I just know that everyone around me is able to sit down every day and actually study for 4-6 hours, while I spend way too much time screwing around on the internet. have no one to blame but myself, I just don’t know why I can’t give myself that kick in the butt, even after taking an anatomy exam that I really-truly-probably failed.

Meanwhile, I of course eat up every single case study discussion centering around socioeconomic barriers to care or the psychosocial aspects of disease. And I love interacting with the standardized patients--which is the only thing I’ve not been awful at since coming here.

Also doesn’t help that I’m pretty homesick and miss my boyfriend and friends from home terribly. I miss Active Minds and I miss working at the psych hospital. Psych is love, psych is life. But psych is not life anyomore. :(

[psychhealth]

I've never lived more than 20-30 minutes away from my family or boyfriend. I've never gone more than 3 weeks without seeing either. In 3 weeks I am moving 4 hours away from every single member of my support system, friends included, to start medical school. Needless to say, I a) have been quite privileged, and b) am now fucking terrified.

[psychhealth]

Emergency services workers who are more likely to suffer episodes of mental ill health later in their careers can be spotted in the first week of training. That's the conclusion of a Wellcome Trust funded study carried out with trainee paramedics.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and King's College London wanted to see if they could identify risk factors that made people more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress (PTSD) or major depression (MD) when working in emergency services.

Dr Jennifer Wild from the University of Oxford explained: 'Emergency workers are regularly exposed to stressful and traumatic situations and some of them will experience periods of mental illness. Some of the factors that make that more likely can be changed through resilience training, reducing the risk of PTSD and depression. We wanted to test whether we could identify such risk factors, making it possible to spot people at higher risk early in their training and to develop interventions that target these risk factors to strengthen their resilience.'

The researchers followed a group of around 400 new ambulance staff through the first two years of their three-year training period. During the initial six-week classroom phase of the training, the students were given a number of assessments to establish their thinking styles, coping behaviour, psychiatric history and personality traits.

Follow up sessions were carried out every four months for the next two years to see if any of the participants had had PTSD or depression. After two years, a final assessment looked at quality of life, as well as smoking, alcohol and drug use, days off work, weight change, burnout and insomnia.

Professor Anke Ehlers said: 'While just under one in five experienced PTSD or depression in the two years, most got better by the next four-month follow-up.

'However, there were still lasting effects. Those who had reported mental ill health were more likely to have sleep problems at 2 years. They were also more likely to have days off work. Paramedics who developed an episode of PTSD were also more likely to report gaining weight and smoking.'

The team found that even accounting for past psychiatric history, people were more likely to experience PTSD and depression if they had lower perceived resilience to trauma, or if they dwelled on stressful events from the past before they started their training. Significantly, the number of traumatic incidents they experienced could not be used to predict PTSD but was relevant to predicting MD, suggesting a cumulative risk of different exposures to trauma for depression.

Dr Wild said: 'This is not about screening out particular people in training. Early assessment means that those who are more at risk can be offered training to improve their resilience to stressful and traumatic experiences. That has the potential to reduce episodes of PTSD and major depression and improve the long term health of a valued and essential workforce.'

[psychhealth]

In a study appearing in the June 28 issue of JAMA, Christiane E. Angermann, M.D., of University Hospital Wurzburg, Germany, and colleagues examined whether 24 months of treatment with the antidepressant escitalopram would improve mortality, illness, and mood in patients with chronic heart failure and depression.

Previous meta-analysis indicates that depression prevalence in patients with heart failure is 10 percent to 40 percent, depending on disease severity. Depression has been shown to be an independent predictor of mortality and rehospitalization in patients with heart failure, with incidence rates increasing in parallel with depression severity. Long-term efficacy and safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are widely used to treat depression, is unknown for patients with heart failure and depression.

For this study, 372 patients with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (a measure of heart function) and depression were randomly assigned to receive escitalopram or matching placebo in addition to optimal heart failure therapy. During a median participation time of 18.4 months (n = 185) for the escitalopram group and 18.7 months (n = 187) for the placebo group, the primary outcome of death or hospitalization occurred in 116 (63 percent) patients and 119 (64 percent) patients, respectively. There was no significant improvement on a measure of depression for patients in the escitalopram group.

"These findings do not support the use of escitalopram in patients with chronic systolic heart failure and depression," the authors write.

[psychhealth]

Having a mental illness is no picnic. On top of managing the illness itself, you may be battling societal misconceptions, family worry and your own self-blame and concern — which is the least fun cocktail since the prairie oyster. In the face of the various challenges afoot, it can be difficult to keep a balanced perspective on what's happening to you — particularly if you're scared, don't know a lot about the situation, or are feeling pressure from those around you. That's where this guide comes in; it's meant to jog your memory about the truths of mental illness and those who have it.

Approaches to your situation don't have to be dour or serious: the Huffington Post is currently beginning a campaign called The Best Medicine, about the use of humor and comedy to combat and alleviate mental health issues. But if you need a hand up and some new viewpoints, I've compiled a look at some of the most vital bits of mental health experience, from historical context to the mentally ill community worldwide. There are rather a lot of us; regrettably, we don't hold club nights or go on fun runs, but there are some fundamentals we should all keep in mind.

Here are five things that all mentally ill people should try to remember; but don't beat yourself up if you forget sometimes. If it weren't hard to remember them, there'd be no need for reminders.

[psychhealth]

Chat service gives employees access to mental health experts

Almost a quarter of the world’s population struggle with some sort of mental health issues. Today, employers are expected to provide assistance in retaining healthcare services, however, it proves difficult to directly provide mental health assistance to employees. A solution to this problem is a new platform called TalkLife Connect, an easily accessible chat service that allows employees to talk to mental health experts about any personal or work issues they may be dealing with. TalkLife Connect allows for people to continuously connect with a therapist over the course of time simply by sending a message.

[psychhealth]

The University of Montana is conducting a research study on the online treatment of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety in teens. Participants can learn strategies which may help them cope better with their emotions and worries. The program is *free*, will take about an hour, and you can even receive a $10 gift card for trying the intervention program.  It is based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles, and was developed by Australian National University in 2004.  You must be 18-19 years old to participate. Visit our study website for more information and to sign up: www.onlineteenstudy.org.  Thanks!!

[psychhealth]

I have trichotillomania, TTM for short, the uncontrollable urge to pull out hair strand by strand, causing baldness in extreme cases. My first therapist gave my mom a photocopied magazine article to explain my diagnosis.  It was 1988, and I was 11 years old.

[lazyyogi]

You are more real than your thoughts could ever be.

Reflect on this.

Examine your experience of the mind. Discern just how much truth unfolds for you and from you in this moment.

Draw no conclusions.

[psychhealth]

How to Talk to Your Boss About Mental Health Issues

Think about how much to say, and when to say it.

[psychhealth]

Helping Indigenous women through pregnancy

A digitised mental health screening program which aims to assess the social and emotional wellbeing of pregnant Aboriginal women is to be piloted in Western Australia.

The program, called 'Baby Coming - You Ready?', invites expectant parents to choose images they strongly connect with from a series of illustrations, to help identify areas of support they may need and to flag mental health issues.

It is based on a research project conducted at Murdoch University by PhD student Jayne Kotz with Aboriginal mothers and fathers from around the state, called 'Kalyakool Moort - Always Family'.

[psychhealth]

August 1, 2016―August 3, 2016

Bethesda Marriott Hotel 5151 Pooks Hill Road Bethesda, Maryland 20814 Phone [phone]

The 23rd NIMH Conference on Mental Health Services Research (MHSR) will highlight scientific investigative efforts to improve population mental health through high-impact mental health services research.

MHSR 2016 is free to attend, and selected sessions will be viewable via webcast.

[psychhealth]

Sortable Stats is an interactive data set comprised of behavioral risk factors and health indicators. This site compiles data from various published CDC and federal sources into a format that allows users to view, sort, and analyze data at state/territory, regional, and national levels. This tool is intended to serve as a resource in the promotion of policy, system, and environmental changes.                                

[neurosciencestuff]

Obese or anorexic individuals react differently to taste

Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have discovered that women suffering from anorexia nervosa and those who are obese respond differently to taste, a finding that could lead to new treatments for the eating disorders.

“Taste is an important driver of food intake and invariably associated with distinct neuronal patters in the insula, the brain’s primary taste cortex,” said the study’s lead author Guido Frank, MD, a psychiatrist and associate professor at the CU School of Medicine.  

The study was recently published online in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Frank and his team set out to find if abnormal eating patterns were associated with changes in the insula’s ability to classify taste stimuli.

Some 106 women of similar age underwent brain imaging while tasting sugar water or a tasteless water solution. Researchers studied how well the insula could differentiate between the flavors.  

Individuals with anorexia nervosa or those who were obese, had difficulty distinguishing between ordinary water and sugar water, compared to control subjects and those who had recovered from anorexia nervosa.

“If you can’t differentiate between tastes, that could impact how much you eat,” Frank said. “That could also activate or not activate brain reward circuits.”

These changes, he said, could occur on a variety of levels. For example, leptin and other hormones are altered in obesity and eating disorders, affecting how the brain responds to food. At the same time, the reduced ability of the insula to classify taste could be due to structural changes within this brain region or alternatively could result in altered taste signal processing in different pathways to the insula.

Research indicates that these problems diminish once a person reaches a healthy weight.

While more research is needed, Frank said one possible treatment could be to alter the taste of food.

“Perhaps adjusting flavor intensity by reducing it for those with anorexia and enhancing it for those who are obese,” he said. “It’s something we need to examine more closely.”

[psychhealth]

I am in total shock--today I found out that some medical school thinks I’m good enough to be a physician.

So many feelings. Processing the fact that I am actually on my way to making some sort of positive impact in psychiatry. I recently got an internship with a psychiatrist on my unit who also runs a private practice that mimics what I envision eventually having myself. She’s the kind of psychiatrist I want to be. And now I am actually on that path.

Anyway.

Overwhelmed. Sorry I haven’t been updating lately!

[psychhealth]

I'm not sure whether these are normal teenage tendencies, but lately I've been feeling more zoned out, antisocial,awkward, and feel a sudden lack of sympathy for things that I should. Does this mean anything?

It could mean nothing, or it could mean something. What you’re feeling is far from unusual and not necessarily a bad thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking into! If feeling antisocial or awkward or "out of it" is distressing you, please do find a trusted adult to confide in and who can direct you to the appropriate resources. It can be a parent, teacher, coach, counselor, whatever. Being a teenager comes with a lot of not-so-fun mental changes so there’s nothing wrong with talking to someone about it. :)