|
Use of psychiatric drugs has spiked; concerns surface about suicide, other dangers
By
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
and
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
- Staff writers
Posted : Wednesday Mar 17, 2010 12:18:59 EDT
At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug.
And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily “cocktails” — for example, an antidepressant with an antipsychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches — despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations.
The drugs come with serious side effects: They can impair motor skills, reduce reaction times and generally make a war fighter less effective. Some double the risk for suicide, prompting doctors — and Congress — to question whether these drugs are connected to the rising rate of military suicides.
“It’s really a large-scale experiment. We are experimenting with changing people’s cognition and behavior,” said Dr. Grace Jackson, a former Navy psychiatrist.
A Military Times investigation of electronic records obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency shows DLA spent $1.1 billion on common psychiatric and pain medications from 2001 to 2009. It also shows that use of psychiatric medications has increased dramatically — about 76 percent overall, with some drug types more than doubling — since the start of the current wars.
THE FULL INVESTIGATION:
• Could meds be responsible for suicides?
• Downrange: ‘Any soldier can deploy on anything’
• How drugs enter the war zone
Troops and military health care providers also told Military Times that these medications are being prescribed, consumed, shared and traded in combat zones — despite some restrictions on the deployment of troops using those drugs.
Read Full Article.....
Millions of Americans suffer from a hurting that doesn't go away.
The consequences can be devastating.
LA Times
July 5, 2010
Pain. It stabs. It burns. It aches. It throbs. It gnaws at you. It knocks you for a loop. But, sooner or later, it goes away.
Unless it doesn't.
That's a nightmare come true for millions of Americans who spend every day in a world of hurt. And the problem will get only bigger. "As our demographics change, and we live longer, more people will experience chronic pain," says Dr. Lynn Webster, medical director of the Lifetree Clinical Research and Pain Clinic in Salt Lake City.
Pain is usually a symptom of something else — a scraped knee, a broken arm, appendicitis. Treating the pain makes the patient less miserable, but it's just a stopgap measure until the underlying problem is fixed and the pain goes away — the scrape heals, the bone knits back together, the appendix is removed.
With chronic pain, however, the underlying problem that started it has usually (though not always) been fixed and yet the patient is still hurting. A malfunctioning nervous system has started manufacturing pain. The pain is no longer simply a symptom. It has become a problem in its own right.
No one knows a sure-fire way to avoid chronic pain. Still, you can improve your chances by avoiding the temptation to simply tough it out when you get injured. "Luckily, if treated adequately, pain goes away in a majority of patients," says Dr. Talal Khan, a specialist in anesthesiology, pain management and pain medicine at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City. "But once chronic pain develops, it can be very hard to cure."
Read Full Article....
Snail 'meth' experiment yields drug addiction clue
Friday, May 28, 2010
In an unusual experiment, scientists have used pond snails to study the effects of methamphetamine, better known as crystal meth, on the brain.
They discovered that the drug enhanced the creatures' abilities to learn and remember a task.
This gives insight into how some addictive drugs produce memories that are hard to forget, and that can even cause addicts to relapse.
The scientists described the discovery in the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Barbara Sorg from Washington State University in the US led the research team. She explained that the snails provided a "simple model" enabling scientsts to examine the effects of drugs on an individual brain cell.
"These drugs of abuse produce very persistent memories," explained Dr Sorg. "It's a learning process - drug addiction is learning unwittingly.
"All of these visual, environmental and odour cues are being paired with the drug.
So addicts might be able to kick their habit in a treatment centre, but when they return to their old haunts, all those cues trigger craving and relapse."
The ultimate question, said Dr Sorg, is why is it so hard to forget these memories?
Read Full Article:
By Black Voices On Money on 05/17/2010 – 11:21 am PDT
When I was young, my father used to tell me and my brother that a gambling addiction is one of the worst addictions for a person to have. He said that it’s worse than drugs, alcohol or anything else. I am not sure if my father was right about that or not, but we listened to him. Millions of African Americans find themselves financially ruined by the gambling that takes place on casino boats that are heavily marketed to inner city communities.
A new study in the Journal of Neuroscience analyzes the minds of problem gamblers. Researchers Henry Chase and Luke Clark analyzed 20 people who enjoy gambling, some of whom were recreational gamblers, and some of whom were “pathological gamblers,” meaning that gambling may cut into their everyday lives.
They scanned their brains while allowing them to play on a simple slot machine. The study found that one of the trappings of gambling addiction is the “near miss,” where you almost win, but not quite. The researchers concluded that the presence of a near miss has an impact on the brain’s reward system, namely two areas called the ventral striatum and anterior insula.
Scientists have long known that a brain chemical called dopamine has a huge impact on how gambling affects us all. Dopamine is associated with other forms of addiction, but they do not fully understand how it works.
“This study provides an important advance in our understanding of how the brain’s reward circuits underlie one form of addictive behavior, pathological gambling,” said Steven Quartz, director of the California Institute of Technology’s Brain, Mind, and Society Ph.D. program. “Many modern games of chance, especially slot machines, compel some people to play repeatedly even when they are not winning.”
Read Full Article...
The Huffington Post
Dr. Ali Binazir
Decision Enhancement Engineer, Author, Hypnotherapist, Thorn in the Side of Tyranny
Posted: May 11, 2010 09:16 AM
Excerpt from article
The Neuroscience of Addiction, briefly
As a recovering user of modern all-connected, all-the-time communication media like email, phones and text messages (henceforth dubbed collectively as gizmos), I'm well aware of how they can all create compulsive behavior. They do it by tapping into the brain's reward circuit and operant conditioning, the association of stimulus with reward.
The reward in this case is the text, email or call: "People love me, yay!" No matter if the message was about 'member enhancement' or 'your phone bill is overdue' - the ring or buzz is what your brain conditions itself to associate with the reward.
The reward gives your brain a little shot of dopamine. Initially, the reaction to the stimulus - the checking of email, voicemail, text - is voluntary. But pretty soon, the brain adapts itself, and the response to the ring or buzz becomes involuntary - hence, the lunging (and the moniker 'Crackberry'). Congratulations - you're well on the way to addiction.
Now if this weren't bad enough, something else happens which makes addiction truly destructive: after you get your hit of dopamine from the email or text, your brain dopamine levels actually dip below normal. You're really screwed now, because you need another hit just to get your levels back up to normal. If you've ever hit the 'Get New Mail' button on your email account a couple of hundred times in a day (I know I have), that's what's happening.
Addiction Pro
April 7, 2010
Some of treatment’s biggest names are supporting this month’s Las Vegas meeting
by Gary A. Enos, Editor
John Giordano recalls a time not long ago when addiction professionals would chuckle upon hearing a colleague talk of providing “holistic” treatment. Today, it would appear that some of the most prestigious treatment centers can’t move fast enough to be associated with the term, now that more are seeing how complementary therapies can help improve upon the success of traditional treatment strategies.
“Fifteen years ago, people didn’t know what the term meant,” says Giordano, co-founder and president of the G&G Holistic Addiction Treatment Program in Dade County, Florida. “Holistic treatment means to treat someone globally.”
Using more blunt language, Giordano scoffs at those who claim to use a medical model for treating addictions but who never assess key biomarkers that could be a major source or exacerbating factor for patients’ problems. “They call addiction treatment a medical model, but if it’s a medical model then everyone should be sued for malpractice,” Giordano said.
Later this month, close to 1,000 professionals are expected to attend a conference in Las Vegas that is being called “Holistic Treatment: Changing the Way We Look at Recovery—Body, Mind & Spirit.” The April 28-30 event is being hosted by Giordano’s center along with the Alliance for Addiction Solutions (a group of integrative medicine experts) and Foundations Recovery Network, a leading voice nationally on effective treatment of co-occurring addiction and mental health disorders.
Other prominent co-hosts and sponsoring organizations read like a who’s who of well-regarded addiction treatment facilities. The list includes CRC Health Group, Crossroads Centre Antigua, Hanley Center, The Meadows, Memorial-Hermann Prevention & Recovery Center, Pine Grove Behavioral Health, Promises Treatment Centers and Spirit Lodge. “Everyone’s looking at what we’re doing,” Giordano says.
Conference materials state that the target audience includes clinicians of various roles, including chemical dependency counselors and psychologists. Giordano says organizers want attendees to leave the meeting with “a bigger tool bag,” so that they “can stop looking at what they do from just one angle.”
Read Full Article....
Dr. Judith Miller, CEO and Founder of Courage to Change, Mary Kaye Whittemore, Clinical Supervisor, Leslie Carol Botha, Marketing Director will be attending the conference.
Despite what you may have thought, alcoholism, like all addiction, begins in an area of the brain called the reward pathway.
The brain is composed of neurons that pass electrical and chemical signals across the brain’s synapses. Neurons come in different shapes and sizes which enables them to communicate in a variety of functions; when the neurons fire in a series from one area of the brain to another it creates a pathway.
In the middle of the brain is the reward pathway which includes the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, and the prefrontal cortex. The neurons in the VTA contain dopamine, the neurotransmitter, which is in the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex. Dopamine is present in the areas of the brain which control emotion, movement, cognition, motivation and pleasure.
When the pathway is activated it provides positive reinforcement, called a reward, for performing certain behaviors. There are both natural (food, water, sex, and nurturing) as well as artificial (drugs including alcohol) rewards. Over stimulation of this system produces a euphoric effect which people try to repeat.
Read Full Article...
The Huffington Post
Therese Borchard
Author of the blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com
Posted: April 5, 2010 10:39 AM
It's a dreadful place.
Relapse.
Maybe you had hoped you'd never go there. Or maybe you stay awake fearing you will. It doesn't matter. You don't have to stay there for long. You'll be on your way shortly.
I prefer to use the term "set back" when I get sucked back into the Black Hole--bam!--stuck inside a brain that covets relief, any form of relief, and will do just about anything to get it. Because it's certainly not the end of recovery. From depression or any addiction. A relapse merely gives you a new starting place.
Since I've been struggling with this recently in my own life, I've laid out seven strategies to get unstuck ... to recover from a relapse.
1. Listen to the right people.
If you're like me, you're convinced that you are lazy, ugly, stupid, weak, pathetic, and self-absorbed when you are depressed or have given into an addiction. Unconsciously you seek people, places, and things that will confirm those opinions. So, for example, when my self-esteem has plummeted to below-seawater status, I can't stop thinking about the relative who asked me, after I had just returned from the psych ward and was doing everything I possibly could to recover from depression: "Do you WANT to feel better?" Indicating that I was somehow willing myself to stay sick in order to get attention or maybe because fantasizing about death is so much fun. I can't get her and that question out of my mind when I'm pedaling backward. SO I draw a picture of her, with her question inside a bubble. Then I draw me with a bubble that says "HELL YES, DIMWIT!" Then I get out my self-esteem file and read a few of the affirmations of why I'm not lazy, ugly, stupid, weak, pathetic, and self-absorbed.
Read Full Article....
|
