New study finds teens are not over-medicated

A new study finds that approximately 14 percent of teenagers with mental illness in the United States are treated with medication for the condition, contradicting the popular belief that teens are over-medicated, according to Businessweek.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness says that 4 million U.S. children and adolescents have a serious mental disorder, which affects their ability to function.

“It’s reassuring that the utilization seems to match the needs of these kids,” Benedetto Vitiello, the author of the study. told Businessweek. “This paper does not suggest that there is an excessive use. If anything, it may suggest at times medications are used fairly sparingly and other treatments are used instead of medications.”

He also told Reuters Health, “Most of the adolescents who met the criteria for a condition were not receiving medication, which suggests that they were being treated with something else, maybe psychotherapy, or maybe they were not even treated.

The study, which was sponsored by the National Institute of Health, looked at data from children ages 13 to 18-years old. Researchers found that of the children who had been diagnosed with a mental illness or illnesses, 14.2 percent were treated with medication, including stimulants, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics. According to Reuters, of the population who did not have signs of a mental disorder, 2.5 percent had been prescribed a psychiatric drug.

But the data was from the years of 2001 to 2004, and NIH researchers said that additional studies are needed to make sure that teen use of these medicines has not changed.

For those interested in reading the study, click here.

DSM-5 to remove “gender identity disorder,” replace with “gender dysphoria”

Transgender symbol

The Associated Press reported today that the term “gender identity disorder” will be removed from the DSM-5, or the newest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is expected to be released in 2013. The DSM is the guide all doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists use when diagnosing mental disorders.

The term “gender identity disorder” is included in the current edition of the DSM, and it refers to children or adults who believe that they were born as the wrong gender.

LGBT activists say the condition is not a disorder, and calling it one is offensive to those who are transgendered. “Gender identity disorder” would be replaced with “gender dysphoria,” which is defined as “emotional distress over one’s gender.”

The AP reports that supporters of this new term consider this change equivalent to when the DSM removed the word “homosexuality” as a mental disorder decades ago.

What do you think? Should there be a term change? Does the wording matter? Should it even be in the DSM?

Photo (cc) by ParaDox and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Australian government threatens to shut down one of the few mental health facilities in the country

The Australian government is threatening to close one of the few mental health facilities in the country due to state budget cuts, despite the fact that there is currently a six month waiting period for entry into the facility.

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported that a teenage girl who was on the waiting list for Barrett Adolescent Centre committed suicide in early November. According to the Herald, the 16-year old had worked as a model and was called “bright” and “articulate.” Over the past two years, the girl’s anxiety and panic attacks worsened. She began burning cigarettes into her arm to “feel something.”

The Australian Health Minister Lawrence Springborg and Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek are considering to shut down the Barrett Centre, which is the only long-term mental health facility in Queensland. For thirty years, the center has serviced 13- to 17-year-olds with severe psychiatric and psychological problems after sexual and psychological trauma.

Brett McDermott of the Mater Medical Research Institute and Paul Harnett, a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society, said the center is expected to be closed by Christmas.

Former patient Jessica Dawe told The Brisbane Times that the government plans to close both the Barrett Centre and its associated school was as “a really dangerous idea.” Dawe, who is 19, criticized the government’s plan to transfer patients at the Barrett Centre back into short-term psychiatric wards in Queensland hospitals.

“They just don’t have the space, the time, or the people that these young kids need,” she said. “They need ongoing support.”

Passion Pit is back, after lead singer takes a break to improve his mental health

The Boston grown band Passion Pit has announced its tour dates for 2013 with Matt and Kim, after taking a brief hiatus. The group cancelled a number of gigs because its lead singer, Michael Angelakos, needed to take time off to improve his mental health.

Michael Angelakos

In a release which was reproduced on Pitchfork’s website, the singer wrote, “on behalf of the band and myself, I would like to greatly apologize for the show cancellations. In order for me to ensure that there will be no further disruptions, I am going to take the time to work on improving my mental health. For now, I’d like to thank all of our fans for their understanding. I hope to see all of you very soon in a much different light.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Angelakos openly spoke about his struggle with bipolar disorder. He revealed that his depression was so bad that he was suffering from “Psychomotor Impairment,” which he described as when “your brain starts shutting down your entire body; so you’re sitting in bed and you can barely move.”

“I really didn’t want to be a bipolar artist,” he said in the interview. “People romanticized it. I’ve been dealing with this since I was 17; eight years of hospitalizations and medications and finally I found treatment and medication that works. It’s a pain but hopefully now that’s just going to eliminate the need to take time off and I can actually start focusing on what I like to do.”

Angelakos mental state is clearly reflected in the band’s newest album, “Gossamer.” In the song “I’ll Be Alright,” Angelakos sings:

Why do I keep housing all this suffering?
Heads go on now where’s my thoughts are stumbling
This party’s over, no, it isn’t happening
No wind in the sails until I’m only recovering

Photo (cc) by Moses and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

China passes first mental health law

China adopted its first law that will help to protect the mentally ill, various news outlets reported on Friday. This is a monumental step for China, and hopefully an indication that countries in Asia will become more open about discussing mental illness.

According to Reuters, China has been accused of using mental institutions to “silence” dissidents. Human rights advocates have pushed for this law for nearly 20 years.

The Xinhua news service reported that the law ensures that the privacy of a mentally ill person is protected. No longer can an institution or individual reveal private information of a mentally ill person “such as their names, addresses, and employment status, unless the sharing of such data is necessary for institutions and individuals while exercising their lawful duties,” Xinhua news reported.

According to a 2007 survey by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 100 million Chinese people suffer from mentally illness. There are approximately 16 million people who are suffering from severe mental disorders, according to the Ministry of Health.

A street view of Shanghai, China’s largest city with a population of 14 million people

Wang Shaoli, deputy head of the Beijing Huilongguan Hospital, a leading psychiatric hospital, told Xinhua that mental health is a social issue, and that it “requires joint efforts from different sectors, not only hospitals.”

“Under the new law, all sections of the society, including the government, non-governmental organizations and families, bear responsibilities in prevention and treatment of mental disorders,” Wang told Xinhua. “It will help promote the cause.”

“Under the new law, all sections of the society, including the government, non-governmental organizations and families, bear responsibilities in prevention and treatment of mental disorders,” Wang said. “It will help promote the cause.”

Photo (cc) by Stephen Codrington and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved. 

Murderer with schizophrenia granted a stay of execution

A U.S. federal judge granted a stay of execution on Saturday for a mass murderer in Florida, who has been deemed mentally ill. He was scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

John Errol Ferguson, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, has been on death row for the past 34 years. According to the AP, the court will listen to Ferguson’s habeas corpus petition on Friday.

“In order for the state to execute him, Mr. Ferguson must have a rational understanding of the reason for, and effect of, his execution,” said Chris Handman, an attorney for Ferguson, in an emailed statement to the AP. “A man who thinks he is the immortal Prince of God and who believes he is incarcerated because of a Communist plot quite clearly has no rational understanding of the effect of his looming execution and the reason for it.”

In 2010 I interviewed Donald Goff, who then headed the schizophrenia clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, about why schizophrenics murder in such a bizarre way. He said that less than one percent of schizophrenics commit murder. But the way in which schizophrenics carry out these murders tend to be so grotesque and seemingly nonsensical, that they attract a great deal of media attention.

“(Schizophrenics) murder because of a delusional, bizarre reason,” Goff said. “Ordinarily murders make sense, because people want to get back at someone. But if the murder is a consequence of the delusion, often it may be brutal because of the nature of the delusion.”

Goff said schizophrenia is considered a psychiatric disorder or psychotic disorder in which sufferers have trouble testing reality. Symptoms include paranoia, auditory hallucinations and delusions. The disorder is lifelong, but individuals usually do not display symptoms until their late teens or early 20s.

Ferguson, 64, was convicted of killing eight people, six of whom died “execution-style” in 1977 in Carol City, according to the AP. In 1978, he killed a teenage couple from Hialeah.

His lawyers argue Ferguson is not rational, and therefore can not be held responsible for the murders. He suffers from a delusion that he is the prince of God and “that God is preparing him to return to earth after his execution and save the United States from a communist plot.”

Scientists discover ties between stress and depression

At the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, scientists presented evidence that stress can modify a brain’s chemistry, resulting in long-term mental health issues, NPR reported.

Current treatments fail to adequately address the link between stress and depression, yet this new research could provide clues about how stress impacts the circuitry of the brain. And an intimate understanding of this connection could lead to new methods of treating depression that has resulted from stress.

“That’s the holy grail and we’re moving in that direction,” Dipesh Chaudhury of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York told NPR.

Chaudhury told NPR that an extremely stressful experience can cause depression by interfering with the brain’s “reward system”: when we eat good foods or spend time with people we love, we experience feelings of pleasure. People suffering from PTSD or from major depression tend to no longer enjoy things that used to give them pleasure.

Chaudhury also said that mice react in a similar fashion to traumatic events. His research indicates that this response can be prevented when the activity of certain brain cells which are tied to the reward system are reduced.  Chaudhury said his hope is to create a drug which could eliminate some of these cells in the human brain.

J.K. Rowling opens up about having obsessive-compulsive disorder: “These are things I know from the inside”

J.K. Rowling reads an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

J.K. Rowling, the author of The Harry Potter series who is known as being a highly private person, recently told Good Morning America that she suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In the interview Rowling discussed her first adult novel, “The Casual Vacancy,” which features a character who suffers from OCD.

“These are things I know from the inside…,” she told journalist Cynthia McFadden. “When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.”

Rowling then said that she became increasingly irrational as a teenager. She was always making lists and couldn’t stop herself from “checking, double checking, and triple checking things.”

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, those with OCD have particular thoughts or engage in rituals which “cause distress and get in the way of daily life.” The repeated upsetting thoughts are known as “obsessions.” A person with OCD will feel compelled to repeat certain rituals, or “compulsions,” to rid him or herself of these thoughts.

NIMH estimates that more than 2 percent of the United States population, or one in every 40 people, will be diagnosed with OCD at some point in their lives.

Rowling, who rarely divulges personal information about herself, also discussed her issues with depression in the interview. She said that she hasn’t felt seriously depressed for “more than a decade,” and that writing Harry Potter was a huge help.

“It cheered me up a lot… Forget the money. Harry Potter gave me back self respect. Harry gave me a job to do that I loved more than anything else,” she said.

Photo (cc) by Daniel Ogren and republished under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The Well Blog: other health news sites just don’t compare

The Well Blog, which is associated with The New York Times, is by far the best source for health news online. The blog offers an array of content including quizzes, well composed and thoughtful videos, and long form health stories.

The stories are creative and insightful: take this one on “Texting the Teenage Patient.” In it, Jan Hoffman chronicles a doctor’s plight to communicate with her young patients via texting, and she suggests that this may become a more widespread trend in the future.

The short, journalistic films on this blog are extremely well composed and well lit; additionally, the concepts for these pieces are quite innovative. For example the video “Life, Interrupted/Visiting Hours,”
features a woman who is waiting for a bone marrow transplant. This film is slightly different from many Times’ videos: the footage is raw and minimally edited. But for this piece, it works. The roughness of the video is appropriate for a piece on a woman who is suffering from cancer and has been in isolation for nearly a month.

Another strength of this blog is layout. The overall layout of the Well Blog is simple and easy to navigate. I also love the playful logo for the blog, which resembles a young child’s finger painting project.

One drawback to the blog is its lack of community involvement. Readers are encouraged to discuss certain stories in the comments section, but this does little to foster a community. A simple online forum would be of great benefit to this site.

Health.com and Menshealth.com are two similar health news websites that don’t even come close to the quality of the NY Times’ Well Blog. The stories are fluffy and devoid of any new and interesting content (i.e. “How Skinny is Too Skinny for a Role?,”  “The Food You Should Eat Everyday.”)

There is no community engagement on either of these magazine affiliated sites. But one redeeming quality of the Men’s Health site are its photo slideshows. Take this one on what the candidates are eating. Hilarious.

The Twittersphere: sorting through the jargon and PR

As a health blogger, twitter is an abundant resource; from one day of research, I could likely have a year’s worth of posts. But the challenge is making sense of the expert jargon, and avoiding the PR twitter trap. By this I mean that highly credible news organizations like The New York Times tend to only push their own content. This is an understandable PR move: by promoting your own content you get more clicks, which leads to increased advertising and revenue.

But as a health blogger, I do not want to fall into a pattern of only looking at the top news twitter accounts. Instead, I will strive for variety. The following ten accounts are the best of the bunch, and are a mix of news sites and health organizations.

Harvard Health is the official twitter account for Harvard Medical School. Harvard Health tweets insightful health news from Harvard Health officials ranging from post such as: how biking can interfere with your sex life, to how pain relievers are linked to hearing loss in women.

The Journal of the American Medical Association, “an international peer-reviewed general medical journal,” is less digestible than most health-related twitter accounts. The links are often to detailed, credible studies, which are rich in information. By digging into these documents, I will be able to provide my readers with more meaty blog posts.

NBCNewsHealth is a tad sensational, but is still a good follow. These stories have grabbing headlines and are likely to draw substantial traffic, such as the story, “Last of the Texas Sextuplets heads home.” 

The NYTimes Well is the twitter account for The New York Times’ primary health blog. The blog posts are well-written, and backed up by extensive research. This twitter is not creative, and the retweets are rarely useful; however, the blog itself is something I will visit on a frequent basis, and the twitter account will help me sort through blog content.

The twitter for NPR Health News is similar to The NYTimes Well account in that the posts and links provide a wealth of information, but the content that is being promoted is mostly from the NPR Health News site.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness, a prominent mental illness organization in the United States, aggregates mental health stories from across the nation.

The twitter for Psychology Today, a general interest psychiatry magazine, is lighthearted and quirky. But some of the stories are eye opening, and certainly worth blogging about, such as this post on how a brain injury can result in an inability to connect physical movements with visual perception.

MassGeneral News, the twitter account for Massachusetts General Hospital, is a perfect follow: it mixes local and national content from a variety of outlets, not just from its own PR team.

NYTimes Health twitter account features national and international health news; for example, a post on unpredictability in dallas west nile virus outbreak, and 12 hours ago in Sweeden, the first uterus transplant from mother to daughter was reported.

PsychScience mixes psychology news with expert analysis: this twitter will likely be a starting point for much of my research.