Bad news leads to good news
Here’s the bad news: Two people died at Northwest Habilitation Center, a mental health facility in suburban St. Louis. One of them choked on a pen; the other was critically burned after being placed in hot water.
Here’s the good news: The AP reports that the Missouri state Mental Health Commission issued a report Tuesday recommending ways to better protect patients, “including providing for more independent investigations and making some information on abuse and neglect reports public.” There’s also a panel the governor appointed looking at ways to make change.
It’s the appropriate response (or at least the beginning of one) after two tragic and unecessary incidents.
Mental Health Commission calls for changes
liz | 4:39 PM | Uncategorized
Perfect headline for Friday Is Funday
Praise for mental health services
Unfortunately, the article itself is three lines long. But I love the name of the publication: Barking and Dagenham Recorder. Doesn’t that sound like a business out of a Monty Python sketch? It’s worthy of Evelyn Waugh, or better still, Mark Helprin’s Freddy and Fredericka, which I’m reading now and which is totally delicious Brit satire.
But a good headline!
liz | 4:56 PM | Uncategorized
Yesterday: BlackBerries bad. Today: Real berries good.
From Indo Asian News Service (where I get all the good stuff):
Eating berries may be good for mental health, shows a test conducted on mice, though scientists say it is too early to apply the findings to humans. Barbara Shukitt-Hale and colleagues at Tufts University studied 60 young male rats, splitting them into three groups, reported the online edition of the health magazine WebMD.
One group of rats got plain chow with no berries. A second group got the same chow laced with strawberry extract. The third group got chow laced with blueberry extract.
After two months of such a diet, the researchers measured the rats’ brain levels of dopamine, a chemical that has many functions in the brain. A decrease in dopamine can cause a drop in memory, attention and problem solving skills. The researchers found improvement in the health of the brain of the rats that had eaten berries.
Shukitt-Hale’s team, however, does not tout any particular type of berry as having the best brain benefits. ‘Berries vary in their nutrient mixes and may have different brain effects, but that’s not certain yet,’ said the researcher. Diets rich in berries may help the aging brain stay sharp, the researchers write in the online edition of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.
The scientists are not making any promises for people just yet. ‘It’s unknown if these findings apply to human brains,’ said Shukitt-Hale.
[Photo by Jeff Kubina]
liz | 1:53 PM | Uncategorized
Friday is Funday, Our All-Good-News Day!
One of the enduring problems with treating schizophrenia is that, when it gets right down to it, clinicians don’t know where or why the disease originates. There aren’t any blood tests you can take to rule out the illness, which means people with vague psychiatric symptoms can be misdiagnosed and suffer without treatment for years. (Or, conversely, they can be diagnosed with schizophrenia when they don’t actually have it, and treated with hardcore medicines they don’t actually need.)
But that’s not the Funday good news. The good news is that some researchers are now saying that they may be able to determine if a person has the disease using spinal fluid as an indicator. From Medical News Today:
In their search for biomarkers, Bahn and colleagues examined the levels of different molecules present in the cerebrospinal fluid of 82 patients with schizophrenia and 70 healthy controls. Of the patients, 54 had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia (or a similar illness called brief psychotic disorder) and had not yet taken any schizophrenia-specific drugs. The remaining patients were undergoing treatment with a range of antipsychotic drugs. The researchers found different levels of certain molecules in the spinal fluid of newly diagnosed patients who had never taken schizophrenia drugs compared with healthy individuals of the same ages. These molecules might therefore turn out to be useful biomarkers for schizophrenia.
Veddy interesting.
Metabolic Profiling of CSF: Evidence That Early Intervention May Impact on Disease Progression and Outcome in Schizophrenia
liz | 11:03 AM | Uncategorized
Song of the day: “Exploding Psychology”
This is by Squarepusher. If I heard it in a club, I would run for the bathrooms, but I’m strangely hypnotized by this video accompaniment.
liz | 1:07 PM | Uncategorized
True confession: Thursday, August 24, 2006
Two things I care about that are utterly unimportant:
1. Whether John Mark Karr did it
2. Whether Brangelina will remain intact
liz | 11:07 AM | Uncategorized
Blackberries blues
Though Philadelphia’s mayor isn’t known for being especially personable, his affection for his BlackBerry has been remarked upon in the press as real evidence that he’s capable of feeling love. If a new report is right, that might explain why he’s fricked up the city to such a degree. (”Fricked up” is my new substitute for “effed up,” which I think is just so last-century.)
A forthcoming report from Rutgers (go Jersey!) says employers who provide BlackBerries to their employees could be liable for said employees’ addiction problems—and treatment.
“The fast and relentless pace of technology-enhanced work environments creates a source of stimulation that may become addictive,” the researchers write in the report. “Information and communication technology addiction has been treated by policy makers as a kind of elephant in the room—everyone sees it, but no one wants to acknowledge it directly.”
BlackBerries damage mental health
liz | 10:48 AM | Uncategorized
Mouse glad
A UPI report:
Canadian scientists are using a breed of permanently ‘cheerful’ mice to research a new treatment for clinical depression. By breeding mice with an absence of TREK-1—a gene that can affect serotonin transmission in the brain—researchers were able create a depression-resistant strain.
‘Depression is a devastating illness, which affects around 10 percent of people at some point in their life,’ said Dr. Guy Debonnel, a psychiatrist and professor at McGill University in Montreal.
Debonnel, principal author of the new research, notes current medications for clinical depression are ineffective for a third of patients, which is why the development of alternate treatments is so important. The so-called knock-out mice were created in collaboration with Michel Lazdunski, co-author of the research, in his laboratory at the University of Nice, France.
‘These `knock-out` mice were then tested using separate behavioral, electrophysiological and biochemical measures known to gauge `depression` in animals,’ said Debonnel. ‘The results really surprised us; our `knock-out` mice acted as if they had been treated with antidepressants for at least three weeks.’
The research—representing the first time depression has been eliminated through genetic alteration—is detailed in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Isn’t that delightful? I love the idea of those happy mice running on their wheels and grooming each other and generally enjoying life, perhaps with extra corn kernels. Could this be important to the development of preventive medicine for depression? It’s hard to imagine how the research could transfer to treatment. I suppose you could get a fairy godmother to turn you into a happy mouse, but then you’d have to contend with an abbreviated life, and no movies.
[This image is of Little Gray and White, may she rest in peace. She loved playing on the kitchen table.]
liz | 9:11 AM | Uncategorized
Ophelia’s Scrapbook: Manic Boy Rant
This was written during a manic period during which it seemed urgent to chronicle every flicker of my fascinating intellect. I was always writing random notes to myself, including this one about being obsessed with men. Thing is, I was only obsessed with men when I was manic, making the logic sadly circular. The best thing about this piece of ephemera is there’s a guy’s phone number written on it, which you’ll see since I’ve posted this sideways. The irony.
Thing is, people imagine mania as fun—even people who’ve gone through it before. It’s not really fun. Here’s what I wrote at the end:
I am inhabiting my body again (i.e., reality) but I can feel myself pushing the emotions that took over aside while I assert the in-control, rational, intellectual me. Who controls me? My emotions fight it out with my intellect. In this place my emotions gain ground. That’s when I find it so frightening. I don’t feel safe here.
liz | 3:28 PM | Uncategorized
