01
Apr
2016
Written by 98.1 FM / 98.1 FM
You’ve probably heard about therapy dogs, or even therapy cats. But what about therapy chickens? A metro-area school is helping kids learn life skills through chickens.There are several chickens at the Lakemary Center in Paola. They serve special needs children with developmental or psychiatric problems. The chickens are the center’s newest way to connect with the kids, says Dr. Courtnie Cain, who’s the clinical program administrator. “Seeing them connect to specific chickens, and name them, you can see the kids project some of their own family ties. And the kids being able to connect with the animals in a way that they haven’t been able to connect with people.” Dr. Cain laughs as she describes just how much the kids love the chickens. “I think we’re probably going to be a pioneer in therapeutic chickens.” Bob the rooster and his four hens, plus another 8 chicks, have their own coop on the southern side of the school. And they’re really popular. School principal Amanda Martell tells us about the first egg, “literally the chicken egg was laid when the kids were in there and they held up the egg like it was a Simba.” The kids are learning life skills too, like making sure the chickens have enough food and water and even how to collect and sell the eggs. “Figuring out if they need more feed, and which kind is the best? Learning the life cycle of a chicken egg. We have the ability to have all that educationally brought in too, I mean it’s just been a win-win,” Martell tells KMBZ.
31
Mar
2016
Written by Leonor Vivanco / Chicago Tribune
Rats genetically bred to be depressed improved greatly after spending a month in a stimulating “playground” with toys and hiding places, Northwestern University researchers reported. The study, published Tuesday in the Translational Psychiatry journal, set out to determine whether a fun environment would decrease depression or a stressful environment would increase depression, said lead study investigator Eva Redei, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The study found that rats genetically bred to be depressed saw a “dramatic” reduction in depression-like behavior after undergoing rat psychotherapy: spending one month in a “playground” — large cages where they could play with toys, climb and hide, Redei said.
30
Mar
2016
Written by Jo Abbott / The Conversation
The relationship between insomnia and mental illness is bidirectional: about 50 percent of adults with insomnia have a mental health problem, while up to 90 percent of adults with depression experience sleep problems. Sleep problems can also create a loop, slowing recovery from mental illness. People with depression who continue to experience insomnia, for instance, are less likely to respond to treatment for depression. They are also at greater risk of relapse than those without sleeping problems. It is unclear how insomnia makes a person more likely to develop mental illness. Research suggests, however, that it may affect our ability to process negative emotions. In one study, sleep-deprived people were found to show greater emotional reactivity to unpleasant images than to pleasant images or images with neutral emotional content. People who weren’t sleep-deprived showed no differences in emotional reactivity. In another study, brain scans revealed that people with insomnia showed greater activity in the brain’s emotional processing area when they used a strategy to reduce their negative reactions to images than when they did not use this strategy. That suggests insomnia makes it difficult to react appropriately to negative emotions. This may exacerbate their sleep difficulties and make them vulnerable to experiencing depression.
28
Mar
2016
Written by Goldie Taylor / The Daily Beast
Sixteen months after the horrific, near-fatal accident that claimed the life of of one of his closest friends, funnyman Tracy Morgan made a triumphant return to Studio 8F in Rockefeller Plaza. Fellow comedian James “Jimmy Mack” McNair died in the multi-car pileup on a rain-soaked highway in New Jersey, and Morgan was lucky to be alive, he told the Saturday Night Live audience. “I’m back. It feels so good to be here,” Morgan exclaimed from center stage. “You may have seen on the news I was in a terrible car accident a year ago. It was awful. But it also showed me how much love and support I have in this world.” What he did not say as he opened the show that night—and what the audience could not have possibly known—is that after eight days in a coma and amid months in a hospital bed, Morgan suffered a debilitating mental collapse and contemplated taking his own life. “I was in a very dark place,” Morgan told Rolling Stone. “I was sitting right here, contemplating suicide.” His path to recovery was as much about the rigors of physical therapy as it was about making peace with himself and embracing the road ahead.
Morgan battled what is known as “survivor’s guilt.” As he spiraled into depression, trapped in a fog of grief, Morgan blamed himself for the tragic collision that killed McNair.
27
Mar
2016
Written by Health Editor / Health News & Views
The more time young adults spend using popular social media, the greater the link to depression, new research suggests. The finding stems from research—which involved nearly 1,800 men and women between the ages of 19 and 32—that tried to get a handle on how depression and social media habits may interact. But does greater involvement with social media actually promote depression? Or, are people who are already depressed simply more likely to gravitate to social media? The jury, according to the study authors, is still out. “One strong possibility is that people who are already having mental illness symptoms start to use social media more, perhaps because they do not feel the energy or drive to engage as many in direct social relationships,” said senior study author Dr. Brian Primack. He is the director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health at the University of Pittsburgh. “However, there are also a few reasons why increased social media use may lead to more depressive thoughts,” Primack added. “For example, people who engage in a lot of social media use may feel they are not living up to the idealized portraits of life that other people tend to present in their profiles. This phenomenon has sometimes been called ‘Facebook depression.’ ”
26
Mar
2016
Written by Melissa Dahl / Science of Us
In 2007, writer Jen A. Miller went through a terrible breakup. (Her ex’s parting words: “I’ll keep you in the top eight of my Myspace friends.”) Soon afterward, her grandfather died. Soon after that, she bought a house and signed the paperwork just months before the recession hit. “I did not handle this well,” Miller wrote in a widely shared 2014 column headlined “Running As Therapy” for the New York Times. “As I was helping my mother pack up her parents’ house, I found myself too drained to move and lay down on the floor and sobbed. My mother suggested I try therapy. I signed up for a 10-mile race instead.”
That column could be seen as an early draft of Miller’s memoir, Running: A Love Story, which is out this week. In it, she details her lifelong relationship with the sport and how the simple act of putting one foot in front of another over 10, 15, or 26.2 miles brought back her mental clarity. In her book, Miller distances herself from the Times headline, writing that she “probably should have sought professional help,” and that she doesn’t mean to suggest self-care is an adequate treatment for the depressed. And it’s true that many severely depressed people are so ill that physical activity becomes impossible; it is also true that seeking professional help is crucial for those who struggle with mental-health issues.
25
Mar
2016
Written by Rachel Fradette / The State News
Each year, MSU hosts a Mental Health Awareness Week with help from the Associate Students of Michigan State University, or ASMSU. The week aims to highlight resources, generate discussions, and ultimately lessen the stigma surrounding mental illness.
These four students share their own battles with mental health in hopes that it will shine a light on what it is like to live with a mental illness. A simple act — walking to class or sitting in lecture — can spiral into a terrifying event for microbiology-environental biology senior Mirijam Garske.
Garske was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and a panic disorder in addition to her phobias, which can cause problems especially with her anxiety.
24
Mar
2016
Written by Beth Shelburne / WTVM
Over 10,000 Alabamians suffer a traumatic brain injury every year and of those, 2,300 are serious enough to require a hospital stay. “No two traumatic brain injuries are the same,” said J. Scott Powell, Executive Director of Alabama Head Injury Foundation. “For some, it may be immediately recognized by others and yet for others, it exists as an invisible injury, often leading to misunderstanding by others and added challenges faced by the survivor.” Wanda Canada of Ragland has learned many things about traumatic brain injury, or TBI, while raising her 15-year-old grandson Hunter Kay. “He is the sweetest boy you would ever meet,” Canada said. “But I want people to know that just because Hunter looks like a normal little boy, he’s not.” In 2004, Hunter was severely injured in a car accident that killed his parents, Summer and John. Hunter suffered broken bones, injured organs and burns on his face, but his most severe wound was right frontal lobe brain damage. “Initially he was just so out of control,” Canada remembered. “You couldn’t take him anywhere, you couldn’t do anything because his little mind was going every which way.” Canada has devoted herself to helping her grandson, but said his challenges can make school a lonely place. He attends Odenville Middle School where she said he goes to both special needs and regular classes, but academically still preforms at a second grade level.
22
Mar
2016
Written by Melissa Broder / BuzzFeed Health
My superpower is the ability to feel like a fraud about everything I do. My other superpower is the propensity to always fear bad things will happen whenever something good occurs. This is because it’s scarier for me to feel good than to feel bad. Feeling good is too threatening. If I feel good, I won’t be prepared for when the positive situation inevitably sours. If I don’t feel like a fraud, then I will be caught off guard when people find out that I am one.
I suppose that I don’t believe I deserve to feel good, that’s my anxiety, mostly because I don’t meet my own conflicting expectations of myself. Just give me a situation and I will find a way to be wrong. The other day I was hanging out with a bunch of artists and I felt that I was too square, too conformist, a “normie.” I felt so old and dried up that I was basically dead. But a little later I was with a bunch of corporate people and suddenly I was a fucking freak, hyper-confessional, too “out there.” I was somehow 16 again, a mess, as though there were a hole in my shoe and my toe was sticking out. The hole may be seen as literal, or metaphoric, but in either case, I was immature and exposed. I can be inadequate in diametrically opposed ways within the course of the same hour.
I don’t even have to be in the company of real people to imagine their judgments. I keep memories of past lovers rattling around inside me at all times, so as to have judgment readily available. Often, in these memories, I imagine my former lovers issuing decrees about what I’m doing wrong, and I use those imaginary judgments as impetus to be forever fixing myself. My attempts to “be better” — these little missions within the depression of existence — provide a sense of definition and purpose, so that I may feel less powerless over the mystery of life and also of death. In this way, memory functions as a narcotic taskmaster.
Yet all these examples are, of course, ego-based conceptions of identity, involving physicality, occupation, romance, and arbitrary conceptions of cool. Even my political affiliations are, in many ways, merely signifiers of the way I see myself and present myself to the world. One time, a few primary elections ago, the line was too long to vote. So I simply lied to my friends and said that I had voted, whom I had voted for, and why. Yet as soon as I revealed whom I’d pretended to vote for, I regretted my choice of make-believe candidate. I couldn’t even pick the cooler candidate to fake-vote for.
21
Mar
2016
Written by Jesse Singal / Science of Us
Generally speaking, sweepingly pessimistic statements about society should be taken with a grain of salt. When someone claims pop music is getting much dumber, or college kids are much more prone to mental illness, odds are pretty good the claim in question is a bit overblown. Overall, we’re often more attuned to the negative stories and anecdotes than positive ones, meaning that news coverage of terrible events, for example, can cause us to develop a distorted view of things.
Sometimes, though, there are exceptions. And an interesting, under-discussed one involves young people and mental health. In short: Ever since the 1930s, young people in America have reported feeling increasingly anxious and depressed. And no one knows exactly why.
One of the researchers who has done the most work on this subject is Dr. Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University who is the author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before.She’s published a handful of articles on this trajectory, and the underlying story, she thinks, is a rather negative one. “I think the research tells us that modern life is not good for mental health,” she said.
A key thing to understand before diving into her argument is that there are important methodological obstacles to accurately gauging how the prevalence of anxiety and depression wax and wane over time. The words “depression” and “anxiety” themselves, after all, mean very different things to someone asked about them in 1935 as compared to 1995, so surveys that invoke these concepts directly only have limited utility for longitudinal study. To get around this, Twenge prefers to rely on surveys and inventories in which respondents are asked about specific symptoms which are frequently correlated with anxiety and depression (she said that there’s a lot of symptomological overlap between the two). Questions like “Do you have trouble falling asleep?” mean similar things in 1935 as compared to 1995.