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With the nation's economic crisis contributing to greater workplace stress, providing effective mental health care for employees may be more important than ever.

Unfortunately, the approach most companies take in purchasing mental health care benefits is flawed and unlikely to produce the best outcomes for either their bottom line or their employees' welfare, according to a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher.

Kathryn Rost, the Elizabeth Freed Professor in Mental Health at the College of Medicine, has received a $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research with potential to change purchasing behavior for companies trying to provide mental health care to employees. The work has enormous potential implications that go beyond mental health. Rost is focusing on depression care management, but the findings likely will apply across a broad range of employee health care coverage.

Absenteeism and lost productivity at work due to depression costs American businesses $51 billion annually, according to a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Rost's work will examine the purchasing behavior of 360 businesses in 18 U.S. cities, each with a minimum of 100 employees, providing mental health care to more than 40,000 workers. Part of the study involves educating companies to ask the right questions of vendors selling mental health care coverage. Rost's team provides dos and don'ts when negotiating with vendors and uses role-playing to guide employers through the process of choosing the right plan.

America's mental health system is in dire need of a stimulus. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) gave the nation's mental health care system a D grade on its state-by-state report card, issued March 11, 2009. The national average grade represents an average of each state's individual grade for a number of different aspects of mental health care, including awareness, funding and improvement over time.

"The NAMI report card confirms what the National Council is hearing from community mental health centers that treat people with mental illnesses around the country. We are seeing treatment center after treatment center experiencing increased demand while receiving fewer resources. Clearly, years of federal and state neglect coupled with the economic downturn have caught up with us," said Linda Rosenberg, president and CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

State grades for 2009 include six Bs, 18 Cs, 21 Ds and six Fs, based on 65 specific criteria involving every aspect of a state's mental health treatment and support services. Although fourteen states improved their grades, 12 states fell backward since NAMI's last report card in 2006. The national average remained a D.

"At a time of increasing demand for services, community mental health centers have shown amazing commitment and creativity. These mental health organizations have proven remarkably resourceful, searching for alternative funding sources and implementing quality improvement measures in order to serve more individuals without added resources -- but it is time for a bailout. The evidence in NAMI's report card will help us rally the call to reinstate and strengthen state and federal funding for mental health resources nationwide," said Director of State Policy at the National Council Chris Loftis.

Labels: depression, funding, mental health

Some people sit down to read the morning paper and others, like me, sit down to read their RSS feeds. =o)

This morning the headline which caught my attention before all others was, "Diagnosis: ADHD-or Is It Trauma?" and it was written by Maia Szalavitz for MSN Health & Fitness.

It piqued my interest because I firmly believe children are more often inaccurately diagnosed with ADD or ADHD than they are accurately diagnosed. And putting your child on drugs to calm them down is not going to teach them how to cope and be calm on their own. Especially if your child truly does not have ADD or ADHD. Right? (Now, I'd like to note I do believe some people probably do need medicine for this and that is fine, I have no qualms with it. What I argue is diagnosing a child, because children are supposed to run around and have short attention spans it is how they develop and learn.)

In this article an adoptive Mom discusses how her child was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 7 and she hesitated to have him further evaluated or to give him medicine, because, "She knew that Dylan had been starved and neglected by his cocaine-addicted mother." Her argument was that due to the trauma in his early life, he was behaving inattentive and hyperactive.

"Though we tend to think of traumatic experiences as rare, in fact, by age 16, seven of 10 children have been exposed to at least one potentially traumatic event-such as a natural disaster, severe car accident, child abuse or the loss of close family member-according to a study of a representative sample of more than 1,400 children living in North Carolina published in 2007."

I can attest to this being true. By the age of 16 there are more than a handful of traumatic events in the timeline of my life. To this day my Mom says they should make a Lifetime made for TV movie about my life.

In fact, I have very early memories of traumatic events and can describe everything right down to the amount of light, the smell and the textures in certain memories of mine. If only my long term memory were as bad as my short term memory these days. =o)

How do you handle a child who has been molded early on in their life by experiences which were far less than stellar? I honestly am not sure if it is possible. I spent a year of my recent life trying to sort things out with a psychiatrist. While medicine certainly took the edge off my extreme emotions; it can't make the reasons go away.

The article at one point discusses some of what this adopted child had witnessed before the age of 7.

"Dylan had seen his mother use drugs and had witnessed a stabbing. In response, his developing brain-in an effort to protect himself-would have tried to predict which adult moods were most likely to erupt in violence."

"These children are hypervigilant because they are looking for dangers or threats," says Frank Putnam, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. "They become exquisitely attuned to sights, sounds and especially facial expressions or tones of voice that might be linked with impending trouble."

"Hypervigilance can look like hyperactivity or inattentiveness in school because these children are paying attention to "distractions" like the teacher's face or another child's movements, not their schoolwork. A slammed door might prompt them to jump from their seats—and cause a "fight or flight" response that might seem aggressive or defiant."

How do you break a cycle like this? Can time, patience, love and understanding really get through? I'm not so sure. I hate to sound like doom and gloom, but once your brain as been molded and developed with those acute responses, how do you change it?

I often find myself saying "well in my world" when I'm talking about life. How selfish it must seem to outsiders to hear me say something like that. But the truth of the matter is there is a "my world" my own internal world; it does exist. And no, you're not invited. Why would you want to enter? I'm still trying to find a way to keep the doors nailed shut.

Labels: ADHD, children, depression, mental health, trauma

If you could test your child to find out if a mental illness is likely in their future, would you do it? And if it came back positive how would you be proactive?

"The research was conducted in youth with a median age of 16 and was funded primarily by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health."

Of course it makes sense to me that intervening in the early stages of a mental illness could definitely help to alleviate some of the severity of the outcome. But I would think testing a child for something like this could also aide in their paranoia or self-hating. The illness doctors are most interested in heading off as early as possible is schizophrenia.

The combinations of factors that predicted psychosis included:

• deteriorating social functioning (for example, spending increasing amounts of time alone in one's room, doing nothing);
• a family history of psychosis combined with recent decline in ability to function (such as a drop in grades not explained by other factors or an unexplained withdrawal from extracurricular school activities).
• increase in unusual thoughts (such as thinking that strangers' conversations are about oneself);
• increase in suspicion/paranoia (such as suspicion of being followed); and
past or current drug abuse.

Most of this seems self-explanatory to me. I feel these are warning signs of definite issues that should be looked into regardless of this research study. Do you know what I mean? If my child had any of these risk factors I would absolutely try to help them. I don't see why a study had to be done on a bunch of teenagers to prove warning signs exist.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the article. Let me know what you think.


SOURCE

Labels: mental health

Should I be insulted when I open a gift and the item on top is a bar of soap called "Demon in the Dark." The ticket stated I could wash away my inner demons. And I thought to myself, how did this sender know I had demons to cleanse myself of!?

The package ended up being from my brother and his girlfriend Jada. They sent a whole set of stress relieving/relaxation goodies from Lush.com.

Lush hand makes all of their cosmetics, soaps, haircare, etc. They have crazy names for their products and colorful packaging. All of the products are made with fresh, natural ingredients and are not tested on animals. In case you are wondering what kind of fresh ingredients, here is a quick list:

coconut
seaweed
strawberries
papaya
ginger
lemon
blueberries
wheatgrass
avocado
fresh mint
ocean salt

The gift package I received is called "Serenity." It is, "For people who are finding it difficult to achieve a bit of peace and quiet in their lives; the Serenity box brings you Lush products with calming properties for your hands, body or head - everything you need to spoil yourself rotten."

Perfect!

Thanks guys. It was very sweet of you to think of me and my well being. You didn't have to do that, it was quite a surprise and I really appreciate it!

Labels: Emotional, Gregory, herbal, Jada, mental health, natural, soap

Suicide was the third-leading cause of death in the 10-24 age group, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ran a study in 2004 and the results just now are being reported. It is the biggest rise in suicides in 15 years.

Director of CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told reporters, "We don't yet know if this is a short-lived increase or if it's the beginning of a trend."

You know, I wish results like this were reported in a more timely manner. If it is related to a certain drug on the market (which it very well could be) it's probably something they should look into a little quicker.

Labels: depression, mental health, suicide