Tag: mental illness

Young People At Risk Of Psychosis Saw Symptoms ‘Surprisingly’ Improve With Marijuana Use, Study Finds

A new study of teens and young adults at risk of developing psychotic disorders found that regular marijuana use over a two-year period did not trigger early onset of symptoms—contrary to the claims of prohibitionists who argue that cannabis causes mental illness. In fact, it was associated with modest improvements in cognitive functioning and reduced use of other medications.

A team of researchers at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Michigan and University of California at Davis carried out the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Psychiatry Research.

“Recreational cannabis use has recently gained considerable interest as an environmental risk factor that triggers the onset of psychosis,” the study authors wrote. “To date, however, the evidence that cannabis is associated with negative outcomes in individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis is inconsistent.”

To investigate, the team tracked 210 CHR patients ages 12–25 who participated in an Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP). Over the course of two years, researchers compared the mental health and prescription medication usage of people who regularly consumed marijuana to non-users.

The study found that “continuous cannabis use over 2-years of follow-up was not associated with an increased psychosis transition rate, and did not worsen clinical symptoms, functioning levels, or overall neurocognition.”

“Nevertheless, our findings suggest that continuously using cannabis may be associated with slightly elevated, albeit non-significant, attenuated positive symptom levels relative to non-users,” the researchers said.

“CHR youth who continuously used cannabis had higher neurocognition and social functioning over time, and decreased medication usage, relative to non-users,” they reiterated. “Surprisingly, clinical symptoms improved over time despite the medication decreases.”

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Medical Marijuana Use Linked To Improved Quality Of Life And Better Job Performance For People With Neurological Disorders, New Study Finds

Medical marijuana use is associated with improved quality of life—including better job performance, sleep, appetite and energy—according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of West Attica in Greece published the study in the journal GeNeDis Neuroscientific Advances on Wednesday following an analysis of survey data from medical cannabis patients with neurological disorders.

“Medical cannabis has been used to relieve the symptoms of people with various chronic diseases,” the authors said. “Despite this, it has been stigmatized.”

The study showed that a majority (58 percent) of respondents said medical cannabis is an effective treatment for their condition.

Among that group, 96 percent said that marijuana decreased their symptoms, 88 percent said it improved their “ability to perform their professional duties,” 79 percent said it enhanced their sleep, 71 percent said it improved their appetite and 68 percent said it increased their energy and vitality.

“Our participants exhibited very few restrictions in activities due to emotional difficulties, a moderate general health status as well as moderate vitality and energy,” the study authors said. “Participants, who reported a longer period of receiving medical cannabis, reported statistically significant more energy and vitality, but also better mental and general health status.”

The clinical questionnaire and SF-36 Health Survey scale that respondents completed also asked about their openness about using cannabis for therapeutic purposes.

A strong majority (85 percent) of medical marijuana patients said that they’ve disclosed their use to family—and 93 percent said that they “enjoyed their support.” However, 81 percent said that they haven’t been open about their cannabis use in their “social environment” such as their workplace.

“Appropriate knowledge could significantly help health professionals in the field of planning and implementation of personalized nursing care in order to achieve optimal therapeutic outcomes,” the study concludes.

The findings are consistent with other recent research indicating that cannabis can play a role in improving general wellbeing.

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Psychoactive drug Psilocybin being studied for treatment of anorexia

Just a single dose of psilocybin was safe and tolerable for adult women with anorexia, according to a phase I open-label feasibility study.

After receiving a 25-mg dose of synthetic psilocybin given with therapist-delivered psychological support, none of the 10 participants experienced any significant changes in vital signs, ECGs, or suicidality during the week after dosing, reported Stephanie Knatz Peck, PhD, of the University of California San Diego, and colleagues.

Meeting the primary outcome, the treatment was also well-tolerated, with no serious adverse events reported amongst participants, who had an average body mass index (BMI) of 19.7, they noted in Nature Medicine.

As for changes in psychopathology — the secondary outcome of the early-stage trial — concerns about weight significantly decreased from baseline to 1 month after psilocybin treatment.

This improvement was also maintained up to 3 months after dosing. Likewise, shape concerns significantly dropped within the month after treatment, but this change was no longer significant at the 3-month mark.

Changes in eating concerns and dietary restraint didn’t reach statistical significance, but there was a trend towards an improvement in eating concerns at the 3-month follow-up.

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South Carolina found to violate rights of mentally ill in group homes

A federal investigation determined South Carolina violates the rights of mentally ill adults by placing them in overly restrictive group homes.

Some 2,000 people with serious mental illness were institutionalized in community residential care facilities, or what a report Thursday from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice calls adult care homes.

The facilities have violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting their choice and independence while offering few opportunities to engage in the community, the report states.

South Carolina failed to provide community-based services to all residents to divert them from adult care homes, investigators determined. Once a resident is placed in a facility, the state has denied them the resources they need to return to the community.

Some mentally ill residents have remained in the facilities for up to 35 years, the report states. The average resident spends five years in an adult care home.

Kimberly Tissot, president and CEO for Able SC, applauded the Justice Department for investigating what has been a longtime problem.

“We are hopeful this will bring true changes to people with psychiatric disabilities and other disabilities in South Carolina,” Tissot said in an email. “The unjustified segregation the disability community continues to experience in South Carolina must end today.”

Of the more than 400 adult care homes in the state that Tissot said she has evaluated, she found fewer than 15 were “somewhat decent and didn’t violate any rights.”

“CRCF’s conditions are appalling and make things more difficult for someone’s well-being,” Tissot added, using an abbreviation for community residential care facilities.

A spokesman for Governor Henry McMaster did not respond to a request for comment.

The Department of Justice said it launched the probe over a year ago after receiving a complaint. Investigators reviewed documents and conducted dozens of interviews with staff, state officials and residents.

In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. L.C. that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that people with disabilities be provided community-based services in the “least restrictive setting” possible. Unnecessary segregation created the assumption that disabled people were “incapable or unworthy of participating in community life,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.

By housing residents in adult care homes rather than less restrictive settings, investigators determined, South Carolina violated the ADA’s requirements.

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Is Long COVID Linked to Mental Illness?

Andrea Roberts was getting ready to submit a study for publication, and she was worried. A senior research scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, she had just written a paper suggesting that people with high stress levels were more likely to develop long COVID after an acute infection.

Roberts has spent the past decade studying the link between physical health and mental health. She knows that psychology can play a role in almost any illness; a few years ago, she discovered a link between PTSD and ovarian cancer. On paper, the new finding was no different from those in her previous studies, but this time she added a disclaimer to her article. “Our results should not be misinterpreted as supporting a hypothesis that post–COVID-19 conditions are psychosomatic,” she wrote.

Her worries were not unfounded. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Psychiatry on Sep. 7 of last year. A few days later, Jeremy Redfern, a member of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, tweeted out the article and put “long COVID” in scare quotes. In the replies, people referred to long COVID as a “self-fulfilling prophecy” and “symptom of liberalism.”

Roberts had meant to convey with the disclaimer that long COVID is not a fake condition, and that patients experiencing it are not duping doctors or themselves (as Redfern implied they were). In doing so, however, she used the word “psychosomatic” to mean “fake.” But that’s not how “psychosomatic” is used in medicine, and she now has mixed feelings about the disclaimer. “The actual definition of psychosomatic is a connection between your psyche and your soma,” Roberts says—that is, your mind and your body. That connection can look like so-called “hysterical” blindness, where a traumatic experience causes someone to lose their sight without any apparent damage to their visual system, or like the well-known (and uncontroversial) relationship between stress and heart disease. Based on that technical definition, Roberts says what she’s showing in the long COVID study “is actually psychosomatic.”

No serious doctor would deny that the mind and body are intimately linked—many would even argue that it is meaningless to differentiate between the two, since the mind is really nothing more than the brain. But it wasn’t just the right-wing Floridians looking to minimize long COVID who responded to her results. Pieces by mainstream journalists have suggested that linking depression and long COVID is tantamount to accusing all long COVID sufferers of being malingerers.

As of yet, there is no conclusive proof that stress or mental illness can contribute to long COVID. But since Roberts’ paper, several other studies have found associations between post-COVID symptoms and mental illnesses like depression. None of this research proves that mental illness plays a role in causing long COVID—it might not play any direct role at all—but some experts see the connection as a promising path toward understanding, and treating, the condition. As long as the idea that mental illness is somehow less “real” than physical illness persists, however, investigating that link remains a risky proposition—both for the researchers, who might expose themselves to intense online criticism, and for the patients, who could see such studies weaponized against them.

“Being ‘real’ or not is a very false dichotomy,” says Tracy Vannorsdall, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins. “And it doesn’t do our patients, or our scientific thinking, any good.”

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Allen, Texas mall shooter was removed from Army over mental health concerns: law enforcement sources

The suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting in Allen, Texas, has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, 33, a senior law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

By the end of Saturday’s deadly rampage, eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded from the massacre in the affluent suburb of Allen, about 25 miles north of Dallas.

In addition to the AR-15 style weapon found near him, Garcia had at least one other weapon on him when he was fatally shot in front of the mall, the source said. Police also found multiple weapons in his car.

CNN spoke with neighbors who witnessed FBI and police at a home of an address that matches Garcia’s parents Saturday night. They arrived there about an hour after the shooting and blocked off the street for several hours, neighbors said.

Garcia had been living in some form of transient lodging, according to the law enforcement source. Law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News that preliminary information developed in the probe indicates that the shooter was in the U.S. Army in 2008 and was “removed due to mental health concerns.”

In addition to the insignia on the shooter’s equipment that suggested a right-wing extremist ideology, investigators have found social media accounts connected to the shooter that reveal hundreds of postings and images, including writings with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, neo-Nazi material and material espousing the supremacy of the white race.

None of the subject’s postings analyzed to date were liked or shared by other users nor were there any public comments. The shooter’s account did not contain any friends or associates that were publicly visible.

Also, investigators have determined he had no criminal history and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. The shooter was equipped with a ballistic vest, numerous magazines and additional handguns.

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Trans Florida teacher ‘Ashlee’ who allegedly said they were ‘going to shoot the kids’ then themselves remains in classroom despite parents’ complaints

Parents of students at Fox Chapel Middle School in Hernando County, Florida, are demanding answers from the district after a teacher made concerning comments allegedly made about harming children and themselves. Although the district investigated the comments and found them concerning, the teacher was not fired and is back in the classroom.

Several parents contacted FOX 13, with each sharing the same story that the teacher made comments about harming students and then herself.

The district stated that the comments were made out of frustration with student behavior, but refused to divulge exactly what was said, leading to tension between parents and the board. “While the teacher in question did make a comment to colleagues that was concerning,” the school principal could be heard saying in a recording sent to parents on Monday. “Staff and law enforcement determined the comment was not an imminent threat to the campus, but was instead an expression of frustration at student behavior.”

A sheriff’s office report from March 24, obtained by Moms for Liberty Hernando County, stated that a school resource officer responded to a report from Assistant Principal Kerry Thornton and Guidance Counselor Kimberly Walby, who reported that a teacher had made statements about harming themself and possibly shooting students.

Thornton told the resource officer that at around 3 pm, she was visiting classrooms and walked into teacher Ashlee Renczkowski’s classroom. Thornton asked how the teacher was doing, to which Renczkowski responded, “Not good, I’m having bad thoughts.”

Thornton radioed Walby and said that Renczkowski was coming to see her. According to the report, “Ashlee walked to Kimberley’s office and started to explain that she learned about a social media post where people were talking negatively about Ashlee’s sexual orientation.”

The post in question was in regard to Renczkowski and Renczkowski’s wife, Fawn Renczkowski, who also teaches at the school.

According to Fox Chapel’s staff directory, Ashlee Renczkowski teaches mathematics for grades six through eight, and Fawn Renczkowski teaches science for grades six through eight.

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INDIANA JAIL LET MAN WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA STARVE TO DEATH IN SOLITARY, LAWSUIT ALLEGES

On July 20, 2021, apartment managers entered 29-year-old Indiana resident Joshua McLemore’s home, found him confused, incoherent, and nude on the floor, and had McLemore transported to a Seymour, Indiana, hospital. McLemore’s mother had called her son’s living complex, worried he could have been having a psychotic episode. At the hospital, McLemore grabbed a nurse’s hair and the Seymour Police Department arrested him on battery charges.

At the Jackson County Jail, McLemore, who had schizophrenia, was stripped naked and thrown into solitary confinement in what was known as “Padded Cell 7,” a small room without toilet access.

Surveillance footage over 21 days shows him screaming; rocking back and forth; licking the walls; smearing his feces and urine all over the floor; violently shoving a plastic bottle into his rectum; throwing his food on the ground; and eating the styrofoam food trays that made their way through the thin slot at the cell door.

According to the lawsuit, he lost 45 pounds in less than a month. Jail staff rarely checked in on him. Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) employees occasionally placed McLemore in restraints and wheeled him into a shower as JCSO forced other imprisoned people to clean the excrement in his cell. On August 8, a guard named Beverly texted her supervisor, “Just bathed him. And he can’t hold his hands, legs, anything. He’s dead weight.”

In the footage, McLemore’s body visibly shrinks over weeks until he doesn’t have the strength to hold his head up.

“Get up, buddy,” a corrections officer asks. But he can’t. In one portion of the footage, a female guard sprays him with liquid soap and hoses him down so that he does not smell before EMS comes.

On August 8, jail officials noticed that McLemore—visibly emaciated and unable to hold up his body—likely needed medical care. But medical officials were unable to save him. According to a suit, doctors listed McLemore’s cause of death as “multiple organ failure due to refusal to eat or drink with altered mental status due to untreated schizophrenia.”

McLemore’s family alleges that at least 20 people, including Sheriff Rick Meyer, had access to roughly 400 hours of footage of McLemore wasting away in his cell. Edwin Budge, the family’s attorney, said he could not understand why no one called 911 earlier.

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Abrupt closure of ketamine clinic chain blindsides veterans and others with severe depression and chronic pain

Military veterans across the country are scrambling after more than a dozen clinics that had been providing them with free ketamine treatments for severe depression, chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder suddenly closed.

Patients and employees of the Ketamine Wellness Centers, or KWC, said they were blindsided when the company, one of the nation’s largest operators of ketamine clinics, announced on its website on March 10 that it had shuttered all 13 of its locations in nine states.

“I cried for days,” said Travis Zubick, a U.S. Navy veteran, who was a patient at the company’s Minnesota location. “They packed up and left town, and that’s over.”

Zubick and about 50 other former service members had been relying on KWC’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for free ketamine treatments.

Now, many are rushing to find another facility that takes their VA insurance before the effects of their last treatment wear off.

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The 9-question survey many doctors use to diagnose depression was actually created by an antidepressant manufacturer

If your doctor suspects you might have depression, there’s a go-to questionnaire they might pull out with nine questions to answer about how you’ve been feeling over the past two weeks.

The questions touch on a range of potential issues, from sleep disturbances, to appetite changes, concentration issues, and your general enjoyment of life.  

Many experts say this tool, called the PHQ-9, was never meant to be a definitive diagnostic test aimed at diagnosing mental health issues. It was designed as a first-ditch screening tool; a conversation starter between doctor and patient.

But for primary care physicians strapped for time in the exam room, it is often used as a stand-in for a more in-depth clinical evaluation — a go-to prescribing tool for antidepressants.

Critics say the issue is that it this tool was developed by Pfizer, shortly after Zoloft came on the market. 

“These forms have a very low criteria for anxiety and depression,” UK-based psychotherapist James Davies, co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, told the Telegraph in 2017. “It’s about getting people in and out of the door in 10 minutes,” often, with a prescription in hand. 

As reporter Olivia Goldhill details in a wide-ranging Stat report out this week, the marketer who first dreamed up the idea for what later became the PHQ-9 — the quick tool that ultimately made many primary care doctors more comfortable prescribing antidepressants from exam rooms worldwide — was a “marketing man” working for Pfizer. Howard Kroplick convinced the company to invest in the pricey research required to develop the now-ubiquitous questionnaire. 

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