Tag Archives: mental health

Another Cost of Lockdown

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75,000 American Deaths Predicted From Overdose and Suicide During COVID-19 Pandemic

Jordan Davidson

May. 08, 2020

A counselor takes calls from the Montgomery County Hotline, including from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, from her home office in Chevy Chase, Maryland on March 18, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in calls to mental health and suicide prevention hotlines. Katherine Frey / The Washington Post via Getty Images

The growing unemployment crisis, the stress of self-isolation and the fear of contracting the novel coronavirus are likely to lead to as many as 75,000 deaths due to drug or alcohol misuse and suicide, according to an analysis conducted by the national public health group Well Being Trust and reported on by CNN.

Not knowing when a sense of normalcy will return may lead to an increase in what the group calls “deaths of despair.” Federal agencies and experts warn that a crisis in mental health problems is on the horizon: depression, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, according to The Washington Post.

“Unless we get comprehensive federal, state, and local resources behind improving access to high quality mental health treatments and community supports, I worry we’re likely to see things get far worse when it comes to substance misuse and suicide,” Well Being Trust’s chief strategy officer Dr. Benjamin F. Miller told CNN.

Miller emphasized that the numbers are just a projection and could easily change with a bit of intervention.

“We can change the numbers — the deaths have not happened yet. However, it is on us to take action now,” Miller said to CNN.

Already, communities across the country have seen an increase in overdoses. In Jacksonville, Florida, the fire and rescue department reported a 20 percent increase in overdose emergency calls in March. There were similar spikes in Columbus, Ohio and in at least four counties in New York State, according to ABC News.

“I think we need to consider the role that social isolation coupled with non-stop reporting on the pandemic may have on the feelings of desperation and hopelessness among those struggling with substance abuse,” U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York James Kennedy Jr. said in a statement, as ABC News reported. “Amidst the current crisis, we need to remember that substance abuse existed long before COVID-19, and it will likely remain long after we have wiped out the virus.”

Similar to the way hospitals were caught unprepared for a pandemic, the U.S. mental health system, which is underfunded, stigmatized and difficult to access, is less prepared to handle a mounting crisis.

“That’s what is keeping me up at night,” said Susan Borja, who leads the traumatic stress research program at the National Institute of Mental Health, to The Washington Post. “I worry about the people the system just won’t absorb or won’t reach. I worry about the suffering that’s going to go untreated on such a large scale.”

The Well Being Trust looked at the impact unemployment, isolation and uncertainty had in certain areas to create a detailed map of where it expects to see spikes in suicide and overdose-related deaths for the next decade. They used historical data to make their predictions, noting that overdoses and suicides increased in tandem with the unemployment rate during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, as CNN reported.

Well Being Trust predicts the most deaths per capita will occur in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Delaware, according to CNN.

The group said that federal, state and local authorities should try to find opportunity within the crisis. For instance, people could be hired for contact tracing. They also said that more leeway should be granted to telemedicine for mental health to increase access to services.

“This screams for an opportunity to examine what wasn’t working about mental health delivery prior to COVID and examine new strategies to create a new and more integrated approach to mental health post-COVID,” said Miller, as CNN reported.

More people are seeking help. Talkspace, an online therapy company, has seen a 65 percent increase in clients since mid-February.

“People are really afraid,” Talkspace co-founder and CEO Oren Frank said to The Washington Post. The increasing demand for services, he said, follows almost exactly the geographic march of the virus across the U.S. “What’s shocking to me is how little leaders are talking about this. There are no White House briefings about it. There is no plan.”

Well Being Trust believes the rising issue of mental health issues could be addressed and mitigated.

“The models we have created rely on the way it happened before. When our communities were faced with rising unemployment, social isolation and individual uncertainty the people suffered and that led to increased deaths of despair. It might be different,” they said in their report, according to CNN.

“By taking stock of the current crisis, predicting the potential loss of life, and creatively deploying local community solutions, it may be possible to prevent the impending deaths of despair. We should not sit idly by, waiting for 75,000 more deaths of despair.”

from:    https://www.ecowatch.com/coronavirus-mental-health-drugs-suicide-2645952573.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

Individuality as Illness

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Nonconformity and Freethinking Now Considered Mental Illnesses

Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest addition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.

The DSM-IV is the manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental illnesses and, with each new edition, there are scores of new mental illnesses. Are we becoming sicker? Is it getting harder to be mentally healthy? Authors of the DSM-IV say that it’s because they’re better able to identify these illnesses today. Critics charge that it’s because they have too much time on their hands.

New mental illnesses identified by the DSM-IV include arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior. In the past, these were called “personality traits,” but now they’re diseases. And there are treatments available.

All of this is a symptom of our over-diagnosing and overmedicating culture. In the last 50 years, the DSM-IV has gone from 130 to 357 mental illnesses. A majority of these illnesses afflict children. Although the manual is an important diagnostic tool for the psychiatric industry, it has also been responsible for social changes. The rise in ADD, bipolar disorder, and depression in children has been largely because of the manual’s identifying certain behaviors as symptoms. A Washington Post article observed that, if Mozart were born today, he would be diagnosed with ADD and “medicated into barren normality.”

According to the DSM-IV, the diagnosis guidelines for identifying oppositional defiant disorder are for children, but adults can just as easily suffer from the disease. This should give any freethinking American reason for worry. The Soviet Union used new “mental illnesses” for political repression.  People who didn’t accept the beliefs of the Communist Party developed a new type of schizophrenia. They suffered from the delusion of believing communism was wrong.  They were isolated, forcefully medicated, and put through repressive “therapy” to bring them back to sanity.

When the last edition of the DSM-IV was published, identifying the symptoms of various mental illnesses in children, there was a jump in the diagnosis and medication of children. Some states have laws that allow protective agencies to forcibly medicate, and even make it a punishable crime to withhold medication.  This paints a chilling picture for those of us who are nonconformists. Although the authors of the manual claim no ulterior motives but simply better diagnostic practices, the labeling of freethinking and nonconformity as mental illnesses has a lot of potential for abuse. It can easily become a weapon in the arsenal of a repressive state.

 

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“Is Free Thinking A Mental Illness?,” from offthegridnews.com, where this was originally featured.

from:     http://themindunleashed.org/2013/11/nonconformity-and-freethinking-now.html

Benefits of Writing

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Writing: Better than a Band-Aid?

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For those of us who write, we often feel a psychological or emotional release after writing, especially if we’ve tackled a difficult subject. It turns out this emotional release may work on an even deeper level. According to a new study from New Zealand, expressive writing helps wounds heal more quickly in older adults, a group prone to injuries.

The study, led by the University of Auckland’s Elizabeth Broadbent, worked with 49 healthy adults ages 64 to 97. All the participants were asked to write for 20 minutes a day for three consecutive days. Half were asked to “write about the most traumatic/upsetting experience in their life, delving into their deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions about the event, ideally not previously shared with others.” The others were asked to “write about their daily activities for tomorrow, without mentioning emotions, opinions or beliefs.”

Then, all participants received a standard skin biopsy, and the resultant wounds were photographed and monitored over the next 11 days. On the 11th day after the biopsy, the wounds were completely healed on 76.2 percent of those who had done the expressive writing. That was true of only 42.1 percent of those who had written about everyday activities.

Interestingly, the participants who wrote expressively did not report lower levels of stress or a feeling of better emotional well-being. It seems that even though they were not consciously aware of feeling more relaxed, the expressive writing had triggered something in their bodies which significantly sped up their healing time.

Though it cannot always be scientifically explained, there is a strong connection between mental and physical well-being. By healing, or at least dealing with, an emotional wound through writing, these study participants were able to prompt their body’s physical healing response, proving, if nothing else, the incredible capabilities of the human mind and body for healing.

Image by jjpacres, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

from:    http://www.realitysandwich.com/writing_better_bandaid