To the Editor:
Re “After Three Suspected Suicides, a Shaken Cornell Reaches Out” (front page, March 17):
Suicide is a tragedy, made worse when occurring in youth. Many university campuses, not only Cornell, are beleaguered by this excruciatingly painful problem. After all, they have our youth and promise in their classes, seminars and dormitories.
The continuing neglect of the major cause of suicide among youth is shocking. The bulk of coverage in the media largely misses it. It is not only about stress, long winter nights, school challenges or failures, loneliness or social isolation. After all, most people who face these stressors do not kill themselves.
Thus, although stress might precipitate it, it is about mental illness, most commonly mood and substance abuse disorders. Until we as a country face the challenge of reaching our youth and providing high-quality mental health services, until we can reduce the stigma of seeking help for psychiatric conditions, we are crippled in our efforts to stem this scourge.
Our future is our youth. We are duty-bound to reach them and maximize the likelihood not only of their survival but also of their success.
Maria A. Oquendo
New York, March 17, 2010
The writer is a professor of clinical psychiatry and vice chairwoman for education in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University.
•
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Study links bullying to cognitive deficits, brain changes
By ANNE MCILROY, Toronto Globe and Mail
They lurk in hallways, bathrooms, around the next blind corner. But for the children they have routinely teased or tormented, bullies effectively live in the victims' brains as well -- and not just as a terrifying memory.
Preliminary evidence shows that bullying can produce signs of stress, cognitive deficits and mental-health problems.
Now University of Ottawa psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt and her colleagues at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario plan to scan the brains of teens who have been regularly humiliated and ostracized by their peers to look for structural differences compared with other children.
"We know there is a functional difference. We know their brains are acting differently, but we don't know if it is structural as well," said Vaillancourt, an expert in the biology of bullying.
She says she hopes her work will legitimize the plight of children who are bullied, and encourage parents, teachers and school boards to take the problem more seriously.
Vaillancourt has been following a group of 17-year-olds since they were 12. All 70 of the children were routinely bullied during those years -- teased, harassed, threatened or excluded.
Physical violence is relatively rare, she says, because their tormentors are smart enough to know it will get them into trouble.
"For many of these kids, every day is a nightmare," she said. They go to school and no one will talk to them. Someone deliberately bumps into them in the hallway, and all the other children laugh. They get called horrible names.
The researchers will start with brain scans of 15 of the extreme cases, like the child who stood in her gym uniform while other kids put her school clothes in the toilet and urinated on them.
There are also teenagers in the study who have been bullied for five straight school years.
The scientists have already shown that children who are bullied are more likely than other kids to have cognitive deficits.
They score lower on tests that measure verbal memory and executive function, a set of skills needed to focus on a task and get the job done. Mental-health problems, such as depression, are also more common.
Vaillancourt suspects they will also have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. Depression has been shown to be related to a smaller hippocampus. As well, animal studies have shown that chronic high levels of stress can kill brain cells. Vaillancourt says this kind of damage may help explain why children who are bullied often perform poorly academically.
She will also be looking for a smaller prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in being able to pay attention and other executive functions.
These kinds of differences have been documented in functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, studies of children who have been neglected or abused. Vaillancourt suspects the chronic stress of being bullied will have a similar impact.
She and her colleagues have already published research showing that boys who are bullied tend to produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. It is as if their system is in permanent overdrive.
It's the opposite for the girls; they tend to produce less cortisol than average, as though their stress response system is overly subdued.
"At some point, their brains stop reacting," said Vaillancourt, who holds a Canada Research Chair in children's mental health and violence prevention.
These changes to the brain's stress response system may be linked to the higher rates of depression among children who are regularly picked on by their peers, especially girls. The adolescent years are when peer relations are most important and when girls, more than anything, want to belong, Vaillancourt says.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
They lurk in hallways, bathrooms, around the next blind corner. But for the children they have routinely teased or tormented, bullies effectively live in the victims' brains as well -- and not just as a terrifying memory.
Preliminary evidence shows that bullying can produce signs of stress, cognitive deficits and mental-health problems.
Now University of Ottawa psychologist Tracy Vaillancourt and her colleagues at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario plan to scan the brains of teens who have been regularly humiliated and ostracized by their peers to look for structural differences compared with other children.
"We know there is a functional difference. We know their brains are acting differently, but we don't know if it is structural as well," said Vaillancourt, an expert in the biology of bullying.
She says she hopes her work will legitimize the plight of children who are bullied, and encourage parents, teachers and school boards to take the problem more seriously.
Vaillancourt has been following a group of 17-year-olds since they were 12. All 70 of the children were routinely bullied during those years -- teased, harassed, threatened or excluded.
Physical violence is relatively rare, she says, because their tormentors are smart enough to know it will get them into trouble.
"For many of these kids, every day is a nightmare," she said. They go to school and no one will talk to them. Someone deliberately bumps into them in the hallway, and all the other children laugh. They get called horrible names.
The researchers will start with brain scans of 15 of the extreme cases, like the child who stood in her gym uniform while other kids put her school clothes in the toilet and urinated on them.
There are also teenagers in the study who have been bullied for five straight school years.
The scientists have already shown that children who are bullied are more likely than other kids to have cognitive deficits.
They score lower on tests that measure verbal memory and executive function, a set of skills needed to focus on a task and get the job done. Mental-health problems, such as depression, are also more common.
Vaillancourt suspects they will also have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. Depression has been shown to be related to a smaller hippocampus. As well, animal studies have shown that chronic high levels of stress can kill brain cells. Vaillancourt says this kind of damage may help explain why children who are bullied often perform poorly academically.
She will also be looking for a smaller prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in being able to pay attention and other executive functions.
These kinds of differences have been documented in functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, studies of children who have been neglected or abused. Vaillancourt suspects the chronic stress of being bullied will have a similar impact.
She and her colleagues have already published research showing that boys who are bullied tend to produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. It is as if their system is in permanent overdrive.
It's the opposite for the girls; they tend to produce less cortisol than average, as though their stress response system is overly subdued.
"At some point, their brains stop reacting," said Vaillancourt, who holds a Canada Research Chair in children's mental health and violence prevention.
These changes to the brain's stress response system may be linked to the higher rates of depression among children who are regularly picked on by their peers, especially girls. The adolescent years are when peer relations are most important and when girls, more than anything, want to belong, Vaillancourt says.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Depressed woman loses benefits over Facebook photos
A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer's insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook.
Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression.
The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall.
When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that "I'm available to work, because of Facebook," she told CBC News this week.
She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday - evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said.
Blanchard said she notified Manulife that she was taking a trip, and she's shocked the company would investigate her in such a manner and interpret her photos that way.
"In the moment I'm happy, but before and after I have the same problems" as before, she said.
Blanchard said that on her doctor's advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.
She also doesn't understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts.
Insurer confirms it uses Facebook
Her lawyer Tom Lavin said Manulife's investigation was inappropriate.
"I don't think for judging a mental state that Facebook is a very good tool," he said, adding that he has requested another psychiatric evaluation for Blanchard.
"It's not as if somebody had a broken back and there was a picture of them carrying ...a load of bricks," Lavin said. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape."
Manulife wouldn't comment on Blanchard's case, but in a written statement sent to CBC News, the insurer said: "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook." It confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients.
Insurance companies must weigh information found on such sites, said Claude Distasio, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association.
"We can't ignore it, wherever the source of the information is," she said. "We can't ignore it."
Blanchard estimated she's lost thousands of dollars in benefits since Manulife changed her claim.
Story by CBC News via http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html
Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression.
The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall.
When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that "I'm available to work, because of Facebook," she told CBC News this week.
She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday - evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said.
Blanchard said she notified Manulife that she was taking a trip, and she's shocked the company would investigate her in such a manner and interpret her photos that way.
"In the moment I'm happy, but before and after I have the same problems" as before, she said.
Blanchard said that on her doctor's advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems.
She also doesn't understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts.
Insurer confirms it uses Facebook
Her lawyer Tom Lavin said Manulife's investigation was inappropriate.
"I don't think for judging a mental state that Facebook is a very good tool," he said, adding that he has requested another psychiatric evaluation for Blanchard.
"It's not as if somebody had a broken back and there was a picture of them carrying ...a load of bricks," Lavin said. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape."
Manulife wouldn't comment on Blanchard's case, but in a written statement sent to CBC News, the insurer said: "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook." It confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients.
Insurance companies must weigh information found on such sites, said Claude Distasio, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association.
"We can't ignore it, wherever the source of the information is," she said. "We can't ignore it."
Blanchard estimated she's lost thousands of dollars in benefits since Manulife changed her claim.
Story by CBC News via http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/11/19/quebec-facebook-sick-leave-benefits.html
Monday, March 1, 2010
Montana mental health court shows early successes
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- Officials say a new adult mental health court in Billings is showing some modest successes in its first year.
The mental health court is designed to help criminal defendants with clinical mental health disorders learn to treat their illnesses and live within the law. The program is only available to 14 people this year, but planners hope to expand the court to serve 40 people in its second year and 70 people in its third.
Billings Police Lt. Mark Cady says he's seen the court lead people who were frequently in trouble to change their ways. The program is still new in Billings, but early numbers suggest that only 10 percent of participants are going on to re-offend.
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Information from: Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
The mental health court is designed to help criminal defendants with clinical mental health disorders learn to treat their illnesses and live within the law. The program is only available to 14 people this year, but planners hope to expand the court to serve 40 people in its second year and 70 people in its third.
Billings Police Lt. Mark Cady says he's seen the court lead people who were frequently in trouble to change their ways. The program is still new in Billings, but early numbers suggest that only 10 percent of participants are going on to re-offend.
---
Information from: Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
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