By JODI HAUSEN, Chronicle Staff Writer
The services at Gallatin Mental Health Center haven't changed but the space in which they are delivered has.
In February, the center opened Hope House and Eck House -- a mental health crisis center and a four-unit subsidized housing facility for people with mental illness, respectively.
Now, two more facilities - Gallatin County Outpatient Services and the Open Arms Drop-In Center -- have opened for business.
"We're kind of in the fogginess of moving in," Scott Malloy, director of the center, said sitting in his office during a brief break Monday.
With vaulted ceilings, wood floors and walls and furnishings in muted earth tones, all the facilities at the campus have a more homey feeling than a typical institution for patients with mental illness. Instead of fluorescent lights, numerous large windows and warm-toned lighting fixtures brighten the rooms.
The 8,700-square-foot outpatient facility boasts a dividable conference room with video-conferencing capabilities, offices and "a really awesome lobby," Malloy said, explaining that their former entryway in the Medical Arts Building on North Willson Avenue was about the size of his current office.
Next door, a fish swam around a small plastic container on an end table, waiting to be plunked back into its bowl at the new drop-in center Monday.
Clients sitting on recently-installed upholstered furniture there were pleased with their new space that houses two offices, a small meeting room, laundry, deck with barbecue and kitchen and pantry lined with red Folgers coffee containers.
"I love it," said John Watson, the drop-in center's director. "We've gone from two rooms at North Willson (to this) in two years."
The 50 mental health center employees did a majority of the moving over the weekend, along with the help of offenders sentenced to the Gallatin County work release program, Malloy said.
If there is a missing piece from the new campus, it is public transportation directly to it, both directors said. Although it us less than a half-mile walk from Bozeman Deaconess Hospital where the Streamline bus already stops, Malloy said he is hoping Streamline will add a stop off Haggerty Lane in front of the campus when the free bus service revamps its maps in the fall.
To celebrate the campus and Mental Health Month, the center, which assists up to 1,000 clients at any given time, will be hosting an open house next week and a series of talks throughout the month of May.
For more information, call 522-7357.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
New Research on Suicidal Behavior
Determining who is at risk for suicide is an arduous and inexact endeavor. Even trained clinicians can miss warning signs.
Researchers have now developed an instrument they believe will help predict those at risk.
Matthew Nock of Harvard University, along with colleagues from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, modified a well-known word-association test to measure associations between life and death/ suicide and examined if it could be effective in predicting suicide risk.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a widely used test that measures automatic associations people hold about various topics. Participants are shown pairs of words; the speed of their response indicates if they unconsciously associate those words.
In the IAT version used in this study, participants classified words related to “life” (e.g., breathing) and “death” (e.g., dead) and “me” (e.g., mine) and “not me” (e.g., them).
Faster responses to “death”/”me” stimuli than “life”/”me” stimuli would suggest a stronger association between death and self.
People seeking treatment at a psychiatric emergency room participated in this study. They completed the IAT and various mental health assessments. In addition, their medical records were examined six months later to see if they had attempted suicide within that time.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed that participants presenting to the emergency room after a suicide attempt had a stronger implicit association between death/ suicide and self than did participants presenting with other psychiatric emergencies.
In addition, participants with strong associations between death/ suicide and self were significantly more likely to make a suicide attempt within the next six months than were those who had stronger associations between life and self.
These results suggest that an implicit association between death/ suicide and self may be a behavioral marker for suicide attempts. These findings also indicate that measures of implicit cognition may be useful for identifying and predicting clinical behaviors that tend not be reported.
As Nock explains, “these results are really exciting because they address a long-standing scientific and clinical dilemma by identifying a method of measuring how people are thinking about death and suicide that does not rely on their self-report.”
He adds, “we are hopeful that this line of research ultimately will provide scientists and clinicians with new tools for measuring how people think about sensitive clinical behaviors that they may be unwilling or unable to report on verbally.”
Mahzarin Banaji, also of Harvard University and a co-author of this study, adds that this work presents a strong argument for the importance of funding basic behavioral research.
“These results are an example of basic research helping to solving a troubling and devastating problem in every society. The method we used was designed to understand the mind, but it turned into a technique that can predict disorders of a variety of sorts. One wonders why funding agencies that should know better about the value of basic research seem so naive when it comes to decisions about what is in the public’s interest.”
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 13, 2010
Researchers have now developed an instrument they believe will help predict those at risk.
Matthew Nock of Harvard University, along with colleagues from Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, modified a well-known word-association test to measure associations between life and death/ suicide and examined if it could be effective in predicting suicide risk.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a widely used test that measures automatic associations people hold about various topics. Participants are shown pairs of words; the speed of their response indicates if they unconsciously associate those words.
In the IAT version used in this study, participants classified words related to “life” (e.g., breathing) and “death” (e.g., dead) and “me” (e.g., mine) and “not me” (e.g., them).
Faster responses to “death”/”me” stimuli than “life”/”me” stimuli would suggest a stronger association between death and self.
People seeking treatment at a psychiatric emergency room participated in this study. They completed the IAT and various mental health assessments. In addition, their medical records were examined six months later to see if they had attempted suicide within that time.
The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revealed that participants presenting to the emergency room after a suicide attempt had a stronger implicit association between death/ suicide and self than did participants presenting with other psychiatric emergencies.
In addition, participants with strong associations between death/ suicide and self were significantly more likely to make a suicide attempt within the next six months than were those who had stronger associations between life and self.
These results suggest that an implicit association between death/ suicide and self may be a behavioral marker for suicide attempts. These findings also indicate that measures of implicit cognition may be useful for identifying and predicting clinical behaviors that tend not be reported.
As Nock explains, “these results are really exciting because they address a long-standing scientific and clinical dilemma by identifying a method of measuring how people are thinking about death and suicide that does not rely on their self-report.”
He adds, “we are hopeful that this line of research ultimately will provide scientists and clinicians with new tools for measuring how people think about sensitive clinical behaviors that they may be unwilling or unable to report on verbally.”
Mahzarin Banaji, also of Harvard University and a co-author of this study, adds that this work presents a strong argument for the importance of funding basic behavioral research.
“These results are an example of basic research helping to solving a troubling and devastating problem in every society. The method we used was designed to understand the mind, but it turned into a technique that can predict disorders of a variety of sorts. One wonders why funding agencies that should know better about the value of basic research seem so naive when it comes to decisions about what is in the public’s interest.”
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on April 13, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
U.S. will allow pilots to take antidepressants
By Reuters - Fri Apr 2, 11:08 AM PDT
The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it was lifting a ban on antidepressants for pilots with mild to moderate depression. To be cleared to fly, pilots who take the drugs must pass screening tests to show they have been successfully treated for at least a year.
Officials said they believed the ban had caused pilots to forego treatment or hide the fact they were taking medication to treat depression. The FAA is offering a six-month grace period for pilots to come forward without penalty if they are currently suffering from depression or are under treatment.
"We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associated with depression. Pilots should be able to get the medical treatment they need so they can safely perform their duties," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said.
Officials said they did not know how many pilots would be affected but noted that about 10 percent of the population suffers from depression.
Pilots who take antidepressants will be monitored for the length of their careers, the FAA said.
The policy applies to four antidepressants -- Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, Pfizer Inc's Zoloft, and Celexa and Lexapro from Forest Laboratories Inc.
Dr. Fred Tilton, the FAA's federal air surgeon, said other medications may be allowed if pilots are being effectively treated with them.
Tilton said antidepressants were originally banned because older medications carried risks such as sedation that were considered unacceptable in the cockpit. Newer medications have side effects that can be manageable, he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Steve Orlofsky))
The Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it was lifting a ban on antidepressants for pilots with mild to moderate depression. To be cleared to fly, pilots who take the drugs must pass screening tests to show they have been successfully treated for at least a year.
Officials said they believed the ban had caused pilots to forego treatment or hide the fact they were taking medication to treat depression. The FAA is offering a six-month grace period for pilots to come forward without penalty if they are currently suffering from depression or are under treatment.
"We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associated with depression. Pilots should be able to get the medical treatment they need so they can safely perform their duties," FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said.
Officials said they did not know how many pilots would be affected but noted that about 10 percent of the population suffers from depression.
Pilots who take antidepressants will be monitored for the length of their careers, the FAA said.
The policy applies to four antidepressants -- Eli Lilly and Co's Prozac, Pfizer Inc's Zoloft, and Celexa and Lexapro from Forest Laboratories Inc.
Dr. Fred Tilton, the FAA's federal air surgeon, said other medications may be allowed if pilots are being effectively treated with them.
Tilton said antidepressants were originally banned because older medications carried risks such as sedation that were considered unacceptable in the cockpit. Newer medications have side effects that can be manageable, he said.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Steve Orlofsky))
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