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))
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Suicide Among the Young: How to Try to Prevent It
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.
•
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 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.
---
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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