Tuesday, May 21, 2013

The Wall Street Journal: For many neurological disorders, from Alzheimer's to ADHD, the first clue something is wrong may be changes in social behavior


For many neurological disorders, from Alzheimer's to ADHD, the first clue something is wrong may be changes in social behavior:http://on.wsj.com/119mLy8
For many neurological disorders, from Alzheimer's to ADHD, the first clue something is wrong may be changes in social behavior: http://on.wsj.com/119mLy8

The Washington Blade: JUST IN | Gay DC psychiatrist, Saul Levin, named head of APA


JUST IN | Gay DC psychiatrist, Saul Levin, named head of APA
Like ·  ·  · 14 minutes ago near Washington, DC ·


Saul_Levin_thumb_(c)_Washington_Blade


Gay DC psychiatrist named head of APA

Levin serves as interim director of Department of Health



Saul Levin, gay news, Washington Blade

Dr. Saul Levin, who last year became the first openly gay head of the D.C. Department of Health, was named on May 15 as the new chief executive officer and medical director of the American Psychiatric Association.
An APA spokesperson said Levin, a psychiatrist who has specialized in substance abuse treatment, becomes the first known out gay person to head the APA, which was founded in 1844 and represents more than 33,000 psychiatric physicians in the U.S. and abroad.
The APA serves as a “national medical specialty society whose physician members specialize in diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and research of mental illnesses including substance use disorders,” according to a statement on the organization’s website.
“I have known Saul for over 20 years,” said Dr. James H. Scully Jr., the current APA CEO and Medical Director who is retiring in the fall, when Levin will take over his duties following a transition period set to begin in mid-July.
“He brings extraordinary intelligence, vision and great energy to the challenges ahead for our profession,” Scully said in a statement. “I look forward to working together with him as we transition to new leadership.”
D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, who appointed Levin as interim director of the DOH last July, issued a statement on May 15 congratulating Levin on his new appointment.
“While this is a great loss for the District government, it is a great gain for the American Psychiatric Association,” Gray said. “Dr. Levin has done an exemplary job leading DOH in this interim period, and I wish him the best in his future endeavors and thank him for his good work for us.”
The APA has played a key role in the advancement of LGBT rights since the early 1970s when, following years of advocacy by gay activists, the organization removed homosexuality from its longstanding classification as a mental illness in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders.
Last December, the APA removed Gender Identity Disorder (GID) from its latest updated edition of the DSM and replaced it with a condition known as Gender Dysphoria.
Transgender rights advocates have said the removal of GID from the APA’s DSM is comparable to the APA’s removal of homosexuality from its classification as a mental disorder in 2003.
Levin is scheduled to remain in his DOH post until July 12, when he will join the Arlington, Va., based APA as CEO-designate, according to an APA statement. He will work closely with Scully until Scully retires in the fall, “at which point Dr. Levin will transition to his role as CEO and Medical Director of APA,” the statement says.
The APA statement says Levin has had a “long history” of working on APA committees and projects beginning in 1987, when he first became a member of the organization. Among other duties, Levin has served on the APA’s Political Action Committee Board, its Scientific and Program Committee and as a consultant to its Finance and Budget Committee.
A native of South Africa, Levin received his medical degree at a leading medical school in Johannesburg before completing his residency in psychiatry at the University of California’s Davis Medical Center.
Levin joined the staff of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he later became coordinator of a program within the department’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Following that position he returned to school, receiving a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 1994.
After that, Levin started a heath care consulting company for which he served as president for the next 10 years.
He next served as president and CEO of a U.S.-based educational trust that provided scholarships to South African black youth before becoming vice president of the American Medical Association for Science, Medicine, and Public Health.
After joining the staff at the D.C. Department of Health, Levin, among other things, served as Senior Deputy Director of the department’s Addiction and Recovery Administration.
Levin was in San Francisco this week attending the APA’s annual national conference and couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

What DSM-5 Means for Diagnosing Mental Health Patients - 5/20/2013 - PBSNewsHour

What DSM-5 Means for Diagnosing Mental Health Patients - 5/20/2013 - PBSNewsHour

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Huffington Post THU MAY 16TH, 2013EMMA MUSTICH Mental Disorders In Children: CDC Releases First-Ever Report


Mental Disorders In Children: CDC Releases First-Ever Report
SHARED BY 1 PERSON

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
NEW YORK, May 16 (Reuters) - Up to 20 percent of children in the United States suffer from a mental disorder, and the number of kids diagnosed with one has been rising for more than a decade, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the agency's first-ever study of mental disorders among children aged 3 to 17, researchers found childhood mental illnesses affect up to one in five kids and cost $247 billion per year in medical bills, special education and juvenile justice.
Children with mental disorders - defined as "serious deviations from expected cognitive, social, and emotional development" - often have trouble learning in school, making friends, and building relationships later in life, the report said.
They are more likely to have other chronic health problems, such as asthma and diabetes, and are at risk for developing mental illnesses as adults.
"This is a deliberate effort by CDC to show mental health is a health issue. As with any health concern, the more attention we give to it, the better. It's parents becoming aware of the facts and talking to a healthcare provider about how their child is learning, behaving, and playing with other kids," Dr. Ruth Perou, the lead author of the study, told Reuters in an interview.
"What's concerning is the number of families affected by these issues. But we can do something about this. Mental health problems are diagnosable, treatable and people can recover and lead full healthy lives," Perou added.
The study cited data collected between 1994 and 2011 that showed the number of kids with mental disorders is growing. The study stopped short of concluding why, but suggested improvements in diagnoses as one possible explanation
"Changes in estimated prevalence over time might be associated with an actual change in prevalence, changes in case definition, changes in the public perception of mental disorders, or improvements in diagnosis, which might be associated with changes in policies and access to health care," the study said. 

VANITA GUPTA: Open Letter to the Corrections Corporation of America After 30 Years of Locking People Up for Profit - HP


Open Letter to the Corrections Corporation of America After 30 Years of Locking People Up for Profit
SHARED BY 1 PERSON
What do I have to say to the Corrections Corporation of America?

After 30 years, CCA should be ashamed.
More...

Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military - NYT


The New York Times


May 15, 2013

Baffling Rise in Suicides Plagues the U.S. Military


After Specialist Freddy Hook, a medic with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, killed himself in 2010, the trail of possible causes seemed long.
He had used illegal drugs: Was it the demons of addiction? His rocky relationship with his fiancée? A wrenching deployment to earthquake-ravaged Haiti or the prospect of an impending tour in Afghanistan?
As with most of suicides plaguing the military today, no one will know for sure.
“There are so many factors,” said his mother, Theresa Taylor, of Lafayette, La. “Everything that was important to him was having problems.”
Of the crises facing American troops today, suicide ranks among the most emotionally wrenching — and baffling. Over the course of nearly 12 years and two wars, suicide among active-duty troops has risen steadily, hitting a record of 350 in 2012. That total was twice as many as a decade before and surpassed not only the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan but also the number who died in transportation accidents last year.
Even with the withdrawal from Iraq and the pullback in Afghanistan, the rate of suicide within the military has continued to rise significantly faster than within the general population, where it is also rising. In 2002, the military’s suicide rate was 10.3 per 100,000 troops, well below the comparable civilian rate. But today the rates are nearly the same, above 18 per 100,000 people.
And according to some experts, the military may be undercounting the problem because of the way it calculates its suicide rate.
Yet though the Pentagon has commissioned numerous reports and invested tens of millions of dollars in research and prevention programs, experts concede they are little closer to understanding the root causes of why military suicide is rising so fast.
“Any one variable in isolation doesn’t explain things,” said Craig J. Bryan, associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah. “But the interaction of all of them do. That’s what makes it very difficult to solve the problem. And that’s why we haven’t made advances.”
An emerging consensus among researchers is that, just as among civilians, a dauntingly complex web of factors usually underlie military suicide: mental illness, sexual or physical abuse, addictions, failed relationships, financial struggles. Indeed, the most recent Pentagon report of suicides found that half of the troops who killed themselves in 2011 had experienced the failure of an intimate relationship and about a quarter had received diagnoses of substance abuse.
Studies have also found that certain patterns of suicide among civilians seem intensified within the military. Among civilians, young white males are one of the most likely groups to kill themselves. In the military that group, which is disproportionately represented, is even more likely to commit suicide. Among civilians, firearms are the most common means; in the military, as might be expected, guns are used even more often, in 6 of every 10 instances.
Deployment and exposure to combat can act as catalysts that worsen existing problems in a service member’s life, like drug abuse, or cause new ones, like post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries, which may contribute to suicidal behavior. Indeed, a study published this week in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry found that troops with multiple concussions were significantly more likely to report having suicidal thoughts than troops with one or no concussions.
Yet deployment and combat by themselves cannot explain the spiking suicide rates, researchers say. Pentagon data show that in recent years about half of service members who committed suicide never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. And more than 80 percent had never been in combat.
“This probably is the keenest misconception the public has: that deployment is the factor most related to the increased rates of suicide,” said Cynthia Thomsen, a research psychologist at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego.
Another question lingers: Is the current trend unique, or typical of war throughout the ages? Because detailed data on military suicides was not collected until after Vietnam, it is impossible to know, though many experts believe that suicides rose during and after the two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam.
What is known is that since 2001, more than 2,700 service members have killed themselves, and that figure does not include National Guard and reserve troops who were not on active duty when they committed suicide.
Suicide among veterans has also risen somewhat since 2001, to an estimated 22 a day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Just 12 years ago, when the rate of military suicide was so much lower, many experts believed that military culture insulated young people from self-harm. Not only did it provide steady income and health care, structure and a sense of purpose, the reasoning went, military service also screened personnel for criminal behavior as well as for basic physical and mental fitness.
But a decade of war has changed that perception.
“There is a difference between a military at war and a military at peace,” said Dr. Jonathan Woodson, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. “There is no doubt that war changes you.”
The Loved Ones’ Question
The Pentagon’s 2011 annual report on suicide, the most recent available, paints this picture: About 9 of 10 suicides involved enlisted personnel, not officers. Three of four victims did not attend college. More than half were married. Eight in 10 died in the United States. Most did not leave notes or communicate their intent to hurt themselves.
Each of those suicides comes with its unique set of circumstances, its own theory as to why. But in the voices of loved ones left behind, themes echo. Surprise. Confusion. A relentless question: Could we have done more?
Cpl. Wade Toothman of the Marine Corps deployed to Iraq, where a good friend was killed, and then to Afghanistan, where a roadside bomb blew out one of his eardrums.
After he left the Marines in 2011, he complained of chronic headaches, a possible symptom of a traumatic brain injury. But he did not seek treatment. His mother also worried that he had post-traumatic stress. But he denied it and refused to see a doctor, saying he feared that the diagnosis would make it impossible to get a job. “People will say I’m crazy,” he told her.
Experts say the months just after a service member leaves the military can be a particularly disorienting and even dangerous time. Once cocooned in close-knit units, new veterans must learn to be individuals again, freer yet often more alone, surrounded by a society that knows little about military life.
Once back in his tiny Oklahoma hometown, Prue, Corporal Toothman got bored and moved to Hawaii, where he had been based. But he could not find work, returned to Oklahoma, took a prison-guard job that he hated and talked idly of re-enlisting.
“He was having a hard time being a civilian,” said his mother, Louise Toothman.
She did not realize just how hard. One October weekend in 2012, she went with her son to shop for groceries and pick up the tags for his new pickup truck. He seemed content. “He was making plans,” she said.
Two days later, he killed himself with a shotgun she had given him as a gift.
After his death, she began to uncover clues. Medical records showed that despite his denials about post-traumatic stress, the Marine Corps had treated him for the disorder, including by prescribing him antidepressants.
He also left behind an anguished note that made his mother believe he could not forget seeing a close friend killed in Iraq. “I’ve held a lot of guilt and anger and sadness inside for a very long time,” he wrote her. “I was too ashamed and proud to say it to you.”
“I stopped drinking and tried dealing with it on my own and I failed,” he continued. “I’m sorry I let you down. I was really hoping for some crazy, noble, heroic death. I love you and there’s nothing you or anyone could do. This is my decision. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough.”
Ms. Toothman wept as she read his words. “If I had known these things, I would have acted differently,” she said. “I would have been right there.”
Don Lipstein knows that feeling.
His son, Petty Officer Second Class Joshua Lipstein, had been a heavy drinker as a teenager growing up in Wilmington, Del. But motivated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks four years earlier, he enlisted in the Navy and joined a riverboat crew that seemed to give him a sense of fulfillment, his father said. He made plans to make the Navy a career.
But during his second Iraq tour, doctors discovered he had a brain tumor and sent him home. In late 2009, he underwent surgery that caused him to lose hearing in one ear. Assigned to a desk job, he seemed headed for a medical discharge. The prospect of losing a career he loved was wrenching.
In the ensuing months, his father recalls, he became dependent on opioid pain killers. He told his father he was not addicted, just self-medicating. But Mr. Lipstein pushed him to enroll in a drug rehabilitation program. It did not help: months afterward, Petty Officer Lipstein started using heroin.
Even the birth of a daughter did not seem to relieve his inner struggles. In March 2011, while he was awaiting his final discharge, he spoke to his father on the phone. Mr. Lipstein could hear the despondency; alarmed, he asked his son to unload his gun.
“Dad,” he replied, “I can’t do that.” He killed himself soon after.
Mr. Lipstein, who speaks and counsels about suicide for the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, a nonprofit organization, says he does not blame the military for his son’s death, noting how much he loved his work.
But he wonders whether commanders missed telltale signs — a problem the Pentagon acknowledges may be widespread. He wonders if he missed them, too.
“I didn’t look at him as suicidal,” he said. “Looking back, there were all kinds of stressors on his life. If I could have considered he was suicidal, could I have done something to prevent it?”
Looking for What Works
For Kathryn Robinson, seeking treatment for her post-traumatic stress disorder and occasional thoughts about suicide was not an issue. Finding a program that worked was.
A member of the Army National Guard, she deployed to Iraq in 2007 as a combat videographer. There, a sniper shot off one of her fingers during a fierce firefight. After active duty, she isolated herself from friends and family and became dependent on antidepressants.
But unlike some veterans, Ms. Robinson, 45, who lives in Detroit, sought treatment repeatedly: a residential program for post-traumatic stress disorder, a women’s trauma recovery program, horse therapy, songwriting therapy, transcendental meditation, running.
Travel seems to work best of all, she said: “I call it trying to outrun the crazy.”
Under intense pressure to expand and improve treatment and prevention programs, the armed services have hired additional mental health counselors, conducted advertising campaigns to encourage troops to seek care and instituted resiliency programs to help them control stress through diet, exercise, sleeping habits, meditation or counseling. Commanders are being instructed on how to identify the telltale signs of suicidal behavior as an early-warning system.
Yet the persistently high suicide rates have raised questions about which, if any, programs work. According to a 2010 report, the Department of Defense had nearly 900 suicide prevention activities, with multiple “inconsistencies, redundancies and gaps” in services.
Some experts say the Pentagon should focus on fewer programs that might have quicker impact. Some studies suggest, for instance, that simply improving sleeping habits can improve mental well-being. Others show that strengthening social connections, such as by having commanders or friends send “caring letters” to troubled service members, can prevent suicide.
But the stubborn nature of the problem is prompting more serious consideration of what suicide prevention experts call “means restriction,” particularly reducing access to privately owned firearms.
“If we want to limit suicide, we should put means restriction at the front because it works,” said Dr. Bryan of the University of Utah.
Indeed, the Pentagon is considering policies to encourage family members to take personal firearms away from suicidal service members. Commanders already have the authority to confiscate military-issue firearms from potentially suicidal service members.
But any such program is sure to be contentious and stir opposition from Second Amendment advocates. Dr. Woodson, the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said that the program would be voluntary, but that details were still being developed.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Pentagon is simply getting suicidal service members into treatment. Surveys show that despite campaigns to reduce stigma, many service members continue to believe that treatment will be ineffective or hurt their careers, said Dr. Charles Hoge, a psychiatrist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“The problem isn’t the specific treatments, but the fact that individuals aren’t seeking care or are dropping out,” Dr. Hoge said. “There’s quite a bit of effort put into addressing stigma. But the fact remains that it is still a big problem.”
Encouraging Help
For that reason, the Pentagon’s first department-wide suicide prevention policy, to be released this year, will require “leaders to foster a command climate that encourages Department of Defense personnel to seek help,” Jacqueline Garrick, acting director of the Defense Suicide Prevention Office, told Congress in March.
Theresa Taylor wonders whether any of that would have saved her son, Specialist Hook, who seemed to fall through one crack after another.
His family had a long history of military service. But his mother, an Air Force veteran, encouraged him to enlist because he was a bright underachiever who used drugs. The military, she hoped, would help him grow up.
For two years, he seemed to thrive as a medic with the 82nd Airborne Division. But in 2010, his life veered wildly off track. He seemed deeply affected by suffering he witnessed during a humanitarian mission to Haiti early that year. Over the following months, there were tensions with his fiancée. An arrest for driving 160 miles an hour. A relapse into drug use.
When he visited his mother in Louisiana in October 2010, he seemed agitated, “not in a good place,” she said. He had begun taking antidepressants and seemed worried that his dream of joining the elite Army Rangers was becoming vanishingly distant. Adding to his stress, he was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan the next March.
“He didn’t want to go,” Ms. Taylor said. “It didn’t have to do with the war or the Army. He felt like he needed to get his life straight.”
As Christmas approached, Ms. Taylor learned that he had asked his fiancée to enter into a suicide pact. She told his commanders at Fort Bragg, and they promised to put him on suicide watch.
But a mental health professional at the post decided that he was not suicidal and cleared him to go on holiday leave, Ms. Taylor said. Over the next day, he stabbed a drug dealer while trying to reclaim a Rolex watch, a cherished gift that he had traded for drugs, his mother said.
His sergeant, whom he told about the stabbing, took him to turn himself in. But on the way to the police station, Specialist Hook called his fiancée and said, “I’ll see you on the flip side.” Then he stepped from the car and shot himself using a pistol he had taken from a friend. He died on Christmas Day at the age of 20.
Ms. Taylor acknowledged that many of her son’s problems had predated enlistment. But she is haunted by a tape loop of questions about whether she, or her son’s friends, or his commanders, could have done more to help him.
“There is enough blame for everyone to go around,” she said. “The only reason you can blame anyone at all is that he was so young. If he was 40 and pulling these stunts, you’d say he should have learned. But he wasn’t.”

The New York Times: Experts concede they are not close to understand the root causes of why military suicides, which hit an all-time high in 2012, are rising so fast.


Experts concede they are not close to understand the root causes of why military suicides, which hit an all-time high in 2012, are rising so fast.

A former combat videographer describes trying to get her life back on track after her return from Iraq left her with PTSD and thoughts of suicide: http://nyti.ms/10ZSdig

Thursday, May 9, 2013

NIMH Won't Follow Psychiatry 'Bible' Anymore

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—slated for release this month—has lost a major customer before even going to print. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), declared last week on his blog that the institution will no longer use the manual to guide its research. 


NIMH Won't Follow Psychiatry 'Bible' Anymore

on 6 May 2013, 5:10 PM | 7 Comments
si-dsmv.jpg
The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—slated for release this month—has lost a major customer before even going to print. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), declared last week on his blog that the institution will no longer use the manual to guide its research. Instead, NIMH is working on a long-term plan to develop new diagnostic criteria and treatments based on genetic, physiologic, and cognitive data rather than symptoms alone.
Insel's pronouncement is the most recent hit in a long barrage of criticism that has rained down upon the latest DSM revision process since it began over a decade ago. "While DSM has been described as a 'Bible' for the field," he wrote, "it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each." Although the manual's strength has been to standardize these labels, he wrote, "[t]he weakness is its lack of validity," and "[p]atients with mental disorders deserve better."
Although Insel's blog was reported as a "bombshell," and "potentially seismic," NIMH's decision to scrap theDSM criteria has been public for several years, says Bruce Cuthbert, director of NIMH's Division of Adult Translational Research and Treatment Development. In 2010, the agency began to steer researchers away from the traditional categories of DSM by posting new guidance for grant proposals in five broad areas. Rather than grouping disorders such as schizophrenia and depression by symptom, the new categories focus on basic neural circuits and cognitive functions, such as those for reward, arousal, and attachment.

Helena Kraemer, a biostatistician at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was responsible for field trials of diagnostic categories proposed for DSM-5, says that Insel is right that the NIMH's new program, called Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) is "the direction we have to go." However, she says, "he's wrong in saying thatDSM-5 is to be set aside." When it comes to validity, there now is no gold standard, she says. "The DSM is a series of successive approximations." Kraemer's vision is that future versions of the manual will not have to wait 10 to 15 years for revision, but incorporate new scientific data from RDoC as it emerges. She says that a meeting is scheduled in June to discuss the possibility of converting the DSM into an electronic document that could incorporate those changes. "Everybody I've talked to about it thinks that's a good idea."
Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and former president of the American Psychological Association (APA), isn't convinced that the whole process doesn't need to start from scratch, however. The measures of agreement between experts for several of the disorders in the new DSM-5were "terrible," he says. "What it suggests is that we need to go back to the drawing board." In 2011, Farley and colleagues circulated a petition for APA to submit the new revisions to independent review. Although 14,000 professionals and more than 50 organizations signed on, he says, "Nothing happened. We got a 'Thanks, but no thanks' letter back."
Both RDoC and DSM are necessary, says William Carpenter, a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Carpenter chairs the psychosis working group for the new DSM-5 manual and is one of three external advisers to RDoC. On a practical level, researchers and physicians need DSM to help characterize and treat patients in the field, he says. "If you don't, you just have 'Mental health I, II, III, IV and V.' "
On the other hand, Carpenter says, drug development for psychiatric disorders "has been stalemated for decades" due to our lack of understanding of the biological roots of psychiatric disease. "What I would hope for our field, is that clinically we get into the habit of deconstructing these syndromes into the specific pathologies that the patients have," such as hallucinations and impaired emotional processing. Once we understand the neural circuitry and neurobiology that cause such symptoms, he adds, "hopefully this will help drag drug companies into trying to make novel discoveries, instead of me-too drugs that they've lived off of for all these years."
Implementing RDoC will present some practical challenges, Carpenter acknowledges. "This does shift the paradigm." Rather than excluding all study subjects who do not fit a DSM diagnosis, such as major depression, for example, the new approach might include a range of participants with different diagnoses who all demonstrate anhedonia, the impaired ability to experience pleasure, and might look for underlying brain abnormalities that they share in common. "I bet that the rough spots are overcome pretty quickly," Carpenter says, "but of course we have to see how well that actually works out."
Cuthbert emphasizes that the new system is a framework for research, not a diagnostic manual, and that it has not yet been tested. "It's a platform to get people moving in the right direction," he says. In the meantime, theDSM "has been and continues to be very useful in psychiatry," he says. For the sake of patients, he says, "it's important to communicate that we do have good treatments for mental disorders."