Mental Health

Music Therapy Cuts Through Barriers of the Heart

02 May 2016
Written by Taylor Sisk / North Carolina Health News

“I never sang when I was drunk,” says Richard Miller. “I was too busy getting into trouble.”

“She’s got me singing,” he then adds, nodding toward Cindy Morris.

Morris is a music therapist who specializes in working with individuals with previous or current substance-addiction issues. Here at Hospitality House of Boone – which offers both immediate shelter and long-term housing – she’s known as the Music Lesson Lady.

According to the American Music Therapy Association, the first references to music therapy surface in the late 1700s, including an article in Columbian Magazine in 1789 titled “Music Physically Considered.”

Music therapy was practiced in Veterans Administration hospitals after World Wars I and II to treat soldiers suffering from shell shock, a condition that now falls within the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder. Music seemed to speak to many of these soldiers who otherwise were unreachable.

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Llama Therapy? Why Pets Make Your Happier

01 May 2016
Written by Linda Blair / The Telegraph

Mountain Peaks Therapy Llamas and Alpacas was created by Lori and Shannon Gregory eight years ago. They’d heard that llamas are gentle and easy to keep, so they decided to buy a baby one. The friendly, playful animal began to attract increasing numbers of visitors, and they decided to register him as a therapy animal. They now own five llamas and three alpacas, and have taken them on over 1,000 visits to rehab centres and clinics. Patients are encouraged to play with the animals, offer them food, and stroke them. The animals have helped to calm the anxious and cheer up those suffering from depression. They even encouraged one mute patient to talk again.

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Music Therapy Cuts Through Barriers Of The Heart

29 Apr 2016
Written by North Carolina Health News / North Carolina Health News

“I never sang when I was drunk,” says Richard Miller. “I was too busy getting into trouble.” “She’s got me singing,” he then adds, nodding toward Cindy Morris. Morris is a music therapist who specializes in working with individuals with previous or current substance-addiction issues. Here at Hospitality House of Boone – which offers both immediate shelter and long-term housing – she’s known as the Music Lesson Lady. According to the American Music Therapy Association, the first references to music therapy surface in the late 1700s, including an article in Columbian Magazine in 1789 titled “Music Physically Considered.” Music therapy was practiced in Veterans Administration hospitals after World Wars I and II to treat soldiers suffering from shell shock, a condition that now falls within the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder. Music seemed to speak to many of these soldiers who otherwise were unreachable.

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What I Would Say If I Was Honest About My Depression

28 Apr 2016
Written by Fraser Speaks / The Mighty

I’m not OK.

I wish I could tell you this. I want to so many times. When you ask how I am.

I’m not OK.

Is what I want to say.

Instead I nod my head. Usually just one confident nod. Sometimes I’ll nod a few times. For security.

Tilt it slightly to the left.

Make sure my smile is big but not too big.

I am so good!

And then I immediately segue into talking about you. Asking how you are. What you have been up to. Steering as far away from the subject of me as I can get us. See how good I am at it? I amaze myself sometimes with how good of an actress I can be.

I feel myself dying a little bit more on the inside. Angry that I let another opportunity come and go. Another opportunity to open my mind up, just a little, and let some of the creatures out.

But I don’t. I can’t. I want to. I want to so badly. But I can’t.

Because here’s the thing: I was fine the day before. I was fine the week before. I’ve been fine for a whole month before!

Before it came back. Because it always does. It tricks me. But it tricks you more.

You see how good I have been. Maybe I was even great. Amazing. Fantastic. And I want you to know I really was. But you, like so many others, were tricked into thinking maybe it wouldn’t come back. That sense I had been doing so well. I’d been so happy. That I could do this.

You’re not the only one though. It got me too. Except, deep down, I always knew the truth. I knew it would eventually be back. It always comes back.

And so I can’t tell you. I like feeling as though someone is proud of me. I like seeing and hearing something other than concern when someone asks how I’m doing. As long as I don’t say it aloud.

I’m sick.

Then I can pretend for a little while longer that I am OK.

So I can’t tell you. I don’t want all of that to disappear yet.

Even though I need you. The longer I continue treading water, trying to keep a smile showing above the water, the more detached I become. Not just from you. From everything. Family. Friends. Strangers. The world.

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Powerful New Data on the Aging Brain and Traumatic Brain Injury

27 Apr 2016
Written by Science Daily / Science Daily
The Allen Institute for Brain Science has announced major updates to its online resources available at brain-map.org, including a new resource on Aging, Dementia and Traumatic Brain Injury. The resource is the first of its kind to collect and share a wide variety of data modalities on a large sample of aged brains, complete with mental health histories and clinical diagnoses.
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Why Mindfulness Is So Important To the Workplace Today

26 Apr 2016
Written by Jacob Morgan / http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2016/04/25/why-mindfulness-is-so-important-in-the-workplace-today/#59f0d66519ab

Joe Burton comes from a corporate background, working in high-stress situations with long hours and constant travel. His career was on an uphill track but his personal life and health started to decline. He even developed insomnia and asthma around the age of 40. Up until then, he would have laughed if someone suggested mindfulness as a way to alleviate his stress. Joe realized that mindfulness training helped him be more present and aware. He developed a deeper relationship with his emotions and central nervous system. It changed the way he is with his family and as a leader.

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A Brother’s Mental Illness Influenced John Kasich’s Views

25 Apr 2016
Written by Trip Gabriel / New York Times

Gov. John Kasich often speaks about mental health in his campaign for president. He has defended his decision to expand Medicaid in Ohio by highlighting its benefits for mentally ill residents. He is probably the only Republican candidate this year to ask a crowd, “Do you know what it’s like for somebody to live with depression?” The question, posed at a rally in upstate New York recently, threw a hush over a room of 1,000 people. Mr. Kasich went on: “There are people here who know exactly what I’m talking about.” Mr. Kasich is one who knows. His only brother, Richard, 59, has struggled with depression disorders since college. He was occasionally hospitalized and today receives disability benefits for mental illness. The Kasich brothers have taken vastly different paths from their hometown, McKees Rocks, Pa., an industrial suburb of Pittsburgh.

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Virginia Firefighter Victim of Cyberbullying Months Before Apparent Suicide

24 Apr 2016
Written by Nicole Hensley / Daily News

Members of an anonymous forum dedicated to Fairfax, Va., gossip may have cyberbullied a female firefighter who died in an apparent suicide in Shenandoah National Park. Multiple posts from December 2015 targeted Nicole Mittendorff with derogatory name-calling of a sexual nature. On April 13, the 31-year-old’s body was found more than a week after she failed to report to Fairfax County Fire and Rescue. Police found a suicide note in her Mini Cooper, which was parked a mile from the site where her body was discovered. Fire Chief Richard Bowers acknowledged a scattering of disparaging forum posts that referred to several female paramedic-firefighters, including Mittendorff, as “slut.” He pledged to investigate the harassment.

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Training the Police to Hold Their Fire

23 Apr 2016
Written by Erica Goode / New York Times

The 911 caller had reported a man with a samurai sword, lunging at people on the waterfront. It was evening, and when the police arrived, they saw the man pacing the beach and called to him. He responded by throwing a rock at the embankment where they stood. They shouted to him from a sheriff’s boat; he threw another rock. They told him to drop the sword; he said he would kill them. He started to leave the beach, and after warning him, they shot him in the leg with a beanbag gun. He turned back, still carrying the four-foot blade. In another city — or in Portland itself not that long ago — the next step would almost certainly have been a direct confrontation and, had the man not put down the weapon, the use of lethal force. But the Portland Police Bureau, prodded in part by the 2012 findings of a Justice Department investigation, has spent years putting in place an intensive training program and protocols for how officers deal with people with mental illness. At a time when police behavior is under intense scrutiny — a series of fatal shootings by police officers have focused national attention on issues of race and mental illness — Portland’s approach has served as a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country. And on that Sunday last summer, the police here chose a different course. At 2:30 a.m., after spending hours trying to engage the man, the officers decided to “disengage,” and they withdrew, leaving the man on the beach. A search at daylight found no signs of him. People with mental illnesses are overrepresented among civilians involved in police shootings: Twenty-five percent or more of people fatally shot by the police have had a mental disorder, according to various analyses.

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U.S. Suicide Rates Up, Especially Among Women

22 Apr 2016
Written by Carina Storrs / CNN

The number of suicides in the United States has been on the rise since 1999 in everyone between the ages of 10 and 74, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics looked at data on cause of death for Americans 10 and older from 1999 to 2014. They also included information on age and race from death certificates. “The increase is broad-based,” said Sally C. Curtin, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report, which was released Thursday. Such an increase in suicides could also make prevention efforts more difficult. “If it were just one particular group, you could say ‘that is where we need to focus,’ ” Curtin said. The report is the first since 1999 to look at suicide rates among all age groups, she said. The number of suicides increased among all racial groups except for black males, who saw an 8% decline in suicide rate from 10.5 to 9.7 per 100,000 between 1999 and 2014, respectively. The largest increases were among American Indians and Alaska Natives; in this group, the suicide rate climbed by 89% among women and 38% among men. Suicide rates among white women and white men increased by 60% and 28%, respectively.

 

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Almost Half of Children Returned From Nauru Have Mental Illness

21 Apr 2016
Written by Ben Doherty / The Guardian

Almost half of the asylum seeker children returned to Australia from Nauru’s detention centre – the public focus of the Let Them Stay campaign – have been diagnosed with a mental illness, the government has told parliament.

Fifty-four children returned to Australia from Nauru were part of the 267 asylum seekers and refugees who were the focus of a nationwide Let Them Stay campaign.

In answer to a February question on notice specifically about that 267 cohort, a Department of Immigration and Border Protection official has told the Senate: “as at 8 February 2016, there were 25 minors from Nauru who were in Australia with a clinically diagnosed mental health condition including depression and anxiety”.

“Additionally, there were five minors in Australia for other long-term medical issues.”

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Rappers Talk About Their Struggles With Depression

20 Apr 2016
Written by Brian Josephs / VICE

Author Rachel M. Harper once likened the relationship between pain and art to childbirth. “We don’t want [our mothers] to suffer in order to bring us into the world,” she writes, “but we are damn happy to be alive.” In regards to hip-hop, it’s hard to disagree. Scarface mined depression and schizophrenic symptoms for the Geto Boys’ career-affirming “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” Me Against the World came after Tupac was shot multiple times and waiting on a prison sentence. And Future said the “best thing I ever did was fall out of love”—five projects and a “March Madness” later, it looks like he was right. Although some of the most transcendent rap openly embraces the blues, sometimes depression and hip-hop can seem at odds. A big part of this divide comes from the fact that hip-hop is a genre that’s competitive and fueled by machismo. Combined with the brutal capitalism of the music business, hip-hop can be an environment where clinical depression or other mental health issues are brushed off as weaknesses. And you can’t have any weaknesses when you’re calling yourself a boss or a don.

I Saw Carrie Fisher Speak About Mental Illness, Spirituality and Star Wars

20 Apr 2016
Written by Maddy Myers / The Mary Sue

Last night, I watched Carrie Fisher receive the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from Harvard’s Humanist Hub. The event was … not what I expected. I loved it. But it was also completely bizarre. Let me take you on this journey. I found out about the event at the last minute yesterday from a friend; I had never heard about Harvard’s Humanist Hub before, but they give out this award to celebrities who’ve been open about being atheist or agnostic. Harvard’s event description made the event sound like it would be a relatively understated affair, and that Fisher would most likely discuss her own relationship with spirituality, and well as her own perspectives on mental illness and perhaps her career in Hollywood a bit. That is indeed what Carrie Fisher talked about once she took the stage, but before that point, the event was an emotional whirlwind of Star Wars fandom. As soon as I got to the Memorial Church, I saw multiple lines stretching out the front door, down the steps, and across the sidewalk. Amidst those lines, I saw a Rey cosplayer swirling a lightsaber. Meanwhile, a group of three other cosplayers–Leia, Han Solo, and Chewie–stood on the front steps, posing for pictures. All of these cosplayers were part of the 501st Legion, which is a group of professional Star Wars cosplayers who often get tapped for promotional Star Wars events. I soon saw that there were also several Storm Troopers, a Darth Vader, and many other 501st official cosplayers in attendance. There were also multiple cosplayers who weren’t there in a professional capacity, but were there simply to express their Star Warsfandom among like-minded folks. I didn’t expect any of this, because this event isn’t, y’know, an official Star Wars event. But I guess any event that Carrie Fisher does might become a Star Wars event. And it didn’t just stop at cosplay! When I got inside, I saw that the entire Harvard Pops orchestra had set up in the front of the church, with the brass section in the balcony. I could tell from their warm-up that they were going to play a Star Wars song.

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Pet Therapy in Recovery

19 Apr 2016
Written by Holistic Recovery Center / Holistic Recovery Center

Pet therapy may include several kinds of therapies involving animals, from animal-assisted therapy to animal-assisted activities. Animal-assisted therapy tends to use dogs or other animals to help people recover from health problems or to cope with mental stresses. Animal-assisted activities allow individuals to interact with animals. These animals may provide comfort during the activity or be used to provide interaction. Animal-assisted therapies work in several ways. For instance, if you attend your drug addiction programand are asked if you want to be part of the program, you can say yes and learn more. If everything is agreeable to you, you’ll seen have an assistance animal, whether it’s a horse, dog, cat, or other animal, come to you. In some cases, the animal stays for longer, but most visits are between 10 to 15 minutes. You can interact with the animal and talk to the handler. Typically, this improves a person’s mood, which is helpful to the healing process.

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