Mental Health Care in Haiti

In Haiti, Mental Health System is in Collapse

"As disasters often do in poor countries, Haiti’s earthquake has exposed the extreme inadequacies of its mental health services just at the moment when they are most needed. Appalled by the Mars and Kline Psychiatric Center, the country’s only hospital for acute mental illness, foreign psychiatrists here have vowed to help the Haitian government create a mental health care system that is more than just an underfinanced institution in the capital city." (NY Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/world/americas/20haiti.html?pagewanted=1&ref=health

Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers

This sounds promising and way overdue!

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: August 17, 2009

Here's a blurb: "The Army plans to require that all 1.1 million of its soldiers take intensive training in emotional resiliency, military officials say.

The training, the first of its kind in the military, is meant to improve performance in combat and head off the mental health problems, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, that plague about one-fifth of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Active-duty soldiers, reservists and members of the National Guard will receive the training, which will also be available to their family members and to civilian employees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/health/18psych.html?_r=1&ref=health

Schizophrenia research

July 1, 2009, 5:10 pm
"Hoopla, and Disappointment, in Schizophrenia Research"
By Nicholas Wade

There's still a long way to go in schizophrenia research:

"The principal news from the three studies is that schizophrenia is caused by a very large number of errant genes, not a manageable and meaningful handful . . . Schizophrenia too seems to be not a single disease, but the end point of 10,000 different disruptions to the delicate architecture of the human brain."

A New Approach to Orphanages

“Fragile Tanzanian Orphans Get Help After Mothers Die”—New York Times
By Denise Grady
Photographed by Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
Published: June 24, 2009


This is a great article on efforts focused on the surviving children of dead mothers in Berega, Tanzania. This article provides an example that there are other ways of offering child services that can be effective and healthy aside from traditional orphanages.


“ . . . Most of their mothers died giving birth or soon after — something that, in poor countries, leaves newborns at great risk of dying, too. The children are here just temporarily, to get a start in life so they can return to their villages and their extended families when they are 2 or 3 years old, well past the fragile days of infancy and big enough to digest cow’s milk and eat regular food.

And, in an innovative program designed to meet the infants’ emotional as well as physical needs, many have teenage girls from their extended families living with them at the orphanage . . . “

www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/world/africa/25orphan.html?_r=1&ref=health

An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread

An Emotional Hair Trigger, Often Misread--New York Times

By Jane Brody

Published: June 15, 2009

Here's a blurb from the article: "Rather, affected individuals seem to be born with a quick and unduly sensitive emotional trigger. The condition appears to have both genetic and environmental underpinnings. Brain studies have indicated that the emotional center of the nervous system — the amygdala — may be overly reactive, while the part that reins in emotional reactions may be underactive."

I found this to be a really interesting article about the enigma that is Borderline Personality Disorder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/health/16brod.html?ref=health

Report on Gene for Depression Is Now Faulted

"Report on Gene for Depression Is Now Faulted" --New York Times

By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: June 16, 2009

The nature vs. nurture debate continues.

Here's a snippet from the article: "One of the most celebrated findings in modern psychiatry — that a single gene helps determine one’s risk of depression in response to a divorce, a lost job or another serious reversal — has not held up to scientific scrutiny, researchers reported Tuesday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/science/17depress.html?ref=science

A testament to self care . . .

Do Everybody a Favor: Take a Sick Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/health/12case.html?ref=health

Article: After Abuse, Changes in the Brain

After Abuse, Changes in the Brain, by Benedict Carey.

Here's a snipet and the link to the entire article is below:

"The researchers found that the genes that code for these receptors were about 40 percent less active in people who had been abused as children than in those who had not. The scientists found the same striking differences between the abused group and the brains of 12 control subjects, who had not been abused and who died from causes other than suicide. “It is good evidence that the same systems are at work in humans that we have seen in other animals,” said Patrick McGowan, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Meaney’s lab at McGill and the lead author of the study."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/health/research/24abuse.html?ref=research

Article: In Turnabout, Children Take Caregiver Role

Here's an article from the NY Times about children taking on the role as caregiver.

Below is a portion from the article:

"Across the country, children are providing care for sick parents or grandparents — lifting frail bodies off beds or toilets, managing medication, washing, feeding, dressing, talking with doctors. Schools, social service agencies and health providers are often unaware of those responsibilities because families members may be too embarrassed, or stoic.

Some children develop maturity and self-esteem. But others grow anxious, depressed or angry, sacrifice social and extracurricular activities and miss — or quit — school."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/health/23care.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Article: hildren in the Mental Health Void

This article by Judith Warner, Children in the Mental Health Void, is an interesting look at our country's failing mental health care system.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/is-there-no-place-on-earth/

Check it out.

Article: Enlisting the Aid of Hairstylists as Sentinels for Domestic Abuse

I thought this was a great article. Stylists are being taught how to recognize the signs of domestic abuse and how to refer their clients for help. This seems like such a smart and effective way of reaching women who really need help!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/nyregion/20salons.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=domestic%20violence%20and%20hair&st=cse

Article: Suing to Raise a Payment of Last Resort

Interesting article from nytimes.com regarding NYS welfare.

Here's a blurb:

New York State has not raised its basic payment for people on welfare since 1989, forcing many recipients to skip meals, wear hand-me-downs and spend many days confined to their homes because they lack the $4 needed for a subway trip, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday.

For the entire article, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/nyregion/09welfare.html?pagewanted=1&ref=nyregion

Article: Mental Health in Iraq

This is an interesting story on the state of mental health services in Iraq:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/10/28/iraq.mental.health/index.html#cnnSTCText

Doctors work to rescue patients in Iraq's mental health system

• Patients crowd filthy rooms at Iraq's sole facility for treating severe mental disorders
  
• Doctor says the mentally ill men and women have nowhere else to go
  
• But health workers hope change for the better will come

By Phil Black
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The man sits gently rocking on the bed, one hand clutching a cloth, the other hiding his face from view.

Few patients ever leave Al Rashad hospital, doctors say.

He doesn't look up and he doesn't want to talk. His body language screams despair.

Across the tiled room, other men are sitting on thin, filthy mattresses atop metal bed frames.

"Our life is miserable. It is dirty. The food is bad. Life is very bad here," says one of them, Abu Ismaeil. "I'm always hungry. I do not want to lie. Shame on me if I lie."

Yet, in Iraq, these are some of the luckier ones, and even Abu Ismaeil agrees. Without the hospital. "I would commit suicide," he said.

Their clothes and surroundings may be drab, but these mentally ill people are fortunate to be in Al Rashad Hospital, Iraq's only treatment facility for severe psychiatric disorders.

More than 1,000 patients, most of them suffering chronic schizophrenia, call the bleak buildings home.

Through their individual stories, there is one overwhelmingly common theme -- abandonment. In a country where life is difficult for the healthy, the mentally ill are seen to bring shame and greater hardship to families.

Dr. Raghad Issa Sarsam, a psychiatrist, says most of his patients have been rejected by their loved ones. Without the hospital, they would be wandering outside, begging, he said.

"They have no place else to stay but here," he said. "Otherwise, they would be on the streets, and I think that would be inhuman."

But once in the hospital, few ever go home again.

Former English teacher Um Ibrahim has not seen her husband and children in three years, since being admitted.

"I want to go to my family," she said in the women's ward.

But they don't want her, and that is common among the patients, Sarsam said.

"They are already rejected by their families because of their chronic illness. They don't want them anymore, even if they become a bit better."

Doctors at Al Rashad Hospital say the numbers of people needing help will continue to grow because of the nationwide trauma suffered during and since the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Some hope that Iraq's health minister, Salih al-Hasnawi, himself a psychiatrist, might begin to effect change.

The doctors are right to have some cause for optimism, according to Dr. Mohammed Al-Uzri, an Iraqi-born psychiatrist now based in Leicester, England, who was recently with al-Hasnawi in Baghdad for Iraq's third National Conference on Mental Health that agreed on five themes to make improvements.

"There is so much need, you can make a huge difference without much of a budget. We have huge human resources [in Iraq] and a huge amount of resilience," said Al-Uzri, who chairs a subcommittee on Iraq for Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Al-Uzri acknowledged the huge challenges that lie ahead for the mental health service and broader health system, which suffered through decades of neglect in the Hussein era and continues to do so amid the war. While he said Iraq did not have to start from scratch, as it had a history of good health care, he agreed that organizing care for the mentally ill remains rare right now.

"Mental health services are providing for a small part of the population. [Most needs] are being met -- or unmet -- by whatever else is available. Families are taking the burden of that."

But there is the will to change things, said Al-Uzri, who was able to meet health workers at this month's conference, which was held for the first time inside Iraq -- itself a visible sign of progress.

And the need for mental health care is likely just to grow and grow, even as Iraq becomes more peaceful, Al-Uzri said.

"We are beginning to see, with the security improving, all kinds of services are needed, " he said.

"A year ago, all people worried about was staying alive and having something to eat. Now, it's becoming more and more involved."