Record Reveals Substance Abuse And Mental Illness Issue Information In Each US State

A new report providing state-by-state analyses of substance abuse and mental illness patterns reveals that despite broad variations amongst the states inside the sorts and levels of behavioral health problems they encounter -- every state suffers from these difficulties. As an example, amongst those aged 12 and older, Iowa had less than a single third the current illicit drug use rate of Rhode Island (4.1 % vs. 13.3 percent) - yet Iowa's population aged 12 and older was among the group of states with the nation's highest levels of individuals participating in binge drinking in the past month (27.2 %).

The statement gives talk about public health authorities and service providers with useful details on a wide range of substance use and mental illness issues affecting their states. The report is component of SAMHSA's strategic initiative on information, outcomes, and quality - an effort to inform policy makers and support providers on the nature and scope of behavioral health concerns.

Among the report's other notable findings:

• Cigarette use by adolescents has decreased in 35 states since 2002 -- no increases in cigarette smoking were observed in any state during this period.
• Minnesota had the nation's highest rate of past year dependence on, or abuse of, alcohol among those age 12 or older (10 percent), while Kentucky had the lowest (5.7 percent).
• Nine of the ten states having the highest levels of past month illicit drug use among persons age 12 or older also had the highest levels of past month marijuana use (in alphabetical order -- Alaska, Colorado, District of Columbia, Montana, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington).
• Thirteen states showed significant declines in past year cocaine use among persons age 12 or older from 2006-2007 (in alphabetical order -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming).
• Wyoming had the nation's highest rate of adolescents aged 12 to 17 experiencing a major depressive episode in the past year (10.0 percent) while Maryland had the lowest (7.0 percent).

"This report provides valuable insight into the exact nature and scope of the behavioral health problems affecting each state, and should help state public health authorities determine the most effective ways of addressing them," said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde, J.D. "These findings remind us that reducing the impact of substance abuse and mental illness is a national challenge and as we work to reform health care behavioral health services are part of the solution in every state."

The report was developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration based on the 2007 and 2008 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Using data drawn from interviews with 136,606 persons from throughout the country the report provides a state-by-state breakdown along 22 different measures of substance abuse and mental health problems including illicit drug use, binge drinking, alcohol and illicit drug dependence, tobacco use, and major depressive episode. The full report is available online at http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k8state/toc.cfm.

taken from:

Mental Health Care Costs Higher

A new report finds mental health care costs are exploding, according to U.S. News & World Report.

"U.S. spending on mental illness is soaring at a faster pace than spending on any other health care category, new government data released Wednesday shows. The cost of treating mental disorders rose sharply between 1996 and 2006, from $35 billion (in 2006 dollars) to almost $58 billion, according to the report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. At the same time, the report showed, the number of Americans who sought treatment for depression, bipolar disorder and other mental health woes almost doubled, from 19 million to 36 million. The new statistics come on the heels of a study, released Monday, that found antidepressant use among U.S. residents almost doubled between a similar time frame, 1996 and 2005" (8/5).

This information was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at kaiserhealthnews.org.

© Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved. (MedicalNewsToday)

American Soldiers Mental Toughness Training

American soldiers are to undergo training in mental toughness or "resiliency" as part of the Army's larger "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness" program, that aims to ensure troops' mental toughness matches their physical toughness.


According to a bulletin posted on 19 August, the first part of the program has already started: some 100 unit leaders and drill sergeants have just completed the first of two classes in learning to teach "master resilience training" to their units. The classes are taught at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where Martin Seligman, renowned for his work on optimism and positive thinking, heads the Positive Psychology Center.

According to an AFP news agency report, the classes draw on over 20 years of Seligman's research and teach soldiers how to change the way they think learn to apply optimism to problems and avoid getting trapped in self-defeating thoughts.

Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum, director of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness told the press that the solider trainers are:

"Learning all the different thinking skills, and how to impart them to other people."

She said resiliency training will help soldiers put worries about money, relationships, health and even tragedy on the battlefield into perspective.

Another part of the program is self-guided learning, and soldiers will also undergo online assessments during the basic training and then every two years afterwards.

Mental fitness is like physical fitness: life-long and ongoing, said Cornum.

"Resilience is a way of thinking -- you apply optimistic thinking to a problem," said Cornum. "It teaches you to remember that problems are temporary, that they are local," said Cornum explaining that while some people are naturally resistant thinkers, others can become so with training.

Cornum said every platoon sergeant and drill sergeant will undergo the master training.

"It's tools, thinking tools, how not to fall into thinking traps or catastrophic thinking," said Cornum.

Summarized from "American Soldiers To Undergo Mental Toughness Training"
by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today

1 In 4 Australian Kid Have A Parent With A Mental Illness

Almost a quarter of Australian children with one parent with mental illness, in the light of new studies, published in the January issue of the Psychiatric Bulletin.

Of these, just over 1% (approximately 60,000 children) have one parent who has a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, depression or manic depression.

The prevalence of mental disorders in the Australian parent families was developed by a group of scientists from Australia, Charles Sturt University and Latrobe University.

Until now, There are some estimates of the number of children in families suffering from mental illness of parents in Australia. Instead, the policy that the data from North and South America, Australia or small budget.

In this study, researchers used three methods to assess the prevalence of mental illness of their parents. First, the figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics study of mental health in the family characteristics of studies, assessment of the population.

According to this assessment, 23.3% of all children in Germany, have parents with a substance which is not a mental illness. A smaller proportion - 1.3% - whose father is severe mental illness.

The second approach has a record of all users of mental health in the state of Victoria in the period from 2003 to 2004 to 38,455 people in total. This suggests that 7829 users (20.4%) had children.

In the latter approach, the survey population of about 700 8 - 12 years, children in three Australian states. Of these, 14.4% reported that at least one parent with mental illness.

Writing in the Psychiatric Bulletin, the authors of the study, said: "Unfortunately, mental illness, but the parents have no guarantee of bad outcomes for children, parents, most with severe disabilities were less sensitive and responsible parenting, mental illness is much higher than that of progeny, insecure children's institutions, and lower quality of the child's parents relations.

"The estimates nearly 60,000 children, parents with serious mental illness in Australia is likely to be very precise in these figures are extrapolated to the conditions of Australia's 14,403 children, the parents of Victoria with severe mental illness. That said, large numbers of children who may be under threat, because their parents have a serious mental illness. "

The authors believe that their new estimates provide important information for policy development and mental health programs. She said: "This test provides information to governments and organizations to promote the mental health of children, many of whom could be considered living in families with a high risk."

www.rcpsych.ac.uk

Abortion And Miscarriage Bring Psychiatric Risk

Drug and alcohol abuse and mental disorders are more common among women who had an abortion or miscarriage, a study by the University of Queensland has found.

Aspirant Kaeleen Dingle are young women who lost their pregnancies are more prone to depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse as women who have never been pregnant.

Mrs Dingle, said that his study on the extension of the latest data, which were later abortion is associated with mental disorders seek errors in the same danger.

"Our findings suggest that this increased risk of psychiatric problems in some women after an abortion may be associated with pregnancy loss rather than caused by the experience of having an induced abortion," she said.

"We found that young women having a miscarriage or an abortion were three times more likely to experience a drug or alcohol problem during their lifetime."

Mrs Dingle said the study on the effects for workers who can contribute more advice and support to women who lost a pregnancy.

"Also, health professionals involved in the care of young women with mental health problems need to take good pregnancy histories, as young women can have complex pregnancy histories involving births, miscarriages and abortions," she said.

Ms. Dingle PhD project is examining the results of joint mental health of young adulthood than their peers because of the circumstances, such as early education, early life in the upbringing of children and the principles of independent living.

His study used data from a large Brisbane based cohort study of birth, in 1981 and then a group of mothers and their children under the age of 21 years.

The University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia
http://www.uq.edu.au/

Serious mental illness associated with increased risk of stillbirth and neonatal mortality

Mothers with severe mental illness are more likely to have children who are born dead or die within the first few months of studies published before the pressure in the Archives of disease in childhood (the fetus and newborn Edition). But the link between the cause of death and the death of a newborn will depend on the nature of mental illness of the mother, research shows.


Researchers studied the 1.45 million births and 7021 deaths over 25 years from 1973 to 1998 in Denmark to investigate links with severe mental illness.

Nevertheless, the chances of neonatal deaths and deaths from all causes were significantly higher in children whose mothers had been hospitalized for mental illness at any time prior to the birth of his son, that the mother has never acknowledged.

In total, 188 mothers of children died before birth were admitted primarily for schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, mood (affective) disorders such as manic depressive (bipolar disorder), and dependence on drugs or alcohol.

The risk of death from complications during childbirth were more than twice as high among mothers with drug or alcohol addiction.

Women with affective disorders are also more than twice higher than the birth of a child with congenital abnormalities, that he was killed.

Among the 6,646 children who died in the first months of life, 201 were born by mothers who had been hospitalized for mental illness at some time in their lives.

Women with schizophrenia are twice as likely that the baby died as a result of congenital anomaly shortly after childbirth compared with the general population.

Alcohol / drug abuse and emotional disorders were associated with doubling the risk of newborn death.

But for most causes of death, the risk of death or the death of a newborn is not for women with schizophrenia than for women with severe mental illness.

These results indicate that factors other than mental disorders is likely to be involved, the authors explain.

They may include a way of life, such as smoking and poor nutrition, poverty and lack of access to prenatal care, improving the chances of complications during childbirth, premature birth and low birth weight children.

Click here to view the paper in full: http://press.psprings.co.uk/fnn/november/fn135459.pdf

British Medical Journal
BMA House
Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9JP
http://group.bmj.com/

Health Commission bar for mental health service users, Britain

With regard to the annual review of health, Lisa Rodriguez, president of the Network for Mental Health NHS Confederation, as well as the executive director of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said:

"This is the second year running that NHS mental health trusts have been rated as one of the best performing parts of the NHS, the strong performance in the areas of quality and the effective management of resources is particularly pleasing.

"As a mental health trust chief executive myself, I know how hard our staff have worked not only to offer excellent services, but also to provide the evidence for doing so.

"Members of the network will continue to work with the Health commission and its successor the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to develop indicators which more effectively measure outcomes for service users."

"Mental health services are coming increasingly under the public spotlight, and we welcome more scrutiny. We are not complacent, and we know that improvements must continue. The public should be reassured that mental health services are getting better year on year. There is no health without mental health."

Mental Health Network represents the majority of mental health trusts. It was the spring of 2007, the voice of NHS service providers in mental health.

NHS Confederation represents more than 95% of organizations that are members of the NHS. Its members are the most acute NHS trusts, ambulance trusts, the Fund hopes, mental health trusts, primary care trusts, special health authorities and strategic health authorities in England and hopes that local health authorities in Wales, as well as medical and social services trusts and boards in Northern Ireland.

source : NHS Confederation [www.nhsconfed.org]

People with severe mental illnesses are faced with a higher prevalence of obesity

Obesity is a crisis of public health in general, however, overweight and obesity problem is also more likely among people with severe mental illness, according to a new report, which was released on October 3, 2008 National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD).

Conclusions and recommendations of the report, in the 22 th September issue of Mental Health Weekly, the magazine first major deviation from the media to inform the public of this new technical report.


NASMHPD calls crisis "epidemic epidemic" and say that I hope that the new report, we are on the way to improve the system, care and treatment for people, SMI.

Specific recommendations, if implemented, should significantly reduce weight and improve overall health, SMI, after NASMHPD. "This report can be viewed as a call for mobilization of additional prevention and intervention strategies for people with SMI, which are struggling with problems of obesity," said Robert W. Glover, Ph.D., executive director of NASMHPD.

The report also notes that some drugs can cause weight gain for people with SMI, and notes that medicines that are more neutral weight should be considered by doctors. "The medical intervention is necessary to avoid the problems associated with the drug can lead to obesity and behavior, counseling and treatment, drugs for weight loss, and surgery," said Joseph Parks, MD, President of directors NASMHPD Medical Council and medical director of Missouri Department of Mental Health. The report, obesity and prevention strategies for persons with severe mental illness, 15 in a series of technical reports. Two years ago, NASMHPD published its report, morbidity and mortality among persons with severe mental disorders, which found that people with SMI die 25 years earlier than the general population.

In its new report, NASMHPD has a number of recommendations at national, state and local level. These recommendations include the implementation of a national obesity surveillance and monitoring systems for people with SMI and promotion opportunities in health care, including specialists in pairs to teach the life, health for families, individuals and the elderly.

Mental Health Weekly contains information on trends in business, government funding and political matters, litigation and much more. The publication is a reliable source for community mental health program directors, administrators of hospitals and other mental health profession.

source : John Wiley & Sons

After Hurricane enhance the credibility of the efforts of mental disorders

This is a storm that people usually do not speak - of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder that strikes after a catastrophic experience. Post-traumatic mental conditions are one of many mental disorders, which affect about 57.7 million Americans in a year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which occurs Improving Mental Health Week, 5-11 October 2008. Organizations, including Allsup, that people across the country Social Security disability benefits, will help raise awareness about mental illness and support for individuals and their families.

Anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic disorder and phobias, more than 40 million U.S. reports. One of the five veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (about 300,000 soldiers) will experience major depression or post-traumatic stress when they return home. Other types of mental disorders also affect millions of people, including 5.7 million bipolar disorder and 2 / 4 million people who have schizophrenia.

"People with mental disabilities are often among the most vulnerable in our society. Unfortunately, too often forgotten in times of natural disasters," said the executive director of NAMI Michael J. Fitzpatrick, recently announced the creation of a U.S. Hurricane Relief Fund to individuals and families In Gustav hurricanes and Ike.

U.S. makes a number of resources and support through its website, including:

• On Drugs: to find information about drugs, dose and processing of information.


• State and local NaMiS: Get information for local associations from state to state leadership.


• Support Program: to find support and build on the basis of point-to-point connections, family and care proposals.
  

One of the most important facts about mental illness is that two-thirds of people with the condition for which there is no cure. During Mental Health Awareness-week, the Association stresses the theme "Building Community. Taking Action".

Mental illness can affect anyone at any time, and good for people and their families, realized that mental health is part of the world's well-being and health.

Allsup notes Mental Health Enhancing Week Free posters for hospitals, clinics and other groups calling Karen Hercules-Doerr at (800) 854-1418, ext. 5770th

source : National Alliance on Mental Illness

Americans show little tolerance for mental illness, despite the growing confidence in the genetic causes

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania and professor of sociology Jason Schnittke shows that while most Americans believe that genetic causes of mental illness, the state is no longer tolerant of mentally ill than 10 years.

The study, published online in the journal Social Science and Medicine 2006, a copy of 1996 General Social Survey module psyche, for trends in religion in public about mental illness in the United States, in particular on public support for genetic reasons.

Before medical sociology studies show that public confidence about mental illness reflect the dominant treatment of mental disorders, the changing nature of media representations of mental illness and wisdom prevailing in the field of science and medicine.


Schnittke study, "insecurity revolution: Why is the emergence of a genetic model of mental illness no more tolerance", attempts to treat major tolerant attitude towards the mentally ill did not increase along with the growing popularity of biomedical look at its causes. His research finds that the various arguments are indeed becoming increasingly popular, but very different associations in connection with mental disorders are treated.

"In the case of schizophrenia, associated with genetic arguments about the violence," said Schnittke. "Indeed, nothing is explained schizophrenia genes impute bad character - how Americans see people with schizophrenia as" bad "in some significant way, and therefore likely to be violent. But if this depression, genetics arguments very different shades: they have relevant to social acceptability. If anyone imagine that depression genetic problems, the situation seems more genuine and less guilty: it is in their genes, not weak, it must take for them. "

Schnittke The study also shows that the arguments related to genetic treatment to recommend, but not relevant to the risk of improvement.

"While the stigmatization of people with mental illness do not decline in the proportion of treatment of psychiatric disorders has increased," wrote Schnittke. "Culture around the treatment of mental illness becomes focused and with direct access to consumer advertising of psychiatric drugs currently one of the pillars of popular media."

After Schnittke research, genetic arguments, in fact, increase state support for medical treatment, although they are not clearly related to improving the overall level of tolerance. We explain tolerance with regard to social distance: the reluctance to live next to the mentally ill, group homes for mentally ill people in the area to spend the night socializing with a mental patient, working in close contact with that person at work, friendship with someone with mental illness or mental illness marry within the family.

source : http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/119823.php