


Archive for January, 2011
 
Article Date: 17 Sep 2010 – 6:00 PDT
A new series of accessible information leaflets for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities is now available on the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) website.
The leaflets have been produced by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust in association with the RCPsych’s Faculty of the Psychiatry of Learning Disability.
There are 30 leaflets in the series. Some leaflets provide general information on different mental health problems: anxiety disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, challenging behaviour, dementia, epilepsy and psychosis. Others provide specific information on different types of medications for dementia, depression, and psychosis and bipolar disorder.
Read in Full:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/201557.php
 
Article Date: 17 Sep 2010 – 2:00 PDT
Some people who use community mental health services in England are still not getting the care and support that fully meets their needs, according to a survey published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The CQC survey captures the views of more than 17,000 people aged 16 and over who had contact with specialist community mental health services between July and September last year.
They had been referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic, local community mental health team or other community-based service. The survey covered 66 NHS trusts.
People were generally very positive about the health and social care workers they had seen most recently for their mental health condition. The vast majority said workers listened carefully to them, gave them enough time for discussion and took their views into account. Also, most people said they were treated with respect and dignity and had trust and confidence in their health or social care worker.
But many reported that they had not been involved as much as they would have liked in some aspects of their care. Significant numbers of people said they would have liked more explanation of, or more say in, their treatment and support, such as their medication or care planning. Nearly half of those surveyed did not know who to contact in a crisis outside normal office hours. Of those who said they wanted some form of talking therapy, 73% had received it but 27% had not.
Read in Full:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/201447.php
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 17, 2010Â
Brain activity during times of wakefulness affects sleep and sleep quality. While researchers have been aware of this for some time, a clear understanding of how the mechanisms triggering sleep occur has remained largely unknown.
Now, a recent study has uncovered valuable insight into how the changeover from wakefulness to sleep occurs. This discovery potentially paves the way for a host of breakthroughs that could affect everything from sleeping aids to treatments for stroke and brain injury.
Led by James Krueger, a neuroscientist at Washington State University (WSU), the findings were recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and represent the most significant discovery of Krueger’s 36-year career focused on sleep research.
The study centered on a hypothesis that the major energy currency of the cell — ATP (adenosinetriphosphate) — is a key trigger for brain activity leading up to sleep. Specifically, researchers followed the method behind how ATP assists in the release of cytokines, the regulatory proteins for sleep.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/17/how-brain-activity-is-linked-to-sleep/18223.html
 
- Ian Holroyd – NORTH OAKVILLE TODAY
- Sep 16, 2010
Colin Brennan needs North Oakville’s help to win singing contest
NORTH OAKVILLE TODAY – Move over Justin Bieber. Like Stratford, North Oakville has its own child singing sensation.
Like Bieber, Colin Brennan has been on television, is featured in You Tube videos and knows his way around a recording studio.
The similarities end there. Colin is only 8 years old and has autism.
His dad Gord said that Colin started singing when he was 3, before he even learned how to talk.
“By 4 he was singing full songs. I have VHS of him when he was 4 singing the Care Bears songs completely,†said the proud father. “We were astounded. Where was this coming from?
“He sings all the time now.â€
Despite Colin’s youth and his challenges, he has already embarked on a promising singing career.
He was recently chosen as a top ten finalist in the TeleToon Total Drama World Tour Karaoke Contest.
“I knew that he was good but I’m biased. So of course you always think your kid is good even if they can’t sing,†said Gord, of his son making the finals. “But I was shocked. I was like, ‘that’s cool.’â€
In this competition, kids were given the opportunity to be in their own music video and sing the theme song of the popular cartoon, Total Drama Island. The finalists’ videos have been posted on TeleToon’s website and were also aired on television.
Colin now needs North Oakville’s help to win.
Most singing competitions are decided by the public’s votes and this one is no different. Cast your vote for Colin’s video by visiting www.teletoon.com and clicking on the Total Drama World Tour icon.
“It might show me and it might say ‘and the winner is Colin Brennan, sent in from Oakville,†said Colin, putting his hands over his head.
Voting runs until this Sunday at midnight and people can vote for Colin once a day. The winner is announced on Thursday, September 30.
The grand prize is $5,000 and if he wins, Colin wants to use the money to fly to Orlando, Florida and visit the new Universal Studios Harry Potter Theme Park.
Read in Full:Â http://www.insidehalton.com/news/article/874692–autism-won-t-stop-dreams-coming-true
 
It’s a question that looms for many parents of children with autism: What will happen to my child, after I’m gone?
More than 500,000 people with autism will reach adulthood in the coming decades.
John Donvan and Caren Zucker found Donald Triplett, now 77, the first person ever diagnosed with autism. His happy, independent life provides insight as to how best create fulfilling later years for adults with autism.
Donvan and Zucker wrote about Triplett’s life for The Atlantic, “Autism’s First Child.”
Known as “Donald T.” in medical literature, Triplett is the first person described in the first article in the U.S. as having autism. His doctor, Leo Kanner, wrote about him in an article in The Nervous Child, a publication that no longer exists, explains Donvan.
Peter Gerhardt, one of the experts Donvan and Zucker spoke with, is the former president of the Organization for Autism Research. He now directs the Upper School at the McCarton School in New York, a program for autistic students.
Gerhardt believes there are skills children diagnosed with autism can learn that will help them grow into independent adults. But he also believes society as a whole can learn how to react to autistic adults better.
Source(Includes Audio 47mins 3sec):Â http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129885995&ft=1&f=5
 
Article Date: 16 Sep 2010 – 7:00 PDT
In a very important development concerning soldier’s mental health and the armed forces of the United Kingdom, the MoD (UK Ministry of Defense) has elected to transfer military personnel patient care to the private sector. This major change in policy will not only improve quality of care for the military, but also boost the National Health Service’s (NHS) during an extremely weak global and national medical economy.
Roughly 300 military patients require admission into a mental health facility at this time. Between 2003 and 2009, those needing psychiatric assistance were admitted into private or independent sector outlets as the last mental health military facility shut down in 2003.
Read in Full:Â http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/201422.php
“Service personnel move to NHS mental health inpatient care”
Martin Deahl
The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 16 September 2010
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61190-7
 
According to positive psychologists, the words ‘thank you‘ are no longer just good manners, they are also beneficial to the self.
To take the best known examples, studies have suggested that being grateful can improve well-being, physical health, can strengthen social relationships, produce positive emotional states and help us cope with stressful times in our lives.
But we also say thank you because we want the other person to know we value what they’ve done for us and, maybe, encourage them to help us again in the future.
It’s this aspect of gratitude that Adam M. Grant and Francesco Gino examine in a series of new studies published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Grant & Gino, 2010).
They wanted to see what effect gratitude has on the person who is being thanked. Does it motivate and, if so, is it just by making people feel good, or is it more than that?
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/15/why-thank-you-is-more-than-just-good-manners/
 
Even as I love the autumn season, it is full of anxiety for me.
I start to mourn the ending of summer when I hear the cicadas grow louder the last two weeks of August and when I feel the crispness in the air at that time, which brings less sunlight and longer nights. Then the back-to-school craze: buying shoes, supplies, backpacks, etc. and trying to catch up on the homework we didn’t do during June and July. By the time I make it to the parent-teacher conferences in early September, when I hear about all the things I’m supposed to be doing with the kids, I’m well into panic mode.
The other day, my therapist and I talked about a few coping exercises to keep my anxiety from disabling me this time of year.
1. Pick a sound or object to be your Xanax.
My therapist looks up to the clouds. They calm her down in traffic or whenever she feels anxious. For me it’s the water. I don’t now if it’s because I’m a Pisces (fish), but the water has always calmed me down in the same way as Xanax, and since I don’t take the latter (as a recovering alcoholic, I try to stay away from sedatives), I need to rely on the former. So I just downloaded some “ocean waves†that I can listen to on my iPod when I feel that familiar knot in my stomach.
2. Repeat: “I am good enough.â€
My therapist reminded me this morning that even if I don’t meet other people’s standards or my own, I am good enough for God. And that’s all that really matters. So whenever I feel the pinch of anxiety when I don’t have time to call back a friend or send a response to an email or write the blog post that I said I’d write, I should remind myself that I am good enough in the eyes of God.
3. Take it one minute at a time.
One cognitive adjustment that helps relieve anxiety is reminding myself that I don’t have to think about 2:45 pm when I pick up the kids from school and how I will be able to cope with the noise and chaos when I’m feeling this way, or about the boundary issue I have with a friend–whether or not I’m strong enough to continue putting myself first in that relationship. All I have to worry about is the very second before me. If I am successful at breaking my time down that way, I usually discover that everything is fine for the moment.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/16/5-ways-to-manage-fall-anxiety/
 
NEW YORK – Once again, Comedy Central has gone too far and lined up too many stars.
Stephen Colbert, Larry David, Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais and Sarah Silverman are just a few of the names expected for this year’s “Night Of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert For Autism Education,” the network said Thursday.
The bicoastal benefit will consist of a comedy concert taped at New York’s Beacon Theatre. Steve Carell, Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, Joel McHale, John Oliver, Chris Rock and Triumph The Insult Comic Dog are among those on the bill, with soul-funk ensemble Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings serving as the house band.

Ricky Gervais
That event will be intercut with live appearances and a celebrity phone bank originating from Los Angeles. Rob Coddry, Bryan Cranston, Jimmy Kimmel, Jim Parsons, Sofia Vergara and Rainn Wilson will be some of the stars on hand taking calls from donors.
Jon Stewart will host the two-hour broadcast, which airs Oct. 21.
The biennial “Too Many Stars” special is aimed at raising money to help ease the shortage of schools and education programs for autistic children and adults. In past years, nearly $7 million was raised, Comedy Central said.
Comedy Central is owned by Viacom.
Online:
Source:Â http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/tv/103057674.html
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SHAWN DOHERTY | The Capital Times
Posted: Tuesday, September 14, 2010
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It is 8:30 on a crisp September morning, the start of a busy day for preschoolers at the Waisman Center’s Early Childhood Program, a nationally renowned laboratory school.
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At a piano in the gym, a teacher holds a 4-year-old named Michael in her lap and helps him tap out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” She speaks to him using both sign language and a singsong voice. Several other boys driving toy cars swerve around another teacher doing duty as traffic cop. A student teacher is coloring at a table with students. In a corner of the gym, two girls are playing house. “This is your bed, Baby Kitty. Go to sleep right NOW!” one of them says. A tiny child with big brown eyes, named Caroline, curls up on a mat and pretends to sleep.
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Michael, distracted by the noisy traffic behind him, wriggles out of Kerri Lynch’s lap and runs up to the boys in cars, making guttural sounds. The boys ignore him and continue to whiz past. Lynch waves down an especially energetic driver in a red T-shirt who has snagged the school’s popular police car. “Michael is talking to you,” she says, holding Michael, who is clearly becoming frustrated. She puts Michael’s face between her hands gently so that he makes eye contact with the other child and encourages him to try to speak again. The other boy listens carefully as the teacher translates: “Michael is wondering when he can have a turn?”
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The boy in the red T-shirt grins, holds up his hand to sign five minutes and offers a verbal promise. “In five minutes!” he says, before taking off again in the car.
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Five minutes later, with some prodding from Lynch, the driver gets out of the car and stands next to it, hollering. “It’s your turn, Michael!” he shouts several times. “It’s your turn!” Michael, now pretending to put gas in another car on the other side of the room, is oblivious. “I don’t think he can hear you,” the teacher says. “You’ll have to come over here.” Again, she facilitates the conversation. “Say thank you!” she tells Michael, who happily climbs into the vehicle.
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When it is time to clean up and Michael is asked to put away the car, he lies down on a mat, confused, and puts his hands over his ears. Before Lynch needs to intervene, a classmate rushes to the rescue. “I’ll park it for him!” she says, putting the car away.
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The kindness and patience shown by these preschoolers as their teachers help them to negotiate their way is all the more remarkable given that several of them, including Michael and Caroline, who have Down syndrome, are special-needs students, a population that is just now being truly integrated — however imperfectly — into public schools.
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“One of the reasons I love to work with this age is because of their innate empathy,” says Lynch, who has taught at Waisman for nearly two decades now. “These children know that kids are different and might need help and they don’t ostracize them for it. I just wish we could bottle that sensitivity up and keep it forever.”
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That is exactly what the Waisman Early Childhood Program (WECP) has been trying to do ever since it opened in 1979 with a mission to educate children with disabilities. Today the program’s six classrooms enroll around 85 children between the ages of 1 and 6, 20 to 30 percent of them with special needs that range from Down syndrome to autism disorders. It wins national kudos for its practice of what educators call inclusion, the belief that children with special needs can and should be integrated with typically developing children in regular classrooms, as opposed to segregated in “special education” classes.
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Over the past two decades the ideal of inclusion has gained traction thanks to federal and state legislation upholding the rights of young children with disabilities to be educated in the least restrictive setting possible. But as practiced in many public school districts, even those valiantly committed to the approach, it has also provoked skepticism from critics who wonder if and how it ever can really work, particularly at a time when schools are strapped for resources.
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Joan Ershler, WECP’s director, is convinced that inclusion can succeed in public schools. But it takes tremendous commitment to the underlying philosophy and to staff, she says. Around 85 percent of WECP’s budget, the majority of which is paid for by tuition fees, is devoted to staff, Ershler says. (Families of preschoolers in Michael’s class pay $730 a month for their children to attend five mornings a week and $1,135 a month for an eight-hour-day, fairly close to what other programs would cost. Some tuition assistance is available.) Each classroom has several staff members present at all times, which allows teachers to give students the kind of intensive attention Lynch was giving Michael the other day. Student teachers are also often present. Many of her teachers are trained in special-needs education, Ershler says. Speech and occupational therapists work onsite with the children. But there is no magic to teaching these children, she insists. “It absolutely can be replicated in the public schools. It requires no special skill set that can’t be learned by any teacher. It is just really good teaching.”
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The school’s inclusive philosophy is obvious from the moment a visitor pulls up in the parking lot. Ramps allow wheelchairs to roll easily into the school’s classrooms and on paths through the lush playgrounds. Classroom computers have touch screens and children have access to lots of fun tools like paintbrushes that can be strapped onto wrists for those with poor muscle control and adaptive scissors. One bike has two seats so a friend can give a lift to another friend unable to peddle. Wiggly or anxious children are given aids to help them remain calm and focused including weighted blankets, squishy pillows, sensory toys and even gum.
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And the curriculum is open-ended. While many more traditional preschools move from one pre-selected theme to the next every week, with the same activities every year, teachers at Waisman develop a curriculum based on the interests of the particular groups of kids they are working with. Such an open-ended and play-based curriculum also allows children with different abilities to participate at their own speed.
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Activities are adopted to students. During what’s called “circle time,” when everyone talks about the day’s events, Lynch sits with the children on a rug, Michael in her lap. A large class calendar, with pictures and words identifying the day’s activities, is propped on an easel. To help Michael, a newcomer to the class, focus, Lynch gives him a smaller version of the class calendar to hold. “Why does Michael need to use the board?” a curious boy asks. “Because he’s just learning what we do,” Lynch explains in a very matter-of-fact way. The questioner, who is chewing gum to remain calm — turns back to the bigger calendar. No big deal. Lynch keeps her eyes on the other kids, too. “I have to tell you something,” she whispers at one point to a fidgety young boy. “It’s kind of rude to suck your knee.”
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Teachers constantly mull over what they do, how they do it, and why. After circle time, children are allowed to choose a friend as they line up in pairs to go out to recess. Michael is among the last to be picked. He doesn’t seem to notice. But later, staff discuss whether or not allowing one child to select another could lead to exclusion and hurt feelings, and the next day children are sent out to recess based on what colors they are wearing. Such reflection spreads to events outside the school as well. Parents, too, get constant support and education from the center. When staff realized several years ago that students with special needs were not being invited to birthday parties, they called parents to a big meeting and tackled the problem head on. “It turned out that parents of typically developing students wanted to include everyone, but they didn’t know how,” Ershler recalls. The upshot? Parents of children with special needs said they would simply come to the parties with their kids and help out.
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The children also learn to be more inclusive.
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Madison parent Sarah Edgerton has watched two daughters thrive at Waisman, one with special needs and one without. “The school taught all of us that we all have our own special quirks and that we can be who we are in life and that is okay,” she says. Her youngest daughter Isabel, 5, is a typically developing child. “She has been introduced to a whole other world of children that she would not get in any other preschool,” Edgerton says. “She is a more patient, gentler child, more reflective.” Just the other day, when children were choosing friends to go outside with, Isabel chose Caroline. “When we first met, we had to get used to each other,” Isabel says. “But now Caroline and I have been friends for so long that we are used to each other.” The two pals headed out to the playground together hand-in-hand, beaming.
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Source:Â
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/article_971bacbc-bf84-11df-9650-001cc4c03286.html


