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ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2010) — As hurricane season gets into full swing, mental health teams will be ready to respond and help survivors cope with possible devastation. Psychologists have analyzed decades of research and found that disaster response strategies should address the needs of the population affected, specifically those with disabilities and mental disorders.

Research conducted in the aftermaths of the Oklahoma City bombing and Hurricane Katrina also showed that the type of disaster can have a distinct effect on how people respond psychologically. These and other findings are reported in a special section of Rehabilitation Psychology devoted to disaster management and people with disabilities. The journal is published by the American Psychological Association.

“Katrina taught us a harsh lesson about the plight of vulnerable people in times of disaster and national emergency,” said the journal’s editor, Timothy Elliott, PhD, of Texas A&M University. “Solutions to these problems won’t be provided by any single profession or service, which is why this special section brings together colleagues from psychology, special education and rehabilitation administration to provide information that will help us find solutions.”

In a study looking at Hurricane Katrina victims, researchers focused on survivors with a wide range of disabilities. Nearly two years after the storm, they surveyed and interviewed disaster case managers and supervisors who provided services to 2,047 individuals with disabilities and their families through the Katrina Aid Today project. They found that considerable barriers to housing, transportation and disaster services were still present two years after the storm. For example, they found that survivors with disabilities were less likely to own homes than survivors without disabilities. This meant that some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency homeowner programs did not help them or, in the case of FEMA trailers, were not accessible to them.

Homeless in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 

People with disabilities were also less likely to be employed, which affected their ability to pay utility bills or purchase furniture when they did transition to more permanent housing. Individuals with disabilities were more likely to have medical needs, which affected their ability to travel to service agencies or get jobs. Case management with the survivors with disabilities was seen as taking longer because these people needed assistance in multiple areas.

“Case managers who are knowledgeable about the needs of people with disabilities are essential when navigating an already difficult service system following a disaster of this magnitude,” said the study’s lead author, Laura Stough, PhD, from Texas A&M University.

Another analysis focused on two different studies — one examining the bombing’s survivors and the other Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The Oklahoma City study assessed 182 survivors six months after the bombing. The Hurricane Katrina study sampled 421 people who had been evaluated in a mental health clinic at a Dallas shelter for Katrina evacuees.

Of the Oklahoma City bombing survivors, the most common psychiatric diagnosis was post-traumatic stress disorder, with 34 percent of participants suffering from the problem. The second most common psychiatric diagnosis was major depression, according to the article. Most of the participants, 87 percent, were injured in the bombing; 20 percent of those had to be hospitalized.

The research analysis noted that Hurricane Katrina affected a wider swath of an already disadvantaged population. The main tasks in the psychiatry clinic at the shelter were rapid diagnostic assessment, resumption of psychotropic medications, and linkage to ongoing psychiatric care for already existing disorders.

“Interventions to address unmet treatment needs for an abundance of pre-existing and persistent psychiatric illness would not have been the primary response needed for Oklahoma City survivors,” said the study’s lead author, Carol North, MD, from the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. “This article represents just one example of why disaster intervention plans need to target expected mental health problems emerging in different populations, settings and time frames.”

Another study looked at the prevalence of injury and illness following Hurricane Ike in the Galveston, Texas, area. About 4 percent of the population had experienced injuries, and 16 percent of households had someone suffering from an illness two to six months following the disaster, according to a survey of 658 adults. The risk for injury or illness increased in areas where there was more damage. Some other stressors that occurred at the same time as these injuries or illnesses were post-traumatic stress, dysfunction and physical disability.

“The associations of injury with distress and disability suggest that community programs should reach out to injured people for early mental health and functional assessments,” said study author Fran Norris, PhD, director of the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research at the Dartmouth Medical School. “Follow-up support services that address mental health and functional problems could be part of the treatment plan for those people treated for disaster-related injuries or illnesses.”

Source:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823131741.htm



 

Article Date: 20 Aug 2010 – 6:00 PDT

Individuals with psoriasis appear to have an increased risk of depression, anxiety and suicidality, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Psoriasis affects 1 percent to 3 percent of the general population, and estimates suggest 0.4 percent to 2.3 percent of adults have the condition but have not been diagnosed. “Psoriasis has long been recognized to be associated with potentially adverse effects on mental health,” the authors write. “In the 1960s, a popular ad campaign labeled the emotional burden of this skin disease as the ‘heartbreak of psoriasis.’ However, there have been relatively few studies evaluating psychological outcomes in patients with psoriasis.”

Read in Full:  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/198451.php



 

by Peter Gray

For good evolutionary reasons, some people are highly impulsive.



 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Autismbrain.jpg

Image via Wikipedia

By Sandy Gautam

Autism is a spectrum disorder , better referred to as ASD, It has been known for some time that differences like autism are, multi-dimensional and not readily reducible to a single set of mechanisms or genetic causes. In the past we have discussed how the disorder may be related to structural differences in the brain like those due to minicolumnar differences.

A new study looked at structural differences in brains of people (adults) with ASD and instead of focusing piece-meal on one feature (like minicolumns) combined a multitude of structural features and used a multi-dimensional classification system to determine the accuracy and specificity of the structural differences to predict/aid in  diagnoses.

They came uyp with five dimensions- two based on volumetric measurements (surface area and cortical thickness) and the other three on geometric features (average convexity/concavity, mean radial curvature and metric distortion.  (the article is open access, so go read it to find what these mean:-) )

Read in Full:  http://the-mouse-trap.com/2010/08/21/the-five-dimensions-of-an-autistic-brain/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMouseTrap+(The+Mouse+Trap)



Her parents thought Sarah was psychologically disturbed, and they even considered the possibility of schizophrenia. But, rather than seek medical help, they tried to cajole Sarah into improving her behaviour. It wasn’t until her mother, looking for answers on the internet, came across the National Autism Society and called their helpline for advice, that Sarah saw a psychiatrist. Finally, at the age of 26, she received a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome (AS), a type of autism. Eight years on she is living a happy, fulfilling life near Witney in Oxfordshire, with her husband Chris Liversedge, a 45-year-old property developer.

Sarah doesn’t blame anyone for the late diagnosis. Asperger’s syndrome, a lifelong, incurable disability, which affects how a person makes sense of the world, processes information and relates to other people, is known principally as a male condition. Girls are rarely diagnosed. The cause of Asperger’s,
a developmental brain disorder, is mostly unknown but in 10 per cent of cases it may be due to genetic or environmental factors such as, possibly, smoking in pregnancy.

There are no statistics for children with Asperger’s, but overall, 588,000 people in the UK have some type of autism including Asperger’s, one in five of whom are female.
The NHS suggests that most parents will
notice if a child is on the autism spectrum at around the age of two, when development of communication, imagination and emotion may have slowed down or stopped. If the symptoms are mild, it may go undiagnosed for a lot longer.

Men are four times as likely to be affected as women by AS, according to the National Autistic Society (NAS). As comparatively few girls “officially” have Asperger’s, some girls get misdiagnosed with other mental health issues.

 Go to fullsize image

 Rudy Simone

Now, Rudy Simone, a female sufferer of AS, has written Aspergirls, a “handbook” that sets out to challenge this way of thinking. The book explains how the condition presents differently in girls; how they can be diagnosed and helped, and how they can help themselves.

Rudy, 46, an author and jazz singer, lives with her partner Mike Whipple, 40, who works in the wine trade, in San Francisco. Like Sarah, her youth was spent struggling with her identity. “I always felt different from my family; they seemed unpredictable and frightening. I was known to be gifted intellectually but I was so profoundly affected by AS that as puberty kicked in, I went through bouts of mutism which could last hours or even a whole day.” She oscillated from performing for attention to shutting down completely – a swing of moods which she says is typical for ”Aspergirls”.

Other symptoms included an aversion to certain types of fabric or clothing, of smells, even foods. And like most people with AS, she developed obsessions. “Some people read hundreds of fantasy books; I read The Chronicles of Narnia hundreds of times. I would become so focused on a record I would literally wear it out playing it over again. I was always being told I was strange and different. ‘Why can’t you be normal?’, they would say. It would set off a cycle of guilt and confusion and depression at my inability to fit in.”

Many of the symptoms both she and Sarah describe are similar to those exhibited by men: difficulty understanding gestures, facial expressions or tone of voice; difficulty understanding jokes, metaphor and sarcasm. The struggle to make and maintain friendships; the difficulty in understanding other people’s thoughts, feelings or actions; and the obsession with hobbies and interests. Where girls differ is that they are often better at mimicking and copying their peers, so they stand out less than boys. Their obsessions are not based so often on numbers and engineering (as with boys), but instead focus on animals, actors or pop stars.

Carol Povey, director of the Centre for Autism for the NAS, agrees that girls are often better at “pretending to be normal” than men. “But they often become isolated. They struggle with the complex way that women build friendships – with subtlety and nuance. They are more comfortable with rules and strict codes.”

Rudy admits she has found it difficult to make friends. “I don’t actually have a single close girlfriend. I’ve tried my whole life, but now I accept that I know lots of women I like, but none that I am close to. We are trusting and sometimes emotionally naive. If we get hurt, we tend to burn bridges. My bluntness and honesty – what some would call tactlessness – can get me into trouble. I have learnt to keep some things to themselves.”

Friendships have also been problematic for Sarah “I’ve often found other women self-obsessed and false. I can’t get to grips with social groups and I seem to make people uncomfortable.”

Motherhood is not easy, either. Rudy has an 18-year-old daughter, Lena. “It’s been very difficult for her to have an Aspie-mum. I have embarrassed her at times,” she admits.

But Rudy is keen to explode the myth that Asperger’s is an unremitting disability.
“There are many good things to be said about Aspergirls. We are highly intuitive. We have an incredible ability to concentrate and a work ethic which makes us employable in the right jobs.” It saddens her that Aspergirls are still left on the margins of society: “So much of our world is about appearance and confidence, as opposed to substance,” she says. “We aren’t fake. We’re not like that.”

Carl Povey agrees. “We expect people with AS to fit in with us,” he says. “We never adapt to them. They have to live in our world.”

Sarah’s diagnosis has left her feeling “a lot less angry and more self-aware”. She has learnt strategies for coping with social situations, and her husband has learnt to be patient when she needs to know every detail before she can make a decision. She found a job at BT through the NAS Prospects employment support service, and she has even found the confidence to sit on the local parish council.

“I don’t blame myself as I used to,” she says. “I accept that I will get things wrong, misjudge people and try too hard. I have two good female friends and I’m working to be comfortable with who I am.”

Buy Aspergirls’ by Rudy Simone from the Telegraph Books

For more information visit www.autism.org.uk

Source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/women_shealth/7944522/Help-at-last-for-the-Aspergirls.html



Jan

22

 

Terry McLeod

Updated: Aug 24th 2010

Telemedicine is being called a boom, and when a nurse shares that she can “see” 20 patients in a day, as opposed to 6 or 7 patients for the same treatment, the positive business results are obvious. Devices are being used to monitor conditions in the home, electronically reporting the results to the healthcare provider, resulting in longer-term, more accurate information as well as better care. Psychotherapists are providing telephone sessions. Webcams and other devices bring us together with care providers without either party having to go anywhere.

When travel is removed from an equation, the overhead drops and profits increase. Additionally, office space costs money. Companies with “troops in the field” commonly maintain less office space to account for them. If 10 employees are in the field, they may be able to share 5 desks at headquarters, resulting in less rented space, less heat, less water in the water cooler…and more productive time because those troops aren’t clustered around that water cooler and can focus exclusively on the tasks they’re being paid for.

Meridian Health in New Jersey was featured in a about telemedicine, and the positive results look to be good for business, good for the healthcare professional, and good for the patient. Now if we can only get somebody to pay for it.

Read in Full:  http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=39241&cn=145



 

 7:20am Tuesday 24th August 2010

 By Julia Kennard »

Daredevil dad David Theobald jumped into a tank of sharks to help fund laptops for autistic and special needs children.

The former independent councillor for St Helier ward was joined by his friend David Price for the stunt at the Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port.

The pair dived with tiger sharks, whose mouths are full of razor-sharp teeth, nurse sharks, stingrays and eels.

Mr Theobald’s son George is autistic and the pair are raising funds to buy specialised laptops for the disabled children of the borough.

They have already raised more than £1,000 for the computers, which cost about £300 each, and can withstand “anything a child can throw at it”.

Mr Theobald said: “Particularly with the autistic and mentally handicapped, computers can provide a gateway into our world as they learn so much from this equipment.

“I can vouch for this with the experience gleaned from my son.

“We hope to get the laptops into schools around the borough.”

Read in Full:  http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/news/8345205.Ex_councillor_dives_in_to_raise_laptop_funds/?ref=rss



Against the odds: Clarence (back row, left) with other children of the National Autism Society in Kuala Lumpur Tuesday.

Wednesday August 25, 2010

Autistic yet artistic

By ZANI SALLEH
newsdesk@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Two boys – both special in their own ways but who barely face the tribulations of life every day – will share their inspiring stories in an upcoming community-based programme over ntv7.

The two autistic boys – Clarence Kang Zhang Wei, 13, and six-year-old Mohd Adam Ezany – will be featured in the second season of the 30-minute Project Sunshine production that tells of children who fight hardships and disabilities merely to continue schooling.

Clarence is a talented pianist while Mohd Adam comes from a hardcore poor family in urban Petaling Jaya.

National Autism Society of Malaysia (NASOM) general manager Chia Liau Kee said both boys are gifted and will relate how they are more determined then others who lead a normal life.

“Each child has a talent of his own, though born with disabilities,” she said, adding that they deserve their right to education.

SP Setia Foundation contributed RM195,000 to the Project Sunshine programme, as part of its corporate social responsiblity.

Chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said the foundation believes education could change one’s life, regardless of their background, if given an equal opportunity of going to school.

“In this programme, audiences would be sharing the true stories of children whose journey will inspire others and bring about greater appreciation for education,” he said.

SP Setia Foundation also allocated RM15,000 for NASOM to set up a gymnasium for its vocational training centre at Bandar Puteri in Klang.

The 13-episode Mandarin programme will air its second season over ntv7 every Saturday at 1.30pm, starting from Sept 4.

Source:  http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/8/25/nation/6915896&sec=nation



 

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on August 24, 2010 

Scientists have developed a drug that successfully resets and restarts the natural 24-hour body clock of lab mice.

The ability to do this in a mammal opens up the potential to pharmacologically address a variety of human difficulties, including some psychiatric disorders, jet lag and the health impact of shift work.

Researchers were led by Professor Andrew Loudon from the University of Manchester and Dr. Mick Hastings of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

The team also worked with a multidisciplinary team of scientists from Pfizer led by Dr. Travis Wager.

Professor Loudon said, “It can be really devastating to our brains and bodies when something happens to disrupt the natural rhythm of our body clocks. This can be as a result of disease or as a consequence of jet lag or frequent changing between day and night shifts at work.

“We’ve discovered that we can control one of the key molecules involved in setting the speed at which the clock ticks and in doing so we can actually kick it into a new rhythm.”

Most living creatures and plants have an internal body timing system, called the circadian clock. This is a complex system of molecules in every cell that drives the rhythm of everything from sleep in mammals to flowering in plants.

Light and the day and night cycle are very important for resetting the clock and the fine adjustments are made through the action of several enzymes, including one called casein kinase 1, which has been the center of this project.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/08/24/researchers-develop-drug-to-reset-body-clock/17200.html

 



 Amanda Aguirre by arizonaguardian

One local legislator will help Arizona residents with autism by serving on a state task force.

Sen. Amanda Aguirre, D-Yuma, was appointed to serve as the chair of the Arizona Joint Legislative Autism Spectrum Disorder Task Force, which was created by her legislation and signed into law this year.

The state Senate announced the move Wednesday.

“The task force will bring together state and community experts appointed by the Senate president and speaker of the House in order to identify and coordinate services and resources available to families to ultimately enhance early intervention and education to improve the quality of life of children impacted by autism spectrum disorder,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre was appointed by the Senate President Bob Burns as one of two Senate members to serve on the task force, according to a news release.

Read in Full:  http://www.yumasun.com/news/disorder-63314-autism-spectrum.html