Mental Illness

Shots – Health News : NPR

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How understanding the gut-brain connection could improve mental health treatment : Shots – Health News : NPR

Sixteen years ago, when Calliope Holingue was in high school, she had a problem. Two, actually. She developed gastrointestinal symptoms severe enough to force her to give up running, plus she had a long history of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"And I wondered if maybe there was a link between my mental health and the GI symptoms I was experiencing," she recalls now.

Her doctors shrugged off her questions. "That led me to start reading a lot about the gut microbiome, the autonomic nervous system, and their connection with the brain and mental health," she says.

Today, Holingue has joined the ranks of scientists seeking to understand the interplay between the brain (and the rest of the nervous system) and the gut microbiome – that is the vast array of organisms, including bacteria, fungi and viruses, that thrive in the human gut.

Homeless New Yorkers with serious mental illness keep falling through the cracks despite billions in spending | Crain’s New York Business

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Homeless New Yorkers with serious mental illness keep falling through the cracks despite billions in spending | Crain’s New York Business

Months before Martial Simon pushed Michelle Go to her death in front of a subway train, his mind had been seized by an unusual toothache.

Simon was confined at the time to the Bronx Psychiatric Center, a state hospital. A nurse offered to connect him with a dentist, but he refused. The dentist was working with the FBI, which was using satellites to loosen his teeth, he said.

Despite Simon’s tenuous grasp on reality, the hospital discharged him a few weeks later, in July 2021. He had been hospitalized for five months. Workers escorted him to an apartment building in the Bronx, where he could live with on-site services. They left him with a 30-day supply of medication and a next-day appointment with a psychiatrist.

He never showed. In all, he spent hardly two hours in his new home. He left only a trace of his presence: a brown paper bag stuffed with his medications.

I’ve been struggling to find a solution to my mental illness

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I’ve been struggling to find a solution to my mental illness 👺

I tried therapy during the spring months, being honest and open about my problems and my fears. It took a while to be open about my problems, but every time I tried to get closer to what I thought was the root of my problems, my therapist seemed to push me away from it. It took a while to open up about my problems and obsessive thoughts, but when I got there, I felt like I was constantly being pushed away from them, rather asked to focus on them and discuss why I felt the way I felt. Maybe I should listen more — maybe my problems are rooted in anger and rebellion — but I just don’t see it that way. And I hated how I was criticized for my use of term of redneck, or my idolization of rural lifestyle of homesteaders with their livestock and burn barrels. I didn’t like being dismissed as a conservative, even though I still believe in progress and the government helping those in needs. I didn’t like the suggestion that I wanted to be a hermit, by suggesting I wanted to be more self-reliant, own an off-grid property and a hobby farm.

I ended canceled my last session, upon deciding I wanted to get out of town for a long weekend after seeing the eye doctor. Feeding the addiction by having a fire up in the woods and drinking beer as flames turned the styrofoam plates into carbon dioxide felt better then trying to face it down. I never rescheduled another appointment, as I watched as co-payments grew long, the hours taken off work grew, and I felt like there was no immediate solution to my problems. The therapist didn’t think it was going to be something I could solve in a few sessions — I was hoping to maybe spend $200 on eight sessions and be done. I also so frustrated about how the counseling wanted to redirect me towards other things, or how I was constantly being labeled by my counselor, rather then being asked questions about why I feel the way I felt.

I told myself I was going to take up more counseling come the end of summer — with September around corner I figured it would pick up therapy again, but then September became October then November and December came without much thought. I had some severe anxiety attacks and dangerous cycles of negative thoughts spiraling out of control. Mostly over my truck and it’s declining condition, and need for expensive repairs including new tires and rust that is eating away at it with an increasing pace. Everything I own seems to be wearing out and falling apart, except for maybe my investment account and my career that is moving forward at an increasing pace with promotions at work and stock market gains, as I work hard and continue to save. Besides work and investing, I feel like everything else in my life is a dumpster fire. Trust me I know what it smells like when you burn stuff.

I’ve tried to break the awful cycle myself but I often relapse into these terrible cycles of thought. I’m most alarmed about is my high anxiety levels over my truck and rundown apartment – and money more generally, my tendency to procrastinate over unpleasant situations and my obsessive thoughts about trash, burn barrels, the throw away culture and the ever growing garbage dumps that crowd out our skyline. I read the news each day about climate change, the toxins in plastics that are being rammed down our throat, and watch as the politicians sell out one piece of Pine Bush after another, pretending that they aren’t the cowards that they are and they are saving the environment by banning plastic bags and paving over farmland with their industrial solar facilities. It’s so goddamn bad if you take the time to read the news, and the only solution is buying more greenie-shit we are told.

I’ve been reading a lot of books and watching YouTube videos about mental health. I’m well aware that most thoughts are unimportant – they are thoughts not reality. You shouldn’t get too worried about things that are unlikely to happen – be prepared but don’t dwell. But I do. One of my biggest take away’s from my learning about anxiety is that it’s biggest risk is not that terrible feeling or the high blood pressure. It’s not taking enough calculated risk in favor of pleasure and personal advancement. Fear might be good in some circumstances. But too much can be really bad. One of the ways to overcome fear is to desensitize oneself to the fear. If you survive a potentially dangerous situation in your mind then you have the ability. I try to be more grateful, but it’s tough.

I’m going to 40 in a little over a year and I’m worried that all my stress in my life is going to a heart attack one of these days climbing a mountain or in remote country while I’m all alone and I will silently die in the woods alone. I don’t think I have high blood pressure but who knows how constricted my arteries are from eating years worth of frozen fish sticks and chicken paddies for lunch – and consuming way more dairy then is healthy. I like dairy and working landscape, I’d rather smell a cowyard then see it turned into industrial solar and more suburban subdivisions or shopping malls. I’ve watched how quickly my hair has gone gray over the past few years. Plus I’m well aware of the statistics – people who have few close friends die younger.

Some mentally ill people die of suicide but that’s not something I think about much, I like my life and I’ve been saving a lot of money and forgoing today’s pleasures for a better tomorrow. I want to own my own land eventually and have a hobby farm that is off grid and not dependent on the fossil fuel, increasingly expensive and unstable power grid. I keep saving and investing for the long-term, I rarely pay much attention to make fluctuation, as I know the market will recover over time, as the economy must grow or otherwise we all have a serious problem. But I worry, because I know I’m not doing well, and my anxiety — while largely hidden is attacking my brain and my body. I worry all the money saved, the dream of the hobby farm and off-grid property won’t work out if the anxiety and my OCD-type addictions leads it all to fall apart before then.

I should back to some kind of counseling. I’m terribly alarmed by some of the cycles of negative thoughts I have or how addicted I feel at times. But it’s so easy to defer and put off everything. Maybe I should try somebody new. With the counseling, I did get some immediate relief by finally addressing the worse plumbing issues in my apartment with various leaks and problems, which my landlord took up as soon as I called him, but so many things remained unaddressed. I want to be able to improve all parts of my life, not have these severe anxiety attacks, but instead be level and clear thinking. I want to change, and be more successful in all aspects my life, without giving up the things I value or being attacked by others for being who I am. I know help is only a few phone calls and co-pays away, but it’s often easier to feed an addictions in the short-term then get the help I need in the short-term to get clean and feel better so I can eventually turn my years of professional success to owning my own land and building the life I want for myself.

Shots – Health News : NPR

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How mental health conditions can raise COVID risk : Shots – Health News : NPR

Last year, researchers analyzed data from five hospitals in the Yale New Haven Health System to see how people with a mental health diagnosis who were hospitalized with COVID-19 fared compared to others.

"What we found was we had a higher level of mortality for those that had a prior psychiatric history," says psychiatrist Dr. Luming Li, who was working on her Master's degree at Yale University at the time.

The risk of death from COVID-19 went up by 50% for those with a history of mental illness compared to those with no such history, says Li, who is now the Chief Medical Officer at the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD in Texas.

210624 Mindworms Thanissaro Bhikkhu Dhamma Talk

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One of my blog friends sent this video along a few weeks ago. Interesting lecture, something to think about when it comes to thoughts one finds repetitive or even disturbing. This year, I'm trying to learn more about my thought procesd, deal with my anxiety and generally try to be a more successful person at all parts of my life. Going to be forty in two years and now is the time to find changes and really figure out what is important in my life.

I am not really into spiritualism, I'm more a mud blood and manure type guy but there is a lot of value in hearing different things and graining new perspectives on why one might think the way they do. Information, especially when it's free should be observed carefully but not necessarily embraced. 

Pathology and the relatively high bar for mental health services 🤪 💭

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Pathology and the relatively high bar for mental health services 🤪 💭

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately a lot is how much push back I got from my mental health therapist when I wanted to discuss my own values and thoughts about the world. He wanted to stay away from with a 39 and half foot pole, mainly because having any one set of values is not a pathology, assuming those values are mostly lawful and the risk to oneself or others is relatively low.

The whole thing kind of bothers me a lot, just because values are so integral to who I am as an individual, and I think a lot of my anxiety issues that at one level are holding me back, as fed by the conflict of values I often have myself having. But having conservative viewpoints might not be pathology. I understand that, but I wish I had someone I could talk to just to better understand my own values, about my hopes and my future plans without everything being pushed back to something that could be easily medicalized and billed to insurance. I also wish there was something in my own thinking, that could be pointed to and need to be changed as faulty logic. But there is no such obvious thing like needing help with depression or anger management. 

I am by no means ready to give up seeking further counseling, as I do think there is benefits to having more introspection and building up my life skills. I am making good money at work, I am getting closer to my life goals and are generally happy, but I think I could still be better at how I think about the world and be a more effective communicator. I still worry I am a bit too much of a firebug, but if I want to move to Pennsylvania or out west some point so I burn my own trash and have bonfires (along with owing more guns, pigs and cattle), then all the more power to me, as my counselor says. In the vast open spaces of our country, there is places where nobody cares. And it’s not that bad of a thing in grand scheme of things, despite what some of the activist types might want you to think.

I have so many liberal friends and relatives, I put in long hours for the Democratic Party, and I involved in fighting development in the Albany Pine Bush and elsewhere. But I find myself often siding with conservatives on many issues, although certainly not all, and somehow that really bothers me as I am not sure totally what to believe these days. But I am not willing to accept whatever I hear on the radio or get in an activist group’s email. I am certainly not a Donald Trump supporter, although I didn’t exactly vote for the other guy either, going for the libertarian this cycle. The activist types say, I threw away my vote, but I rather say I just threw up my hands!