After emerging from a private meeting with about two dozen behavioral health care authorities around the region, the city’s top physician said Tuesday that the disparate system has little choice but to improve communication and efficiencies in response to announced cuts in inpatient and emergency services now provided by Louisiana State University’s New Orleans hospital. “There is plenty we can do,” New Orleans Health Commissioner Dr. Karen DeSalvo said.

But she conceded that whatever improvements are made among a web of service providers — public and private hospitals, specialty inpatient facilities, the state-run Metropolitan Human Services District, independent chemical detox facilities, community-based case management teams for patients with psychotic disorders, law enforcement agencies and the judicial system, temporary housing programs — it almost certainly will have to be done with less money.

“Government is going to get smaller,” DeSalvo said. “We don’t want to do less. … But these cuts will have in impact.”

Full story at Nola.com

According to many experts, suicide is likely the second leading cause of death among college students.

While it “is not possible for an institution to prevent every situation,” Anthony Jenkins, vice president for Student Affairs at University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said efforts to prevent students from harming themselves and others have increased dramatically on campuses across the country following the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois University in 2008.

A graduate of Virginia Tech who went on to serve on its crisis management team, Jenkins said he has helped create behavioral assessment teams at several of the institutions where he has worked.

“We have seen an influx across higher education nationally of more students entering with mental health issues, seeking more psychological support,” he said, “In the last 10 to 15 years, institutions have been put in the interesting situation of how to address issues of what is best for the individual versus the university. It can be a delicate balancing act, making sure that we’re able to sustain enough counselors and support staff to meet students’ needs and also balance that with funding issues.”

Full story at Delmarva Now

The boom of the plane hitting the towers, the gray pieces floating in the air, and the people jumping out were parts of the scene replayed in physician Margaret Dessau’s mind for years after the 9/11 disaster. She remembers looking out her apartment window to see a “guy with this white towel, and he’s waving it.” After he jumps, she hears children scream from a nearby school.

Nearly 10 years later, she described these memories as part of her post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to writer Anemona Hartacollis for the New York Times. Many PTSD sufferers replay disastrous events as memories that intrude on everyday life — intrusive memories — or in nightmares. They complain of not sleeping or concentrating. They may overreact to loud noises, become excessively alert and hypervigilant, and avoid reminders of the disaster. Dessau, who witnessed the attacks from her window, avoids looking at the skyline.

Intrusive memories are only part of a larger picture that often includes a sense of isolation, hopelessness, anger, and emotional numbness.

Full story at The Atlantic

According to recent research, some people are becoming depressed after using Facebook. If you can’t understand this, maybe you don’t have Facebook. I have always found it depressing. Where else can you have 500 friends and still feel like nobody really knows who you are.

And where else but Facebook can you go to see constant updates on what everyone is doing all the time. Status update: i’m taking out the trash. Status update: going to grandma’s house. Status update: Stacy’s coming over for soup…so excited! Seems depressing to me.

Utah Valley University conducted research last year which indicated that people are becoming depressed after viewing Facebook, and not because they find stays updates monotonous like I do. A sample of 425 undergraduate students was surveyed and for those who spent the most amount of time on Facebook, depression was more likely. Why?

Full story at Web Pro News

When Brandi Braegger, of Cedar City, was 13 years old she had a major depressive episode that served as the beginning of a rollercoaster ride that would eventually include self medication, binge drinking, nine hospitalizations, post-partum hallucinations and four suicide attempts.

“When I’d wake up it would be a huge despair (thinking) ‘I’m still here,’” Braegger says of the attempts that involved taking excessive amounts of pills.

It’s a situation to which Josh Barker, of St. George, can relate. For years this 34-year-old experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, combined with certain obsessions and compulsions that often dictated his actions, yet he never really knew that his behavior wasn’t normal.

“For a while I thought this was how everybody operated,” Barker says.

It’s taken therapy and proper medication to help him realize that isn’t the case.

Full story at The Spectrum