Quantum Units Education

The über-hip HBO drama Girls has taken a step away from irony and entered the bright lights of dim reality. Just when we all figured that Hannah (Lena Dunham) was going to live out one of those blessed lives as someone who seems nice and approachable, gives to the right charities, and says the right things about politicians and offshore oil drilling, we realize she suffers. According to reports, or at least her own tweets, she has obsessive-compulsive disorder—and the real thing, not OCD the cute, prissy condition where you line up your paper clips.

In last week’s and this week’s episodes, we’ve learned that Hannah needs everything to happen in series of eight (or 64) and probably needs a left-right balance as well. It is, we are told, the “stress” of success—her book is coming along nicely, sort of—that tips her back into the OCD she fought as a child. Her parents notice her “counting” while at a fancy dinner and arrange for her to see first her old pediatrician, then a real shrink who tells her she has a classic presentation—before mentioning his own bestselling book.

Full story of real OCD at The Daily Beast

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Adding the dietary supplements folate and vitamin B12 to treatment with antipsychotic medication improved a core symptom component of schizophrenia in a study of more than 100 patients. The study focused on negative symptoms of schizophrenia — which include apathy, social withdrawal, and a lack of emotional expressiveness. While the level of improvement across all participants was modest, results were more significant in individuals carrying specific variants in genes involved with folate metabolism. The report from a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal JAMA Psychiatry(formerly Archives of General Psychiatry) and has been issued online.

"The symptoms of schizophrenia are complex, and antipsychotic medications provide no relief for some of the most disabling parts of the illness. These include negative symptoms, which can be particularly devastating," says Joshua Roffman, MD, MMSc, of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, corresponding author of the JAMA Psychiatry paper. "Our finding that folate plus vitamin B12 supplementation can improve negative symptoms opens a new potential avenue for treatment of schizophrenia. Because treatment effects differed based on which genetic variants were present in each participant, the results also support a personalized medical approach to treating schizophrenia."

Full story of B12 reducing schizophrenia symptoms at Science Daily

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will revolutionize the field of substance abuse treatment, according to A. Thomas McLellan, PhD, CEO and co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute.

“It will have more far-reaching positive consequences for substance abuse treatment than anything in my lifetime, including the discovery of methadone,” he said at the recent annual meeting of the New York Society of Addiction Medicine. “It will integrate substance abuse treatment into the rest of health care.”

Currently, just 2.3 million Americans receive any type of substance abuse treatment, which is less than one percent of the total population of people who are affected by the most serious of the substance use disorders—addiction, said Dr. McLellan, who is a former Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Most who receive treatment are severely affected, he said.

“If diabetes were treated like substance abuse, only people in the most advanced stages of illness would be covered, such as those who had already lost their vision or had severe kidney damage,” he said.

Full story of substance abuse treatment at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

The term “enabling” is commonplace in the field of addiction. It is used within support group settings, in treatment programs and throughout the professional literature about addiction and the family. I consider it one of the most frequently misunderstood terms in our field. In fact, as my research about family caregivers of people with substance use disorders has evolved, I have come to loathe the term “enabling.” Here is why.

There is a great deal of misinterpretation about what qualifies as behavior that is “enabling.”

Webster’s  definition of the term includes: “a) to provide with the means or opportunity; and b) to make possible, practical or easy.” Wikipedia notes that enabling also is used “to signify dysfunctional approaches that are intended to help but in fact may perpetuate a problem….” Examples include taking responsibility, blaming others or making accommodations for a person’s harmful conduct, so that the person is shielded from the harm it may do and the pressure to change.

Full story of enabling at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Stereotypes about addiction, perpetuated by the media, can be unintentionally reinforced by addiction professionals, according to a New York addiction expert.

“When you go to a diabetes clinic, you don’t expect your doctor to have diabetes. But many people treating those who are addicted have themselves been treated for addiction, and tend to use the same lingo as their patients to make them feel more comfortable,” Dr. Edwin A. Salsitz, MD, Medical Director, Office-Based Opioid Therapy at Beth Israel Medical Center, said at a recent meeting, “Solutions to the Addiction Crisis.” “They use terms like ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’ to refer to a urine drug test, instead of the more medical ‘positive’ or ‘negative.’ Using slang in addiction medicine can be confusing and demeaning, and reinforce the stigma attached to addiction.”

Salsitz encourages his colleagues to choose their words carefully. “We need to use medical terms for addiction medicine,” he said. “I never use the word ‘addict’—that pigeonholes someone, and defines who they are. I always talk about addicted patients.”

Full story of treatments based on stereotypes at DrugFree.org

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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education