Category Archives: Current News

Topics on Mind Health, lifestyle, everyday dilemmas

Kids, Lifestyle, Mind Health

Sweet drinks linked to depression

Sweet but sad and mostly corn syrup.
Sweet but sad and mostly corn syrup.

 

A Harvard University School of Public Health team linked sugar sweetened drinks to risks of chronic diseases (Brownell, KD et al. 2009) while articifially sweetened drinks are associated with an increase in weight gain (Yang, Q, 2010). Researchers noted that cutting down on these drinks that contain artificial sweeteners would naturally lower the risk of depression.

Researchers have more recently found that both naturally sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks ranked high in the diet of those who were diagnosed with depression.

Specifically, the risk of depression was greatest in those who drank diet iced tea, diet soda and diet fruit punch. Those who drank four cans of fruit punch per day were 38 percent more likely to develop depression. People who drank more than four cans of soda per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression than those who did not drink any of these kinds of drinks.

Study authors noted that those who drank four cups of coffee per day were about 10 percent less likely to develop depression. (Chen, H, Guo, X, Park, Y, Freedman, ND and Shinha, R.) There have been other studies that question the dietary effects of caffeine and tannic acid in coffee for certain people such as in pregnant women, young children, people with insomnia, those with kidney and liver disease.

Lifestyle, Mind Health

DC residents discuss blacks going to therapy

Jinneh Dyson’s initial skepticism about treating her debilitating depression changed after counseling. Her treatment was thought to be so transformative that it is the impetus for her current work: She now splits her time working for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and as a life coach and motivational speaker on mental health.  (By Tara Bahrampour for The Washington Post, 7/9/13.)

When Jinneh Dyson was 17 and a doctor prescribed medication to treat depression that had plagued her since the death of her mother three years earlier, her friends and family persuaded her not to take it.“They said: ‘That’s going to make you crazy. You’ve just got to pray and have faith,’ ” recalled Dyson, who is African American and the daughter of a Baptist minister. “They said, ‘That’s the way of the white man, poisoning.
Four years later, Dyson was a student at the University of Texas at Austin and still battling debilitating depression. A friend, who was biracial, urged her to seek counseling.“I said, ‘Girl, we don’t do that . . . that’s your white side,’ ” said Dyson, now 31. But she eventually agreed to meet with the university’s only black counselor. Her treatment was so transformative that she now splits her time working as a senior manager at the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington and as a life coach and motivational speaker on mental health and other issues in Houston.Many people, regardless of race, have a hard time talking about mental illness.But for many African Americans, the topic has carried particularly negative connotations — to the point where it’s easier to talk about drug or alcohol addiction than depression or anxiety. In 2008, whites received mental health treatment or counseling at nearly twice the rate of blacks, and whites received prescription medication for mental health-related issues at more than twice the rate of blacks, according to the 2010 National Healthcare Disparities Report.But African Americans’ acceptance of therapy has been rising in the past decade, providers say, particularly among the young and those with more education and in those urban areas with large black populations.There have been no large-scale studies about the recent shift, but providers interviewed said they have seen it in their work and in their communities.“I’ve seen an increasing number of African Americans who feel increasingly less stigmatized about coming in and seeking therapy and who also recognize the healing power of therapy,” said Jeffrey Gardere, a psychologist in private practice and assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York City, adding that in the past 10 years he has seen a 20 to 25 percent rise in African Americans seeking therapy.

“The attitudes have changed,” said Lisa Whitten, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York, noting that more black students are studying psychology and “taking that message home . . . that this is something a broad range of people do and it doesn’t mean you’re disintegrating.”

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Kids, Racism/Diversity

Justice – Hill Harper on Epidemic Incarceration of Young Black Men

Gallery

The son of a psychiatrist father and anesthesiologist mother, Hill Harper is not just an actor (CSI: NY  and Covert Affairs) but also an author of a number of books meant to encourage young black men  and women. His latest, Letters to An Incarcerated Brother,  tends a growing cancer of racism in America – the epidemic incarceration  of our young men.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Hill points out that one in six black men is incarcerated now. He expects that one in six number to increase to one in three. That fact along with the letters he received from so many inmates caused him to listen, learn and then aid the young men who have been locked up so young, long before they have had any chance to  discover their real worth and power.

Lifestyle, Relationships

Black women who had their partners arrested for domestic violence were 98% more likely to die early from other causes

Date:
March 2, 2014
Source:
University of Cambridge
Summary:
Researchers followed up on a landmark domestic violence arrest experiment and found that African-American victims who had partners arrested rather than warned were twice as likely to die young.

University of Cambridge

Mandatory arrest in domestic violence calls is associated with early death in victims

New, and seemingly surprising, research from a major ‘randomised’ arrest experiment 23 years ago finds that domestic violence victims whose partners were arrested on misdemeanor charges – mostly without causing injury – were 64% more likely to have died early, from other causes, compared to victims whose partners were warned but not removed by police.

Among African-American victims, arrest increased early mortality by a staggering 98% – as opposed to white victims, whose mortality was increased from arrest by just 9%. The research also found that employed victims suffered the worst effects of their partners’ arrests. Black women with jobs whose partners were arrested  suffered a death rate over four times higher than those whose partner received a warning at the scene. No such link was found in white victims.

The study’s authors say that causes are currently unknown but such health impacts are consistent with chronic stress that could have been amplified by partner arrest. They call for a “robust review” of US and UK mandatory arrest policies in domestic violence cases.

“It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be,” said Professor Lawrence Sherman from Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, who authored the study with his colleague Heather M. Harris from University of Maryland.

The findings were announced in the US on Monday 3rd March in Milwaukee and College Park, Maryland, and presented on Wednesday in London at the winter meeting of the Society of Evidence-Based Policing. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, who supported the follow-up study, will join in the presentation and discussion of the results. The study will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Experimental Criminology.

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Kids, Lifestyle, Mind Health

Suicide in African American Teens and Young Men

It seems to be happening more and more often to people? They get a call about the son of a friend or someone they know who is determined to kill themselves. They nearly panic and try to calm themselves. What should they do next?

Watch this very informative video. You’ll learn so much that will help you help someone.

More on depression and suicide in young black men….