Tag Archives: Schizophrenia

Mind Health

Taking psychiatric meds? How to protect yourself from side effects.

Along with frequently described mood  or antidepressant medications, what else can a person do to protect themselves from accumulating brain tissue loss and losing brain function?

For the folks suffering from disabling episodes of psychosis, mania and depression, the right psychiatric  medications are a godsend. There are many people who attribute their ability to continue working and leading a normal life to their  medications along with therapy. It is thought that for some people, these brain illnesses are associated with degeneration of brain cells. While every case may be different, often dysfunction in the brain occurs along with  dysfunction in the body. After all, every part of our body is connected.

We are seeing increases in autoimmune disorders, food allergies, gut problems, arthritis, asthma, skin disorders, depression and sleep disorders. For some people, some of these problems may be due to the same culprit. There is much discussion now about the role of diet and gut dysfunction in the emergence of mood disorders.

So, would it make sense to identify and eliminate the culprit(s) and replace lost or missing nutrients that are known to be essential for brain health? How about looking at non-prescription supplements and foods that help the brain? In the December, 2016 issue of Current Psychiatry, Dr. Henry A. Nasrallah, writes about supplements that can help protect the brains of folks who are experiencing brain problems which show up as mood or cognitive disorders.

Some antidepressants, mood stabilizers and atypical antipsychotics may not only decrease troubling symptoms but may also have a protective effect on the brain.

There is an additional step that your doctor can take to help you protect your brain from the “destructive processes that accompany acute episodes of psychosis, mania and depression”.

Some of the supplements mentioned are:

Omega-3 fatty acids – Found in fish oil supplements have been shown in research studies to help reduce the effects of mood disorders and psychosis when used in addition to medications as well as a general supplement to protect brain health. Check out http://www.VitalChoice.org

Caffeine –  Thought to be neuroprotective and to aid in preventing mood and memory dysfunction. Not necessarily good for anxious clients but helpful for those with psychosis or mood disorders.

Vitamin D3 –  A deficiency of this essential vitamin (the status of most people living north of North Carolina and especially of people experiencing psychotic and mood disorders)  has been associated with depression, Alzheimer’s, autism and schizophrenia.  Supplementation with natural vitamin D (inexpensive over the counter) is said to protect the brain and the body against basic illnesses.

Nicotine (in the form of nicotine gum or nicotine patches) can help with cognitive processing (thinking), stress and cell health.

Melatonin – is an antioxidant, supportive to the immune system which reduces brain inflammation.  Especially for diabetics or those with metabolic syndrome, melatonin is felt to be protective of brain tissue.  Melatonin is considered an over the counter supplement that is helpful for sleep problems.  For those taking Synthroid or the generic form, levothyroxine,  melatonin use needs to be discussed with your pharmacist or physician.

N-acetylcysteine – is a powerful antioxidant for the brain, especially during a psychotic episode

Minocycline – An antibiotic that has been shown in studies to have protective effects on the brain as an additional treatment in schizophrenia

Lithium – usually used to treat mania in dosages of 900 to 1500 mg/d has been found to prevent progression of “amnestic mild cognitive impairment” to full dementia when taken in doses as low as 1 mg/d.

Erythropoietin (limited use due to some black-box warnings)

Cox-2 inhibitors: anti-inflammatory drug helpful in acute psychosis usually associated with neuro-inflammation.

Talk to your provider about adding these supplements to your psychiatric medication

Source: Current Psychiatry,  Are you neuroprotecting your patients? 10 Adjunctive therapies, Henry A Nasrallah, MD, Vol. 15, No.12, December 2016

Lifestyle, Racism/Diversity

Police violence – Every 10 days an unarmed black person is killed

police-car

A mental health threat for our people
Police killed 346 black people in 2015, making fear of our “protectors” a rational, reasonable fear.  Now, for sure, there are many honest, caring cops out there. You hope that they are the ones who stop you for a broken tail light. The statistics on police killings portray practices that often result in death for black individuals stopped for nonviolent issues. This presents a HUGE source of trauma affecting the mental health of our people. Emotional trauma affects physical health as well.

NY_Time_photo_MappingPoliceViolence_web_link
Police violence directly affects the mental health of black people.

See how widespread the problem is
The resource website, http://www.mappingpoliceviolence.org   allows you to learn the stories of each of the individuals that were killed. Many of them are shocking, such as the Chicago landlord who opened her front door to greet police officers who had been called by her upstairs tenant. She opened the door, they shot her dead. Or the 17 year old brother, whose mother and sister had called the police when he experienced a psychotic episode. He ran into the bathroom, police shot him 17 times as his family begged them to stop.

The story of Kenneth Chamberlain

One of the saddest is the story of Kenneth Chamberlain of White Plains, NY.  Mr. Chamberlain, a retired Marine and long-time corrections officer, was killed by police after accidentally triggering his 1st Alert alarm.  He wore it because of a heart condition.  Police in riot gear stormed his apartment  (to be sure he was safe), and in a few seconds, tasered him twice, shot him at close range with four bean bag rounds, finally shooting him in the chest and killing him.

Picture of Kenneth Chamberlain as a young marine.

The entire episode was taped by the 1st Alert operator and yet the officers were never charged.  The conflicting testimonies of the officers supported a cover-up. The civil suit was lost because the nearly all white jury could not believe that the 69 year old retiree was not still standing when he was finally shot.  Watch the film and see what you think. His story also inspired a musical tribute to him and six other victims of police violence by Joel Thompson at the University of Michigan. These are not uncommon stories and they boggle the minds of mental health professionals right along with all other folks.

Mind Health, Racism/Diversity

Painting Insanity Black

This article is from the Black Health Network:

Painting Insanity Black

By Annie Murphy Paul

It took only a few weeks on the job for William Lawson to notice that there was something very strange going on. The psychiatrist had just joined the staff of the John L. McClellan Veterans Hospital in North Little Rock, Ark., and already he had seen patient after patient — dozens of them, as it turned out — with the same ill-fitting diagnosis. All African-American men, all veterans of combat in the Vietnam War, they suffered from terrifying nightmares, gut-twisting anxiety,
flashbacks of fighting — classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet they’d been assigned a very different condition: schizophrenia.

Lawson immediately took the men off the anti-psychotic medication they’d been prescribed, replacing it with the psychotherapy and antidepressants that have proven effective in relieving PTSD. Under the new treatment regime, most of the patients made a quick recovery. Mistakes like the ones he discovered may be odd, but they’re far from uncommon, says Lawson, now a professor at Indiana University and the co-editor of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry (Wiley, 1999).

Studies going back to the 1960s show that African-Americans are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than whites, a discrepancy due at least in part to clinician error. The rates of such mislabeling vary with the type of facility –they’re much lower, for example, in hospitals affiliated with universities — but Lawson estimates that in overburdened community mental-health centers, as many as 30 percent of black patients diagnosed with schizophrenia actually have some other illness.

Mind Health

Does wheat increase schizophrenic episodes?

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Over the last thirty years studies have shown that increased wheat consumption (bread, pasta, cereals) has been associated with increases in schizophrenia and other psychiatric illnesses.

Multiple studies have tracked reductions in schizophrenia in communities where there has been a corresponding reduction in removal of gluten from the diet.

Researchers in recent years have found a biological explanation for this relationship, noting that schizophrenics displayed abnormally igh levels of antibodies to gliadin, in a complex of wheat proteins.

Source: http://www.mercola.com, “60 Years of Research Links Gluten Grains to Schizophrenia.”