Common biology shared in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

That is what the title of this article talks about. “Patients suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share similar cognitive and brain abnormalities, three new multi-site studies show.  The findings, published in the November issue of American Journal of psychiatry, add to growing literature that the two disorders share a common biology.  We have known for a long time that the clinical symptoms are shared substantially between the two conditions, but when you look at the biology, these illnesses also blur into each other, said Godfrey Pearlson, professor of psychiatry and neurobiology and a co-author of the studies.  It is clear that they are not two nicely separated packages, but there is a substantial crossover between the two.”  Comparing the brains of schizophrenics and bipolar disorder patients you can see the same brain in both.  Does the same medication work for both mental illnesses?

The article also says: “The diagnoses of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have been used for almost a century to differentiate between symptoms, outcomes, and more recently, response to medications.  However, a growing number of researchers are beginning to question whether they are useful tools for the classification, understanding, and treatment of major mental illness.  While genome-wide analysis of patients DNA has not revealed clear-cut genetic culprits, researchers have known for years that schizophrenia and bipolar patients share similar abnormalities in such measures as eye movement and response to electroencephalogram tests.  Similar abnormalities are also often seen in their non-ill close relatives.”  They share some abnormalities in their brains that are similar so do there close relatives. These answers can help a lot of people searching for answers to why this happened to them. When none of their relatives have ever had a mental illness before that they know of.
Who is being tested for this: “Researchers at Yale and the Institute of Living in Hartford—as well as four other sites in Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas and Maryland—are studying 20 potential biological disease indicators in 3,000 individuals.  The subjects include those with schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder, as well as their close relatives and unrelated healthy controls. The study is known as BSNIP (Bipolar-schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes).  The new studies also show similar deficits in the brain among grey matter (neurons) and white matter (neuronal projections and connective cells) among schizophrenia and bipolar patients.  Also, the two conditions share similar forms of cognitive problems.  There are no clear-cut biological distinctions separating the conditions.  Intriguingly, similar brain abnormalities and cognitive deficits are shared to a lesser degree by relatives of the patients and likely represent markers of disease susceptibility.  These findings may lead researchers to common genetic causes of these deficits.  Pearlson also noted that the National Institute of Mental Health recently proposed a reclassification of mental illnesses based on biological measures.”  Bipolar face the same cognitive problems as schizophrenics.  College was tough on me.  If I would have went before my mental illness I know I would have done better especially in math.

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Her History of Mental Illness

She is back in the news as she has went back to a treatment center for her Bipolar II disorder that is what this article says.  Another news story  says she goes in periodically for a preemptive step to ensure that she continues to be in good health.  She also was absent this past Saturday from the 2013 White House Correspondents Dinner, which her husband Michael Douglass attended.  She has been candid with her mental illness.   She talks about her struggles with this disease.

She first went public about her mental illness in 2011: “After her husband, Michael Douglas, received the good news that his Stage IV throat cancer was gone that January, she couldn’t fight a lingering depression. In April of that year, she checked into a mental health facility in Connecticut and during her five-day stay there, she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, a mental illness marked by prolonged periods of depression alternating with episodes of mild mania.” It is good that she lets people know that she has this disease.  It can lessen some of the stigma associated with mental illness.
It is a disease a lot of us do not understand because we have never went through it or understand going through highs and lows I would guess.  I know my mental illness some would not understand also.  The article goes on to talk about why she discloses:  “This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them,’ the actress told People at the time.’ if my revelation of having bipolar II has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it.  There is no shame in seeking help.’”  That is encouraging to people to get help if she can so can others.  I know from experience the shame was on me.  It was hard to face my old friends even though they did not know what I was going through.
My breakdown came in prison I was already in the hole or as they call it segregation.  One if my friends were already on the other side of the cellblock that I was on.  The other friends did not know what was going on with me.  They told me they would help me though whatever I was going through.  I was taken to the hospital in Canon City.  The doctor asked where I would like to go to back to Buena Vista or where.  I told him right there behind the walls.  I did not want to go back and face my old friends.  I saw one of my friends from Buena Vista when I was out for about ten years already.  He waited until I was finished shopping at a store and came to speak to me.
He never brought up what happened just told me about his life.   I told him that I had been out about ten years and then we said goodbye.  The shame of this mental illness was mine.  Catherine Zeta-Jones says it best: “Everyone has things going on and we deal with them the best we can, ‘ she continued. ‘We can’t jump from rooftops shouting, you know, about, I have this, look at me, victim.’ No. We all have issues in life and I’m really happy that I have great friends, great support, and that’s all I can do.”  I guess I should have heard that before.  One reason I gave up all my old friends and I do not know if they would understand.  I would do anything for any of my friends that is the type of person I am.  Yes I have done time for a friend and did not snitch.  For me to go on being free I had to give them up.  A friend’s mom told me once it is not you it is your friends.  I did not understand that at the time.  How could that be they never go to jail or get in trouble just me? I am glad I read this article it is time someone lets people know they get help for a mental illness.

Apathy: An Unseen Connection

There is a strong connection which bonds apathy and other mental illnesses.  For instance apathy is a symptom of schizophrenia and the many people who have a schizophrenic diagnosis show little interest in people, events or emotions.  In other words they have “tuned out” a portion, if not all of reality.  People who are suffering from depression are often negative in their feelings of what surrounds them; as such they too have no interest in anything which gives pleasure or any experience which can bring them joy.

What is apathy?  Apathy in short is indifference, a lack of will or motivation to care.  Apathy is not depression it is a symptom, the result of an illness, event, though it is an illness, you can even relate it to being a symptom to other more physical diseases such as Alzheimer disease.  It is said that people who are apathetic do not take care of themselves as well as other consumers who are not apathetic, but this is said only in relation to other psychiatric illnesses.

 “The world Health Organization defines health as an optimal state of being that maximizes ones potential, for physical, mental, emotional and spiritual growth.”

Apathy -effects, withdrawal, people, effect, health, mood, Definition, Description

I have sat for many hours with my mind closed to the outside world in the past, not only ignoring social activities, yet also closed to the emotions of myself and finding only darkness inside and people to eschew from my way of life.  I had no idea I was apathetic, living without motivation, lacking any pleasurable existence, because I did not want to find one.  I understood the physical aspect of my life was suffering in a small sense, yet it is not depression I am suffering from, though during these times I did not understand what it meant to be Bi-Polar either, I was living in an up and down kind of world.  Many, many people experience apathy at one time or another, the reality of its disappointment is an uncaring attitude or slothful emotion, which is a part of life and apathy is a way to hide, with these negative symptoms such as stress can be dealing with external problems.  Yet, apathy can “enable people to move forward” and try something new when the rope loosens: you can see what is new which has become a part of the smile you’ve lost. 

Written by Donald S.

Creativity and Mental Illness Confirmed

This article talks about how people with mental illness are in creative professions. “People in creative professions are treated more often for mental illness than the general population, there being a particularly salient connection between writing and schizophrenia.” This is what researchers presented. We have only to look at some famous people who have had schizophrenia one being John Nash. There must be a reason why. They do not say why it happens that people with mental illness are creative in this article.
What the article does say: “Last year, the team showed that artists and scientists were more common amongst families where bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is present, compared to the population at large. They subsequently expanded their study to many more psychiatric diagnoses – such as schizoaffective disorder, depression, anxiety syndrome, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, autism, ADHD, anorexia nervosa and suicide – and to include people in outpatient care rather than exclusively hospital patients.” They included just about all the psychiatric diseases. They also included alcohol and drug abuse patients.
Now we find out how they found the results: “The present study tracked almost 1.2 million patients and their relatives, identified down to second-cousin level. Since all were matched with healthy controls, the study incorporated much of the Swedish population from the most recent decades. All data was anonymized and cannot be linked to any individuals. The results confirmed those of their previous study: certain mental illness – bipolar disorder- is more prevalent in the entire group of people with artistic or scientific professions, such as dancers, researchers, photographers and authors. Authors specifically also were more common among most of the other psychiatric diseases (including schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome and substance abuse) and were almost 50 per cent more likely to commit suicide that the general population.” They are more authors or writers will have schizophrenia or depression and always substance abuse. What can they do with these results?
It explains here: “if one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient’s illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment, he says. In the case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost. In psychiatry and medicine generally there has been a tradition to see the disease in black-and-white terms and to endeavor to treat the patient by removing everything regarded as morbid.” As I read about other schizophrenics on the web they all seem to have negative side effects from the medication. Do they lose their creativity also? I know I am one of the lucky ones in that I can work. I can get up early and keep a sleeping pattern. I do not know what I would do if I was never have gone to college and get a job. I see the negative side effects as really bad when you would like to improve your situation and cannot. You can also check us out at http://mhcd.org/blog

Schizophrenia and Cancer

BEFORE I GET INTO The BLOG, I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT The RECOVERY BLOG IS MOVING TO A NEW LOCATION: OUR BLOG WILL CONTINUE FROM OUR NEW HOME: http://www.mhcd.org/blog
This is another blog like last weeks. They are continuing to study the health of people with mental illness. This week they are talking that people with schizophrenia are more susceptible to cancer. “People with serious mental illness –schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and disabling depression – are 2.6 times more likely to develop cancer than the general population, new John Hopkins research suggests.” Again more than the general population, sometimes it seems like we cannot catch a break. Just being mentally ill is enough.
The article goes on to point out: “The increased risk is definitely there, but we’re not sure why, says study leader Gail L. Daumit, M.D., M. H. S., an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Are these people getting screened? Are they being treated? Something’s going on.” That is not all the bad news. “In a separate study, published last month in the journal Injury Prevention, Daumit found that people with serious mental illness were nearly twice as likely to end up in a hospital’s emergency room or inpatient department suffering from an injury than the general population and about 4.5 times more likely to die from their injuries.” Why are they suffering injuries and then die from them? That is the question.
The article says: “In the first study, Daumit’s team looked at data from 3,317 Maryland Medicaid beneficiaries with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, determining whether they developed cancer between 1994 and 2004 and what type of cancer they had. They found that patients with schizophrenia, when compared to the general population, were more than 4.5 times more likely to develop lung cancer, 3.5 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer and nearly three times more likely to develop breast cancer. People with bipolar disorder experienced similarly high risk for lung, colorectal and breast cancer. There were no racial differences in who developed cancer in this group, whose average age was between 42 and 43 years.” This tells who gets cancer and not the why. That is very young to get any disease let alone cancer.
We get a little of an answer in this part of the article: “Daumit says one reason for the elevated risk of lung cancer could be smoking, which is more prevalent in people with serious mental illnesses. She also speculates that the breast cancer risk could be related to the fact that women with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are less likely to have children, and childbearing is believed to reduce breast cancer risk. Also, some psychotropic medications can increase levels of the hormone prolactin, a factor that has been linked to breast cancer. The colorectal cancer risk, she says, could be related to lifestyle issues, such as smoking, lack of physical activity and diet lacking fruits and vegetables.” All the things a person need nowadays to stay healthy. I used to smoke but I quit so I could be with my granddaughter. I remember coughing so bad one day this guy told me if I did not quit that I would die. That still did not make me quit. I am glad now though that I did quit. The article goes on to say there needs to be more screening.
Now we will talk about the second study: “…Daumit and her colleagues looked at similar Maryland Medicaid data from 1994 through 2001 in search of other patterns. They found that over a seven year period, 43 percent of the 6,234 people with serious mental illness in the group studied were seen at a hospital emergency department or admitted with an injury. Among the members of the study group with an injury, 42 percent were injured once, 23 percent twice, 25 percent three to five times and 10 percent six or more times.” That is a lot of people with mental illness going to the emergency room. Are they falling a lot?
The article says: “Superficial injuries, open wounds and sprains were the types of injuries most frequently experienced by those in the study… Daumit says the results suggest that people with serious mental illness appear to be at heightened risk for both intentional and unintentional injury, and the types of injuries are mostly consistent with falls and minor violence.” I can see how people are not watching where they are walking or running. Minor violence should not be happening to anybody. Accident do happen though and hopefully not too many.
JUST A REMINDER THAT THE RECOVERY BLOG IS MOVING TO A NEW ADDRESS: OUR NEW HOME IS: http://mhcd.org/blog

Mental Health Premature Death

I have written about this subject in previous blogs. Here it is in the news again. This article about premature death and mental illness is a study done in the United Kingdom. This article say people with schizophrenia or bipolar have a substantially raised risk of premature death. They looked at death records from 1999 to 2006. They found that the mortality rate for patients with these types of mental illness was double the average for the population.
That is double the average of most people without mental illness. “For schizophrenics, the risk was raised by 60 percent in 1999, but more than twofold by 2006. For people with bipolar disorder, it was 30 percent higher in 1999, and ninety percent higher by 2006.” It seems it gets worse as the years go by. They say: “About three-quarters of all deaths were classed as natural causes. Circulatory disease and respiratory disease were the main components of this increase.” They say what they believe is the cause of these deaths. Now they have to find a way to stop the increase.
They say they need a better understanding of what causes this early death. “The team reviewed 37 studies based in 25 countries and found that most of the major causes of death were elevated in people with schizophrenia, and this has “worsened in recent decades.” It seems to affect men and women equally.” It affects people with schizophrenia and bipolar. They affect quite a number of people who fit those two mental illnesses. They do not think that people with schizophrenia have benefited from improvements in health outcome.
The article states: “They point out that several of the newer, second generation antipsychotic drugs can trigger metabolic syndrome, which is associated with a two- to threefold increase in death from cardiovascular disease and a twofold increase in deaths from all causes combined.” The medication has a little to do with it. They will keep studying, but they say it may take decades to find out if it is the weight gain caused by the medication. It is not very good news.

Common Destruction, Depression or Manic Depression

When suffering from bi-polar or depression alone, you tend to have episodes or mood swings, some of these moods people have are over excitation, this is with the manic phase in manic depression. The other is of hopelessness or the depressive mood and combined becomes a mixed state which can lead to outrage or irritation during a mood swing. With depression a person might feel tired, cannot concentrate, remember or make decisions. They may be restless, irritable, lack an appetite, sleep restlessly even contemplate death or attempt suicide. When looking at depression or manic depression, sadness or hopelessness reflects the person’s mood. Depression in manic depress has psychotic symptoms as well which tend to reflect a person’s mood.
In the one extreme you may think you have great wealth, or that you may be some famous individual in the crowd of friends you associate with. In another way you may think you have some special powers, either physical or magical. There is an opposite extreme, that of being depressed with a psychotic episode of which you may believe your life is going nowhere, that you are destined to ruination, that you are poor or that you have become a criminal. People with this state of mind can be wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia which may be a cause of medicinal problems when being diagnosed for medication.
Having friends on the one hand might be easy when you’re overspending or comical or mysterious, and living with depression on the other hand leads to often extreme abuse. There is in these matters use and abuse of one’s self and depression is a trap when things don’t go your way or you can go no further. During my struggle with being bi-polar I was also diagnosed as schizophrenic, through my use of drugs and alcohol, which lifted me from a slow sleepy gait to climbing mountains. This is not literal yet I thought I was enjoying life and I had no shame with the kinds of “friends” I had, with whom I used with, how long I partied or where I slept. Yet my life, both physically and mentally were not of good health. I used more drugs as time went by drank more, slept later and later, and ignored those good people who thought they would help me as I made believe my life was to wonderful and cool. I believed I could cause the rain to fall, all of this because I felt lowly and that I would never achieve anything in life.
After many years of Rehabilitation and fighting with the medications that were used, I finally braved reality. To begin a new life meant new friends not grave diggers and it meant understanding those who knew what was right. I knew I didn’t want to end my life with drug addicts standing above me, and I knew I had a reason to keep living and believing with the faith that grew inside yet I also knew, it was not the end of the world.

Written by Donald Sammons

Where There’s a Will There’s a Way

I sit at work sometimes wondering how to continue working a project that has me stumped. I become agitated my emotions change; I even become afraid that I am not capable of doing the work I was assigned. I want to run away at that point, just get up from my chair and leave everything behind. The computer programmer I share the office with calls it some sort of “fight or flight” syndrome, I call it “giving up”. This has everything to do with developed and undeveloped skills, and it’s what I perceive in my mind, not being able to focus on what is expected of me. My attention span dwindles and I become confused when there is no answer, and as I try to think, everything spins down different avenues, I am ready to run! This reaction is as physical as it is mental, a sort of Bi-Polar (manic) reaction.

Such reactions have been known as tools to survival and there are people who will say that no one person can persevere with such emotional responses as these, which is true in extreme cases. We need to stop and take time to clear our minds and think, with a reference book on how to take our next step! With all of the information that exist in the world, word of mouth, TV, news paper, computers, radio, just to mention a bit of the media of communication, I often wonder where is there to run for that quiet instance when we need to clear our minds and find a change of pace to carry on.

The will to overcome such anxiety, on the job, at home, at the airport comes from the belief that you can accept what must be done at that moment. Don’t run, clear your mind, set the world apart from the beginning of what troubles you and relax with only the one thought that it’s easy to feel the breeze of that thought which can change the ignorance you are feeling. You might think it’s silly to just walk outside the office (outdoors), or anywhere outside of where you feel you are closed in, even if your are at home or even set your work aside; yet know you need a minutes space greater than where you are and go there beyond disparity. That instance you have begun to relax what has been troubling you, and you are putting aside impatience and your gaining calmness and enthusiasm to finding your way beyond the “fight and flight” of confusion; finding space outside that cell that is giving you negative vibes is not wrong, it’s the running away that keeps you in that sphere as they say, where there’s a will there’s a way, and the first step is to believe you answer is real and at hand…relax.

Written by Donald Sammons

smoking

Smoking
· 40% - 60% of people with depression smoke
· 61% of people with bi-polar disorder smoke

People who use tobacco, who don’t quit can or will die of smoking related problems, especially those with a serious mental illness who may die 25 years earlier than the “normal” non-smoker.

We hear a lot about smokers who exist in the mental health category, yet not very much about cigarette use amongst adults who work full time or adolescents. The two categories cannot be readily compared yet it can be stated that in the food and restaurant occupation, cigarette use is nearly 50% in that work force, the highest of most occupations where 33 million full time employees from the age of 18 to 64 do smoke, the lowest being 15% for those in the physical, psychological and social science occupations.

There are many studies of cigarette smoking amongst adolescents from the age of 12 to 17 years of age who may be smoking 1 – 2 packs of cigarettes a day. Studies such as these have taken place over a 27 state range throughout the United States. Cigarette smoking cause more than 400,000 deaths every year and most smokers begin in their adolescence. There are many prevention programs throughout the United States, not only from the private sectors of businesses yet also the government and state level as well. Cigarette use has a major role in the health of many citizens in every state in this nation, and to reduce making and changing the attitudes of smoking in people will have achieved progress in maintaining the health of these people.

People who are clients within the Mental Health system, who have a mental illness, are known to smoke more than all other people in other occupations; twice as much. The reasons for such high smoking statistics in schizophrenics and other serious mental illness are social, psychological and physical; and smoking amongst people with mental illness is viewed as not just smoking, yet self medicating as well.
It is hard to tell the difference between nicotine withdrawal and the symptoms of mental illness, when people are being treated for a possible mental illness, in all this treatment for mental health is a bit more difficult.

These are just a few of the unnoticed attitudes about smoking that have been established in the United States and abroad. So while most everyone I have ever met smokes because of nerves, or a friend got them started, the fact remains that smoking tobacco takes its toll, even amongst the mentally ill.

by Donald Sammons