Ah, Independence Day — July 4th. A good day to celebrate, enjoy some family time, and have an outdoor barbeque. Or try to, if only the darned kids would get off their Nintendos and cell phones!

It’s a day for family and friends, for celebrating our independence from another country who tried to dominate our lives through intrusive government and taxation without proper representation. But with each passing year, it sometimes feels like the lessons of past centuries are being lost. Our government increasingly seeks to intrude in our private lives in the name of “security,” forgetting that our nation is founded on the grounds of “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” Taxes rise every year and while I’m sure we’re better off than our colonial counterparts, most individual Americans feel the rising burdens of government more than government itself feels them.

Of course government cannot “feel” anything (since it’s a faceless, ever-growing bureaucracy). But we the people do.

Families today face many more challenges than problems with government, though, or rising taxes. The face of the family is changing, as it has changed with the advance of every new technology in the past. People who haven’t studied history think all of this change is new and exciting. And while it is exciting, it is nothing new.

There are dozens of milestones in recent history where technology has played a major role in shifting the course of society. Technology used in the Revolutionary War, such as the printing press, faster warships, and more reliable muskets, helped alter the face of society forever across the world. It spun the idea of democracy and freedom from aristocracy, which spread across Europe. Steam-powered sawmills in the 18th century sped the ability to build new structures across our fledgling country, helping to fuel the creation of towns in the westward expansion to the Pacific.

With the industrial age brought all sorts of significant changes to the family. The mass production and affordability of mainstream goods, including the automobile, led to a burgeoning middle class and greater mobility for …

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Apparently after you’ve made it as a tenured professor at Harvard University, your first job is to secure some more funding for your research (despite Harvard being the richest school in the world). And what better way to do this than to ask for a little industry support?

Critics have typically focused on the potential for a conflict of interest when researchers are funded by the pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they study. But there are many deep pockets in the world, and gambling companies have some of the deepest.

Just ask Howard Shaffer, a world-renown researcher on compulsive gambling and a Harvard professor. Bloomberg pointed out yesterday how he has received over $9 million in industry money since 1996, in support of his research initiatives into gambling and gambling problems.

Shaffer’s research, however, is extensive in this field and his reputation is impeccable. The primary difference seems to be that the media (in this case, Bloomberg specifically) is on a bit of a witch hunt now, looking for anyone who gets industry money and does research on that same industry (regardless of whether there has been any failure to disclose the support).

To be clear, Shaffer is not under any type of investigation for failure to disclose financial support from the industry, a point not clearly made until you’re nine paragraphs into the article:

Shaffer’s research complies with Harvard’s guidelines for receiving funding from industry, David Cameron, a spokesman for Harvard Medical School, said in an emailed statement June 25.

Shaffer, 59, said his funding sources are fully disclosed, his findings are published in peer-reviewed journals and casino companies haven’t interfered with his research.

Far before this point is made, the Bloomberg author trots out guilt by association, bringing up the other …

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Johns Hopkins University researchers have released two follow-up papers to their fascinating 2006 study in Psychopharmacology, in which 36 healthy volunteers were given psilocybin (also known as “magic” or “sacred” mushrooms) under controlled laboratory conditions.

Subjects in the original study were screened to rule out any predisposition toward psychosis or other serious mental illnesses, which can be exacerbated by hallucinogenic drug experiences. The rigorous process involved two different 8-hour laboratory visits, during which subjects received psilocybin on one occasion and a placebo (Ritalin) on the other. The study was double-blind, meaning neither the participants nor their highly trained “monitors”, who were present for safety reasons during the trials, knew who was getting what. These precautions ensured that nobody entered the psilocybin experience with any prior expectations.

For the first follow-up paper, researchers checked back in with subjects fourteen months after their hallucinogenic experiences:

[Lead investigator Dr. Roland] Griffiths re-administered the questionnaires used in the first study — along with a specially designed set of follow up questions — to all 36 subjects. Results showed that about [two thirds] of the volunteers ranked their experience in the study as the single most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful or spiritually significant events of their lives and regarded it as having increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction.

“This is a truly remarkable finding,” Griffiths says. “Rarely in psychological research do we see such persistently positive reports from a single event in the laboratory. This gives credence to the claims that the mystical-type experiences some people have during hallucinogen sessions may help patients suffering from cancer-related anxiety or depression and may serve as a potential treatment for drug dependence. We’re eager to move ahead with that

…

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With the question of how to pay for good psychotherapy (nevermind how to find or get “good” psychotherapy in the first place) not far from many people’s minds, researchers are spending more time looking at alternatives to traditional but expensive face-to-face psychotherapy. While some therapists are exploring alternative realities, researchers are still focused on far more accessible, some might even say “mundane,” approaches.

CBT4CBT is one such approach. It stands for computer-based training (CBT) for cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) (get it?). It basically teaches the components of cognitive behavioral therapy sans therapist using an approach “based on elementary-level computer learning games, and the presentation of material was done in a range of formats, including graphic illustrations, videotaped examples, verbal instructions, audio voiceovers, interactive assessments, and practice exercises.” In other words, the researchers tried to make it engaging and interactive, and not too dry — a failing of previous attempts to make CBT interesting via computer.

In this particular study, the researchers wanted to assess its effectiveness in the treatment of cocaine addiction. So it consisted of six lessons, or modules, using content based closely on a CBT manual published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The researchers wanted to use this manual (which anyone can read, download and use on their own) because it had been used in several previous randomized, controlled trials in a range of substance-using populations. This makes the results more comparable across studies.

According to the researchers, the modules covered the following core concepts: 1) understanding and changing patterns of substance use, 2) coping with craving, 3) refusing offers of drugs and alcohol, 4) problem-solving skills, 5) identifying and changing thoughts about drugs and alcohol, and 6) improving decision-making skills. …

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It’s common wisdom that pets help confer certain physical and emotional health benefits to their owners. An advice column from The Times last month, in fact, suggested that the health benefits of pet ownership are global and generalized — that owning a pet has a positive correlation with wellbeing in most people. The research tells a different story, however — pet ownership can cause problems or be a burden for some.

Allen (2003) conducted a valuable review of the literature to-date about the benefits of pet ownership and concluded:

Several epidemiological and experimental studies have demonstrated that having a pet cat or dog can have significant cardiovascular benefits. Although the idea that a pet serves as social support may appear peculiar to some people, pet owners talk to and confide in their pets and describe them as important friends. […]

An important consideration, however, is that media reports of the ability of pets to lower blood pressure are often highly inflated and misrepresent actual research.

Pets can be a healthy pleasure and provide social support to their owners. But the effects and benefits are not global in nature, nor do they apply to all people all the time. Pets appear to have a social facilitation effect on their owners, helping their owners perform tasks better and with less stress. They also appear to have a stress buffering effect — when a person is in need of unrestricted positive regard, pets provide such to their owners.

But not everyone benefits from pet ownership.

For instance, in one study of 2,551 individuals aged 60 to 64 years old, the researchers found that those who had a pet in their home reported more depressive symptoms (Parslow et al., 2005). The study also found …

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In a study published in the medical journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery recently (and profiled in this May 28 New York Times article), Yale University researchers examined how features of the eye and eyebrow affect our facial expressions and, in turn, how other people use this information to guess our mood at the time.

Study participants were shown 16 digitally altered versions of the same face (check them out here), each with different eyebrow placement, lid shape, and level of wrinkling. For each photograph, they were asked to rank on a scale of one to five the presence of tiredness, happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, disgust and fear.

The results might surprise you:

“…many of the pictures that mimicked various plastic surgery procedures, such as eyelid surgery or brow lifts, actually generated worse scores, with study participants rating those faces as looking angry or tired.

For instance, drooping of the upper eyelid was the biggest indicator of tiredness, but a picture that simulated a type of eyelid surgery — involving the removal of excess skin from the upper eyelid — made the woman look even more tired and sad, the study participants reported. Raising the upper eyelids produced an increase in the perception of surprise and fear.

“A significant number of plastic surgery patients opt for eyelid surgery, forehead lifts and face-lifts not only for rejuvenative reasons, but to change an unattractive facial expression as well,” said Dr. John A. Persing, one of the study authors. “Our findings indicate that moderation is best when removing excess skin in the upper eyelid. You do not want to create an overdone look that actually makes you look more tired.”

It’s about time researchers conducted a study like this, and I’m …

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The below hospital surveillance video shows a dying woman while people around her, including a hospital security guard, did nothing to help. Apparently hospitals aren’t good places for people with mental illness to be (click here to read the full entry and view the video):

After a full hour, another patient alerted hospital staff of the woman dead on the floor. But it gets better:

Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment provided Esmin Green before she died.

And while I’d like to say this is a rare, unfortunate accident, indifference among staffers at hospitals toward people with mental illness is actually fairly common.

This is not the first time this hospital has had troubles, either:

A federal suit filed last year in Brooklyn alleged neglect and abuse of mental patients at the hospital. The suit sparked an investigation by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s civil rights unit before the June 19 death.

Why their psych ward is even allowed to remain open is beyond me. And while 6 staffers have been fired, including 2 security guards who saw the woman and did nothing, it still leaves a bitter taste in anyone’s mouth who watches this tape. The loss of a job just doesn’t seem sufficient punishment for the death of a person with mental illness — in a hospital.

Read the full story: Hospital video shows no one helped dying woman

I don’t mean to be insensitive to the potential for destructive nature of a gun in the home, but there was a spate of news articles yesterday regurgitating a statistic which is neither new nor news — that more than half of firearm deaths in the U.S. are suicides. From the Associated Press:

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

This isn’t news, however, as for the past 25 years, 80% of the time suicide has outranked homicides and accidents as the number one handgun killer.

Why do so many people turn to a handgun when they want to end their lives?

Perhaps it’s because nothing else in this world is quite like a handgun. A handgun’s only purpose is to kill or hurt someone. So it has an allure to many people to use it for its purpose. (A knife or rope or drugs, while all potential tools of suicide, also serve many other ordinary purposes, such as cutting up celery, tying down some luggage on the car rack, and treating a headache.) Also, in the throes of depression and suicidal thinking, the easiest, most lethal option may seem like a good choice.

But research notwithstanding, the right to bear arms is guaranteed by our Constitution, which the Supreme Court upheld as a fundamental right in this country last Thursday. Whatever public health concerns public health officials might have with firearms have to be weighed and balanced against that right. (And to be clear, this right wasn’t some reactionary amendment tacked on a few decades ago. It is a core element of our history for fear of …

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In a newly published report on “Global Alcohol, Tobacco, Cannabis, and Cocaine Use” from the World Health Organization’s series of Mental Health Surveys, Americans’ levels of cocaine and marijuana use were highest among the 17 countries on six different continents surveyed. Researchers found that 16.2% of U.S. survey respondents had at least tried cocaine in their lifetime; New Zealanders were next at 4.3%. Kiwis caught up with their American counterparts in cannabis use, however: in both countries, 42% of the population sample had tried marijuana.

According to the report, global drug use “is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.” For example, in the Netherlands, a country whose drug policies are quite liberal compared to those in the U.S., only 19.8% of people reported cannabis use and a mere 1.9% had tried cocaine.

Researchers did find sex differences — males were more likely to have used drugs than females — but the gap appears to be closing.

These results are nothing to sneeze at, considering the hefty sample size of 85,052 people. Still, the 16% rate of cocaine use sounds awfully high to me, although the latest (2006) results from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health name a rate of 14.3% for lifetime use across all ages.

All this makes me wonder: what might contribute to such high rates of drug use in the U.S., if drug policies are not necessarily a factor? Is it a question of “forbidden fruit”, perhaps, where overly stringent drug policies somehow make drugs more attractive?

What do you think?

For more information: The Of Two …

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In this blog post a few days ago, John mentioned an April 2008 literature review by researchers at Boston University who wanted to explore the efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in treating anxiety. The authors of the review concluded that CBT, a short-term treatment technique, is generally effective for anxiety orders.

In a related article from the June 2008 BUforward Alumni e-newsletter, a study taking place at the University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders is discussed in more detail. Associate Professor of Psychology Donna Pincus is currently conducting a five-year, NIMH-funded study looking at the effectiveness of intensive, short-term CBT on adolescent patients with severe anxiety problems such as agoraphobia and panic disorder.

Patients don’t get any medication during the therapy; “interoceptive exposure” (placing people in the same situations that cause them to panic) is more than enough. Pincus explains:

“In order to overcome anxiety, adolescents have to actually experience the physical sensations that are caused by panic… The first time it’s scary — terrifying, even. But by the second or third time, habituation occurs. By allowing patients to experience sensations of panic in a controlled setting, they learn that it takes only a few minutes for those sensations to dissipate, because our bodies like to stay at homeostasis… And once a patient stops responding to the sensations with fear, the sensations go away.”

Sixteen-year-old study participant Lindsey Lanouette suffered from panic attacks and anxiety before participating in Pincus’ cutting-edge program:

“…Lindsay…appeared to have it all. Tall and lithe, with long blonde hair and striking blue eyes, she had lots of friends, got along well with her parents and sister, earned good grades, and played varsity soccer.

But sometimes, while wandering the aisles of

…

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I took a seat at a large conference table in the university’s counseling center. I looked around nervously. I kept my hands in my lap, fingers (figuratively) crossed, hoping that I wouldn’t recognize a single face that walked through the door and into the Anxiety and Stress Management Class that I’d signed up for. It was a six-week class that I’d discovered via a flier posted on a bulletin board outside of my second home, the university library. As I sat and waited, my heartbeat felt large and uncomfortable. No doubt, I was anxious.

I was a first-semester graduate student at the time, trying to keep up with the 200+ pages I needed to read each week for my classes. It was just too much reading. (I hadn’t yet fully realized the fine art of skimming and scanning.) Theories would blend together and famous philosophers like Hume and Locke would inch their way into my dreams, uninvited. Even during the waking hours, I couldn’t relax. I’d try to zone out by watching a sitcom; instead, I’d find myself thinking about how little I know about designing research studies — and I needed to know for that exam on Monday! — and I’d only end up flustered and feeling unproductive when the credits rolled by. I couldn’t keep my anxiety level in check. Not even through the traditional notion of relaxing — sitting on the couch, remote control in hand, pleasant faces and canned laughter on the screen. Nope. Didn’t work.

I held my breath as a handful of fellow students began filtering into the conference room. “He looks …

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As we read our way through the detailed, insightful articles of The American Prospect’s special issue on the politics of mental health, we’ll share interesting tidbits from them.

Taxpayers historically hate having to pay for public services through increased taxes of any kind. Many of us believe we are taxed enough as it is, and so finding funding for things that should be available in most states — like affordable mental health care — can be challenging. In the Pete Earley article about this topic, he reviews some creative strategies for funding mental health treatment these days, and recounts this amusing story of how difficult funding for public health concerns can be:

Historically, mental-health funding has been a low political priority. In Wyatt v. Stickney, the country’s first major civil-rights battle about mental illness, attorneys sued Alabama and introduced horrific evidence that showed how patients in state asylums in the 1970s were being abused, neglected, and, in some cases, tortured. Yet, when a disgusted Alabama judge ordered the state legislature to overhaul its shameful system by pumping in millions of new tax dollars for improvements, legislators balked. They cried poor. There was no money, they insisted, until an enterprising attorney released state financial records that revealed Alabama was spending more each year to host the Alabama Junior Miss Pageant and swine shows at county fairs than it spent caring for people with mental illnesses. Red-faced legislators approved limited funds. Such legislative priorities proved typical. When choosing between new highways, more police, bigger jails, and improved schools, legislators always pushed mental-health treatment aside.

I mean, we’re talking about our government here and while we may believe this would never happen in this modern age (hey, that was over …

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