Ceremonial PTSD therapies favored by Native American veterans

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Native American veterans battling Post Traumatic Stress Disorder find relief and healing through an alternative treatment called the Sweat Lodge ceremony offered at the Spokane Veterans Administration Hospital.In the Arizona desert, wounded warriors from the Hopi Nation can join in a ceremony called Wiping Away the Tears. The traditional cleansing ritual helps dispel a chronic “ghost sickness” that can haunt survivors of battle.These and other traditional healing therapies are the treatment of choice for many Native American veterans, — half of whom say usual PTSD treatments don’t work — according to a recent survey conducted at Washington State University. The findings will be presented at the American Psychological Association conference in Washington D.C. this August.The study is available online at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nativeveterans.Led by Greg Urquhart and Matthew Hale, both Native veterans and graduate students in the College of Education, the ongoing study examines the attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of Native American veterans concerning PTSD and its various treatment options. Their goal is to give Native veterans a voice in shaping the types of therapies available in future programs.”Across the board, Native vets don’t feel represented. Their voices have been silenced and ignored for so long that they were happy to provide feedback on our survey,” said Hale.Historically, Native Americans have served in the military at higher rates than all other U.S. populations. Veterans are traditionally honored as warriors and esteemed in the tribal community.A 2012 report by the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that the percentage of Native veterans under age 65 outnumbers similar percentages for veterans of all other racial groups combined.The WSU survey provides a first-hand look at the veterans’ needs, but more importantly, reveals the unique preferences they have as Native American veterans, said Phyllis Erdman, executive associate dean for academic affairs at the college and mentor for the study.Cultural worldviewUrquhart said many Native veterans are reluctant to seek treatment for PTSD because typical western therapy options don’t represent the Native cultural worldview.”The traditional Native view of health and spirituality is intertwined,” he explained. “Spirit, mind, and body are all one — you can’t parcel one out from the other — so spirituality is a huge component of healing and one not often included in western medicine, although there have been a few studies on the positive effects of prayer.”For many years, the U.S. government banned Native religious ceremonies, which subsequently limited their use in PTSD programs, said Urquhart. …


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Dr. Robert Cameron Chairs International Panel of Medical Specialists at 4th Annual Symposium on Lung-Sparing Therapies for Malignant Pleural...

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Dr. Robert Cameron ThePacific Meso Center, in conjunction with The Office of Continuing Medical Education of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, held the 4th International Symposium on Lung-SparingTherapies for Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma on June 7, 2014 in Santa Monica, California. TheWorthington & Caron Law Firmwas proud to once again be a platinum sponsor of this unique medical seminar focusing on rational treatment options for patients with pleural mesothelioma.As in years past, the course organizer and chair of the symposium was thoracic surgeon and pleural mesothelioma specialist,Dr. Robert Cameron. An ardent supporter of rational lung-sparing treatments for pleural mesothelioma, and innovator of thepleurectomy/decortication(“PD”) surgical procedure, Dr. Cameron is the founder and director of both theComprehensive Mesothelioma Programat the UCLA Medical Center and…


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New EMS system dramatically improves survival from cardiac arrest

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A new system that sent patients to designated cardiac receiving centers dramatically increased the survival rate of victims of sudden cardiac arrest in Arizona, according to a study published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine.”We knew lives would be saved if the hospitals implemented the latest cutting edge guidelines for post-cardiac arrest care and we were able to get cardiac arrest patients to those hospitals, similar to what is done for Level 1 trauma patients,” said lead study author Daniel Spaite, MD, Director of EMS Research at the University of Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center in Phoenix and Tucson and a professor and distinguished chair of emergency medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. “Taking these patients directly to a hospital optimally prepared to treat cardiac arrest gave patients a better chance of survival and of preventing neurologic damage, a common result of these cardiac events.”Under the study, 31 hospitals, serving about 80 percent of the state’s population, were designated as cardiac receiving centers between December 2007 and November 2010. Approximately 55 emergency medicine service agencies also participated in the study.The study shows that the survival rate increased by more than 60 percent during the four-year period of the study, from 2007 to 2010. More importantly, when the results were adjusted for the various factors that significantly impact survival (such as age and how quickly the EMS system got to the patients after their arrest), the likelihood of surviving an arrest more than doubled. In addition, the likelihood of surviving with good neurological status also more than doubled.This statewide effort was accomplished through the Save Hearts Arizona Registry and Education-SHARE Program, a partnership involving the Arizona Department of Health Services, the University of Arizona, over 30 hospitals and more than 100 fire departments and EMS agencies. The SHARE Program is part of a network of statewide cardiac resuscitation programs dedicated to improving cardiac arrest survival and working together as the HeartRescue Project.”We worked closely with the hospitals around the state to implement these Guidelines and then formally recognized the hospitals as Cardiac Receiving Centers (CRCs) ,” said Ben Bobrow, MD, Medical Director of the Bureau of Emergency Medicine Services and Trauma System for the Arizona Department of Health Services in Phoenix, Ariz. “We then developed protocols for our EMS agencies to transport post-cardiac arrest patients to those centers. Our overarching goal was to have more cardiac arrest victims leave the hospital in good shape and be able to return to their families and careers. As we suspected, ‘regionalizing’ the care for these critically-ill patients markedly increased their likelihood of survival and good neurologic outcome.”Dr. Bobrow, who is also a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix and an emergency physician at Maricopa Medical Center, said the study shows that just transporting these patients to the nearest emergency department does not maximize the likelihood of a positive outcome. …


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Reducing Hep C infections for injection drug users

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Despite a number of social/behavioral intervention and educational programs, the spread of hepatitis C (HCV) in people who inject drugs (PWIDs) remains a chronic problem. Now, researchers affiliated with New York University’s Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) are focusing on intervention strategies that highlight the lesser-known dangers of HCV transmission through the sharing of other injection equipment such as cookers, filters, drug-dilution water and water containers.Their article, “The Staying Safe Intervention: Training People Who Inject Drugs in Strategies to Avoid Injection-Related HCV and HIV Infection,” published in AIDS Education and Prevention, Vol. 26:2, April 15, 2014, explores the feasibility and efficacy of their “Staying Safe Intervention,” a strengths-based social/behavioral intervention conducted with small groups of PWID, designed to facilitate long-term prevention of HIV and HCV.”The Staying Safe Intervention seeks to reduce injection risk by intervening upstream in the causal chain of risk behaviors by modeling, training in, and motivating the use of strategies and practices of long-term risk-avoidance,” said Dr. Pedro Mateu-Gelabert, the study’s Principal Investigator, at the NYC-based National Development Research Institutes.Dr. Mateu-Gelabert and his NDRI-CDUHR team evaluated 68 street-recruited injectors from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The objective was to reduce participants’ injection risk behaviors, empower and motivate behavioral change, and teach tactics to help reduce drug intake. The current program was built upon findings of their 2005 study, “Staying Safe,” which looked at the behaviors and strategies of individuals who had injected drugs for long periods of time (8-15 years) but had not contracted HIV or HCV.”The Staying Safe Intervention does not focus exclusively on the moment of injection,” explains Dr. Mateu-Gelabert, “but on the upstream determinants of risk behavior, such as stigma, risk networks, social support and income, while encouraging injectors to plan ahead in order to better manage the drug-related risk contexts they are likely to face.”The social/behavioral intervention showed substantial improvement in motivation and planning to avoid injection-related risks, increased use of stigma management strategies, and decreases in drug withdrawal episodes (known to reduce safe injection practices) and number of weekly injections. The research team also noted that participants in the study have been spreading the word on safer drug use within their communities.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that not only do nine percent of new HIV infections originate from drug use, but 18 percent of PWID are HIV positive and up to 70-77 percent of PWIDs have HCV.”Given the substantial reductions observed among Staying Safe participants in key injection-related risk behaviors associated with HCV transmission, the Staying Safe Intervention may have the potential to contribute to sufficient additional risk reduction to help address the seemingly intractable rates of HCV transmission among PWID,” said Dr. Mateu-Gelabert.Currently, Dr. …


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Early childhood education can pay big rewards to families, society

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High quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children can simultaneously reduce inequality and boost productivity in America, contends James Heckman, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and one of the nation’s leading experts on early childhood education.”With the global rise in income inequality, children born into disadvantaged environments are at much greater risk of being unskilled and facing many obstacles in life — which is bad for individuals and bad for societies,” said Heckman, who delivered a talk “Giving Kids a Fair Chance Early in Life: A Strategy that Works” on Feb. 14 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual meeting in Chicago.He pointed out that economic and socially related gaps in cognitive and non-cognitive skills emerge early, and can be traced in part to adverse early environments.”With smart policies we can arrest the polarization between skilled and unskilled, focusing on early years when change is possible,” he said. Strong early childhood education programs can help overcome the gaps and help children become better prepared for success in life, he said.Heckman spoke at a seminar titled “Talking to Kids Really Matters: Early Language Experience Shapes Later Life Chances.” At the session, scholars discussed the importance of verbal engagement by caretakers in the development of children’s language and cognitive abilities.Researchers have found that the timing, quality and quantity of talking with children are crucial to the development of language and cognitive abilities. In one study, some mothers spoke many thousands of words a day to children, while another spoke only 600 words to her infant over a 10-hour day, organizers of the seminar pointed out.The gap reduces the children’s vocabularies and undermines their performance in school, scholars contend. Early childhood education programs can make up for some of the differences.Heckman has studied extensively early childhood programs, including the Perry Preschool Project and the Abecedarian Project, and found that they were especially effective in helping children from disadvantaged families succeed in school and later in life.When the oldest participants were studied (at age 40 for the Perry program and age 35 for Abecedarian), the people who received services when they were younger scored higher on achievement tests, attained higher levels of education, required less special education, earned higher wages, had better physical health, were more likely to own a home, and were less likely to go on welfare or be incarcerated than other children from similar backgrounds.Non-cognitive skills, which can be fostered at an early age, are as important in the children’s futures as are academic preparation, Heckman said. Those skills include perseverance, attentiveness, motivation, and self-confidence. Those skills help students perform better in school and later on jobs, he has found.Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by University of Chicago. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Strategy that narrows academic achievement gap by 63 percent

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Americans don’t like to talk about social class. But new research from Northwestern and Stanford universities suggests that, at least in college and university settings, they should do just that.An upcoming article in Psychological Science describes a novel one-hour intervention that closed by 63 percent the persistent academic achievement gap between first-generation college students and continuing-generation students. (Continuing-generation students are defined as those with at least one parent with a four-year college degree.)The key to the one-time intervention’s success was raising students’ awareness of the ways that social class shapes the college experience, according to Northwestern psychologist Nicole Stephens.”First-generation students earn lower grades, are at greater risk of dropping out and feel a greater sense of ‘not belonging’ when they transition to college, yet programs designed to help them usually leave out discussions of students’ social class backgrounds,” says Stephens, associate professor in Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.In “Closing the Social-Class Achievement Gap,” lead author Stephens and co-authors MarYam Hamedani and Mesmin Destin outline the intervention they devised to help first-generation students successfully transition to college. Hamedani is associate director of Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Destin is assistant professor in Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy and in its Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.The “difference-education intervention,” which took place at the beginning of the academic year, deliberately but subtly included discussions of the ways that students’ different social class backgrounds impacted their college experience. Researchers compared it to the “standard intervention” which, in contrast, avoided reference to social class.In both interventions, third- and fourth-year undergraduates from a wide variety of family backgrounds related personal stories about their own college adjustment to a group of incoming freshmen, some first-generation, some not.In the difference-education intervention, student panelists discussed obstacles to and strategies for college success that they linked to their different social class backgrounds. In the “standard intervention,” they discussed the same issues without talking about their family backgrounds.A panelist in the difference-education intervention said: “Because my parents didn’t go to college, they weren’t always able to provide me the advice I needed. So it was sometimes hard to figure out what classes to take and what I wanted to do in the future. But there are other people who can provide that advice, and I learned that I needed to rely on my adviser more than other students.”A panelist in the standard intervention also talked about the difficulty of choosing classes and of the need to rely on professors, mentors and other campus resources but did not mention her social class background.The effort to embrace instead of erase discussions of social class difference had significant long-term consequences. The difference-education intervention not only closed the social-class academic achievement gap by 63 percent but also improved first-generation students’ psychological adjustment to college.At the end of the academic year, they reported better outcomes on psychological well-being, social fit, perspective taking and appreciation of diversity than their peers in the standard intervention. …


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#Academic, #Alternative-Medicine, #College, #Destin, #Education, #Health, #Intervention, #King, #Science, #Social, #University

The 4 Cardinal Rules of Smart Money Management

The 4 Cardinal Rules of Smart Money Management



Americans are getting better at making ends meet, according to the 2013 National Financial Capability Study, but they are lacking in savings and debt management skills. Less than half of Americans surveyed had emergency savings of three months’ i...

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Mobile compression device recommended to prevent DVT after joint surgery

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Research from The Shiley Center for Orthopaedic Research and Education at Scripps Clinic could change how patients are treated to prevent blood clots after joint replacement surgery. A study published today as the lead article in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery determined that after lower extremity joint replacement surgery a mobile compression device was just as effective as blood thinners in preventing deep vein thrombosis (DVT), but without negative side effects including bleeding complications.The multicenter study, led by Scripps Clinic orthopedic surgeon Clifford Colwell, MD evaluated the efficacy of a mobile compression device that is small and portable enough for patients to use at home for 10 days or longer after joint replacement surgery.”Blood thinners have long been considered the standard of care to prevent blood clots after orthopedic surgery, but they can have side effects that are concerning for many patients,” said Dr. Colwell. “Through this research we have found and established an equally effective means of accomplishing the same goal with an added layer of safety for patients.”Story Source:The above story is based on materials provided by Scripps Health. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Cortical convolutions controlled in sections: Non-coding DNA sequence affects brain"s characteristic folding, study shows

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Researchers have tied a particular gene to the development of cortical convolutions — the prominent but enigmatic folds covering the surface of the human brain. Their discovery should shed some light on these characteristic contours, which have been the subject of wild speculation for ages, and perhaps also provide a better understanding of how such brain ridges form, how they evolved from our pre-human ancestors and, ultimately, how they influence brain function.The exact role of cortical convolutions remains unknown, but theories have abounded. (Some, for example, have suggested that the folds act as the body’s cooling system and others have even proposed that Albert Einstein’s genius could have been traced to a single cortical fold on his brain.)Now, leveraging advances that permit a closer look at how these folds develop, research published in the 14 February issue of Science shows that a mutation affecting GPR56 causes cortical convolutions around the brain’s Sylvian fissure — a particularly deep indentation — to develop thinner and more convoluted than usual. The finding, which suggests that genes may assert control over the brain’s physical folding on a section-by-section basis, provides insight into the mysterious cortical development process.”There is already a list of genetic mutations that cause abnormal neocortical folding, which can be used for prenatal testing,” explained Byoung-il Bae from the Division of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, one of the lead authors of the Science report. “We intend to add this mutation to some of the panels.”Bae and colleagues from around the world investigated the genomes of five individuals with abnormalities on Broca’s area, or the language center of the brain. These study participants were from three different families — one Turkish and two Irish-American — and they suffered from refractory seizures as well as intellectual and language difficulties.The researchers found that all five patients harbored a mutation on a particular regulatory element that influences the GPR56 gene. Such regulatory DNA doesn’t code for any proteins itself but promotes the expression of genes elsewhere on the genome. Geneticists have long-suspected that such non-coding regions of the genome could play important roles in evolution. To observe the specific effects of the GPR56 “promoter” DNA sequence, Bae and his team used genetically modified mice.They discovered that low expression of GPR56 (gauged by low levels of mRNA) decreases the production of neuroprogenitor cells — those that will eventually give rise to neurons — around Broca’s area and the Sylvian fissure. By contrast, overexpression of the gene boosts the production of such progenitor cells in that region. …


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