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Co-Occurring Disorders Among Social Workers
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders (SUD) affected an estimated 8.1 million adults or 3.7% of the total adult population in the United States....
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Crisis Respite: An Effective Intervention in the Continuum of Recovery
Think about your work with a client with a psychiatric diagnosis in emotional crisis. Did your client get what they needed at an emergency room? Or, after hours of waiting, were they told they were well enough to deal with it at home, perhaps by themselves? A peer-run Crisis Respite stay is an...
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Suicide Prevention in the Aging
By 2040, it is estimated that 82 million Americans will be over the age of 65. Approximately 16 million of them will have mental health issues and/or substance use disorders (SAMHSA, 2017). It is also known that the highest rate of suicide is among those 65 years and older. 90% of those who die by...
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From the Publisher’s Desk “The Handshake of Hope”
With the holiday’s only a month or so away, I recall a true story I wrote about several years ago in this publication. It began with, “Let me tell you a story about a simple handshake that saved the life of a man from New York suffering with mental illness.” The year was 1987 and he was 38...
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Helping Moms and Kids
Health care delivery is generally complicated, but it doesn’t always have to be. Change can occur through a simple step. Take the case of maternal depression. It is undisputed that depression is a highly treatable medical condition, especially if identified and treated early. It is also...
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New, Work-focused Approach Helps Employees with Depression Do Better at Work and Feel Better, Too
When employees injure their spine, they often receive physical therapy for this common condition. They learn how to strengthen weak muscles, lift properly and sit ergonomically. Essentially, they are taught proven strategies to get them back on their feet and back on the job. But it’s been a...
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Introducing Collaborative Care in the Workplace
Depression in the workplace affects 10 million people each year (Value Options, How Depression Affects the Workplace) with 6-8% of the population having a major depressive episode each year (Kessler RC et al., The Prevalence and Correlates of Workplace Depression in the National Comorbidity Survey...
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Scan Predicts Whether Therapy or Meds Will Best Lift Depression
Pre-treatment scans of brain activity predicted whether depressed patients would best achieve remission with an antidepressant medication or psychotherapy, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. “Our goal is to develop reliable biomarkers that match an individual patient to the...
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Depression and Primary Care
Depression is an arch enemy if you suffer from one of many chronic, physical illnesses. It appears all the time, as an unwelcome intruder, in people with diabetes, heart and lung diseases, cancer, Parkinson’s disease and asthma. It impairs our ability to recover from these, and other, medical...
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Cognitive Behavior Therapy: To Treat Depression in Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome
This article will focus on those with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) who have a co-morbid mental health diagnosis, as current research supports the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for this sub-group on the autism continuum. This is not to say that those diagnosed with PDD-NOS or...
