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Tag: anxiety disorders

  • My Daughter Woke Up Every Morning Sick With Anxiety — Until I Cut This 1 Thing From Her Life

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    The morning I decided not to send my 14-year-old daughter back to school, she was vomiting from anxiety. Again.

    It wasn’t a dramatic moment. There was no big speech. I just looked at her, pale and shaking on the bathroom floor after another round of girl-group bullying during the holidays, and thought: We’re done with this.

    My daughter has dyslexia, dyscalculia and inattentive ADHD. Still, on paper, she wasn’t “failing.” She was getting by. But the cost of getting by had become brutal. Daily nausea. Crying every morning. Crippling fatigue. Anxiety that had her frozen in her seat, running on adrenaline just to survive each day, then collapsing at home where it felt safe to fall apart.

    Her nervous system was in complete burnout. And she hadn’t even hit 9th grade.

    Here’s the thing nobody tells you: The school system didn’t identify any of this. Not one teacher flagged it. Not one report card expressed concern. I had to follow my gut, take her to specialists, chase diagnoses, and fight for answers while she smiled and masked her way through every school day.

    The dyslexia diagnosis came first. Through the Allison Lawson Centre for Dyslexia in Australia, we worked to retrain her eye-to-brain messaging ― addressing how one dominant eye and one weaker eye process visual information differently. By strengthening the weaker eye’s ability to relay information to the brain, Maya’s dyslexia symptoms dissolved after nine or 10 treatment sessions.

    Then she was diagnosed with dyscalculia, a learning disability that affects the understanding of numbers and mathematical concepts. This one is harder to crack ― her numbers still don’t stack up.

    Then came the ADHD diagnosis through a pediatrician, armed with letters from my daughter’s teacher and her psychologist. She was prescribed Concerta, which turned out to be life-changing. She was also prescribed anxiety medication, because her body was keeping the score of years spent trying to fit into a system that wasn’t built for her brain.

    But the biggest improvement didn’t come from the medication. It came when I made the decision to pull her out of school.

    Mother and daughter on a visit to Venice, Italy.

    Photo Courtesy Of Lisa Jones

    When I shared the reasoning behind this decision on Instagram, my DMs exploded with messages from thousands of parents quietly navigating the same issues. Watching their capable, intelligent children crumble and wondering if they’re the only ones considering alternatives. Many of them told me they feel like failures for even thinking about stepping outside the system.

    But we’re not failing ― the system is.

    This term, Maya has been “unschooling” in the truest sense. She completed a first aid and paramedic certification, trained as a barista and learned special effects makeup. She got a part-time job at a café, traveled to China to understand global sourcing and came with me to New York for real-world business learning. She’s been living, not just sitting at a desk.

    The shift in her energy has been extraordinary. The constant stomach aches? Gone. The morning tears? Gone. The girl who couldn’t get out of bed is now asking what’s next.

    Next year, she will start virtual school, which is 2 1/2 hours of live, curriculum-based learning with qualified teachers each day. Her afternoons are free for life skills, travel, hobbies, rest, and the kind of learning that wasn’t happening for her in a crowded classroom.

    This is not homeschooling. It’s a modern educational pathway that prioritizes her nervous system safety as much as her curriculum. And it’s fully accredited, which matters when people ask (and they do ask): “But what about her future?”

    The other main criticism I have received since sharing this decision on social media is that not every family can afford to make the same one.

    The virtual school Maya will be starting costs around $7,000 AUD annually, which is actually half the cost of Maya’s previous private school. With qualified teachers delivering curriculum in live virtual classrooms each morning, plus afternoon tutoring support available online, I also no longer need the private tutors we used to pay for separately. So for our family, the cost savings are significant.

    But kids and families also need access to alternative educational models that are free or low cost. As a single mother who works full-time, I also needed a solution that didn’t require me to suddenly become a teacher. The free distance education programs that exist in most Australian states typically require more parental involvement. Things like the flexibility to work from home, and to take Maya with me when I travel for work are also immense privileges that are disproportionately available to those with higher-income work.

    And even when accessible alternatives to the mainstream educational model exist, parents with fewer resources are also the ones who are less likely to have the free time to spend finding and researching them.

    Not all distance education is created equal, and finding the right fit took time. I found our solution by researching everything, including multiple virtual pathways and alternative schools. I even observed a friend in Bali’s trial at a Texas-based AI-led model offering two-hour daily programs. I ultimately chose a program based where we currently live so Maya could attend in-person meetups if she wanted to connect with classmates.

    People have asked me if I’m worried about socialization. Here’s my answer: My daughter was surrounded by 1,200 students every day and felt completely alone. She was bullied, overlooked and exhausted. That’s not socialization; that’s survival.

    Now she’s meeting people through work and travel, and actually having the energy to show up as herself. She’s learning to trust her body again. To recognize when she’s overwhelmed, and to learn when to say no. These are life skills that no test will ever measure.

    The author has seen incredible improvement in her daughter's anxiety and stress levels since deciding to switch to an alternative education model.
    The author has seen incredible improvement in her daughter’s anxiety and stress levels since deciding to switch to an alternative education model.

    Photo Courtesy Of Lisa Jones

    This path isn’t easy. It’s not always clear. Some days I second-guess everything. But every time I see her laugh without that underlying tension, every time she tells me about something she learned because she wanted to, not because she had to, I know we made the right call.

    Maya is not lazy. She’s not broken. She’s a divergent thinker in a rigid model. And when the model doesn’t fit, you don’t break the child. You build something different.

    For the mothers out there who are watching their children suffer in silence, running on empty, masking their way through each day just to keep up appearances: Trust your gut. You know your child better than any curriculum does. You see what no teacher sees. The system might not be the problem for every child, but the system might just not be built for yours.

    And if that’s true, you’re allowed to build something better.

    Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

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  • Plenty of People Could Quit Therapy Right Now

    Plenty of People Could Quit Therapy Right Now

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    About four years ago, a new patient came to see me for a psychiatric consultation because he felt stuck. He’d been in therapy for 15 years, despite the fact that the depression and anxiety that first drove him to seek help had long ago faded. Instead of working on problems related to his symptoms, he and his therapist chatted about his vacations, house renovations, and office gripes. His therapist had become, in effect, an expensive and especially supportive friend. And yet, when I asked if he was considering quitting treatment, he grew hesitant, even anxious. “It’s just baked into my life,” he told me.

    Among those who can afford it, regular psychotherapy is often viewed as a lifelong project, like working out or going to the dentist. Studies suggest that most therapy clients can measure their treatments in months instead of years, but a solid chunk of current and former patients expect therapy to last indefinitely. Therapists and clients alike, along with celebrities and media outlets, have endorsed the idea of going to therapy for extended stretches, or when you’re feeling fine. I’ve seen this myself with friends who are basically healthy and think of having a therapist as somewhat like having a physical trainer. The problem is, some of the most commonly sought versions of psychotherapy are simply not designed for long-term use.

    Therapy comes in many varieties, but they all share a common goal: to eventually end treatment because you feel and function well enough to thrive on your own. Stopping doesn’t even need to be permanent. If you’ve been going to therapy for a long time, and you’re no longer in acute distress, and you have few symptoms that bother you, consider taking a break. You might be pleasantly surprised by how much you learn about yourself.

    Therapy, in both the short and long term, can be life-altering. Short-term therapy tends to be focused on a particular problem, such as a depressed mood or social anxiety. In cognitive behavioral therapy, usually used for depressive and anxiety disorders, a clinician helps a client relieve negative feelings by correcting the distorted beliefs that he has about himself. In dialectical behavior therapy, commonly used to treat borderline personality disorder, patients learn skills to manage powerful emotions, which helps improve their mood and relationships. Both treatments typically last less than a year. If you start to get rusty or feel especially challenged by life events that come your way, you simply return for another brief stint. Termination is expected and normal.

    Read: What’s the smallest amount of therapy that’s still effective?

    Some types of therapy, such as psychodynamic therapy and psychoanalysis, are designed to last for several years—but not forever. The main goal of these therapies is much more ambitious than symptom relief; they aim to uncover the unconscious causes of suffering and to change a client’s fundamental character. At least one well-regarded study found that long-term therapy is both highly effective and superior to briefer treatment for people diagnosed with a clinically significant psychiatric illness; other papers have shown less conclusive evidence for long-term therapy. And few studies compare short and extended treatment for clients with milder symptoms.

    In fact, there’s reason to believe that talk therapy in the absence of acute symptoms may sometimes cause harm. Excessive self-focus—easily facilitated in a setting in which you’re literally paying to talk about your feelings—can increase your anxiety, especially when it substitutes for tangible actions. If your neurotic or depressive symptoms are relatively mild (meaning they don’t really interfere with your daily functioning), you might be better served by spending less time in a therapist’s office and more time connecting with friends, pursuing a hobby, or volunteering. Therapists are trained to use the tools they’ve learned for certain types of problems, and many of the stress-inducing minutiae of daily life are not among them. For example, if you mention to your therapist that you’re having trouble being efficient at work, he might decide to teach you a stress-reduction technique, but your colleagues or boss might provide more specific strategies for improving your performance.

    One of my childhood friends, whose parents were both psychoanalysts, went to weekly therapy appointments while we were growing up. He was a happy, energetic kid, but his parents wanted him and his sister to be better acquainted with their inner lives, to help them deal with whatever adversity came their way. My friend and his sister both grew up to be successful adults, but also highly anxious and neurotic ones. I imagine their parents would say the kids would have been worse without the therapy—after all, mental illness ran in their family. But I can find no substantial clinical evidence supporting this kind of “preventive” psychotherapy.

    Read: What it’s like to visit an existential therapist

    Beginning therapy in the first place is, to be clear, a privilege. Therapy is not covered by many insurance plans, and a very large number of people who could benefit from it can’t afford it for any duration. Only 47 percent of Americans with a psychiatric illness received any form of treatment in 2021; in fact, federal estimates suggest that the United States is several thousand mental-health professionals short, a gap that is likely to grow in the coming years. Stopping therapy when you’re ready opens up space for others who might need this scarce service more than you do.

    I do not mean to suggest that a therapy vacation should be considered lightly, or that it’s for everyone. If you have a serious mental-health disorder, such as major depression or bipolar disorder, you should discuss with your mental-health provider whether ending therapy is appropriate for your individual situation. (Keep in mind that your therapist might not be ready to quit when you are. Aside from a financial incentive to continue treatment, parting with a charming, low-maintenance patient is not so easy.) My rule of thumb is that you should have minimal to no symptoms of your illness for six months or so before even considering a pause. Should you and your therapist agree that stopping is reasonable, a temporary break with a clear expiration date is ideal. At any time, if you’re feeling worse, you can always go back.

    Psychiatrists do something similar with psychiatric meds: For example, when I prescribe a depressed patient an antidepressant, and then they remain stable and free of symptoms for several years, I usually consider tapering the medication to determine whether it’s still necessary for the patient’s well-being. I would do this only for patients who are at a low risk of relapse—for example, people who’ve had just one or two episodes, rather than many over a lifetime. Pausing therapy should be even less risky: The beautiful thing about therapy is that, unlike a drug, it equips you with new knowledge and skills, which you carry with you when you leave.

    Read: The quick therapy that actually works

    About a year after my patient and I first talked about ending therapy, I ran into him in a café. He told me that stopping had taken him six months, but now he was thriving. Maybe you, like my patient, are daunted by the idea of quitting cold turkey. If so, consider taking a vacation from treatment instead. It might be the perfect way to see how far you’ve really come.

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    Richard A. Friedman

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  • TOMS Shoes founder is pledging $100 million for psychedelic research – Here’s why he’s doing it.  

    TOMS Shoes founder is pledging $100 million for psychedelic research – Here’s why he’s doing it.  

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    A nascent category of mental health treatments is getting a major cash infusion. 

    Blake Mycoskie, founder of the canvas-footwear phenomenon TOMS Shoes, has committed to giving $100 million to support psychedelic research and access, Mycoskie told MarketWatch in an exclusive interview. The money will help fund academic institutions investigating psychedelics’ potential to treat anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental-health issues, as well as nonprofits helping to connect patients in need with psychedelic treatments. 

    Traditional psychedelics include hallucinogens like LSD and psilocybin, or “magic” mushrooms–recently legalized in Oregon and Colorado. Other drugs that can alter mood and perception–such as ketamine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy–aren’t classical psychedelics but are broadly included in the research and policy discussions generating a surge of interest in this class of treatments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example, has granted psilocybin and MDMA “breakthrough therapy” status, a designation designed to expedite development and review of drugs for serious conditions, and could approve MDMA for treatment of PTSD as soon as next year.

    Given the rapid developments in the field, ”we really need to get this right, and we really need to have these foundations and nonprofits funded properly,” therapists trained, and clinics open and running smoothly, Mycoskie said. “I felt a real sense of urgency,” he said, and asked his wealth manager, “what’s the most that I can give?”  

    The $100 million answer to that question amounts to about a quarter of Mycoskie’s net worth and marks a major milestone in psychedelics’ delicate image transformation. Shedding some of their dangerous-party-drug reputation, psychedelics are gaining attention from top pharmacologists, the scientific community, biotech companies and investors who see them as a critical part of the solution to America’s mental health crisis. 

    Cracked open 

    Mycoskie, 46, said his interest in psychedelics dates back to 2017, when a friend returning from a trip to Central America described his incredible experience with ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic brewed into a tea. As an entrepreneur under intense pressure to perform, Mycoskie said, he decided to try it for himself. The experience “cracked me open, and it connected me more to my faith in God, made me feel that we were all connected and everything was fine and perfect,” he said. “I came back just feeling like, wow, that was more powerful than any therapy I’d ever done.” He later tried MDMA-assisted therapy, he said, which also helped him process issues that traditional talk therapy had left unresolved. 

    Realizing how many people could benefit from similar treatments, Mycoskie started giving money to academic groups and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, a nonprofit organization. He also got involved in last year’s Colorado ballot initiative, which legalized psilocybin and several other psychedelic substances, including ibogaine, which has shown potential to treat substance-use disorders. Mycoskie has already given about $10 million to psychedelic research and access, he said, and plans to give about $5 million annually for 18 more years. 

    Mycoskie was a bit squeamish at first, he acknowledges, about publicly backing research on drugs that are largely illegal. “Am I going to get held up at TSA every time I go through the airport?” he remembers thinking. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration categorizes LSD and MDMA alongside heroin as “schedule one” drugs, defined as “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” But with growing public awareness and acceptance of the drugs’ potential as mental-health treatments, he said, he felt emboldened to make a big public commitment, and “the research has caught up,” he said. “It’s important that people like myself put their name out there and their money out there to show that this really is a path forward,” he said. 

    Mycoskie’s $100 million commitment “is the biggest that we’ve ever seen in the psychedelics space,” said Joe Green, president of the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit supporting philanthropy in the field, and a MAPS board member. Now that research has made great strides to support use of the medicines as mental-health treatments, that money can help ensure that “these actually come to the world in a safe and beneficial way,” Green said. With certain treatments legalized in Oregon and Colorado, for example, “the system requires licensed guides, facilitators, licensed service centers,” he said. “It’s not like cannabis medical–you won’t be able to take the mushrooms outside the service center.” 

    Psychedelic therapeutics market could be worth more than $8.3 billion by 2028

    Mycoskie plans to publicize his pledge at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’ psychedelic science conference–billed as “the largest psychedelic conference in history”–this week in Denver. On the agenda: Sessions ranging from state policy and regulatory considerations to clinical trials of psilocybin- and MDMA-assisted therapy and “sex and psychedelics: weaving altered states for healing and pleasure.”   

    The news comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing for new funding for research into the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD in military service members as part of the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which the House Armed Services Committee will consider Wednesday.  

    Already, public companies like Atai Life Sciences
    ATAI,
    -6.91%    ,
    Compass Pathways
    CMPS,
    -3.37%
    and Cybin
    CYBN,
    +6.81%
    are developing therapies based on psychedelic substances. The psychedelic therapeutics market could be worth more than $8.3 billion by 2028, according to InsightAce Analytic. Even the federal government is throwing money at this niche, funding efforts to develop psychedelic mental-health treatments without the hallucinogenic side effects. 

    More than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and less than half of the roughly 58 million adults with any mental illness are receiving treatment. Suicide rates, which have been on a long upward trajectory, declined briefly between 2018 and 2020 before returning to peak levels in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nine out of 10 U.S. adults believe the country is suffering a mental health crisis, according to a survey last year by CNN and KFF, a health policy nonprofit. And commonly prescribed antidepressants, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) don’t work well for many patients.  

    Nushama, a New York City wellness center offering ketamine-based therapy.


    Courtesy of Nushama and Costas Picadas

    Mental illness “is truly an epidemic, and we are losing the fight,” said Dylan Beynon, CEO and founder of Mindbloom, which offers a telehealth ketamine treatment program. While there are some existing solutions that are helping to bend the curve, he said, more research and educational support for providers and patients is needed, he said.

    Indeed, some substantial hurdles still separate psychedelic mental-health treatments from many of the patients they might benefit, including a lack of insurance coverage for the currently legal treatments and debate over how to administer them safely. In the case of ketamine, for example, which is FDA-approved as an anesthetic and used off-label as a mental-health treatment, some providers favor in-person guided sessions while others, like Beynon, advocate for telehealth prescribing–a model that boomed during the pandemic.

    Some experts have lately warned that the practice of psychedelic medicine may be getting ahead of the science. Given the growing public and commercial interest, “there is the risk that use of psychedelics for purported clinical goals may outpace evidence-based research and regulatory approval,” the American Psychiatric Association said last year in a position statement on psychedelic and “empathogenic” agents–a category that includes MDMA.

    Mycoskie has also made some investments in the psychedelics space, although he said profits aren’t his motivation. He has invested in Mind Medicine Inc.
    MNMD,
    -0.50%    ,
    which says it is developing “psychedelic inspired medicines” that aim to treat the underlying causes of distress in the brain. And Mycoskie helped fund a public benefit corporation linked with MAPS, which is taking MDMA through the FDA approval process–an investment that will pay dividends when the treatment is commercialized, he said.        

    Providers currently offering ketamine treatments say they’re eager to expand into MDMA and other therapies in the category as soon as they’re legal. Mindbloom, for example, currently offers a ketamine treatment program that’s available through telehealth in several dozen states and aims to start offering MDMA-assisted therapy late next year after FDA approval is finalized, Beynon said. Psilocybin-assisted therapy could come a couple of years after that, he said. 

    Nushama, a New York City psychedelic wellness center that offers ketamine-based therapy, delivered through in-person IV infusions, also hopes to expand into MDMA when it’s approved, said co-founder Jay Godfrey. 

    Treatment without the trip 

    Still on the horizon: New treatments that could produce psychedelic medicines’ mental-health benefits without the trip. University of North Carolina School of Medicine pharmacology professor Dr. Bryan Roth is leading an effort to create new medications for depression, anxiety and substance abuse that work similarly to psychedelics but without the hallucinogenic, disorienting side effects. His effort is backed by a $27-million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Such treatments, Roth said, could help the many patients for whom such psychedelic effects are unappealing or ill-advised–such as military service members. “You would never want to give psilocybin or ketamine to somebody who has a gun,” Roth said. 

    Having worked with Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD while training as a psychiatrist earlier in his career, Roth said, he’s keenly aware of the need for safe and effective treatments. “There was nothing we could give them for their symptoms,” he said. “The most we could do was give them medications to stop their ability to have dreams, so they wouldn’t have nightmares. That was basically it.” 

    “Undoing 52 years of propaganda is a heavy lift,” said Nushama co-founder Jay Godfrey.


    Costas Picadas

    Roth’s team has already developed compounds that have shown antidepressant effects without psychedelic side effects in mice, he said. The team is now working to find a clinical candidate suitable for testing in humans, he said. 

    Treatments that can help “break bad emotional or psychological patterns without scary, high-friction psychedelic experiences would be a great thing for patients, providers and the healthcare system,” said Mindbloom’s Beynon. 

    Much more remains to be done to reduce the stigma associated with psychedelics, experts say. It has been 52 years since President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one,” and billions of dollars have been spent since then telling people that “these medicines are dangerous, that they’re addictive, and that they’ll fry your brains,” Godfrey said. “Undoing 52 years of propaganda is a heavy lift, but one thing I’m optimistic about is that the outcomes are starting to speak for themselves.” 

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  • Mental illness may put people under 40 at a greater chance of heart attack and stroke | CNN

    Mental illness may put people under 40 at a greater chance of heart attack and stroke | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Adults in their 20s and 30s with mental disorders have a higher chance of having a heart attack or stroke, according to a new study.

    The study published Monday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology looked at the health data of more than 6.5 million people through the Korean National Health Insurance Service database.

    The people included in the new study ranged in age from 20 to 39 and underwent health examinations between 2009 and 2012. Their health was monitored until December 2018 for new onset heart attacks and stroke.

    About 13% of participants had some type of mental disorder — which included insomnia, anxiety, depression, somatoform disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or a personality disorder, according to the study.

    Those people younger than 40 with a mental disorder were 58% more likely to have a heart attack and 42% more likely to have a stroke than those with no disorder, the study found.

    “We have known for some time that mental health and physical health are linked, but what I find surprising about these findings is that these links were observable at such a young age,” said Dr. Katherine Ehrlich, an associate professor of behavioral and brain sciences at the University of Georgia. Ehrlich was not involved in the research.

    Coronary arterial disease and heart attacks are rare before the age of 40, so a study as large as this one was needed to see the relationship between mental health and such an unusual occurrence in young people, she said.

    Ehrlich said she would like to know more about the physical activity and diets of the people involved to understand better if those factors have an influence on the relationship between mental health conditions and heart attack and stroke.

    “For example, if you are chronically depressed, you may struggle to maintain a healthy diet and get adequate physical activity, which might in turn increase your risk for cardiac events over time,” she said.

    But the increased risk could not be attributed to lifestyle differences alone, as the authors controlled for factors including age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and income, the study said.

    That doesn’t mean lifestyle should be ignored, however, said study author Dr. Eue-Keun Choi, a professor of internal medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea.

    “While lifestyle behaviours did not explain the excess cardiovascular risk, this does not mean that healthier habits would not improve prognosis,” Choi said in a statement. “Lifestyle modification should therefore be recommended to young adults with mental disorders to boost heart health.”

    One in eight people between ages 20 and 39 studied had some sort of mental illness, meaning a substantial number of people could be predisposed to heart attack and stroke, study author Dr. Chan Soon Park, a researcher at Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea said in a statement.

    That could point to a greater need for managing psychological conditions and monitoring heart health in those at risk, Park added.

    “If we can reduce the number of people living with chronic mental illness, we may find secondary benefits in future years regarding the number of people managing cardiac-related conditions,” Ehrlich said.

    It is important to note that the findings do not show that mental illness causes heart attacks or stroke, she added. But the research does indicate a risk factor to watch out for.

    There may be benefit in preventive measures to minimize risks, Ehrlich said, which can include maintaining a healthy diet and incorporating physical activity.

    Choi recommends that people with mental health conditions receive regular checkups as well.

    These findings may also emphasize the importance of addressing loneliness, she added.

    “Many individuals with mental illness suffer from social isolation and loneliness, and for years researchers have been sounding the alarm that loneliness is detrimental for physical health,” Ehrlich said.

    “Efforts to improve social connectedness among young people may be critical to addressing the rising rates of cardiometabolic conditions in adulthood,” she added.

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