Proposal requires some employers to pay for mental health treatment
COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolinians could be a step closer to getting mental health coverage through their employers after lawmakers compromised on a bill that would require insurers to pay for the mental health treatment.
The proposal, approved Wednesday by a Senate committee, doesn't go as far as mental health advocates had hoped. It exempts small businesses and limits the illnesses covered under the mandate. But advocates say...
With breath begins our journey of life. But as we breathe incessantly, taking it for granted, we develop bad breathing habits. Here are some tips on how to correct them for total well-being.
What is the correct way to breathe? Do we need to relearn breathing? Learning to breathe is a deconstruction process, not a technique to improve breathing. We identify and let go of existing things, which restrict the natural flow of breath.
Perform a subtle check whether the breath is disordered or restricted.
Sit comfortably in a chair, back straight and feet firmly planted on the ground. Quietly observe your breath. Ask yourself the following questions and wait for your reactions. Don't worry if they are vague or blurry. Over a period of time, the sensations will become...
Washington, DC - The House of Representatives today passed a federal budget resolution that advocates say would dramatically reduce federal support for Medicaid-financed mental health services.
"Indiscriminate Medicaid cuts could have a crippling effect at the local level and absolutely devastate the tens of thousands of people with mental illnesses and their families who rely on Medicaid to access needed services," Linda Rosenberg, spokeswoman for the Campaign for Mental Health Reform and President and CEO of the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare.
Medicaid is...
Pain is more likely to be a part of the lives of people who live with depression than it is for those who are free from depression, according to research presented here on February 25th at the 21st annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine.
The same study's findings show that among individuals who have chronic pain, those with depression will report more severe pain and worse functioning, and use more medications than do non-depressed people.
Previous studies showed that people with depression...
Sometimes a friendmay actually increase your stress level.
Alone Against the World
Having friends to depend on can be comforting, but one new study suggests that sometimes it's best to go it alone.
Ohio State University psychology professor Catherine Stoney, Ph.D., concocted a purposefully stressful situation in which 40 college-aged women were given just two minutes to prepare a speech. They then delivered their speech before a video camera, and while half of the women had a friend on hand for support, the other half gave the speech alone.
To measure stress, Stoney monitored the speakers' blood cholesterol levels before, during and after giving their speeches.
Surprisingly, she discovered that women with a friend present experienced a surge of cholesterol three times greater than did women with no social support.
"It may be that having a friend there engenders more...
Program to Take Psychiatric Services to Frail Elderly in Their Homes
(PRNewswire)
Updated: Feb 25th 2005
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- A groundbreaking outreach program for frail elderly who need psychiatric services in their homes -- believed to be the first of its kind in the United States -- is being launched by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
"The highest prevalence of mental illness is in those aged...
The urge to merge. The search for a soul mate. Be it hearts and minds, bodies or souls, the desire of humans to connect with each other may be the most basic of instincts, the mating ritual, mankind's most primal.
But while anthropologists have long known that the complex combination of biological and evolutionary factors that drive humans to couple and reproduce ensures the well-being of the species, decades of research into human sexuality, brain chemistry, mental health, longevity —even the nutritional value of wine and chocolate — have increasingly shown...
Reality therapy is a very user friendly technique that asks key questions that help us look at our behaviors and see if we are just "talking the talk, or whether we are walking the walk". Actions speak louder than words. Reality therapy employs some...
Panic disorder with or without agoraphobia occurs commonly in patients in primary care settings. This article assesses multiple evidence-based reviews of effective treatments for panic disorder. Antidepressant medications successfully reduce the severity of panic symptoms and eliminate panic attacks. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants are equally effective in the treatment of panic disorder. The choice of medication is based on...
Objective: The first purpose of this study was to examine the variables related to the diagnosis of a depressive disorder and associated with referral to a mental health clinician. The second purpose was to examine the level of agreement of the primary care provider's diagnosis of depression with that of the mental health clinician.
Depressive disorders are common, chronic, and costly. Almost 20% of adults experience a mood disorder requiring treatment during their lifetimes, with approximately 8% of adults having...
WHEN IT COMES TO EMOTIONAL LEARNING, the things you have heard may be affecting you as much as those you have experienced, according to Elizabeth A. Phelps, Ph.D., a New York University neuroscientist. Phelps and her colleagues at Yale University found that patients who expected to experience an electric shock suffered anxieties similar to those who had a response to a real threat. "A lot of our fears and anxieties are learned through communication," says Phelps. "If someone tells you to be afraid of a dog, then the brain responds as if you actually were."
During the study, published recently in Nature Neuroscience, subjects were shown...