Mental Illness and Vitamin D Deficiency

From the Vitamin D Council

Vitamin D has a significant biochemistry in the brain. Nuclear receptors for vitamin D exist in the brain and vitamin D is involved in the biosynthesis of neurotrophic factors, synthesis of nitric oxide synthase, and increased glutathione levels—all suggesting an important role for vitamin D in brain function. Animal data indicates that tyrosine hydroxylase, the rate-limiting enzyme for all the brain's monoamines, is increased by vitamin D. Rats born to severely vitamin D deficient dams have profound brain abnormalities.

Link

Clearly this is an issue that affects us all! We ask about the most vulnerable - how many children, seniors and incarcerated persons are deficient in Vitamin D - and show abnormalities in behavior and thinking as a result?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Mental Illness

David Granirer's comedy training for individuals with mental illness is proving to be a hit - a report from Canada's THE TYEE
Link

NYT: Do Toxins Cause Autism?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 24, 2010
Autism was first identified in 1943 in an obscure medical journal. Since then it has become a frighteningly common affliction, with the Centers for Disease Control reporting recently that autism disorders now affect almost 1 percent of children.

Over recent decades, other development disorders also appear to have proliferated, along with certain cancers in children and adults. Why? No one knows for certain. And despite their financial and human cost, they presumably won’t be discussed much at Thursday’s White House summit on health care.

Yet they constitute a huge national health burden, and suspicions are growing that one culprit may be chemicals in the environment. An article in a forthcoming issue of a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, just posted online, makes this explicit.

The article cites “historically important, proof-of-concept studies that specifically link autism to environmental exposures experienced prenatally.” It adds that the “likelihood is high” that many chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

...Continues at Link

NYT: The Americanization of Mental Illness

From the essay:
'...we may have yet to face one of the most remarkable effects of American-led globalization. We have for many years been busily engaged in a grand project of Americanizing the world’s understanding of mental health and illness. We may indeed be far along in homogenizing the way the world goes mad.

This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. In some Southeast Asian cultures, men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia; men in the region also suffer from koro, which is characterized by the debilitating certainty that their genitals are retracting into their bodies. Across the fertile crescent of the Middle East there is zar, a condition related to spirit-possession beliefs that brings forth dissociative episodes of laughing, shouting and singing.

The diversity that can be found across cultures can be seen across time as well. In his book “Mad Travelers,” the philosopher Ian Hacking documents the fleeting appearance in the 1890s of a fugue state in which European men would walk in a trance for hundreds of miles with no knowledge of their identities. The hysterical-leg paralysis that afflicted thousands of middle-class women in the late 19th century not only gives us a visceral understanding of the restrictions set on women’s social roles at the time but can also be seen from this distance as a social role itself — the troubled unconscious minds of a certain class of women speaking the idiom of distress of their time.'

Link

Wikipedia has an article about mental health diagnoses in China.

London, Ontario - WOTCH

From the site:
"WOTCH Community Mental Health Services is dedicated to serving adults in South Western Ontario who live with serious mental illness. The skilled mental health professionals at WOTCH help clients achieve realistic goals and to live interdependently within the community.

With a history extending back to 1970, WOTCH (Western Ontario Therapeutic Community Hostel) is the lead agency in Middlesex County for mental health housing and is a strong component in the mental health support system in the areas of case management, community integration and life skills support, employment programs, treatment programs, clinical programs and women's mental health programs.

Approximately 120 employees provide service to more than 1,000 adult clients annually. WOTCH is a registered non-profit corporation and a registered charitable organization. WOTCH programs and services are governed by an independent Board of Trustees."

That's quite a lot of medico-social work jobs.

Here is the information on the site about what is offered at this program:

"Clinics and groups are offered to individuals as well as one-on-one assessments and interventions that include:

* Consultation Clinic with a psychiatrist
* Medical Clinic with a family physician
* Diabetes screening and self management program
* Free Foot care Clinics
* Collective Kitchen
* Nutrition Clinic"

We will enquire further as to the components of WOTCH "assessments" and the "nutrition clinic" to determine if they know about the 29 CAUSES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA.

Nutrition is the basis of good mental and physical health. "Nutrition Clinic"is last on this group's list, but Psychiatrist is first. We fear that clients in this program will be given drugs which merely substitute one problem for another - and necessitate yet another intervention, or morbidity and early mortality. See Anatomy of an Epidemic.

The staff have really nice clothes, though.

The Quickening Maze

Mental Health in Fiction

The asylum in the forest
Andrew Motion applauds a vividly sympathetic exploration of poetry, madness and identity

Andrew Motion
The Guardian, Saturday 2 May 2009

High Beach, on the edge of Epping Forest in Essex, is a strange poetic vortex. Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas were stationed there during the first world war; we have no evidence that they met. Seventy-odd years earlier, a better-known literary overlap occurred in the same vicinity, thanks to one Matthew Allen. Allen was founder of the High Beach Private Asylum, the institution that first gave shelter to John Clare. He was also a friend of Alfred Tennyson, doctor to Tennyson's brother Septimus, and eventually (by persuading them to put money into a half-baked wood-carving scheme) the cause of their bankruptcy. You wouldn't know any of this today, driving through the Epping commuter belt, but it's a resonant place for literary archaeologists.

The Quickening Maze has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Link




I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

~ John Clare

Is mental health an occupational hazard of poets? Link

We think the problem is nutritional; once that weakness is mended, the individual remains creative - and is well.

Spiritual help for mental disorders: Dion Fortune's The Secrets of Dr. Taverner

Mental Health in Fiction
Occultist Dion Fortune's fictional Dr. Taverner is modeled on her mentor, and his assistant, the young Dr. Rhodes, is modeled after herself. Taverner runs a nursing home in which patients suffer from a variety of "psychological" disturbances which seem to be psychiatric. Dr. Taverner is a sort of psychic Sherlock Holmes, an adept of an occult order, and is able to cure the sufferers using unusual means.

The Secrets of Dr. Taverner - Dion Fortune

PTSD and Lord Peter Wimsey

Mental Health in Fiction
Did Dorothy Sayer's fictional detective suffer from PTSD? It would seem so. Link
How writers get PTSD wrong in fiction.
PTSD in the Lord of the Rings, and
PTDS, the West Wing and the Apocalypse
Rachel Manga's PTSD handbook is also reccommended.
In The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers tells another story of mental health. A lovely girl marries her doctor, who is pathologically jealous and abusive. By chance a former would-be suitor finds her in the remote Basque mountains, hideously changed - "the face white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open... a dry fringe of rusty hair [clinging] to the half-bald scalp". From the suitor's description, Lord Peter Wimsey recognises the symptoms of thyroid deficiency, or hypothyroidism. He travels to see her, secretly feeds her the thyroid hormone she needs, rescues her, and restores her to health and beauty.

Total Cure for Fungal Infections (Candida) Found

This just in... and welcome news indeed, because Candida/yeast infections are a cause of malfunction of the neurological system, resulting in brain fog, fatigue, irritability and schizophrenia.

..fungal infections can be deadly for people with compromised immune systems, such as AIDS patients or those undergoing treatment for cancer or organ transplantation.

Doctors say Candida albicans are the fourth leading cause of hospital acquired infectious diseases.

But the researchers have now found a way to fight fungal infections by knock out its associate protein, a Toronto University statement said Friday. Link

The researchers say that compromising Hsp90 protein makes the fungal-fighting drugs (known as echinocandins) more effective in killing fungal germs or Candida albicans.

"Our results suggest that interfering with Hsp90 function provides a powerful and much-needed strategy to render existing antifungal drugs more effective in the treatment of life-threatening fungal infections,'' the statement quoted Cowen as saying.

The researchers discovered that impairing the function of germs' protein Hsp90 by using potent drugs or genetic techniques made the fungus much more prone to killing by echinocandins.

They said this strategy was found effective in both lab experiments and mouse models.

The researchers said treating patients with a drug that inhibits Hsp90 along with an echinocandin will have major benefits for people with life-threatening fungal disease.

The study was published Friday in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

University of Toronto
Times of India
Insciences

As fungus may cause cancer, these findings are likely to have implications far beyond what these news releases suggest. Link


Will this also help in the bat die-off? Link

No Escape - Prison Rape

MATURE SUBJECT MATTER
Too many of the incarcerated are mentally ill, and institutional treatment in both prisons and hospitals - crowded conditions, bad nutrition, poor or nonexistent medical treatment, indifference and violence - will not improve their health. Rape happens in asylums and mental hospitals as well.

Found at
http://arch1design.com/blog/?p=1571

Michael Jackson: "They keep feeding him pills like candy"

If good can come out of the death of Michael Jackson, it may be through raising awareness that medications may not be our friends. Link (Globe&Mail)
As we read this chapter from a new book on Michael Jackson, we are struck by how many of his traits - anorexia, pain, eccentricity and isolation - resemble nutritional deficiency conditions called Pyroluria and Histadelia.

This bizarre story after the death of MJ reminds us in a different way that meds are not our friends -
Seroquel murder-suicide

Vitamin D and Mental Health

"I've been wondering how vitamin D and mental illness are related,
so I did a search and found that vitamin D does, indeed, play a role in mental illness based on these reasons from the Vitamin D Council's website:

Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness."

From the Huffington Post.
Link

Psychiatric Treatment: A Risk Factor for Obesity?

Get the stats and facts from the Canadian Pediatric Association (PDF)
https://www.cps.ca/english/Media/NewsReleases/PCHFebruary02/ArticlePsychiatricObesity.pdf or Link

Apparently increased or decreased head size, weight gain and male breast enlargement are pretty common with all antipsychotic medications, and the results can be permanent. Link


Gynecomastia - Man Boobs -

More Americans are taking drugs for mental illness than ever before, reports Reuters.
Why not try food for mood and mental health instead?
An article from the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients outlines vitamin treatment of psychosis (schizophrenia) here.

TED Talks: Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity

We like Elizabeth Gilbert, and wish to take her thoughts a step further - to discuss protective effects of proper nutrition on the brain of the young and the creative. Much self-destructive behavior stems from problems caused by poor nutrition. Video at link
Relevant article - Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue

Take Zinc for Your Thyroid

Zinc and Hormones

Zinc deficiency affects hypothalamic pituitary thyroid function. Thyrotropin releasing hormone content was decreased in the zinc deficient rat (Morley et al., 1980). Ultimately triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxin levels were decreased. The hypothalamic axis susceptibility to Zn deficiency may explain the dynamic relationship between testosterone and Zn. Injections of testosterone or dihydro-testosterone in mice restores normal zinc content (Donovan and Thomas, 1980) while Zn deficiency decreases serum production and delays puberty (Prasad, 1966).

Elevations in hypothalamic Zn concentrations in the rat appear to correlate with the release of gonadotropin releasing hormone and gonadotropins which occurs between proestrus and estrus and after castration, although this, of course, does not establish a causal relation (Zinc and Manganese in the Schizophrenias
Merriam et al., 1979). Hypothalamic Zn ions rise with gonadotropin secretions (Merriam et al., 1979; Root et al., 1979). Hypogonadism occurs with Zn deficiency (Caggiano et al., 1969; Prasad, 1966).

Zinc deficiency inhibits essential fatty acid metabolism to prostaglandins (PG) either by blocking linoleic acid desaturation to gamma - linoleic acid or by inhibiting mobilization of dihomo - gamma linolenic acid from tissue membrane stores (Cunnane and Horrobin, 1980). Prolactin and Zn have similar actions on PGE1 formation and prolactin enhances flow of fluid from fetal to maternal compartments (Manku et al., 1975; Manku et al., 1979). Zinc deficiency can result in polyhydraminos (Manku et al., 1979). Opiates may have an effect on PGE1 synthesis which is opposite to that of Zn and there is evidence that reduced PGE1 production (possibly due to an endogenous opioid) may play a role in schizophrenia (Horrobin et al., 1978; Horrobin and Morgan, 1980). An enkephalin degrading amino peptidase from rat brain homogenates is a Zn metalloenzyme(Schnebli et al., 1979). A higher than normal proportion of arachidonate was found in the fatty acids of Zn deficient skin (Bettger et al., 1980). PGE2 and PGF2 have opposing effects on Zn transport and may act as regulators of the intestinal mucosa transport of Zn (Song and Adham, 1979).

Zinc deficiency and thyroid hormone shortage occurring in both cretinism and myxedema have similar signs, ie. retarded growth, reduced appetite and activity, impaired development of skin and hair (Hartoma et al., 1979). Zinc deficiency symptoms may be mediated by excess glucocorticoids since Zn depletion results in elevation of glucocorticoids. Elevated glucocorticoids and Zn deficiency both result in death of thymic lymphocytes (Donovan and Thomas, 1980). A deficiency of nerve growth factor may occur with Zn deficiency. One nerve growth factor is a small basic protein with three distinct types of sub-units (Vinores and Guroff, 1980). Two molecules of Zn are present in the complex and Zn participates in holding the structure together (Dunn et al., 1980; Pattison and Dunn, 1975). In the absence of Zn the subunits separate. Nerve growth factor is required for the survival and development of certain sympathetic and sensory neurons. It is equally clear that nerve growth factor affects a wide variety of other cells as well. Nerve growth factors are present on the plasma membrane and almost certainly at the synaptic ending as well (Dunn et al., 1980). Nerve growth factor action increased dendritic attachments which requires elevated levels of RNA synthesis, which is Zn dependant.

- From article on Zinc and Manganese in the Schizophrenias by Carl Pfeiffer

Link

Want to know more?
We like the About.com site hosted by Mary Shimon
here.
Listen to an mp3 about your thyroid, zinc and other minerals and vitamins from Wellness Resources here

Video: Cures for mental illness (not!)

Mental health tied to income equality

"Evidence: Mental Health
Until recently it was hard to compare levels of mental illness between different countries because nobody had collected strictly comparable data, but recently the World Health Organisation has established world mental health surveys that are starting to provide data. They show that different societies have very different levels of mental illness. In some countries only 5 or 10% of the adult population has suffered from any mental illness in the past year, but in the USA more than 25% have.

We first showed a relationship between mental illness and income inequality in eight developed countries with WHO data - the USA, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Since then we've been able to add data for New Zealand and for some other countries whose surveys of mental illness, although not strictly comparable, use very similar methods - Australia, the UK and Canada. As the graph below shows, mental illness is much more common in more unequal countries. Among these countries, mental illness is also more common in the richer ones."

Link

We think one factor in this may be nutrition....

Is Caffeine Driving You Crazy?

Drinking copious cups of coffee isn’t just bad for your health, it’s also more likely to drive you crazy, or at least crazy enough to hear voices. According to a study published in the academic journal “Personal and Individual Differences,” people who consumed the equivalent of more than seven cups of coffee per day (330 mg) were more likely to have hallucinations than those who consumed less than one cup (10 mg).

The articles link, link claim that they have not quite worked out why this is so. However, caffeine, an alkaloid, was known as a psychoactive to the Cherokee in America before written history,
and caffeine psychosis was identified in Western medical literature at least as early as 1936. Go here to see Blogger StoneSoupStation's great collection of coffee craziness links.

For decades, orthomolecular physician and psychiatrist Dr. Abram Hoffer has recommended elimination of caffeine from the diets of his schizophrenic patients - and they get well:

'The majority of scientists and psychiatrists subscribe to the dopamine excess theory of schizophrenia--that too much dopamine is largely responsible for the symptoms of psychosis. However, since 1952, Dr. Abram Hoffer, the founding father of orthomolecular medicine, has researched, published, and expanded upon the adrenochrome theory of schizophrenia. (1,2) He and his colleagues, Drs. Osmond and Smythies, came to this theory by studying and researching the effects of substances such as mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and amphetamines--all of which can cause a clinical syndrome in normal individuals that would be clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia.

Hoffer noticed that mescaline had a similar chemical structure to that of adrenaline, and since both can be converted to indoles in the body, the potential schizophrenic toxin might be an indole derivative of adrenaline with similar neurochemical properties to that of mescaline or LSD. He eventually deduced that the schizophrenic toxin was an oxidized derivative of adrenaline known as adrenochrome. Since the early 1950s, Hoffer's adrenochrome theory has been validated due to the following findings:

* that adrenochrome and its close relatives--dopaminochrome (from dopamine) and noradrenochrome (from noradrenaline)--are present in the human brain, (3-5)

* that these compounds probably induce a combination of neurotoxic and mind-mood-altering effect, and (3-5)

* that reducing adrenochrome and its close relatives is therapeutic for the treatment of schizophrenia. (6)

The majority of schizophrenic patients (about 90%) who receive mainstream treatments remain unwell and nonfunctional for the rest of their lives despite receiving the most advanced drugs and social services currently available. (7) Estimates of first episode schizophrenics are a little more optimistic, reporting that of five recently diagnosed patients, one will recover sufficiently to live an almost normal life without medication or with very low doses of medication. (8) The economic costs of schizophrenia to society are enormous, amounting to approximately two million dollars for each schizophrenic patient over a 40-year course of the illness. (9)

In a recent publication examining the economic burden of schizophrenia in Canada, the direct and non-direct heath care costs associated with this disease were estimated to be 2.02 billion Canadian dollars in 2004. (10) In addition, when these figures were added to the high unemployment rate with additional productivity, morbidity, and mortality losses, the estimate reached 4.83 billion Canadian dollars, for a total cost estimate of 6.85 billion Canadian dollars in 2004. The authors of this report arrived at the following conclusion: "Despite significant improvements in the past decade in pharmacotherapy, programs, and services available for patients with schizophrenia, the economic burden of schizophrenia in Canada remains high."

The purpose of the report is to highlight the problems with the standard medical treatment of schizophrenia and to demonstrate that the addition of orthomolecular medicine provides patients with the best opportunity of living a reasonable quality of life. Common orthomolecular treatments are reviewed, including summaries of relevant clinical studies and prescribing information. Four patient cases are described to show the reader the potential benefits of this approach, as well as the difficulties with this approach when certain essential treatment components are lacking.'
Source

You can read a short article on Hoffer's methodology here, and
see Dr. Hoffer's book on nutrition and mental health, PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER, here. Hoffer's work remains the gold standard in the field and he is a hero and savior to many.

Margot Kidder Battles Stigma

Natural Health article
Margot Kidder's
SEARCH FOR SANITY*

by Karen Dale Dustman

Margot Kidder made headlines as Lois Lane in the 1979 movie "Superman." In 1996, she hit the news again -- when she was discovered ragged and hungry in the backyard of a stranger's Glendale, Calif., home.

Convinced her former husband, writer Thomas McGuane, and the CIA were out to kill her, Kidder roamed the streets of Los Angeles for 1-1/2 weeks, eventually sharing food and a cardboard shack with a homeless man named Charlie. By the end of her delusional episode, the actress was almost unrecognizable. She had lost the caps on her front teeth, chopped off her long auburn hair, and swapped her Armani suit for a homeless man's dirty T-shirt and pants.

Kidder has bipolar disorder, a condition marked by alternating episodes of depression and mania. (The manic phase can produce psychotic symptoms as it did for Kidder.) Born in 1948 in Yellowknife, a mining town in Canada's Northwest Territory, she spent almost 20 years of her adult life seeking treatment. After her 1996 incident, Kidder realized the conventional therapies she was receiving weren't working.
Link

That article was written years ago.... Kidder has been well with orthomolecular medicine for FOURTEEN YEARS. Here is an article about Kidder from 2008.

The actor downplays the time in 1996 when she went missing for three days in Los Angeles and was taken to a psychiatric ward when found dishevelled, dazed and fearful in a stranger's backyard.
"If I were a cancer patient, I would today be considered cured," said Kidder, once diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "I haven't had an episode in 14 years."
Food allergies, the environment, air and water pollution, toxins, a vitamin deficiency, drugs, lack of sleep, low blood sugar and gastrointestinal damage can cause emotional problems, she said.
"The list goes on. Such things can cause mood swings, delusions and even people hearing voices.
"The reality is that you can have 10 people with manic depression and they can have 10 causes that cause their symptoms.
"Pharmaceutical companies make millions of dollars, but are only interested in producing drugs that dampen symptoms."
Link

Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

Feeding Minds, Feeding Bodies
Written by Rosalie Moscoe
Monday, 29 December 2008


Orthomolecular Nutrition to the Rescue!

My husband and I waved goodbye as we watched our son John (not his real name) board the plane, happily joking with his buddies. The year was 1989. John was 19, and headed for what we expected to be a wonderful youth tour overseas; indeed, for the first few weeks he called home to say what a good time he was having. But after the fourth week, we received a shocking phone call. The trip organizers were sending him home. John had become paranoid and delusional; he had been taken to a hospital after fainting at the top of a mountain.
We left on the next plane and returned with a young man who not only looked physically ill and emaciated but also was totally psychotic. We were devastated.
John was hospitalized for a short time and was released with antipsychotic medication. The doctor told us it was “psychosis”. His personality changed. Our outgoing, friendly, affectionate boy and talented musician now spent hours in his room, asleep. Awake, he suffered Parkinson-like tremors and tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of his medication.
His progress was negligible and within a year, he was hospitalized with symptoms of schizophrenia. Upon his release, John was marginally better. Schizophrenia prognosis was dim. What was to become of him?
Frantically I searched for answers. Traditional texts left me feeling hopeless. By sheer luck, I came across a book by psychiatrist, Dr. Abram Hoffer, M.D. PhD., psychiatrist, and a scholar of bio-chemistry. The book (now renamed Healing Schizophrenia) discussed diets with healthy nutrients, free of allergens that could help his condition. (Hoffer is the author of 31 books and 500 research papers.)
Also emphasized were nutrition health benefits of nutrients in supplement form such as Vitamin B3 (niacin) and Vitamin C – both natural and essential to the human body for restoring health along with other nutrients.
Orthomolecular medicine is the practice of optimizing health and treating disease by providing correct amounts of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, essential fatty acids and other substances which are natural to the body’s environment. In other words, find out what’s missing in the body and brain and give it what it needs and wants. Orthomolecular treatments are also safe to use along with medication.

Link