Our signature program, Project Healthy Moms, won the National Mental Health America "Innovation in Programming Award!" This award recognizes the continuing innovation and creativity of the MHA affiliate network in program development and implementation. 

In Georgia alone, over 30,000 pregnant and postpartum women will likely experience a PMAD (Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder), yet only 5% of them will get treatment. 

Support Project Healthy Moms' goal to increase awareness, identification, treatment and support of PMADs in Georgia, while also reducing the stigma.

To register, visit our Facebook Event or sign up at  Sips n Strokes. 

For children, teens, and college students, summertime is associated with freedom from school and positive emotions. However, summer can also be a time when certain mental health issues need to be tended to even more than usual. 

Peter Zafirides, a psychiatrist in Ohio, said he has noticed a common mental health issue for children, teens, and students during the summer. Many evaluate whether they should still take their medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

"Stimulants are often prescribed during the school year, but depending on the severity of the underlying ADHD, the summers may provide for some time off the medications," Zafirides said. "But it may not always be smooth-going. The combination of unmedicated ADHD symptoms, along with the less structured days of summer, can be very problematic for kids and their parents. Beyond the attention symptoms that worsen, kids can experience mood changes, including anxiety and irritability."

Click here to learn 10 things you didn't know about minority mental health.

INTERNET- BASED HEALTH INTERVENTIONS CAN REDUCE INSOMNIA & WORK RELATED STRESS.

The ability to detach from work at the end of the day is necessary for brain restoration and recovery. Inability to disconnect and unwind from the work day has been linked to lower work production, fatigue, depression, and-unsurprisingly-problems with sleep. 

Fortunately, internet-based health interventions can help people leave work at work.  One study found that those who participated in the intervention experienced a significant reduction in insomnia, as well as a reduction in work-related stress and rumination compared to those in the control group. The positive effects remained after six months.  Researchers concluded that Internet-based self-help interventions that focus on psychological detachment from work and improving sleep can help people decrease work-related stress and its negative consequences, including insomnia and other sleep impairments.

Click here for more information.

CLINICAL TRIALS CORNER

HUMAN CONNECTOME PROJECT MARKS ITS FIRST PHASE: BRAIN CONNECTIVITY GETS PERSONAL, AS AN INDIVIDUAL'S SCANS PREDICT BEHAVIOR 

Scans of an individual's brain activity are emerging as powerful predictive tools, thanks to the Human Connectome Project (HCP), an initiative of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Such individual differences were often discarded as "noise" - uninterpretable apart from group data. Now, recently reported studies based on HCP neuroimaging and psychological data show that individual differences in brain connectivity can reliably predict a person's behavior. Such scans might someday help clinicians personalize diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, say researchers. 

For more information, click here.