Newsletter Editor: Denise Nelson
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You're not Alone
Support is Here for You
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Support Groups are Confidential
No Registration Required
–
Walk-ins Welcome
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Visalia FamilySupport Group
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
120 N. Hall – Corner of Center and Hall
Tuesday, February 4
First Tuesday of every month
Education Group at 5:45 p.m.
Support Group from 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Call for Information:
(559) 627-1306
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Porterville Family Support Group
Wellness and Recovery Center
333 W. Henderson Ave.
Thursday, February 6
First Thursday of every month at 6:00 p.m.
Call for Information: (559) 280-5258 or (559) 539-5288
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Connection Support Group
My Voice Media Center
300 E. Oak Ave. in Visalia
Every Tuesday from 2:00-3:15 p.m.
Call for information: (559) 685-2429 or
(559) 300-5874
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Connection Support Group provides persons with mental health conditions a gathering of respect, understanding, encouragement, and hope. This group is led by trained individuals who are experienced at living well with a mental illness.
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Places for adults to attend support groups and activities,
learn life skills, and practice socialization:
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My Voice Media Center
Near the Transit Center
in downtown Visalia
300 E. Oak Ave.
Phone: (559) 802-3290
Hours of Operation:
Tuesday-Friday: 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Closed most major holidays
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Visalia Wellness Center
1223 S. Lovers Lane
Visalia, CA 93292
Office: (559) 931-1001
Hours of Operation:
Mon-Sat: 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Closed most major holidays
Porterville Wellness Center
333 W. Henderson Ave.
Porterville, CA 93257
Office: (559) 256-1183
Hours of Operation:
Mon-Fri: 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Sat: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Closed most major holidays
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Check calendars in this newsletter for classes and events
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March 17th
May the luck of the Irish be with you!
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New housing recently opened in Porterville and Tulare. A beautiful, 16-bed campus opened in Porterville, and a 20-bed campus opened in Tulare. There is on-site management for both campuses. These housing units were funded with the Mental Health Services Act dollars (MHSA).
NAMI Tulare County
recently made a $750.00 donation to the Warming Center for Homeless, sponsored by St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Visalia.
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NAMI Basics OnDemand
is the online adaptation of the in-person NAMI Basics. It is a free, 6-session education program for parents, caregivers, and other family who provide care for youth (ages 22 or younger) who are experiencing mental health symptoms. It is available online 24/7.
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TOGETHER, WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
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Your generosity can change people's lives for the better. When you donate, you help give NAMI Tulare County a voice in our community to make a difference for people living with mental illness and their families.
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You can also mail donations to:
NAMI Tulare County
P.O. Box 3655
Visalia, CA 93278
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NAMI Tulare County is grateful for
our members
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You help us provide support groups, education, and advocacy
for people within Tulare County who are living with mental illness.
Not a member? Please join today.
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Help NAMI Tulare County Advocate for
Mental Health Issues
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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Found to Improve Cognition in Patients With Depression
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Both high and low doses of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may improve cognition in patients with depression, according to
a
study
in
Depression & Anxiety
.
“Research has found that unipolar depression can reduce processing speed, decrease attention, and impede executive function, and that bipolar disorder can adversely affect working memory,” wrote Shawn M. McClintock, Ph.D., M.S.C.S., of UT Southwestern
Medical Center, and colleagues. Although previous studies have suggested that tDCS has antidepressant effects, less was known of the neurocognitive effects of the therapy.
This study enrolled 130 adults 18 and older with unipolar or bipolar depression who had been experiencing a major depressive episode for at least four weeks. The participants were randomized to receive 20 sessions (given on consecutive weekdays over four weeks) of either high-dose tDCS
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(2.5 mA for 30 minutes) or low-dose tDCS (0.034 mA for 30 minutes). Afterwards, all participants had the option to continue with four weeks of open-label, high-dose tDCS treatment.
At baseline, after four weeks, and after eight weeks, the researchers assessed participants’ mood as well as verbal learning, memory, selective attention, auditory attention, working memory, psychomotor processing speed, visuospatial attention, and verbal fluency.
Participants in the high- and low-dose tDCS groups experienced mood improvements over the eight-week period. “The study found across all patients and time, that there were improvements in verbal learning and memory, selective visual attention, auditory attention, and information processing speed in both the low- and high-dose tDCS conditions, which were independent of mood effects,” McClintock and colleagues wrote.
They concluded, “The tDCS associated neurocognitive effects require further investigation and replication, which is clinically important as such investigation could provide information to develop personalized tDCS therapeutic approaches to target specific cognitive functions and improve the utility and efficacy of this noninvasive neuromodulation treatment.”
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Looking at Addiction and Suicide Through the Lens of Brain Science
Q and A with Nora Volkow, M.D. Director National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH Member
The connection of opiate-use disorder (OUD) and mood disorders is not surprising, because the mu-opioid receptors in the brain, which are the target of drugs like morphine or heroin or Oxycontin, among their other functions modulate the serotonin system, which plays a major role in regulating mood.
But we must ask: why is this problem with opioid addiction happening in the United States, and to whom, exactly and why right now? Angus Deaton and Anne Case, sociologists at Princeton have looked into the demographics of people who have borne the brunt of drug and alcohol-associated mortality. They point out a midlife “reversal” in mortality statistics—numbers that were dramatically improving throughout most of the 20
th
century that are now showing a reversal. Who is affected? Many lower-class white Americans, people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Denton and Case ask: What are the factors driving it? They propose that it is the loss of jobs and the lack of new opportunities, driven in part by limited education, that explains the rising mortality in lower-middle class white Americans. Addiction to drugs and alcohol (along with suicides) are illnesses of the body, that can be thought of as “diseases of despair.” They distinguish those people who have a very high risk of actually dying of overdose. Among white middle-class people, its those who do not go beyond high school. Which of course, then limits their opportunities for work and constrains them in other important ways.
Whether we call it “addiction with overdoses” or you call it “suicidality” or you call it “alcoholism” (which is also a substance-use disorder), you have to consider those aspects of our social system that help people overcome stressors so that they can be strengthened, versus factors that weaken the social structure, and limit possibilities and alternatives for individuals.
Dr. Volkow, for years you have been eloquent on the subject of addiction being a brain disease. Yet some people continue to resist that idea. What would you say skeptics who claim that addiction, in the end, is a failure of personal control?
We all see reality through our own experiences. And when someone has not been addicted themselves, they see that they are able to control and regulate their actions. Even while sometimes they may not be successful, most of the time they are able to regulate their emotions and desires.
It may help to do a thought experiment to help illustrate the significance of losing the capacity to self-regulate. You normally don’t think twice about picking up a glass of water. But if you have a stroke in the motor area of your cortex, you will not be able to do it. And why not? Because
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the area of the brain that sends the signal to the muscles in your arms is not working. It cannot send the signal.
Similarly, in an addicted person, the area of the brain that regulates the desire to have the drug isn’t working
properly. It’s not sending the signal. Nobody would question this when someone has a stroke. We would say well, that person’s brain can no longer send the proper signal. But people have difficulty in bringing that logic into a situation like drug-seeking which concerns an inner, cognitive control process as opposed to one that concerns the movement of a limb.
For people who have never lost control, it becomes very difficult to conceptualize. And that’s why, to me, it’s very important to imagine what it might be like. Say you haven’t eaten anything for five days. You are starving. And someone places food in front of you that is likely to be contaminated with salmonella. You know you shouldn’t eat it, but the ability to stop that extreme hunger from taking over is very hard, and with further food deprivation it might be almost impossible. Your brain is processing it as a state of emergency. You feel that if you don’t eat now, you’ll die. The threat of your getting sick in the future becomes almost theoretical. This kind of situation of overvaluing the “now” at the expense of the “late” is at the heart of addiction.
This relates to the science you and others have done on this subject, concerning the way our brains are wired for motivation and reward. You have said that these mechanisms, so central to our survival as a species, get hijacked in addiction
.
Yes, in the brain of a person who is addicted, an artificial sense of deprivation is generated, akin to the sense of hunger that leads the starving person to ear the contaminated food. The hunger for the drug is equivalent in its power to motivate the behavior of an addicted person. For in addiction, the survival circuits that motivate your actions have been hijacked.
In addiction, you’ve generated an artificial sense of being in a state of deprivation survival situation. You feel that unless you address it, it could cost you your life.
How ironic.
But this may help a skeptic understand that addiction is, indeed, an illness in which the brain is not functioning properly. This illness can be overcome, but it is not a trivial matter of simply wanting to assert self-control.
Addiction is a chronic illness that must be treated in a continuous model of care that includes the social support systems necessary
.
Dr. Volkow also states, “We should regulate vaping devices and cartridges used in them. We also need to create policies that interfere with the selling of these devices to minors just like we have done for cigarettes and alcohol.”
Peter Tarr, Brain and Behavior Magazine, July, 2019
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Vaping Causes DNA Changes Similar to Those in Cancer
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People who vape have potentially cancer-causing changes in their DNA similar to those found in cigarette smokers, according to a new study.
These chemical alterations — called epigenetic changes — can cause genes to malfunction. They are found in nearly all types of cancer, as well as other serious diseases, the researchers noted.
"That doesn't mean that these people are going to develop cancer," said study leader Ahmad Besaratinia, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
"But what we are seeing is that the same changes in chemical tags detectable in tumors from cancer patients are also found in people who vape or smoke, presumably due to exposure to cancer-causing chemicals present in cigarette smoke and, generally at much lower levels, in electronic cigarettes' vapor," he said in a school news release.
Besaratinia and his colleagues said their findings add to a
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growing list of health issues linked to e-cigarettes. The study included 45 people who either vaped only, smoked cigarettes only, or did not vape or smoke (control group). Blood samples were tested for changes in two specific chemical tags attached to DNA that are important for proper gene activity and/or function. Changes in levels of these chemical tags occur at various ages and in diseases such as cancer.
Compared to the control group, vapers and smokers both had significant reductions in both chemical tags. The authors said this is the first study to show that these changes can be detected in vapers' blood, just as in smokers.
Many people consider vaping safer than smoking, and more than 25% of U.S. high school students use e-cigarettes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Researchers now plan to identify all the genes affected by these chemical changes in vapers, compared to smokers. Besaratinia said the study could have immediate public policy implications.
"The epidemic of teen vaping and the recent outbreak of vaping-related severe lung injury and deaths in the U.S. underscore the importance of generating scientific evidence on which future regulations for electronic cigarette manufacturing, marketing, and distribution can be based," he said.
The study was published online recently in the ournal Epigenetics.
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"Review of “What is Bipolar”
Bipolar is a treatable illness marked by extreme changes in mood, thought, energy, and behavior. Bipolar disorder is also known as manic depression because a person’s mood can alternate between the “poles”---mania (highs) and depression (lows). The change in mood can last for hours, days, weeks, or months.
Bipolar 1
Disorder
is characterized by one or more manic episodes that last at least a week or require hospitalization. Episodes of depression and hypomania may also occur. Some mood episodes may have mixed features (symptoms of both depression and mania/hypomania.
Behavior during mania and disability during bipolar depression can lead to severe financial, family and social disruption.
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Bipolar Two
Disorder
is characterized by one or more depressive episodes accompanied by at least one hypomanic episode. Hypomanic episodes have symptoms similar to manic episodes but are less extreme and don’t last as long. However, the person’s behavior is clearly different from the norm to observers.
Cyclothymic Disorder
is characterized by chronic mood fluctuations that do not reach the level of a full manic or depressive episode. However, symptoms cause significant distress in personal relationships, work or school, and other areas of life when they occur. Although symptoms are relatively mild compared to Bipolar 1 or Bipolar 11, they recur within two months each time. People with cyclothymia may go on to develop a more extreme form of bipolar illness.
bp Hope & Harmony, bp Magazine, Summer, 2019
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The Visalia Wellness Center (VWC) offers a wide array of wellness and resiliency-focused services in a lively and supportive environment tailored to individuals who are on their journey to wellness.
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To enlarge, click the menu icon (3 lines at top right corner of computer in toolbar), go to zoom, and click the + symbol until you reach desired size)
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The purpose of My Voice Media Center, located in the Art District of downtown Visalia, is to help peers in their wellness and recovery. They do so by providing a creative outlet for self-expression, striving to reduce stigma in surrounding communities, and promoting available wellness and recovery services.
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Your membership makes it possible for NAMI Tulare County to advocate for access to services, treatment, and research.
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Officers:
Ralph Nelson (President)
Sandra Juarez (Vice President)
Kathy Farrell (Secretary)
Mary Mederos (Treasurer)
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Board of Directors:
Donna Grigsby
Ivy Jones
Ray Lara
Karen Mabry
Bruce Nicotero
Elizabeth Vander Meer
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Office Hours: Tuesday-Friday 9:00am-3:30pm
Phone: (559) 732-6264
Email: namitc@att.net
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