Editor: Denise Nelson
(559) 627-1306
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We are pleased to announce we are offering our NAMI Family Support Groups in both Porterville and Visalia locations starting this month. These are free, peer-led support groups, and walk-ins are welcomed. Please join us. LEARN MORE
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Porterville Location
Time: 6:00 pm
When: First Thursday of the month, June 3
Location: Porterville Wellness Center, 333 W. Henderson Ave.
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Visalia Location
Time: 5:45 pm
When: Second Tuesday of the month, June 8
Location: St. Paul's Anglican Church, Riviera Hall, 120 N. Hall St.
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If you are concerned for a family member or friend, please call our help lines: |
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Office Cell Phone: (559) 967-6168
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Visalia Area: Ralph, (559) 627-1306
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Porterville Area: Donna, (559) 280-5258
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Porterville and Visalia Wellness Centers |
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Wellness Center activity calendars are on the NAMI TC website:
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The Speakers Bureau group is now meeting twice a month. Do you want to share your personal story? Contact Olivia at 559-802-3266. My Voice Media Center's activities calendar is on the NAMI TC website:
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Sign up Today, Tell a Friend |
Your shopping can help generate donations for NAMI Tulare County. Go to AmazonSmile, and Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible purchase.
When you log in, please choose NAMI Tulare County as your charitable organization, and your donation will be linked directly to us.
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Tulare County Mental Health Board Meetings |
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The Tulare County Mental Health Board meets on the first Tuesday of the month, at 3:00 pm, via ZOOM.
Public comment is at the beginning of their meeting.
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The in-person course is taught by a trained team with lived experience raising a child with a mental health condition. They know what you’re going through because they've been there too.
The OnDemand program is also guided by parents and family members with lived experience but is self-paced and available 24/7. OnDemand offers the flexibility of participating in the course on your schedule. This online course provides education
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as well as strategies and the opportunity to connect with other parents and caregivers.
What You’ll Gain
By participating in NAMI Basics, you’ll realize that you are not alone. You’ll find support and shared understanding—compassion, reinforcement and empathy from people who truly get your situation. And don’t forget: Your experiences may also help others in the course. Together, you will all learn that recovery is a journey, and there is hope.
Go to the NAMI.org website type in Basics and you will find more information.
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"One positive thought in the morning can change the whole day."
– Emily Dickinson
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In the First Six Months of Health Care Professionals Replacing Police Officers, No One They Encountered was Arrested
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Denver Police Department (DPD) Chief Pazen, who is fond of the STAR program, says it frees up officers to do their jobs: fight crime.
A young program that puts troubled nonviolent people in the hands of health care workers instead of police officers has proven successful in its first six months, according to a progress report.
Since June 1, 2020, a mental health clinician and a paramedic have traveled around the city in a white van handling low-level incidents, like trespassing and mental health episodes, that would have otherwise fallen to patrol officers with badges and guns. In its first six months, the Support Team Assisted Response program, or STAR, has responded to 748 incidents. None required police or led to arrests or jail time.
The civilian team handled close to six incidents a day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, in high-demand neighborhoods. STAR does not yet have enough people or vans to respond to every nonviolent incident, but about 3 percent of calls for DPD service, or over 2,500 incidents, were worthy of the alternative approach, according to the report.
STAR represents a more empathetic approach to policing that keeps people out of an often-cyclical criminal justice system by connecting people with services like shelter, food aid, counseling, and medication. The program also deliberately cuts down on encounters between uniformed officers and civilians.
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Source: Denver's STAR Program
“This is good stuff, it’s a great program, and basically, the report tells us what we believed,” said Chief of Police Paul Pazen. Pazen added that he doesn’t want to sound flippant, but the approach was somewhat of a known quantity because he’s been talking about it with advocates for mental health and criminal justice reform for years. Denver just so happened to launch the program in the middle of a movement against police violence.
Pazen’s goal is to fill out the alternative program so that every neighborhood can use its services at all hours, instead of just weekdays during normal business hours. Nearly $3 million for more social workers and more vans should help Denver move toward that “North Star” this year, Pazen said. The money is expected to come from the city budget and a grant from Denver’s sales-tax-funded mental health fund.
Carleigh Sailon, one of two civilian social workers on the team, said more vans — and more food and blankets to go with them — as well as weekend and after-hour shifts will do big things for the program.
“We run an unbelievable amount of calls for such a limited pilot program and have had some really good outcomes on those calls,” Sailon said.
The policing alternative empowers behavioral health experts to call the shots, even when police officers are around.
Sailon said she remembers a call last year in which a woman was
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experiencing mental health symptoms at a 7-Eleven. The clerk had called the police — the woman was technically trespassing — but when the police arrived, they called Sailon.
“We got there and told police they could leave,” Sailon said. “We didn’t need them there.”
The woman, who was unhoused, was upset about some issues she was having on her prepaid Social Security card. Sailon helped her into the van where the two “game-planned” a solution before the STAR crew drove her to a day shelter for some food, she said.
“So we were sort of able to solve those problems in the moment for her and got the police back in service, dealing with a law enforcement call,” Sailon said.
The fact that the police officers even called the STAR team tells Dr. Matthew Lunn, who is in charge of DPD’s strategic initiatives, that the program is working (Lunn has a PhD but is not a medical doctor). About 35 percent of calls to STAR personnel come from police officers, according to the report.
“I think it shows how much officers are buying into this, realizing that these individuals need a focused level of care,” said Lunn, who authored the report.
No one really needs any more evidence that this alternative to traditional policing works, but Sailon and Lunn said more data will make STAR stronger. For example, while STAR might steer people away from jails and courts initially, the long-term effects of the program must be studied, the report states.
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Source: Denver's STAR Program
Chief Pazen is thrilled with the success of STAR, but the time and money it saves will go toward fighting crime, he said.
A spectrum of solutions has sprouted from protests against systemic racism and police brutality that started last summer, including the idea of taking money from traditional policing and giving it to social programs not unlike STAR.
For Pazen, transferring low-level calls to civilian teams is not about reallocating money. It’s about solving two problems at once: getting harmless residents the help they need while letting police focus on other things.
“I want the police department to focus on police issues,” Pazen said. “We have more than enough work with regards to violent crime, property crime and traffic safety, and if something like STAR or any other support system can lighten the load on mental health calls for service, substance abuse calls for service, and low-level issues, that frees up law enforcement to address crime issues.”
Pazen added: “I see this as an ‘and.’ Not an ‘or.'”
**This article was updated to clarify that Lunn holds a doctorate but is not a medical doctor.
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People With Schizophrenia Have Increased Risk of Dying From COVID-19, Research Reveals
Posted: February 4, 2021 by
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
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A study conducted in a major New York City hospital system in 2020 found that people with schizophrenia have 2.7 times the overall risk of dying within 45 days if they are infected with the COVID-19 virus. Higher mortality was not seen in people with depression or anxiety who contracted the virus.
A newly published study based on data from a 2020 peak period of the pandemic in New York City indicates that people previously diagnosed with schizophrenia or a schizophrenia spectrum disorder who contracted a COVID-19 infection had a significantly increased risk of mortality. Specifically, their risk of death from COVID within 45 days of infection was 2.7 times the risk in people without a psychiatric diagnosis who contracted COVID.
The observed increase in COVID mortality risk for people on the schizophrenia spectrum was second highest in the study, following the elevated risk associated with age. By comparison, people who had previously suffered heart failure had 1.6 times the risk of those without a psychiatric diagnosis, while those with a history of diabetes had 1.27 times the risk.
The mortality risk within 45 days of COVID diagnosis was also elevated in people who had a recent diagnosis of mood disorders, after demographic factors were factored into the calculation. But this excess risk was not present statistically after various medical risk factors were taken into consideration.
There was no observed relation detected between COVID-related mortality and a stable, established
mood disorder or with recent or previously established anxiety disorders.
The study, appearing in JAMA Psychiatry, was based on medical records complied in the spring of 2020 at the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Donald C. Goff, M.D., of NYU Langone was senior member of the team. He is a 2009 and 2003 BBRF Independent Investigator. The team also included 2005 BBRF Distinguished Investigator Mark Olfson, M.D., MPH, of Columbia University.
Electronic medical records of 26,540 patients tested within the multi-center NYU Langone health system were the basis for the study. Of these, 7,348
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tested positive for COVID-19; 53% were women and the average age was about 54.
Seventy-five (1%) of those receiving a positive COVID test had a history of schizophrenia; 564 (7.7%) had a history of a mood disorder; and 360 (4.9%) had a history of an anxiety disorder. The sample was demographically diverse and reflected a consecutive stream of adult patients tested in the NYU Langone system between March 3 and May 31, 2020. Outcomes including mortality (death or discharge to a hospice) were monitored for 45 days following each positive COVID diagnosis.
A systematic study led by BBRF Scientific Council member Nora Volkow, M.D., and based on the electronic health records of over 61 million American adults recently found that people with a diagnosis of a mental disorder within the last 12 months have a significantly increased risk for COVID-19 infection and tend to have worse outcomes than people infected with COVID-19 who don’t have a mental disorder.
Results of the new study revealing the elevated risk of death in people with schizophrenia in the 45 days following a COVID infection should be important, the researchers said, in “guiding clinical decision-making, including the need for enhanced monitoring and targeted interventions” in such patients.
The result in schizophrenia may have reflected “unmeasured medical comorbidities,” the researchers said. But they also pointed out that “the risk remained significantly increased after adjustment for multiple established risk factors.”
It has been noted previously that people with severe mental illness are more likely to live in crowded housing, institutional or otherwise, and may either lack or eschew the need for personal protective equipment to avoid COVID inflection. Yet the increased risk of death from COVID seen in people with schizophrenia may also indicate the presence of biological factors related to schizophrenia or to treatments for it that the current study was not designed to detect, the researchers said.
The team speculates that among the biological factors that may make people with schizophrenia more vulnerable to COVID infection are dysregulation of the body’s immune system, deficits in cellular immunity, and irregularities in immune-system signaling. Evidence for all of these has been generated in many previous studies of schizophrenia, including studies of the genes that tend to be perturbed in people who have the illness.
Unable based on their study to forge more precise biological linkages, the researchers stressed the practical clinical need of “targeted interventions for patients with severe mental illness to prevent worsening health disparities” in circumstances such as are being faced now in the continuing COVID pandemic.
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Maurizio Fava, MD, Executive Vice Chair Department of Psychiatry Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Director of the Division of Clinical Research, Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Question: I know that tai chi, the traditional Chinese exercise form, can improve heart health, balance and flexibility, but recently I heard that it also positively affects the brain. Is this true?
Yes, research suggests that tai chi---an ancient martial art that requires concentration to learn, memorize, and move through a long series of physical poses-has been associated with a
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number of benefits for the brain. A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease a few years ago found that participants who practiced tai chi experienced brain growth of one-half of one percent over eight months and scored better on tests of memory and thinking, while participants who engaged in stimulating discussions, went on regular walks, or received no intervention showed limited or no improvements in brain volume and cognition. Other studies have linked tai chi with brain-related changes leading greater connectivity among brain regions, improvements in decision-making, multi-tasking, and attention, and an increase in feelings of self-worth and happiness.
To find out more about tai chi and about programs in our area contact the American Tai Chi and Qigong Association (www.americantaichi.net). The Visalia Park Recreation Program used to have tai chi classes at the recreation center on Jacob and also in Blaine Park. Also, the Visalia Wellness Center had afternoon classes before the Covid-19 epidemic.
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There are many different ways you can get involved to help raise mental health awareness.
Learn how you can support NAMI Tulare County and why it's so important to get involved.
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Help raise mental health awareness. |
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Ralph Nelson, President
Sandra Juarez, Vice President
Mary Mederos, Treasurer
Kathy Farrell, Secretary
Donna Grigsby
Karen Mabry
Bruce Nicotero
Elizabeth Vander Meer
Ivy Jones
Ray Lara
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Office Hours: Tuesday-Friday 8:00am-2:30pm
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