Data visualization fun with Tableau – please give this a like!

Hey, check out this cool visualization on microloan programs my scary smart journalism school classmate, Kate Prengaman, produced using Tableau software (another classmate and I provided some input, but this was her baby). Kate created it for a contest, and if it gets enough ‘likes’ it will win a prize. So please take a second to go check it out, and if you think it’s cool, please click ‘like’ at the bottom.  Thanks!

Update May 1: Just a quick note that the data visualization won first prize in the national Tableau contest — way to go, Kate!

Can brain training make you smarter?

I’m a master procrastinator, which is why I usually ban myself from computer and video games. But a few days ago I succumbed to temptation in the form of Lumosity.com, whose dozens of online brain training exercises purport to “improve brain health and performance” and “enhance memory, attention and creativity.”

Oops. I told myself I’d try Lumosity because I was sick of losing my keys, but now I’ve spent more hours than I care to confess playing the site’s addictive brain games. Taxes? Housework? Who cares? I’d rather try to remember whether Robert, Richard or Ryan ordered the chicken wings, cheeseburger or chicken salad, or solve falling math problems before they dissolve into a lake.

Turns out I’m not alone. Lumosity.com reports having recruited more than 20 million users since its inception in 2007, including almost 9 million unique visitors last January. That’s a lot of other people hankering to sharpen their face-name recall or remember where they left their cell phone (Inside a clothes drawer? On a shelf at the grocery store? In my case, yes and yes.)

The site’s popularity is no surprise. Besides its alluring games, Lumosity entices users by tracking their scores over time and showing how they stack up against other players. Since I started using the site, my “brain performance index” — Lumosity’s measure of cognitive power — has nearly doubled and I now outscore more than half of users in my age group. When else in adult life can you improve that much in five days?

But whether such gains translate to meaningful real-life abilities is debatable. In a much-cited study published in the journal Nature, 11,430 volunteers aged 18 to 60 who played brain training games for six weeks got better at playing the games, but showed no significant change in their ability to reason, retrieve words or shapes from short-term memory, or correctly associate one word or concept with another.

In a 2010 study, 11,400 people showed no significant improvements in various cognitive tests after an average of 25 brain training sessions. Experimental groups 1 and 2 played one of two types of brain training games, while the control (comparison) group searched the internet to answer a series of obscure questions. Notice that the control group also improved slightly, but not significantly, casting further doubt on the legitimacy of brain training games. Source: Putting Brain Training to the Test. Nature. 2010 Jun 10;465(7299):775-8.

It’s important to note, though, that the Nature study didn’t help answer a central question: whether brain training might help slow or reverse age-related cognitive decline. That’s because the researchers tested 18 to 60 year old volunteers with normal brain function, not older people with mild cognitive impairment.

But since 2010, when that research was published, no other major study has shown that brain exercises help people function better in everyday life. Indeed, as McGill University neuroscientists pointed out in a lengthy review published last month in the journal Brain and Cognition, there’s little evidence showing that getting better at one cognitive task through brain training helps people improve in other areas, or that brain training boosts healthy older people’s overall cognitive function. So far, most studies have been hampered by small sample sizes and design limitations. A PLoS One study published in March 2012, for example, reported that older people who played Nintendo’s Brain Age outperformed Tetris players on tests of thinking speed and executive functioning (the ability to organize and plan, manage time and make reasoned decisions). But the study included only 32 participants and assessed neither real-world tasks nor memory, one of the brain functions most susceptible to aging, stress and depression.

Does that mean there’s no value in using websites like Lumosity? Not necessarily. As the McGill authors noted, brain training games won’t hurt you and may have a helpful placebo effect, inspiring users to pay better attention to the world around them, focus more when making decisions, or engage in other activities that stimulate the mind. And brain training may also hold promise for more specific types of disabilities, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or impaired cognitive performance after a stroke.

For me, Lumosity has reinforced a couple of ideas. First, my husband’s right when he says I’m good at solving problems, but not always at paying attention. In fact, my Lumosity scores mirror his observation exactly. I’m dubious whether brain training can make me slow down and focus in the kitchen, where I’m prone to burns because my mind jumps ahead of my fingers, but sometimes just knowing you need to slow down and compensate for a weakness can help. And second, sleep really does make a difference in brain function. When I’ve slept five hours, I score lower on the exercises no matter how much coffee I drink. It’s a good reason to sign off Lumosity, wrap up this post and climb into bed — until tomorrow, when that tax deadline looms even nearer.

Garden your troubles away

The songbirds returned about a month early here in south-central Wisconsin, and in honor of spring, I’m updating a post from last year about gardening’s mental health benefits.

I hope this spring brings you fresh energy and many happy hours outside on — and in! — the earth.

Photo by Laura Berman.

When you’re stressed, when you go to the garden, you feel different.
It helps you hold onto life.
– Southeast Toronto resident, 2007 study on health benefits of community urban gardening

Summer’s finally here in south-central Wisconsin, ushered in by one of the coldest springs we’ve had in years. Though I grumbled about trudging through snow flurries on May 1, our garden loved the cool, wet weather. Now, in mid-June, Red Russian kale stands tall in raised beds, its smooth curled leaves jostling with green cabbages, Di Cicco broccoli and Early Snowball cauliflower. The heirloom tomatoes I grew from seed back in February are beginning to flower, and pea vines climb a trellis so fast I swear I can see them move.

When I’m in my garden, life’s troubles crumble away with the rich black soil between my fingers. I’m fully in my body, out of my head, my worries banished. My garden is my church, my time there sacred.

We 21st-century humans so often find ourselves adrift in technologies that wall us off even as they keep us connected. Our gardens are antidotes to that, places where we abandon the filters of cell phones and computers and contact life directly, sensually, touching and smelling plants and bugs and worms and the billions of microorganisms that make garden soil so rich. Biologist E.O. Wilson spoke to these feelings with his biophilia hypothesis, the idea that humans have an “innately emotional affiliation… to other living organisms.”

While far scarcer than studies on psychotherapy or psychiatric medications, research on gardening’s health benefits has found that working with plants can ease mental suffering. There’s even a term for this process — horticultural therapy. As we tend our gardens, sowing seeds, watering, pulling weeds, pruning and, months later, harvesting, so too we sow seeds of patience, hope and optimism within ourselves. A 2008 paper in Nursing Times called such hope “an intrinsic requirement of gardening,” and key to how this activity heals.

Gardening as a therapy for mental illness hasn’t been thoroughly researched, but what has been published shows promise. A paper from 2011 summarized two studies in which patients with depression who gardened for 12 weeks felt better at the end of the intervention and three months later (note that both studies lacked control groups, so we don’t know how much the patients might have improved on their own). In the United Kingdom, a program called Rethink Green Growers helps people with mental illness ranging from mild depression to schizophrenia grow their own food on land plots in Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset. The program organizers say gardening not only gets the patients out of bed and into the sunshine, but  helps them connect with each other and eat healthier diets — which, in turn, further stabilizes their moods.

Horticultural therapy isn’t only being used as adjunctive treatment for mental illness. A 2005 study found gardening reduced stress in patients undergoing cardiac rehabilitation, and a study of patients with dementia found that gardening twice weekly for six weeks helped them interact more with others.

I’ll sign off for now — my garden beckons. How has gardening helped you feel better?  Please share your experiences! (And read more from a wonderful blog called The Storied Mind!)

Reduce anxiety by learning to accept life’s uncertainties

Life so often bucks and plunges beyond our control. Its pleasures and rewards can evaporate in an instant, demolished by a car accident, a pink slip, a friend’s betrayal.

Image by Luca Z.

By the time we reach adulthood, most of us have seen firsthand how damningly unsure life can be. But knowing this is one thing. Accepting it is another.

Though we all struggle at times to make peace with life’s unexpected twists and turns, studies show that people with high levels of anxiety — including conditions like panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia — tend to have a much harder time accepting uncertainty than others. (A study published last month also found some association between intolerance of uncertainty and hypochondria, or chronic, unfounded health concerns.)

This connection makes sense when you think about it. Excessive worry can be a subconscious attempt to control life — to try to prevent mishaps by imagining and trying to sidestep everything that could go wrong.

People who can’t tolerate uncertainty may develop counterproductive behaviors, too, like refusing to delegate tasks, re-reading every email before sending it, and triple-checking their work, even on small projects. They may constantly ask friends or family members for reassurance. In severe cases, they may fear the unexpected so much that they avoid routine activities, like driving, meeting new people or traveling.

Of course, such efforts to control life usually don’t work. They just confine us to ever-shrinking comfort zones, reducing our potential and stifling both learning and pleasure. What’s more, chronic, unrelenting anxiety and tension have been linked to a host of emotional and physical health problems, from insomnia and digestive problems to a weakened immune system and even heart attacks.

Learning to accept uncertainty can significantly reduce anxiety. But how to do it? Changing ingrained beliefs takes time and sustained effort. Here’s what the research shows helps:

- Cognitive behavioral therapy helps anxious people learn to identify distorted, negative thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones. For example, someone who lives in a safe neighborhood but constantly worries he’ll be assaulted can learn to identify this thought as “fortune telling” and replace it with a more realistic one, such as, “It’s very unlikely I’ll be attacked, and I can reduce the risk further by keeping my head up and looking around when I walk.” Or someone who constantly overworks herself because she fears negative feedback can notice the underlying beliefs that drive her behavior, such as, “If someone criticizes me, it means I’m a bad person,” and respond with healthier self-talk, such as, “I don’t need to be perfect. Constructive criticism is useful and can help me grow, and I get to decide whether or not I agree with others’ feedback.” Group cognitive behavioral therapy can also help people with social phobias better tolerate uncertainty, according to a small study published this month.

- Whether you do it on your own or as part of therapy, seeking out situations you’ve habitually avoided is one of the best ways to teach yourself that you can tolerate uncertainty and solve problems on your feet when they arise. This process usually involves a gradual immersion into a new experience: If you’d like to one day feel able to travel internationally by yourself, perhaps you start by spending a day alone in a city within driving distance. And if you’d like to meet new friends, but you fear rejection, you might experiment with smiling at strangers and silently wishing them well, and then, once you’re comfortable with that, practice striking up a conversation.

- Mindfulness meditation can be a powerful tool for learning to accept uncertainty. Simply sitting and feeling your breath — the interplay between long and short inhalations and exhalations — reveals life’s mercurial essence. And noticing habitual thoughts helps you choose how you’ll respond to them. By cultivating an alert but passive attitude in meditation, you can begin, breath by breath and thought by thought, to relinquish the need to control life — and taste the profound peace that comes with letting go.

Why more stroke patients don’t call 911

Image by Arlee (Flickr).

Strokes kill someone every four minutes in this country, making them the fourth most common cause of death in the United States.

They’re a true medical emergency — one of those times when every minute counts.

That’s because most strokes are caused by clots in the blood vessels that carry oxygen and nutrients to the brain. Given quickly enough, anti-clotting treatments can help restore the brain’s blood flow and prevent potentially irreversible brain damage.

But most stroke patients don’t reach the hospital in time to receive that treatment.

In fact, only about half arrive at the emergency department by ambulance, a percentage that hasn’t significantly improved since in the mid-1990s, according to an analysis of 11 years of hospital data published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

National Trends in Ambulance Use by Patients With Stroke From 1997 Through 2008. Kamel H et al, Journal of the American Medical Association.

People don’t always realize they’re having a stroke, so they may delay seeking medical care or call their regular doctor instead of 911, said researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center who led the study. At other times, medical staff themselves may not recognize stroke symptoms.

But there’s more to the problem than that: Sometimes patients who suspect they’re having a stroke don’t call right away for help. That’s what happened to brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who was home alone 16 years ago when a blood vessel burst in her brain.

Taylor recounts her experiences in My Stroke of Insight, a fascinating New York Times bestseller I’d recommend to anyone interested in the brain and emotions.

Taylor, then 37 and healthy, awoke alone one morning with a splitting headache that quickly progressed to confusion and difficulty walking.

The Harvard-trained neuroanatomist knew all the signs of stroke. But because the massive bleed affected her brain’s left hemisphere — the side that handles logical thinking and analysis — she struggled for long minutes to understand what was happening to her. And then she spent the better part of an hour figuring out how to call her doctor and ask a friend to take her to the hospital.

Cartoon depicting the "doing" versus "being" roles of the brain's left and right hemispheres. Image from mattovermatter.com

She received excellent care there, but her left hemisphere was so damaged that she was unable to read, comprehend a normal speaking pace or piece together a children’s puzzle.

Researchers have traditionally thought that patients stop improving about six months after they’ve had a stroke. But Taylor writes that she fully recovered over eight years. She attributes this feat to her early and hard work to re-learn how to do things, and to the unwavering support of her mother, friends and doctors.

Taylor’s memoir fascinates me for another reason. She writes that before her stroke, she was an aggressive, reactive “doer” — highly accomplished, but mired in negative thoughts and memories of a difficult past.

But her stroke halted all that. Because it left her brain’s left hemisphere mostly incapacitated, Taylor lost her ego. She no longer compared herself to other people, felt self-conscious or competitive, or succumbed to painful memories. She switched from doing — planning, evaluating and remembering — to being in the present.

As a result, she writes, she felt connected to the universe, immersed in the kind of deep inner peace that mystics talk about.

What’s more, when her left hemisphere rebuilt itself enough for the old emotional baggage to reappear, she made the conscious choice to disengage from it. Instead of indulging old (or new) grievances, she taught herself to handle emotions like anger and worry by sensing them in the body and then letting them pass naturally, as meditators sometimes do.

Taylor now travels widely, teaching audiences to nurture their brains’ right hemispheres to help foster feelings of compassion and joy.

Since reading her book, I’ve started “stepping to the right” (as Taylor calls it) more often — such as by paying attention to how I feel when I snuggle with my cat or practice yoga. And when I notice happiness arising, I try to let it really sink in, as psychologist Rick Hanson recommends. I’ve found doing so cuts straight through the stress-laced stories and memories my left hemisphere likes to churn out.

A stroke of insight, indeed.

Warning Signs of Stroke

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, you should call 911 if you experience any of these symptoms.

• Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
• Sudden, severe headache with no known cause

Does depression cause obesity? Or does obesity cause depression? It’s not (even) that simple

Percent of adults globally who are overweight or obese. Source: World Health Organization.

If you’re severely overweight and have depression, you may have been told that if you’d “just” shed a few pounds, you’d feel better. Perhaps a health professional even gave you that advice.

But most clinicians and scientists agree the link between obesity and mood is too complex to merit such a simplistic approach.

Studies do show that obese teens and adults in the United States are more likely to have symptoms of depression than their peers who aren’t overweight.

But here’s the catch: when people are both depressed and obese, it can be unclear whether the obesity caused the depression (through chronic low self-esteem or physical health problems), whether the depression caused the obesity (because of antidepressant-induced weight gain or decreased physical activity), or some third factor — such as stress — caused both.

Depression has been clearly linked to weight gain in some studies. In one large U.S. study, for example, researchers reported that young adults with low mood gained substantially more belly fat in 15 years than peers who reported feeling happier.

But the association between excess body fat and depression seems to vary by culture, ethnicity, age and gender. The research summarized here shows just complex this can get.

• A study published this month in the journal Aging and Mental Health reported a decreased risk of depression in overweight and obese elderly women in Taiwan. The same study found that older men were underweight were more likely than their peers to have depression.
• A 2010 study from Korea found that obese women aged 60 to 85 years were less likely to report depression than normal weight peers.
• A 2004 study from Hong Kong reported that obese men and women aged 65 and older were less likely to have depression than peers of normal weight.
• A 2011 Harvard University study found that severely obese U.S. teens who were non-Hispanic white had a significant increase in depressive symptoms over three years. But no such increase was seen for severely obese teens of other races and ethnicities, including non-Hispanic blacks.
• And a 2010 study of more than 1,000 U.S. teenagers found that overweight girls were more likely to report poor body image and depression if they were Asian or were very assimilated into mainstream U.S. culture. But that wasn’t true for other girls, or for boys.

So what can we take from all this? Older people from non-Western countries may reflect the values and mores of cultures before they became weight-obsessed — before, for example, the Western version of anorexia swept Hong Kong. And that may explain, to some extent, why obese adults in these countries may be less prone to depression than their grandchildren in the United States, where images abound of skinny models, most of them Caucasian.

The obesity-depression connection needs to be teased out further. But these studies support the idea that factors like body image and social stigma play a crucial role in the effect of body weight on mood.

Does being gorgeous and successful require you to be thin?

Westerners didn't always think so.

Gaps persist in campus mental health services

My six-month investigative project on the University of Wisconsin’s mental health services ran today. Here’s the main story. You can also click here for the complete coverage.

Amid surge in demand, students take public role to combat stigma

 By Amy Karon, Kate Prengaman and Jenny Peek

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

 

Matt Vohl meets with Rachel Steidl in the Student Activity Center on East Campus Mall in Madison, Wis., Jan. 27, 2012. Vohl and Steidl help lead the UW-Madison campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Lukas Keapproth/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

 

A decade ago, Thomas Murphy was a college dropout who used alcohol and drugs to deal with undiagnosed depression. Now he’s back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he co-leads a chapter of Active Minds, a national, student-run group promoting open conversations about mental illness.

Therapy made the difference for Murphy. But he can’t receive it at school. When he re-enrolled at UW-Madison and went to the counseling center, he walked out with no appointment and a list of referrals.

“They couldn’t help me because of my extensive history,” Murphy said. “So I go out and pay on my own for the services I need.”

Murphy’s story underscores a national dilemma: a surge in students seeking intensive counseling and psychiatric care, which college mental health centers often lack resources to provide. The problem has become even more urgent in the wake of mass shootings by troubled students at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

In Wisconsin, understaffed counseling centers are prioritizing services for those with urgent needs, expanding group therapy options to reach more students, and referring patients off campus for long-term treatment. And students like Murphy are forming campus organizations to support peers and fight the stigma of mental illness.

A growing need

Step onto a U.S. college campus today and you’ll still find students rushing between classes or holding hands with first loves.

But 80 percent of college counseling center directors reported seeing more students in crisis during the past five years, according to a national survey in 2011. The same study found that students with severe psychological problems now account for nearly 40 percent of counseling center visits — more than double the proportion in 2000.

Last spring, 19 percent of college students surveyed by the American College Health Association said they’d been diagnosed with depression sometime in their lives, up from 12 percent a decade ago. Almost one in five students had seriously considered suicide.

These statistics aren’t all bad news, said psychologist Danielle Oakley, director of mental health services at UW-Madison, where counseling visits increased 10 percent last year alone. More people know about mental illness and are seeking help, and better psychiatric medications enable some to attend college who couldn’t have a generation ago.

But Oakley said the faltering economy is fueling worries about paying for school. Many students are stressed, overworked and sleep-deprived, which can cause mental health problems.

Though studies show people with serious mental illness usually aren’t violent, there have been tragic exceptions: In 2007 and 2008, troubled students shot themselves after killing 37 people and wounding dozens more at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities.

Campuses across the country responded by revamping policies for handling disturbed students and staff. At UW campuses, threat assessment teams — whose members hail from deans’ offices, academic departments, campus police, and counseling centers — try to identify and help such people before they hurt themselves or others.

“If there is a silver lining in something like that happening, it’s put the spotlight on some needs on our campus,” said John Achter, counseling director at UW-Stout.

Still, most people with mental illness fly under the teams’ radar. And despite attempts to meet demand, Wisconsin students are being turned away — or told to wait weeks for care.

Long waits, but some improvements

UW-Madison senior Rachel Steidl was one such student. “I grew up really focused on helping other people,” she said. “When I had my own problems with depression, I didn’t feel like I had anyone to turn to. I was pretty lonely my freshman year.”

Steidl later saw a psychology intern at the campus counseling center. She learned to open up more and made friends. When she returned to the center this year, an intake provider saw her the same day to assess her needs.

That’s because at Oakley’s urging, UW-Madison began offering same-day assessments in early 2011.

“We don’t want any barriers to get to us,” Oakley said. “The day you decide that you want support, all you have to do is walk in.”

But what happened next frustrated Steidl. Because her immediate needs weren’t deemed urgent, she said, she was asked to wait three weeks for her next appointment.

“If my depression gets worse, it could escalate,” she said. “I want to avoid getting to the point where I have to call the crisis hot line.”

Most UW campuses use such triage systems to help students in crisis first. UW-Eau Claire student Anneliese Vaini, for example, was prescribed Paxil when she sought help for panic attacks in 2009. After she stopped eating and sleeping and went on a “financially disastrous” shopping spree, her campus counselor and psychiatrist correctly identified and treated her bipolar disorder — ending eight years of bouncing between clinicians who’d misdiagnosed her.

“They saved my life. Literally,” said Vaini, who now works as a pet groomer. “I wasn’t able to complete a degree, but they gave me a brighter future than education.”

But Steidl’s wait time is more typical. Last fall, UW-Madison students went an average of 14 days between their intake appointment and first regular counseling session, said Dr. Sarah Van Orman, health services director. Other UW campuses report similar waits.

Such delays stem partly from inadequate staffing. A UW System audit found that five years ago, only UW-Madison met the international standard of one mental health professional for every 1,000 to 1,500 students. The auditors recommended that over the short term, UW institutions aim to employ one mental health staffer for every 2,000 students.

But as of 2011, just eight of 13 campuses had achieved that ratio, an analysis by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism showed. Of those, only two schools — UW-Stevens Point and UW-Superior — met the international standard.

To improve counselors’ availability, UW-Madison wait-lists students for earlier sessions, offers daily drop-in groups and confidential consultations in several campus locations, and has more than 25 process and support groups to help students deal with issues ranging from low self-esteem, grief and social anxiety to graduating or coming out as a sexual minority.

None of these options was right for Steidl, though. She found a therapist in private practice.

Referred off campus, some never find help

It took a violent mugging in the Dominican Republic in 2008 for Thomas Murphy to finally face his depression. During rehabilitation for a brain injury, he also got the counseling he’d needed.

Milwaukee native Mary Martinco sought help sooner, seeing a therapist for depression for two years in high school. But transitioning to UW-Madison was painful.

“Freshman year I felt so alone, crying all the time,” recalled Martinco, now a junior.

Like Murphy, Martinco sought help at UW-Madison’s counseling services and left with a list of off-campus referrals. But in her case, they either weren’t a good match or didn’t take her insurance. In the end, it was her mother, not her school, who helped her find a therapist.

Most UW counseling centers limit students’ counseling sessions. UW-Madison students like Martinco, who need more than the 10 permitted each academic year, are often asked to go elsewhere from the beginning.

Oakley said that’s because making students change therapists disrupts their treatment. But a 2006 University of California-Davis study found that 42 percent of students referred off campus never connected with providers — usually because of financial concerns.

To address that problem and help prevent tragedies like those at Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech, UW System officials recommended in 2008 that campus providers follow up with high-risk students to help ensure they’re successfully referred.

A half-time case manager now fills this role at UW-Oshkosh. And in 2010, after Martinco’s failed referral experience, UW-Madison hired a full-time case manager who saw 300 students her first year — five times more than expected.

Still, lack of health insurance “poses great barriers” for students referred off campus, Van Orman said. She cited campus surveys that show 6 to 8 percent of students at UW-Madison are uninsured and another 30 to 40 percent have no coverage in the Madison area.

The case manager connects these students to agencies that charge a fraction of the going rate or to the student health insurance plan. She also helps students navigate deductibles and co-pays.

Some students struggle to pay for psychiatric prescriptions. Martinco saw peers risk going off medication when short on cash. She and Murphy said they knew students who self-medicated with alcohol or illegal drugs because they couldn’t afford mental health care.

“The self-medication issue is complex,” Oakley said. “For example, students who use substances such as alcohol to treat anxiety can end up with substance abuse problems in addition to their anxiety.”

Alcohol withdrawal symptoms can mimic anxiety, Oakley added, leading students to drink more or use stronger drugs. In the end, she said, money spent on drugs and alcohol, lost time at work, medical treatment for accidents and legal consequences can far outstrip medication costs.

Student groups expand 

Frustrated by her experiences on campus, Steidl joined fellow student Matt Vohl two years ago in reviving the campus chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

“We saw a lack of resources available for students with mental illness or even just mental health problems,” Vohl said. “We wanted to offer an alternative.”

Students responded en masse: More than 70 signed up at the campus organizational fair last September, Vohl said. A month later, they peppered Bascom Hill with signs.

“The best way to reduce the stigma is by educating people,” Vohl said. “We want to let people know that (mental illness) is not this inherent condition that makes people freaks, it’s not demonizing, it shouldn’t be taboo. It’s something that can affect anyone.”

Steidl and Vohl are working with the counseling center to train students to provide confidential, face-to-face support for peers who want to talk about everyday problems.

“You can go there and know that people kind of understand you at least,” said a member with obsessive-compulsive disorder who asked not to be named for privacy reasons. “You get to know their struggles every day, whatever they are, and to be there to be support for them and other people as well.”

Murphy and Martinco now run UW-Madison’s branch of Active Minds, which promotes mental health awareness. Five other Wisconsin campuses also have chapters. At UW-Parkside last semester, members practiced yoga, colored and made squeezable stress balls.

“Finally I feel able to talk about it, and I want to help others talk about it too,” Martinco said.

“I had this deeper, darker side that I never talked about,” Murphy agreed. “For me, communicating my emotions, my struggles, and my successes has been vital.”

Amy Karon is a reporter for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Kate Prengaman, Jenny Peek and Sam Zastrow contributed as students in a UW-Madison journalism class taught by Professor Deborah Blum, in collaboration with the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The Center also collaborates with Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and other news media. Works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or its affiliates.

Studies: metta (loving-kindness) meditation eases symptoms of schizophrenia

What if something as simple as well-wishing could lessen symptoms of schizophrenia?

I listened to a talk the other day by a Buddhist monk who teaches meditation in the West. He told a story suggesting just that.

The monk said that when a woman with schizophrenia came to him to learn intensive mindfulness meditation, she quickly destabilized. Something about focusing deeply on her breath, her body, her thoughts and feelings made her psychotic. She had to stop meditating and take more medication.

(NOTE: people with schizophrenia are known to have become acutely psychotic on intensive meditation retreats. Read more here.)

The monk told the woman she should give up learning to meditate. But she refused. She was committed to the practice, convinced it could help her.

So she kept trying, with the same results.

Image from Flickr

Then the monk had an idea. He told the woman to abandon mindfulness practice. Instead she sat quietly and thought to herself,

May I feel safe and protected from harm.
May I feel happy.
May I feel strong and free from pain.
May I feel at ease.

She repeated these phrases again and again, wishing herself well.

May I feel safe and protected from harm.
May I feel happy.
May I feel strong and free from pain.
May I feel at ease.

Then, slowly, she began extending those wishes to others — first to someone for whom she felt uncomplicated affection. Then to someone she’d seen before, but didn’t know. Then to someone she’d fought with. And finally to all people.

May you feel safe and protected from harm.
May you feel happy.
May you feel strong and free from pain.
May you feel at ease.

This is metta meditation, also called loving-kindness. It develops concentration in the gentlest of ways. You don’t work to focus on your breath, risking frustration or even self-hatred when your attention strays. You simply cultivate goodwill.

And something about that switch changed everything for this woman. She could now meditate safely for long periods. What’s more, after years of metta practice, she again tried intensive mindfulness meditation. Now she could do it without becoming psychotic.

Does this make loving-kindness a cure-all for schizophrenia? Certainly not. But it does suggest metta practice initiated some profound changes in this woman’s brain.

Studies support that idea. In 2008, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used brain imaging to show that people without mental illness who practiced loving-kindness had increased activity in the insula, a part of the brain that helps detect the body’s response to emotion, and in the right temporoparietal junction, which helps people feel empathy and perceive others’ thoughts and emotions as separate from their own.

These brain regions are affected in people with schizophrenia. Researchers have proposed that insular dysfunction may contribute to schizophrenic hallucinations, and multiple studies have found that people with schizophrenia can have decreased activity in the right temporoparietal juncture, which may contribute to difficulty interacting socially.

Clinicians have now begun studying metta to treat schizophrenia. In a pilot study published last July, 18 outpatients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders showed marked increases in positive emotions, empathy, and the ability to experience pleasure after six weeks of loving-kindness practice. In another article, the same clinicians reported that loving-kindness helped some patients strengthen their ability to pay attention to the present. As a result, they were able to enjoy feeling the wind on their faces when cycling and use mindful breathing to calm themselves when they had hallucinations.

I’ll never meet that woman; she persevered with metta practice long before researchers began studying its potential to help her. But I’m inspired by her story. Her fearlessness and persistence paid off. She forged her own path to freedom.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! I write from Taos, a beautiful mountain town and artists’ colony in northern New Mexico, where my husband and I are taking a much-needed vacation alone together after months of studying and working in different states.

Here are a few Flickr pictures of the Taos area.

In the new year I’ll further develop this blog’s focus on new research on mental disorders and treatments. I wish you peace, health and happiness in 2012!

Surviving the holidays when you’re grieving, stressed or living with mental illness

The holiday season is in full swing as I write this. Lights glitter from windows and rooftops. Parties abound. And when I stopped at the mall for coffee last Sunday, I thought I’d be overrun by throngs of irritable shoppers.

Image from Chicagonow.com

We all know the holidays can be stressful. Social and financial obligations pile up just when the days (in the northern hemisphere) are at their shortest and darkest. Meanwhile, we’re inundated with holiday carols and advertisements telling us we should be rich, beautiful, in love and deliriously happy.

It’s no wonder this time of year can be especially hard for people who struggle to keep their moods on an even keel. So much so, in fact, that one large study found a 40 percent increase in suicide attempts after Christmas.

When you’re grieving or sad or sick, it can hurt so much to contrast the season’s fervent hopes and expectations with your own experience. Perhaps a wish you’ve always carried — that your family would get along, that you could stop drinking, that an estranged child would return home — feels unbearable against all the tinsel.

Or perhaps you or your partner has been laid off, or you’re afraid one of you will be, and you’re weighing that possibility against your children’s gift lists. Or maybe you lost a loved one this year, and you can’t believe you’ll never celebrate New Year’s Eve with him or her again.

Perhaps you’re worried about spending future holidays alone.

Maybe you’re alone now, and wish you weren’t.

The internet teems with advice about how to care for yourself during the holidays. Eat healthily, exercise, drink in moderation, lower your expectations. It all makes sense, but really, who needs any more pressure at this time of year?

So here’s what I wish for you, if you’re stressed or sad, grieving or struggling with mental illness this holiday season. I hope you’ll let yourself cry as much as you need to. That you’ll take a walk and just feel your feet, solid on the earth. That you’ll tell someone you care about them, and why. And most of all, that you’ll remember that we all fear isolation, illness and death. None of us is as happy as we seem.

The holidays will pass, and crocuses will pop up again from the snow.