NaturalNature: Magic Mushrooms May Ease OCD

http://www.naturalnews.com/021380.html

(NaturalNews) Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in “magic” mushrooms, might be a key tool in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder, suggest the results of a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Obsessive-compulsive order, or OCD, is the fourth most frequently diagnosed psychiatric disorder today, after phobias, depression and alcoholism. There are approximately 6 million people in the United States alone with the disorder, which is characterized by ritualistic repetition of certain behaviors such as washing and counting.

This study is the first to investigate the benefits of psilocybin, which is derived from illegal psychedelic mushrooms. The hallucinogen has some patients in the study able to walk barefoot on the floor — an act that most patients with OCD would not be able to consider before being treated with the psilocybin — and experiencing relief from other OCD symptoms. The results are temporary, usually lasting for about 24 hours after taking the lowest dose, but the scientists report one patient’s symptoms went into remission for more than six months.

“I really think that participating in the study influenced the patient’s remission,” said Dr. Frances Moreno, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona.

Some critics say the study had flawed methodology, for example, there was no other comparison drug in the test, which means the patients could have just responded to the care and attention given by the researchers. This would preclude any conclusions that may have been drawn from the study, said professor Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of California, Los Angeles, and might encourage suffering patients to look to it as a magic bullet cure. However, the study authors say the trial was only meant to demonstrate the safety of the compound.

All participants were given psychedelic drugs before the study, in order to increase the study’s safety, Moreno said. Psilocybin’s mind-altering affects had a significant impact on the patients, who described the hallucinogenic experience as “stressful” at times, but also described it as “psychologically and spiritually uplifting.” They gave descriptions of past lives, distant planets, and conversations with deities encountered while taking the drug.

Dr. Paul Blenkiron, a consultant in adult psychiatry at Bootham Park Hospital, York, U.K, said the study did not prove the drug’s safety, because the effects were only measured up to 24 hours.

“OCD is a chronic condition, not measurable in hours and days, but months and years,” he said, adding, “About 12 percent of people can suffer flashbacks after less than 10 exposures (to psychedelic drugs) many years later, beyond the six months of this study, so long-term effects should be carefully assessed.”

Professor Paul Salkovskis, of the Maudsley Hospital Centre for Anxiety Disorders in London, questioned the safety of giving someone with OCD — which he said can already cause flashes of disturbing images, such as stabbing someone or worse — a drug known to produce hallucinations.

Moreno admitted that a larger controlled study needed to be done for the actual efficacy of psilocybin on OCD to be determined.

“If the question is, ‘did we find enough information to support exploring this further?’ then we got some interesting findings which support the need for a proper controlled study,” he said.

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Filed under: Interests, Life, News Articles, Random Thoughts, Self-motivation , Alcoholism, Anxiety, Compulsive, Condition, Deities, Depression, Disorder, Drug, Hallucinogenic, Magic Mushrooms, Obsessive, OCD, Phobias, Psilocybin, Psychedelic, Psychiatry

To some psychiatric patients, life seems like TV

According to YahooNews…

NEW YORK – One man showed up at a federal building, asking for release from the reality show he was sure was being made of his life.

Another was convinced his every move was secretly being filmed for a TV contest. A third believed everything — the news, his psychiatrists, the drugs they prescribed — was part of a phony, stage-set world with him as the involuntary star, like the 1998 movie “The Truman Show.”

Researchers have begun documenting what they dub the “Truman syndrome,” a delusion afflicting people who are convinced that their lives are secretly playing out on a reality TV show. Scientists say the disorder underscores the influence pop culture can have on mental conditions.

“The question is really: Is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion … or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we’re in, in which fame holds such high value?” said Dr. Joel Gold, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

Within a two-year period, Gold said he encountered five patients with delusions related to reality TV. Several of them specifically mentioned “The Truman Show.”

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Yes, I am posting once again… you guessed it. Seems like the only time I blog is when I’m down.

I feel like my life is a reality tv show…do I need psychiatric help?

Filed under: Interests, Life, News Articles, Random Thoughts , Culture, Delusion, Mental Conditions, Truman Show

CNN: Experts Ponder Link Between Creativity, Mood Disorders

Wow, check this article out from CNN…I cut and pasted the entire thing onto my blog. It is very fascinating.

(CNN) — The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance.

Certain characteristics of his prose — hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation — reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity.

There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the “An Unquiet Mind,” a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

“Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth,” Jamison said. This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace — suffered mood disorders.

“It’s pretty clear if you read [Wallace's] books that he was a very obsessive, kind of ruminating guy,” said Paul Verhaeghen, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology.

“You can see it in his sentences. … They’re breathless and they need to be annotated, and the annotations need to be annotated again.”

The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.

“If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what’s happening to you and to the world — people who do that are at risk for depression,” he said.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a “somewhat mood disordered person,” had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.

“One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that’s when I start writing,” he said.

Sensitivity to one’s surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.

Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings — colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don’t worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.

“The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent,” he said. “If you go too far you can pay a price — you can be too sensitive to live in this world.”

Terence Ketter is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

Ketter and his colleagues compared a healthy control group with bipolar patients, depression patients, and a control group of graduate students in writing and the arts.

They found that people with bipolar disorder scored better — up to about 50 percent higher — on creativity tests than the healthy control group. The creative control group had about the same increase in score relative to the healthy control group.

But more research is needed, says Ketter. The study does not explain the connection or show a causal relationship, he said.

Some have pointed out that being engaged in creative pursuits makes a person more open to experience, while others say the pressure of being engaged in the arts causes negative emotion, according to Ketter.

Still, the temperamental characteristics in question are thought to be somewhat inherent.

“It’s a little hard to argue that engaging in creative activity could create the temperament, and it may be a little bit more possible that this temperament gives you a creative advantage,” he said.

Verhaeghen’s theory that rumination contributes to negative emotions generally sounds plausible and in some ways consistent with his own views, said Ketter.

Many hope that this type of research will be helpful in developing better strategies to manage and detect mental illness. These strategies can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

“Tragically, mood disorders can still present a sudden death in people who have been undiagnosed and untreated, and die from the illness,” says Ketter.

More specifically, Ketter says, just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.

 

This article to me makes perfect sense, it is crystal clear. My blog itself is a living proof of me in my reflective mode. I can see how there may be a link between creativity and mood disorders. Let alone, writing is thereuptic and the reason why one would have a blog or journal in the first place would be to document their daily life, to see themselves progress…Genius.

Filed under: Interests, Life, News Articles, Random Thoughts, Self-motivation , Arts, Bipolar, Claremont University, CNN, Creativity, David Foster Wallace, Depression, Disorders, Emotional Nuance, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hypersensitivity, John Hopkins University, Mental Illness, Mood, Obsessive, Personality type, Psychiatry, Reflectiveness, Rumination, Sensitivity, Suicide, Sylvia Plath, Temperamental, Verhaeghen's theory