Can Depression Spread?

Depression is a common theme in addiction and those with a counseling certification will see this a lot in sessions. Can depression spread though? Here's what Psych Central has to say

1. The “negative cognitive triad.”

"Psychologist Aaron Beck coined the term “negative cognitive triad” to describe three arenas in which depressive thinking is negative. Depressed folks see themselves, others and their futures through dark-colored glasses. For example, Owen was depressed for several months after losing his job. Julie, his wife, felt dragged down by Owen’s constant, negative comments. Owen tried to be more upbeat, but his dialogue was always peppered with self-reproach.

 

2. Negative energy. Owen had also become uncharacteristically critical of his wife. As she headed to work feeling good about the way she looked, Owen ended his goodbyes with, “Do you really have to wear so much makeup?” As to his future, Owen would say, “I’m sure I’ll never get another job I love as much as the one I lost.” Eventually, Julie began to agree with him. His bad mood brought her down to his emotional level.

Just walking into a room where Owen was sitting was enough for Julie to feel her energy level sink. Sometimes she avoided talking to him. Even being in the same room with him seemed to let the air out of her proverbial balloon.

3.  Social isolation.

Owen seldom left the house. When the family was home, he’d stay in his room, alone with the TV.

Soon, Julie followed suit and became a virtual shut-in. Bringing Owen with her to social gatherings was too painful. She could see that their friends, who used to love Owen, now avoided him. His dark cloud must have appeared contagious to them as well.

For years, Julie and Owen exercised together. When it became too difficult for Julie to convince Owen to run with her anymore, Julie also stopped running. Running was once a way for Julie and Owen to stay in touch with their neighbors, who also were runners.Increasingly, Julie felt cut off, depressed at the loss of her old, fun, casual friendships."

Source: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/22/is-depression-contagious/

 

Depression: Can it Spread?

Depression is a common theme in addiction and those with a counseling certification will see this a lot in sessions. Can depression spread though? Here's what Psych Central has to say

1. The “negative cognitive triad.”

"Psychologist Aaron Beck coined the term “negative cognitive triad” to describe three arenas in which depressive thinking is negative. Depressed folks see themselves, others and their futures through dark-colored glasses. For example, Owen was depressed for several months after losing his job. Julie, his wife, felt dragged down by Owen’s constant, negative comments. Owen tried to be more upbeat, but his dialogue was always peppered with self-reproach.

 

2. Negative energy. Owen had also become uncharacteristically critical of his wife. As she headed to work feeling good about the way she looked, Owen ended his goodbyes with, “Do you really have to wear so much makeup?” As to his future, Owen would say, “I’m sure I’ll never get another job I love as much as the one I lost.” Eventually, Julie began to agree with him. His bad mood brought her down to his emotional level.

Just walking into a room where Owen was sitting was enough for Julie to feel her energy level sink. Sometimes she avoided talking to him. Even being in the same room with him seemed to let the air out of her proverbial balloon.

3.  Social isolation.

Owen seldom left the house. When the family was home, he’d stay in his room, alone with the TV.

Soon, Julie followed suit and became a virtual shut-in. Bringing Owen with her to social gatherings was too painful. She could see that their friends, who used to love Owen, now avoided him. His dark cloud must have appeared contagious to them as well.

For years, Julie and Owen exercised together. When it became too difficult for Julie to convince Owen to run with her anymore, Julie also stopped running. Running was once a way for Julie and Owen to stay in touch with their neighbors, who also were runners.Increasingly, Julie felt cut off, depressed at the loss of her old, fun, casual friendships."

Source: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/22/is-depression-contagious/

 

Depression: Can it Spread?

Depression is a common theme in addiction and those with a counseling certification will see this a lot in sessions. 

1. The “negative cognitive triad.”

"Psychologist Aaron Beck coined the term “negative cognitive triad” to describe three arenas in which depressive thinking is negative. Depressed folks see themselves, others and their futures through dark-colored glasses. For example, Owen was depressed for several months after losing his job. Julie, his wife, felt dragged down by Owen’s constant, negative comments. Owen tried to be more upbeat, but his dialogue was always peppered with self-reproach.

 

2. Negative energy. Owen had also become uncharacteristically critical of his wife. As she headed to work feeling good about the way she looked, Owen ended his goodbyes with, “Do you really have to wear so much makeup?” As to his future, Owen would say, “I’m sure I’ll never get another job I love as much as the one I lost.” Eventually, Julie began to agree with him. His bad mood brought her down to his emotional level.

Just walking into a room where Owen was sitting was enough for Julie to feel her energy level sink. Sometimes she avoided talking to him. Even being in the same room with him seemed to let the air out of her proverbial balloon.

3.  Social isolation.

Owen seldom left the house. When the family was home, he’d stay in his room, alone with the TV.

Soon, Julie followed suit and became a virtual shut-in. Bringing Owen with her to social gatherings was too painful. She could see that their friends, who used to love Owen, now avoided him. His dark cloud must have appeared contagious to them as well.

For years, Julie and Owen exercised together. When it became too difficult for Julie to convince Owen to run with her anymore, Julie also stopped running. Running was once a way for Julie and Owen to stay in touch with their neighbors, who also were runners.Increasingly, Julie felt cut off, depressed at the loss of her old, fun, casual friendships."

Source: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/22/is-depression-contagious/

Not really okay

Sometimes it's just not enough to fake feeling fine. The chemical dependency counseling and counseling certification communities have seen patients that pretend like things are getting better, but they really arent. 

"The trick is to expose yourself to a variety of possibilities and numerous methods and hone in on those treatment[s] or coping techniques that work best for you in your particular situation.

The more determined you become to manage your symptoms and not allow them to manage you, the better your quality of life will be. Playing an active role in your treatment and taking care of yourself and your needs helps enormously, whether it’s doing regular meditation, exercise or educating yourself on various treatment options. When you become an expert in your disease, you manage it better. Meshing acceptance of your mood or anxiety disorder with determination to do the best you can, when you can, is a winning combination.

Many who suffer from mood or anxiety disorders tend to feel guilty when they are unable to participate in social activities or work, or they berate themselves if they are too fatigued to accomplish what they originally set out to do.

But guilt is a wasted emotion. Learning to honor your limitations instead of playing the blame game and generating self-destructive thoughts that chronicle your shortcomings can be an extremely difficult skill to master.

For instance, you have to learn to say ‘no’ to some things that pushed you too far too fast. But, by doing so, it can assist you in regaining a sense of control rather than being at the mercy of your symptoms and setbacks.

One of the most beneficial coping tools is to take goals and break them into a series of small steps. This is quite difficult for those of us with Type A personalities! However, it truly helps to pace yourself and not bite off more than you can chew.

Learning to be compassionate toward oneself is another important tool, especially for women. We are taught to be caregivers, always watching out for those around us. We are not accustomed to taking care of ourselves or making ourselves the priority."

Source: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/17/faking-feeling-fine/

Baby Withdrawal, a Rising Problem.

Drug use is still a major problem in the United States and it's one of the Top Ten causes of death here. Now the rising problem that the counseling certification community has been seeing is baby's going through withdrawal. This isn't something that can be solved by chemical dependency counseling unless the mother comes in before she is pregnant. More on the story..

"MUNCIE, Ind. - The cry of a baby in withdrawal isn't quite the same as the whimpers mothers are accustomed to when welcoming their bundle of joy.

These are shrieks -- never ending calls for help -- as these babies withdraw from the narcotics that ran through their bloodstreams for months inside their mothers' wombs. Those yells often become seizures, tremors, sweating battles and high fevers.

These sounds aren't caused only by illegal "street drugs" used by the mother, but more often in recent years from prescription medications. And the misuse and abuse of prescription drugs by pregnant women -- whether intentional or unknowingly -- is on the rise in East Central Indiana."

 

""This is a problem that certainly isn't going away. Just last week, four of the 14 babies born in the hospital were going through drug withdrawals," said Donna Wilkins, the Delaware County Health Department medical officer and a neonatologist for Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital. "Sometimes I feel like we're never going to stop this, not without the whole community getting involved. This is a problem not only for us, but the whole country."

On April 6, Prevent Child Abuse of Delaware County -- of which Wilkins is a part -- will hold a free conference open to the public, "Mom & baby: Addiction, trauma and hope."

The group organized an initial conference in 2012 to spread awareness regarding prescription drug addiction and pregnant women specifically for the local medical community, inviting nurses, doctors, pharmacists and hospital administrators to the event.

This year, with the call for community action on the subject, everyone is invited to learn more, as well as offer suggestions to assist women with addictions and their children.

"Whether people realize it or not, this issue affects the entire community," said Pat Garofolo, president of the local PCA. "Educators are affected because we don't yet know how this will effect these children and how they'll perform in school. Employers need to understand how this affects their workers. Young people need to know how these medications can affect them when they get pregnant. This is a community issue."

It's also a growing national issue."

Source: http://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-news/babies-born-hooked-on-moms-pres...

Second Chance for Addicts in Court

Judges are starting a program that could prove to be much more useful than just sending an addict to jail. Treatment programs for addicts in court are a great solution to solving the real problem. This will also require the aid of mainly who know chemical dependency counseling and have a counselor certification, it's not only good for counselor jobs, but also providing new hope. 

"Federal judges around the country are teaming up with prosecutors to create special treatment programs for drug-addicted defendants who would otherwise face significant prison time, an effort intended to sidestep drug laws widely seen as inflexible and overly punitive.

John Gleeson, a federal judge in Brooklyn, helped establish a “drug court” as an alternative to some long prison sentences.

The Justice Department has tentatively embraced the new approach, allowing United States attorneys to reduce or even dismiss charges in some drug cases.

The effort follows decades of success for “drug courts” at the state level, which legal experts have long cited as a less expensive and more effective alternative to prison for dealing with many low-level repeat offenders.

But it is striking that the model is spreading at the federal level, where judges have increasingly pushed back against rules that restrict their ability to make their own determination of appropriate sentences.

So far, federal judges have instituted programs in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. About 400 defendants have been involved nationwide.

In Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Thursday, Judge John Gleeson issued an opinion praising the new approach as a way to address swelling prison costs and disproportionate sentences for drug trafficking.

“Presentence programs like ours and those in other districts mean that a growing number of courts are no longer reflexively sentencing federal defendants who do not belong in prison to the costly prison terms recommended by the sentencing guidelines,” Judge Gleeson wrote.

The opinion came a year after Judge Gleeson, with the federal agency known as Pretrial Services, started a program that made achieving sobriety an incentive for drug-addicted defendants to avoid prison. The program had its first graduate this year: Emily Leitch, a Brooklyn woman with a long history of substance abuse who was arrested entering the country at Kennedy International Airport with over 13 kilograms of cocaine, about 30 pounds, in her luggage.

“I want to thank the federal government for giving me a chance,” Ms. Leitch said. “I always wanted to stand up as a sober person.”

The new approach is being prompted in part by the Obama administration, which previously supported legislation that scaled back sentences for crimes involving crack cocaine. The Justice Department has supported additional changes to the federal sentencing guidelines to permit the use of drug or mental health treatment as an alternative to incarceration for certain low-level offenders and changed its own policies to make those options more available.

“We recognize that imprisonment alone is not a complete strategy for reducing crime,” James M. Cole, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Drug courts, re-entry courts and other related programs along with enforcement are all part of the solution.”

For nearly 30 years, the United States Sentencing Commission has established guidelines for sentencing, a role it was given in 1984 after studies found that federal judges were giving defendants widely varying sentences for similar crimes. The commission’s recommendations are approved by Congress, causing judges to bristle at what they consider interference with their judicial independence.

“When you impose a sentence that you believe is unjust, it is a very difficult thing to do,” Stefan R. Underhill, a federal judge in Connecticut, said in an interview. “It feels wrong.”

The development of drug courts may meet resistance from some Republicans in Congress.

“It is important that courts give deference to Congressional authority over sentencing,” Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, a member and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. He said sentencing should not depend “on what judge happens to decide the case or what judicial circuit the defendant happens to be in.”

At the state level, pretrial drug courts have benefited from bipartisan support, with liberals supporting the programs as more focused on rehabilitation, and conservatives supporting them as a way to cut spending.

Under the model being used in state and federal courts, defendants must accept responsibility for their crimes and agree to receive drug treatment and other social services and attend regular meetings with judges who monitor their progress. In return for successful participation, they receive a reduced sentence or no jail time at all. If they fail, they are sent to prison.

The drug court option is not available to those facing more serious charges, like people accused of being high-level dealers or traffickers, or accused of a violent crime. (These programs differ from re-entry drug courts, which federal judges have long used to help offenders integrate into society after prison.)

In interviews, the federal judges who run the other programs pointed to a mix of reasons for their involvement. 
Judge Ricardo S. Martinez ran a state drug court in Seattle before he was appointed to 
the federal bench. “People that have a serious addiction, you can put them in custody, but the minute you put them back in the community, they go back to the same thing and lo and behold you see them again,” Judge Martinez said in an interview.

Some of the most pointed criticism of the status quo has come from Judge Gleeson, a former federal prosecutor. The drug court he helped set up is open to defendants who committed a range of nonviolent crimes, like fraud and selling prescription pills, and whose addictions fueled their actions.

In a 35-page opinion he issued this week, he criticized the Justice Department for charging defendants with drug offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences, urged the Sentencing Commission to reduce the guideline range for many drug offenses and called for more programs that divert defendants from prison time.

The opinion chronicled the case of three graduates of the drug court, including Ms. Leitch, 29. The daughter of two addicted parents, she began smoking marijuana daily and later snorting cocaine at a young age, stealing to pay for her drug habit.

After a visit with her children to Guyana, where her father lives, she was paid over $30,000 to transport drugs back to the United States. Customs agents at Kennedy found the cocaine and charged her with importing and possessing the drug, which carried a three-year sentence under federal guidelines.

Though she showed up high at a court hearing, causing her to be jailed for a time, Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold offered her a slot a year ago in the district’s new drug court. She later took parenting courses, earned a general equivalency diploma and got a commercial bus driver’s license — with government subsidies for some of those efforts. She now drives a bus in Nassau County.

Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said she backed the program because drug courts elsewhere had lowered recidivism rates. “Our overall strategy of law enforcement and crime prevention isn’t just incarceration,” Ms. Lynch said.

At a sentencing hearing for Ms. Leitch last month, a prosecutor vacated her guilty plea and agreed to dismiss the charges if she did not use drugs or get arrested for 18 months. After the hearing, Judge Gleeson offered some encouraging words for the defendant, and then a hug.

“I don’t know them as just the judge,” Ms. Leitch said later. “People see judges as the bad guy. They get deeper. They get to know who you are.” "

By MOSI SECRET
Published: March 1, 2013 
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/ny...id-prison.html