Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I will be conducting all counseling sessions via telehealth beginning on 3/16/2020. There are several options/platforms available for webcam sessions and phone calls are welcomed as well. This change in my practice is to protect the health of my patients, myself and the community at large and will last until our public health officials determine we can return to office visits. I greatly appreciate your understanding and encourage you to contact me to discuss any aspect of this further.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated "Gaming Disorder" as an official diagnosis to be included in the next revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Currently, ICD-10 is in use and Gaming Disorder, as part of the ICD-11, was approved in June, 2018 and will be formally implemented on January 1, 2022.
The description for Gaming Disorder is: As a component of First Lady Casey DeSantis' "Hope for Healing Florida" program, the State Board of Education has approved the implementation of 5 hours of mental health instruction for all public school students in grades 6-12 on an annual basis. Required topics to be covered in the instruction are:
- Awareness of sign and symptoms. - Process of getting or seeking help for themselves or others. - Awareness of resources ( i.e., Fortify Florida app and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-825). - What to do or say to peers struggling with mental health disorders. Citing an accumulation of research and knowledge, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has updated their policy statement "to recommend parents not to use spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating or shaming" as forms of child discipline. The AAP outlines the strong association of spanking and adverse outcomes as:
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), suicide rates in the U.S. rose 25% from 1999-2016. Only one state (Nevada) saw a decrease by 1%. North Dakota saw an increase of 57% during this time period. Twenty five states had increases of more then 30% and 45,000 lives were lost to suicide in 2016.
The states of Missouri and Mississippi have proposed legislation to join 18 other states who have banned the sale and use of fake urine samples. As Katie Zezema reports in the Washington Post, synthetic urine samples have become an increasing and problematic way for individuals to circumvent urine drug testing used by the courts, police and employers. The U.S. Supreme Court first upheld the use of drug testing in the workplace in 1989. Recently, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) added ecstasy as a sixth substance testing for those in safety sensitive positions with the others being amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, PCP and opioids. SAMSHA also added four prescription pain killers (Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percocet and Dilaudid) to the list of tests run on federal employees.
Following the tragic school shouting at Parkland on February 14, 2018, 11 Senators introduced the School Safety and Mental Health Services Act of 2018 to address the issue of school shootings. While the legislation is waiting vote for approval and implementation, the proposal address two main areas: improving school safety and addressing mental health needs.
New research by neurologist Michael Gandal and others, conducted at the UCLA, shows that there are shared patterns of gene expression between: alcoholism, autism, bipolar disorder, depression and schizophrenia. The researchers say they are measuring similarities in the "disruption" of how brain cells communicate with one another. While the study advances our understanding of where in the genetic code the faulty DNA is, the researchers are clear to point out there are environmental factors that contribute.
For the full article, please visit: http://science.sciencemag.org On October 26, 2017, Eric Hargan, the Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), declared the opioid epidemic to be a "Public Health Emergency". According to the Center for Disease Control, 140 Americans die each day from drug overdose with 91 of these being opioid related. 52,404 died from drug overdoses in 2015 and at least 64,000 died in 2016.
The Pinellas County Adult Pre-Arrest Diversion (APAD) program was implemented earlier this year as a way to reduce costs of incarceration and prosecution of certain types of misdemeanors. These are:
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