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At NAMI CCNS We Offer Support & Encouragement To Families, Friends & Those Fighting Mental Illness.
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The stories of these parents helped frame the discussion for the other members attending the hearing hosted by the oversight subcommittee of the House of Energy and Commerce Committee and headed by Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa., and ranking member Diana DeGette, D- Co., this Tuesday. The hearing, titled After Newtown: A National Conversation on Violence and Severe Mental Illness, examined the nature of severe mental illness, violence and the availability of federal mental health resources and programs.

read the full article from our NAMI.org blog:

http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?Section=Top_Story&template=%2FContentManagement%2FContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=151747&lstid=809

From Face The Nation & CBS NEWS!

An interesting piece on Are video games, violence and mental illness connected?

President Barack Obama greets Sue Abderholden, Executive Director, National Alliance on Mental Illness Minnesota. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.)

By Bob Carolla, NAMI Director of Media Relations

In the White House’s Now is the Time plan on gun violence, released  last month, President Obama included a provision for a national dialogue about mental illness.

Read the full article on nami.org website:

http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?Section=Top_Story&template=%2FContentManagement%2FContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=151070&lstid=809

*HOPE* Coursera.com, an internet based University, is offering a course on mental health entitled, “The Social Context of Mental Health And Illness”
Learn More: https://class.coursera.org/mentalhealth-001

“Stigma makes a huge difference every day, in small and big ways,” he said, “because in the end stigma is an institutional impediment — to treatment, to full participation, to inclusion and to the exercise of meaningful citizenship.”

Read this very informative article on mental health here http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1269248–lawyer-recovers-from-depression-and-disgrace-thanks-to-a-good-night-s-sleep

Dear NAMI CCNS Family,

Improving the lives of individuals with serious mental illness and those who love and care for them is the driving force behind NAMI Cook County North Suburban.  It is words from a grateful parent, such as the following, that make each educational course, each support group, each public education meeting, and, indeed, each dollar contributed worthwhile.

“Yes, my husband and I loved Family to Family!!!  We took it in Northfield at a time when our daughter entered college and started having serious emotional issues.  The class was a journey helping us understand the range of mental illnesses, treatments, medications, etc, etc.  Most of all, F2F helped support us during a very difficult period and helped us develop coping strategies to help our daughter become more honest and responsible.  It helped restore our faith and hope that we could navigate the choppy waters of mental illness.  Eventually we were able to persuade her to get the help she needed.  She ended up at a university which had a counseling program and so she was able to continue her education and is on her way to being a teacher.”

While each educational course and support group that NAMI CCNS provides is offered at no cost to participants, there is a real cost for each program to the organization.  For example, each twelve week Family to Family class costs NAMI CCNS approximately $3,100 to cover the cost of teacher training, materials, rent and administrative support.

As 2012 draws to a close and we prepare to welcome 2013, we ask you to consider making as generous a financial gift as possible so that NAMI CCNS can continue to give the gift of knowledge, support and hope to individuals and family members in our communities who struggle with mental illness.  Your gift will be sincerely appreciated and deeply rewarding.

Gratefully,

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden found that individuals in the arts and sciences are more likely to have bipolar disorder. Authors are more likely to have not only bipolar disorder but also schizophrenia, depression, anxiety syndrome, and substance abuse. Authors are 50% more likely to commit suicide than other individuals.

Researchers found that family members of individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder also are more likely to be in the arts and sciences.

The researchers concluded that the findings should make people rethink treatment of mental illness so that beneficial aspects of the illness can be maintained.

The study tracked nearly 1.2 million individuals.

Source: Simon Kyaga, Mikael Landen, et al. “Mental Illness, Suicide and Creativity: 40-Year Prospective Total Population Study.” Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2012 Oct. 9.

Use of the Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-Clinical (HRC-20-C) scale has been found to help mental health professionals more accurately assess the risk that an individual with a mental illness will become violent.

In a study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, hospital residents using the HRC-20-C scale were able to assess the risk of violence almost as accurately as faculty psychiatrists with an average of 15 years more experience.

Canadian researchers developed the HRC-20-C scale, similar to a checklist, several years ago for use in prisons and hospitals, but it is only beginning to be used in U.S. hospitals.

The study, “The Relationship Between Level of Training and Accuracy of Violence Risk Assessment,” was published in the August 2012 issue of Psychiatric Services.

Although even infants can develop serious mental illness, they are unlikely to receive needed treatment because of the pervasive, but mistaken, belief to the contrary. So conclude researchers Joy D. Osofsky, PhD, of Louisiana State University, and Alicia F. Lieberman, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco.

Help for such infants is difficult to obtain because there are few practitioners in early childhood mental health. Even when such help is available, it may not be covered by insurance, according to Florence Nelson, PhD, of the nonprofit ZERO TO THREE, and Tammy Mann, PhD, of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute.

See Joy D. Osofsky and Alicia F. Lieberman, A Call for Integrating a Mental Health Perspective Into Systems of Care for Abused and Neglected Infants and Young Children, American Psychologist (February 2011), and Florence Nelson and Tammy Mann, Opportunities in Public Policy to Support Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, American Psychologist (February 2011). Both articles are available at http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/02/babies-mental-illness.aspx.