#clinical psychology research

[reasonsforhope]

Story from the Washington Post here, non-paywall version here.

Washington Post stop blocking linksharing and shit challenge.

"The young woman was catatonic, stuck at the nurses’ station — unmoving, unblinking and unknowing of where or who she was.

Her name was April Burrell.

Before she became a patient, April had been an outgoing, straight-A student majoring in accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But after a traumatic event when she was 21, April suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of visual and auditory hallucinations. The former high school valedictorian could no longer communicate, bathe or take care of herself.

April was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, an often devastating mental illness that affects approximately 1 percent of the global population and can drastically impair how patients behave and perceive reality.

“She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” ...

It would be nearly two decades before their paths crossed again. But in 2018, another chance encounter led to several medical discoveries...

Markx and his colleagues discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain.

After months of targeted treatments [for lupus] — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up.

The awakening of April — and the successful treatment of other people with similar conditions — now stand to transform care for some of psychiatry’s sickest patients, many of whom are languishing in mental institutions.

Researchers working with the New York state mental health-care system have identified about 200 patients with autoimmune diseases, some institutionalized for years, who may be helped by the discovery.

And scientists around the world, including Germany and Britain, are conducting similar research, finding that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed.

Although the current research probably will help only a small subset of patients, the impact of the work is already beginning to reshape the practice of psychiatry and the way many cases of mental illness are diagnosed and treated.

“These are the forgotten souls,” said Markx. “We’re not just improving the lives of these people, but we’re bringing them back from a place that I didn’t think they could come back from.” ...

Waking up after two decades

The medical team set to work counteracting April’s rampaging immune system and started April on an intensive immunotherapy treatment for neuropsychiatric lupus...

The regimen is grueling, requiring a month-long break between each of the six rounds to allow the immune system to recover. But April started showing signs of improvement almost immediately...

A joyful reunion

“I’ve always wanted my sister to get back to who she was,” Guy Burrell said.

In 2020, April was deemed mentally competent to discharge herself from the psychiatric hospital where she had lived for nearly two decades, and she moved to a rehabilitation center...

Because of visiting restrictions related to covid, the family’s face-to-face reunion with April was delayed until last year. April’s brother, sister-in-law and their kids were finally able to visit her at a rehabilitation center, and the occasion was tearful and joyous.

“When she came in there, you would’ve thought she was a brand-new person,” Guy Burrell said. “She knew all of us, remembered different stuff from back when she was a child.” ...

The family felt as if they’d witnessed a miracle.

“She was hugging me, she was holding my hand,” Guy Burrell said. “You might as well have thrown a parade because we were so happy, because we hadn’t seen her like that in, like, forever.”

“It was like she came home,” Markx said. “We never thought that was possible.”

...After April’s unexpected recovery, the medical team put out an alert to the hospital system to identify any patients with antibody markers for autoimmune disease. A few months later, Anca Askanase, a rheumatologist and director of the Columbia Lupus Center,who had been on April’s treatment team, approached Markx. “I think we found our girl,” she said.

Bringing back Devine

When Devine Cruz was 9, she began to hear voices. At first, the voices fought with one another. But as she grew older, the voices would talk about her, [and over the years, things got worse].

For more than a decade, the young woman moved in and out of hospitals for treatment. Her symptoms included visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as delusions that prevented her from living a normal life.

Devine was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can result in symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She also was diagnosed with intellectual disability.

She was on a laundry list of drugs — two antipsychotic medications, lithium, clonazepam, Ativan and benztropine — that came with a litany of side effects but didn’t resolve all her symptoms...

She also had lupus, which she had been diagnosed with when she was about 14, although doctors had never made a connection between the disease and her mental health...

Last August, the medical team prescribed monthly immunosuppressive infusions of corticosteroids and chemotherapy drugs, a regime similar to what April had been given a few years prior. By October, there were already dramatic signs of improvement.

“She was like ‘Yeah, I gotta go,’” Markx said. “‘Like, I’ve been missing out.’”

After several treatments, Devine began developing awareness that the voices in her head were different from real voices, a sign that she was reconnecting with reality. She finished her sixth and final round of infusions in January.

In March, she was well enough to meet with a reporter. “I feel like I’m already better,” Devine said during a conversation in Markx’s office at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she was treated. “I feel myself being a person that I was supposed to be my whole entire life.” ...

Her recovery is remarkable for several reasons, her doctors said. The voices and visions have stopped. And she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria for either schizoaffective disorder or intellectual disability, Markx said...

Today, Devine lives with her mother and is leading a more active and engaged life. She helps her mother cook, goes to the grocery store and navigates public transportation to keep her appointments. She is even babysitting her siblings’ young children — listening to music, taking them to the park or watching “Frozen 2” — responsibilities her family never would have entrusted her with before her recovery.

Expanding the search for more patients

While it is likely that only a subset of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychotic disorders have an underlying autoimmune condition, Markx and other doctors believe there are probably many more patients whose psychiatric conditions are caused or exacerbated by autoimmune issues...

The cases of April and Devine also helped inspire the development of the SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry and Mental Health at Columbia, which was named for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which awarded it a $75 million grant in April. The goal of the center is to develop new treatments based on specific genetic and autoimmune causes of psychiatric illness, said Joseph Gogos, co-director of the SNF Center.

Markx said he has begun care and treatment on about 40 patients since the SNF Center opened. The SNF Center is working with the New York State Office of Mental Health, which oversees one of the largest public mental health systems in America, to conduct whole genome sequencing and autoimmunity screening on inpatients at long-term facilities.

For “the most disabled, the sickest of the sick, even if we can help just a small fraction of them, by doing these detailed analyses, that’s worth something,�� said Thomas Smith, chief medical officer for the New York State Office of Mental Health. “You’re helping save someone’s life, get them out of the hospital, have them live in the community, go home.”

Discussions are underway to extend the search to the 20,000 outpatients in the New York state system as well. Serious psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, are more likely to be undertreated in underprivileged groups. And autoimmune disorders like lupus disproportionately affect women and people of color with more severity.

Changing psychiatric care

How many people ultimately will be helped by the research remains a subject of debate in the scientific community. But the research has spurred excitement about the potential to better understand what is going on in the brain during serious mental illness...

Emerging research has implicated inflammation and immunological dysfunction as potential players in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression and autism.

“It opens new treatment possibilities to patients that used to be treated very differently,” said Ludger Tebartz van Elst, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at University Medical Clinic Freiburg in Germany.

In one study, published last year in Molecular Psychiatry, Tebartz van Elst and his colleagues identified 91 psychiatric patients with suspected autoimmune diseases, and reported that immunotherapies benefited the majority of them.

Belinda Lennox, head of the psychiatry department at the University of Oxford, is enrolling patients in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of immunotherapy for autoimmune psychosis patients.

As a result of the research, screenings for immunological markers in psychotic patients are already routine in Germany, where psychiatrists regularly collect samples from cerebrospinal fluid.

Markx is also doing similar screening with his patients. He believes highly sensitive and inexpensive blood tests to detect different antibodies should become part of the standard screening protocol for psychosis.

Also on the horizon: more targeted immunotherapy rather than current “sledgehammer approaches” that suppress the immune system on a broad level, said George Yancopoulos, the co-founder and president of the pharmaceutical company Regeneron.

“I think we’re at the dawn of a new era. This is just the beginning,” said Yancopoulos."

-via The Washington Post, June 1, 2023

#mental illness #schizophrenia #schizoaffective #psychotic disorders #psychology #neurology #autoimmune #autoimmine disease #neuroscience #medical news #medical research #catatonia #immunotherapy #immune system #clinical trials #good news #hope

[poebrey]

saw that there was a video on tiktok circulating about what people even do with womens studies degrees and I saw a nice little rebuttal video that gave a syllabus list and that’s really nice and informative and all but back to the point there are real jobs that are super important that people can do with humanities degrees and part of fighting the backlash against them is acknowledging they exist

#I mean in a capitalist sense sociology psychology etc are super useful when you’re trying to sell people shit #but like a good chunk of women’s studies is devoted to the political and medical sphere #everything from setting up workplace policies (yes HR more legal) #to studying pay disparities #examining bias in clinical studies #plus there’s the whole research field of doing studies into gender #and the combination of medicine and law like studying anti choice laws etc etc #there are people who do all this shit for a living and it’s all legitimate work

[muslimpsychologist]

As-salamu alaykum all, 

It is that time again! I hope this message finds you well. As part of my clinical psychology doctorate, I am conducting a research study focused on the integration of religion in therapy. As you may or may not know, there is a lack of research being conducted within the Muslim community, and there is also a shortage of Muslims participating in studies. Therefore, it is important that we make a change in this regard so that we can create more suitable services that meet the needs of Muslims in the UK. 

The study aims to shed light on the crucial role that religion plays in therapy when it holds significance in the client's life. Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the experiences of Muslim clients who are currently in therapy or undergone therapy and have felt that their religious faith and practice was either minimised or excluded by the therapist for at least a part of the therapy. 

Key details about the study: 

UK only.

Purpose: Illuminate the importance of religion in therapy for clients where it is significant 

Time Commitment: I hr interview on Teams or on the phone 

Confidentiality: Participant data will be kept confidential and anonymised 

Incentives: £10 for their time 

If you have questions or express interest, please don't hesitate to contact me. 

#uk #Muslims #Islam #Muslim research #clinical psychology #Help me please #share

[nightfallsystem]

literally sent an anti endo research, fucking hand fed it to them and they made up shit i-

dude. can anti endos read or? im kind of convinced they cant when theyre pullin this shit

#LITERALLY IGNORED RESEARCH BY SOMEONE WITH A DOCTORATE IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY #i??? #endo safe #endogenic #system #plural #endogenic friendly #plural system #actually plural #pro endo

[i-like-plan-m]

What’s your occupation or career, area of study, and/or any topic(s) about which you have you have a lot of expertise??

Asking for fun and also to start a collection of miscellaneous field experts who can answer the random but highly specific questions a writer has when working on a fic/novel

#it’s called NETWORKING #mine are: #research #university/institutional research administration #academia (regretful) #clinical psychology #counseling #I was a therapist for almost 2 years #psychological assessments and evaluations #neuroscience #ummm #research project/grant management #grant planning and logistics #for a US private institution so it’s not universal knowledge ofc #but it received 1 billion in research funding this year so that counts for something right?

[tetedump]

whoops i

Sep. 5th, 2023; 04h14

forgot to make a beginning of the school year post. so. here it is.

GRAD SCHOOL HAS STARTED !!!! 🥳

i've had a week so far and i love it so much:)) some of the classes are eh but overall it's so good and people are so kind:) here are my fall semester classes:

Cross Cultural Psychology

Intro to Clinical Practice

Cognitive Assessment

Intro to Psychological Research

History and Systems

and in addition to that, i'm doing a field placement! i'm going to keep it vague/anonymous for privacy, but it's been really lovely to get back to interacting with clients again <3

unsure how i'll be using this tumblr in grad school/over the next few months. it obviously has moved away from being a studyblr as covid has lessened its impact on governmental guidelines/i've been able to go out and interact with people more. the blog might just reflect the start of grad school in that the number of psychology fact posts will probably increase, as i'm learning a ton of cool new things:)

but as always, if there's something you're curious about/want to know about my experience, do feel free to ask:) <3 hope the beginning of the school year is going well for all of you!! <3

#psychology #university #uni #psychblr #psyd #cross cultural psychology #intro to clinical practice #cognitive assessment #intro to psychological research #history and systems #field placement #clinical psychology #therapist #ich

[phantasyhalation]

big fan of beefing with academic psychology. not because of the critical theory or any clinical trauma etc. just looking at discipline climate and research methodologies relative to public image and deciding the shit-to-merit ratio is dire enough to take offence

#it's not All full of shit. but. but hm. hm. seriously that is a LOT of shit relative to cultural authority #are you gonna check that? no? really? damn. #(i have beefs with clinical psychology too but they're about as separate as they can be from the Research) #latency.txt

[system-of-a-feather]

Listening to this while working since I really gotta stop just defaulting to True Crime cause I really dont even like True Crime that much its just easy to find something "good enough" to have on in the background

Its a nice listen so far

#alter: riku #eli somer #maladaptive daydreaming #actuallymadd #actually madd #research #conference #clinical psychology #Youtube

[psychandme]

Mental Well-Being and Mental Health Awareness:

Hello! I have joined a mental health ambassador program in collaboration with a Certified Therapy practitioner. My job is to create awareness regarding mental health issues to the best of my abilities. To understand the things that I can do now, not only to create awareness but bring a change in the thinking patterns as we grow up in the society. For the next generation to come, and for our loved ones who might be currently going through something.

You can start by telling me about the ways you think it would help you to better understand notion of mental health and mental well being. What could have helped you better understand about this topic when you were young and break the stigma? How would you like to receive more information and awareness regarding this matter?

And, if you are comfortable, you can share your personal experiences about struggling with mental health to help me have a better insight into the problems.

You can connect with me through dms or just drop an ask.

Thankyou for listening!!

#psychology #psychblr #clinical psychology #psychiatry #psychology student #psychologist #research #psychology research #psychopathology #psychodynamic #depression #generalized anxiety disorder #tw disordered eating #psychoanalysis #psychology aesthetic #dark acamedia #bookblr #psych #psych studyblr #student #study #desiblr #desi studyblr #desi academia #desi dark academia #anorexia #maladaptive daydreaming #adhd #bpd #bipolar

[milfbro]

Sorry that last post felt wrong so I decided to fact check real quick.

According to all the sources I found "trauma bonding" is just the affection the abused feels for the abuser after being exposed to repeated cycles of abuse. The dedinition in the post is a tiny bit wrong. Trauma bonding is not a manipulation tactic. But uh all the serious articles are behind paywalls.

Still we shouldn't be using it to describe a manipulation tactic because it's just using words that describe the emotions of the abused as something that the abuser is doing. Like it's centering the abuser, and it's the opposite of giving agency to the victims

#also two more things #love bombing is not necessarily a manipulation tactic #in fact one of the wikipedia sources is a very funny the guardian article #about how love-bombing as a therapy can help “reset the emotional thermostat” of traumatized children #it's funny wording but the method he developed seems good. definitely more research worthy #also gaslighting is apparently not even really a clinical term according to the APA #so the pop psychology definition isn't even wrong

[star-mum]

Hello little gay people in my phone, I'm actually getting down to business and no, not to defeat the Huns but yes, to defEND A THESIS

#insane that this is the first year that my college decided to anticipate the date a whole year #and of course my class is the one BLESSED BY THAT #i mean it is better for us cause then our 5th year will be basically just interships but STILL terrifying #anyways I wanna do field interviews : D so wish me luck #if anyone's curious is about the queer woman's experience in clinical psychology (please ask me questions about it i love doing research)

[mona-liar]

This psych textbook is horrible from both a formal and a content perspective (trying to cover everything superficially instead of trusting the other classes to do their job) but the worst of all imo is that it very obviously was written with an audience of people who want to learn more about psychology in order to self-therapize

#which is a little insidious bc the whole goal of psychotherapy is not learning the techniques yourself and not needing it anymore #and since it's a university-level textbook for US-students which opens with 'US-textbooks are fucking expensive and we want to change that' #catering to people who already get scammed for their education let alone their therapy feels kinds dishonest and questionable #from a professional ethics point of view #but also: you're trying to teach clinical psychology from an academic and research perspective! Stop trying to cram in half the course #for actual psychotherapy training and its dedicated classes into it! That's not what you're here for! #anyway i hate this textbook I cannot wait for when this is over

[mycapnraydor]

Study link: https://williamjames.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9KwpwqWIz9vlV5A

A friend of mine is doing research for grad school and needs help! If you’re eligible, please consider taking a little time to check it out. She’s making a donation to RAINN for each person who takes part. She’s also hoping to have the word about her research spread, so reblogs would also be really helpful. Thank you!!

#research #RAINN #psychology #participants #subjects #psyd #phd #clinical psychology #dissertation

[switchcase]

thinking about the study showing that in my home country, in a non-clinical population of university students, over a quarter of them scored moderate to severe for dissociation

also thinking about how the same researcher thought the word "premonition" was an example of how we normalize dissociation culturally (we do tend to but not because of the word premonition)

#.log #ah the pros and cons of having a westerner who doesn't speak the language conduct psychological research #the fact of the high stat in a non-clinical population really surprised her but also really highlights #that she didn't know much about the country

[your--isgayrights]

It’s orvuto anon again, I stalled on your pinned post again — experimental neuroscience?? :eyes:

Yesss. I'm actually an undergrad neuroscience major... Like writing and art and stuff is just for fun, I wanna be a research neuroscientist one day lol.

#That's why I practically haven't posted the past few weeks cuz I'm back in school #I'm also in a lot of east asian history classes because I'm minoring in east asian language and lit for fun #and I've been running into this barrier recently where I feel like its hard to explain to people the overlap that exists between hard #science and the needs of the individuals that science is supposed to help you know #like for me the reason being a research neuroscientist is so appealing is because if you're going to pick a job where you mostly do busy #work all day then being in a research field just means you know that whatever pointless thing you're doing or failed experiment you perform #everything you do is a piece of data that's going to contribute to this greater process that really has tangible eeffects in helping real #people who suffer from neurological disease. which I think is comforting in a world where doing a little never feels like enough #What I've been thinking about lately though is that I have an inherent belief in that system because I really believe in the ability of #people to do good in it because I'm coming from the same frame of rationalist mindset that a lot of research is based in but that in #clinical applications there are a lot of inherent biases that prevent people from knowing what illnesses they have and how to receive #treatment for them... because in my east asian history classes we've been talking about different belief systems and ways of thought #that sometimes have to do with medicine or psychology. and I always think that it's interesting to analyze practices that are mysticized in #modernity through that lense. but it's become apparent to me that it's hard to express that interest as genuine to religious people without #them feeling as though I'm dismissing their beliefs rather than trying to analyze how they interact with the physical reality that I know. #and it made me realize that the dismissiveness of western science towards religion combined with ableism in society makes it hard for peop #le who have the symptoms of things like psychosis or mood disorders that might have an associated role in a religion to feel like #psychiatric diagnosis or treatment isn't a complete insult to who they are as a person and I think that's the fault of a lack of compassion #and respect for others in clinical practice... its just like a social norm that i really wish would change. because i don't think physical #reality has to be dismissive of spiritual beliefs when acknowledged but because of some of the habits of western scientists and #certain subsects of christianity people don't think about it enough to have that conversation sometimes... #that's just what i've been thinking about lately lol. #personal #ask #anonymous

[edresearchcdf]

RESEARCH STUDY [Part 1] Ways of Coping with the Anorexic Voice.

looking for participants to take part in research on eating disorders - if you have an anorexic voice we are interested in your ways of coping! please see poster for more information & click here to participate in part 1  - https://cardiffunipsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2fuszCv2OuszcPQ

#ed recovery #recovery #anorexia #anorexia recovery #prorecovery #anorexianervosa #edrecovery #eating disorder recovery #research #psychology #clinical psychology #psychology research #eating disorders research #ed research #anorexia research #anorexic voice