HIV, AIDS disturbs Mental Fitness

HIV, AIDS disturbs Mental Fitness

                          

 Stress is a contributor to illness. Stress lowers the immune system’s ability to fight off viruses.

It is a “vicious circle,” in which people get ill, become stressed, and stress worsens the illness.
Doctors prescribe bed rest not just to allow the body to heal, but so the patient will calm down. .
It follows that a particularly stressful illness like HIV would be a great burden to a person’s mental health. People with HIV have weakened immune systems, and are advised by all means to reduce stress in their lives. This affects the way they earn a living and how they cope with family and personal relationships. Now it is learned from a meeting of mental health professionals in Johannesburg last week that people living with HIV and AIDS are at an increased risk of developing serious mental disorders. Such disorders go beyond the depression that inflicts people when they learn they are HIV positive–a depression that requires counseling and constant effort to overcome.For Swaziland, with its incipient psychiatric services, this is a tall order. But a foundation already exists – the incorporation of counselling into HIV testing services is well established.A counsellor is not a psychiatrist, however. A psychiatrist is a trained doctor who can detected serious mental illness and prescribe remedies, sometimes medication and sometimes talk therapy.

Participants in the Johannesburg meeting cited studies from all over the world that reported how in all populations it seems that mental health disorders are growing the fastest among people infected with HIV. Studies find that people with HIV have double the incidence of mental illnesses of HIV-negative people.

Oil-Spill Damage Spreads to people

Oil-Spill Damage Spreads to people

                                                          Psychiatrists and mental health professionals are responding to the emotional aftermath of the massive BP oil spill that disrupted the lives of thousands in states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil that spilled out of BP's Macondo well fouled the waters and shores of the Gulf of Mexico, then disrupted lives and communities along a coastline already devastated by a cascade of disasters.

Many were still struggling to recover from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and Gustav in 2008 when the BP well blew up on April 20, killing 11 drilling-rig workers and spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf for the next three months. The blowout stunned the region's economy and stressed its residents psychologically.

Concern for contamination of fish and other seafood led to closing of some fishing grounds in the Gulf, crippling one of the region's major industries. Vacationers cancelled trips after seeing media reports of oil-soaked beaches. Fishermen, seafood processors, and resort workers found themselves without jobs for months, and perhaps longer.

Then the federal government's ban on oil drilling in the Gulf threw yet another segment of the economy out of work. Many people in the region work in both the oil and fishing industries and so were left with no way to pay their bills.

Mental Fitness Society Workers to be Furloughed

Mental Fitness Society Workers to be Furloughed       

                                          BATON ROUGE, La. - Some 250 employees of a local state agency that treats mental health and addictive disorders will be furloughed for seven days without pay to avoid a $518,000 deficit, the agency's executive director said. The move is being taken to avoid state employee layoffs, Capital Area Human Service District Executive Director Jan Kasofsky said Thursday. "If we did a layoff, it would really hurt our ability to deliver services," Kasofsky said. She said the furlough will affect services some, "but when we are up and running we will be able to run a better ship." 

                                                "It was the least disruptive of the options," Kasofsky said. Most of the affected employees are in direct service positions, including doctors, nurses, social workers, counselors, therapeutic guards and medical records personnel, Kasofsky said. The Capital Area serves some 10,000 people in its mental health and addictive disorders clinics annually.

The district serves those in need of mental health and addictive disorder treatment in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Ascension, East Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana. Layoffs would have more severely affected the agency's ability to deliver services because ten or more employees would have lost their jobs, Kasofsky said. Under the plan, approved by Civil Service, affected employees will be furloughed at various designated times between now and the end of the year. The furlough days will be before or after state holidays

                                                                           

Medplus Service in USA

Medplus Service

                         MedPlus Services USA is the answer for many distributors that are not members of NDC who still need to buy medical products and supplies at competitive pricing from a reliable source. With over 100 healthcare manufacturers' products available from one source, you can bundle your purchase orders.    

                                           

Distributor rationalization and pressure to increase operating efficiencies are changing the way manufacturers evaluate their business models. What was considered an acceptable minimum order years ago may not be today. Worse yet, it may cost a distributor more money in freight and cause an unnecessary increase in order size to maintain access to a manufacturer's line.

MedPlus Services delivers a business solution designed to allow you access to multiple manufacturers, achieved in a single P.O., with no minimums. Online ordering is quick, easy and efficient and shipping directly. When you choose a supplier for healthcare products, look for a partner that will grow with you, provide the service you need and allow for future growth

Mental Health Sevice

                                                   Mental Health Sevice

                                     

People using community mental health services generally said they felt listened to and respected, but half didn’t know whom to contact in an out-of-hours crisis and many said they had insufficient understanding of their care, a survey by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has shown. The report also reveals a gap between provision of talking therapies and patients’ desire for them. The CQC has published the views of 17,000 adults who used specialist community mental health services – psychiatric outpatient clinic, local community mental health team or other community-based service – from July-September 2009. The survey covered 66 NHS trusts. Most service users (88%) said they were treated with respect and dignity, four in five (80%) said that their health and social care workers listened carefully to them, and nearly three-quarters (73%) said they were given enough time to discuss their condition and treatment. A similar proportion (72%) said they trusted and had confidence in their health or social care worker. However, many people said they felt insufficiently involved in their own care and had not been given adequate explanations of their treatment. Fewer than half (43%) of those prescribed new drugs in the past year claimed to have ‘definitely’ been told about possible side-effects of their new drugs and 29% said they were not told at all.

                                                                   

Fewer than half (48%) of patients said they ‘definitely’ understood what was in their care plan, 29% understood it ‘to some extent’, 15% were not sure and 9% did not understand it. Only just over half (57%) had had a meeting to review their care plan in the past year and only 44% knew the phone number for an out-of-hours mental health problem. Of the patients who said they wanted a form of talking therapy, more than a quarter (27%) had not received it. The survey also revealed large-scale unmet need for help dealing with people’s physical health problems and social problems such as finding and keeping employment or accommodation and claiming state benefits. Cynthia Bower, CQC Chief Executive, said: “There is no doubt that the added investment and attention over recent years has improved the quality of community mental health services. There are some very positive messages from service users, particularly about health and social care workers.

Physical Fitness For Womens

Women to Women: A Handbook for Active Aging by Catharine Stewart-Roache and Barbara Yarnell advises women on how to sustain physical fitness DENVER (MMD Newswire) September 15, 2010                                      

                                       

A Handbook for Active Aging by Catharine Stewart-Roache and Barbara Yarnell is a guidebook to women's health and fitness after the age of 50.Stewart-Roache and Yarnell were frustrated that the majority of women's health and fitness books on the market only targeted women up to age 45 or were written from a much younger point of view. Women to Women is written for mature women by mature women. Stewart-Roache and Yarnell take years of personal experience combined with scientific research to offer women tips on setting fitness and nutrition goals as they age. According to Stewart-Roache and Yarnell, maintaining or beginning an active lifestyle while aging can reduce the effects of many diseases common among women such as high blood pressure, osteoporosis and depression. Women to Women aims to demonstrate how participating in cardiovascular fitness, flexibility training, and strength training will greatly enhance mental, physical and emotional well-being. Within Women to Women, readers are given detailed advice on how to begin walking, running, swimming, strength training and flexibility training with a comprehensive appendix. Kirkus Discoveries Reviews says, "Stewart-Roache and Yarnell's refreshing, no-nonsense attitude toward aging can be summed up by their brusque, introductory statement that 'old can be active old or rocking chair old.' The book continues in a similarly conversational tone, with the first half consisting of a quick introduction to nutrition and aerobic exercise, interspersed with notes of friendly encouragement." With Women to Women, the authors hope to make physical fitness accessible and inspiring to women over 50.

       

One way to stop HIV in India

India has the world's fourth largest population suffering from AIDS. However, the estimated number of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in India has declined drastically in recent years — from 5.5 million in 2005 to below 2.5 million in 2007. These new figures are supported by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS.                         

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Despite being home to the world's fourth largest population suffering from AIDS, the AIDS prevalence rate in India is relatively lower. In 2007 India's AIDS prevalence rate stood at approximately 0.30% — the 89th highest in the world. The spread of HIV in India is primarily restricted to the southern and north-eastern regions of the country and India has also been praised for its extensive anti-AIDS campaign. The US$2.5 billion National AIDS Control Plan III was set up by India in 2007 and received support from UNAIDS.

The main factors which have contributed to India's large HIV-infected population are extensive labor migration, low literacy level in certain rural areas resulting in lack of awareness and gender disparity. The Government of India has also raised concerns about the role of intravenous drug use and prostitution in spreading AIDS, especially in north-east India and certain urban pockets. A recent study published in the British medical journal "The Lancet" in (2006) reported an approximately 30% decline in HIV infections among young women aged 15 to 24 years attending prenatal clinics in selected southern states of India from 2000 to 2004 where the epidemic is thought to be concentrated.

The authors cautiously attribute observed declines to increased condom use by men who visit commercial sex workers and cite several pieces of corroborating evidence. Some efforts have been made to tailor educational literature to those with low literacy levels, mainly through local libraries as this is the most readily accessible locus of information for interested parties. Increased awareness regarding the disease and citizen's related rights is in line with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.