Tuesday, June 25, 2024

By Courtney Wise

Plus, an Olympic swimmer tells of how she fell from elation after winning gold into the dark hole of depression—and found herself again.

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Pregnant women with addiction get help becoming GREAT MOMs in one Grand Rapids clinic

Dr. Cara Poland is a master in the art of disarming. Sitting on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, the addiction specialist intentionally looks up at her patients in their very first appointment. 

“I sit below patients so they can internalize that they are in charge—the reverse of what they usually experience,” she told The New York Times. “I’m showing that I’m just there to support them.” 

For Kim Short, a 30-something pregnant woman battling withdrawal from methamphetamine, alcohol, Xanax and Klonopin, it was the perfect invitation to accept prenatal treatment at GREAT MOMs. Cofounded by Poland in 2018, Grand Rapids Encompassing Addiction Treatment and Maternal Obstetric Management is a program of Spectrum Health (now Corewell Health) that provides coordinated obstetric and addiction care during pregnancy and the first year after birth, when a mother is at greatest risk of relapse. 

Poland’s goal is to chisel away at the shame and judgment associated with addiction and connect pregnant women to vital medical support. 

“It’s your job to teach [my students] how to not be assholes to people who have addiction,” Poland told Short as she began her exam from the ground. Short laughed out loud. 

In addition to treating pregnant people struggling with addiction, Poland is an associate professor in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University and the lead on MI CARES, an initiative designed to increase the addiction medicine workforce in the state by training physician-level addiction specialists.

That training and education is critical. Already a highly stigmatized condition, pregnant women dependent upon drugs or alcohol can face prejudice in all sectors of life, including the medical and criminal justice systems. Fearing their children might be taken away by child welfare authorities, pregnant women often avoid prenatal treatment while in active addiction. Fearing litigation if the fetus is harmed, many detox centers refuse to provide pregnant women treatment.

“I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t try to change something about their health because they’re pregnant,” she said. “It’s a really powerful motivator. It just happens the thing my patients are trying to change is their drug use.”

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A Baltimore neuroscience study hopes to diversify the racial landscape of research, with goals that include a better understanding of mental ills

Addiction, not COVID-19, snatched away 41-year-old Larry Agnew on March 26, 2020. His mother, Priscilla Agnew-Hines, wants to know why. So when the opportunity to have her late son’s brain contribute to a groundbreaking neuroscience study presented itself, she seized the chance. Why was Larry more susceptible to addiction? 

“What part of the brain triggers mental illness?” she mused during an interview with Alia Sajani of STAT News. “If we continue to be quiet, no one will understand the process of mental illness.” 

Seeking answers for her son, Agnew-Hines donated Larry’s brain to the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative, a research collaboration between Baltimore-based HBCU Morgan State University, the Lieber Institute for Brain Development, and local community leaders. In process since 2019, the study exists to identify the biological reasons some neurological conditions are more prevalent in Black people.  More than a hundred Black residents of Baltimore have donated the brains of their loved ones who have died to the initiative, according to STAT News.

Reaching this stage is a significant achievement, given the history of medical racism in Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University, home of the Lieber Institute – as well as in other prominent U.S. medical institutions: 

– The fast-growing cancer cells of a Black woman named Henrietta Lacks, for example, were harvested at Johnson Hopkins without her consent and have been used to conduct groundbreaking biomedical research since the 1950s. Called the HeLa cells, they continued to be propagated and became the first immortal human cell line. 

–J. Marion Sims, a physician credited for the field of gynecology, experimented on enslaved Black women without anesthesia or consent.

– The infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study, started in 1932, saw Black men infected with syphilis go untreated for 40 years to varying degrees of devastation because white physicians preferred to see the natural progression of the disease rather than relieve victims—and their families—of its suffering. 

Small wonder that the majority of Black Americans still believe that “medical researchers experiment on Black people without their knowledge or consent,” a recent Pew Research Center survey found.

It has also meant that Black Americans are largely underrepresented in neuroscience research, limiting the power of existing genetic databases to uncover answers explaining exactly why Black Americans are 20% more likely to experience major mental health problems, and twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Seeking to understand how the lived experience of Black people in the United States affects gene expression with as little bias as possible, the Lieber Institute study has been intentional about working alongside Black neuroscientists, including the organization Black in Neuro, to interpret its findings. Interesting discoveries include evidence that certain genes that control the body’s immune response and the structure of blood vessels are more elevated in people of African descent when compared to those of European descent. It suggests that stress, long known to affect the immune system, is a culprit in the increased prevalence of neurological illnesses like Alzheimer’s. It also points to the need for more inclusive research, wrote Alvin C. Hathaway, Sr., a retired pastor and cofounder of the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative, in an editorial.

“We reasoned that if we could demonstrate the success of this model in Baltimore (a city with a largely Black population and a long history of racial trauma and mistrust of medical institutions), we could institute a model that is suitable to be applied throughout neglected communities across the nation,” he said.

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Stand with Trans launches Therapy Assistance Program for trans and nonbinary youth 

To increase access to gender-affirming care for the 38% of trans youth living in states that ban such access, Michigan-based Stand with Trans has launched the Therapy Assistance Program.They provide trans and nonbinary youth aged 24 and under with gender-affirming mental health care in the following communities: Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, and the Bay Area of California. 

The program is set apart for not only coordinating therapy sessions between qualified counselors and interested patients, but also paying all fees and co-pays associated with each visit for a predetermined number of sessions. Due to the uniqueness of each youth’s needs, the number of sessions covered by the program varies from patient to patient. 

“Any trans person [aged 24 and under, living in Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, and the Oakland/Bay Area of California] can apply through the form online to receive assistance so that they can see a therapist,” program coordinator Eridian Dempsey told Michigan Advance. “But it’s not just any old therapist. We make sure that they’re equipped to deal with trans issues and have experience working with people in the age range,” they said.

Community competency and free access can make all the difference in trans or nonbinary youth seeking mental support, said licensed therapist and Stand with Trans provider Amber Kennedy. 

“When you live in a small town, how many therapists that you go to are going to respect your pronouns and understand the special issues that come with being part of the LGBTQ+ community? Probably not many,” she said.

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In other news…

Elite swimmer Lydia Jacoby was astonished to experience severe depression shortly after winning Olympic gold in the women’s 100-meter breaststroke in Tokyo in 2020. “After the Olympics, you’re getting pulled so many different directions,” she said during an interview on NBC’s “My New Favorite Olympian” podcast. “I’m very much a people pleaser. So I was like, ‘I want to do this for everyone.’ And I felt, like, at a point I’d given every piece of myself away and I had nothing left for myself.” It also shook her sense of trust in the people around her, both new and old. 

The mental distress became so overwhelming, Jacoby said she almost quit swimming altogether. Finally acknowledging her feelings is what prompted a turn for the better. “I hadn’t accepted that I was feeling any sort of depression or anything,” Jacoby said. “I just feel like acceptance was the biggest piece for me, just realizing that I was struggling with depression and I was struggling with some other things. That help was actually something that I needed.”

An 18-month long investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice has found that Missouri is violating federal disability law by needlessly confining thousands of adults with mental illness to nursing homes. Though afflicted with mental health disabilities, none of the 3,289 adults noted in the DOJ’s report had Alzheimer’s or dementia, despite being held for at least 100 days in a nursing home. In fact, reports the Missouri Independent, around half of the subjects are yet to reach senior age, with some still in their 20s. Nor do most of them require help with basic physical needs like eating, getting in and out of the bed or going to the bathroom. 

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If you or someone you know is in crisis or experiencing suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and connect in English or Spanish. If you’re a veteran press 1. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing dial 711, then 988. Services are free and available 24/7.

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