Minneapolis St. Paul Mental Health Blog

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MaryAPRN.com/ Advanced Practice Psych LLC

Opioids or Non-Opioids?

Mental Health and Opioids | Non-Opioids may be as effective as Opioids for Chronic Pain

Opioids or Non?  For moderate to severe chronic back pain or osteoarthritis pain of the hip/knee, opioid initiation may not be necessary.

Patients with moderate to severe chronic back pain or hip and knee-related osteoarthritis pain do not require opioids in place of non-opioid treatments, according to a study published in JAMA.

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Meditation and Mental Health

Mental Health Improvements | Cognitive Gains From Meditation May Endure Years

Mental Health Matters | Improvements in attention gained through intensive meditation training were partially maintained 7 years later, even among older practitioners, according to a study published online in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement.

“The present study is the first to offer evidence that intensive and continued meditation practice is associated with enduring improvements in sustained attention and response inhibition,” researchers wrote, “with the potential to alter longitudinal trajectories of cognitive change across the lifespan.”

The study followed 40 people who participated in a 3-month meditation retreat in Colorado, where group meditation sessions were held twice daily and participants meditated individually for 6 hours a day. Immediately after the retreat, participants demonstrated gains in attention, psychological well-being, and their ability to cope with stress.

Those attentional gains were partly evident at a 7-year follow-up, researchers reported in the new study. All 40 participants still reported practicing meditation, with those who were most diligent at maintaining meditation avoiding typical patterns of age-related decline in attention.

“In conclusion, the present study suggests that intensive and continued meditation is associated with enduring improvements in sustained attention, supporting the notion that the cognitive benefits of dedicated mental training may persist over the long-term when promoted by a regimen of continued practice,” researchers wrote.

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Adolescent Depression guidelines

Updated Clinical Practice guidelines for Adolescent Depression

Mental Health Minnesota | New guidelines issued for adolescent depression in primary care
 
The American Academy of Pediatrics has updated clinical practice guidelines to assist primary care clinicians in the management of adolescent depression.
 
One of the guidelines' major updates is the endorsement of universal adolescent depression screening for those aged 12 and older using a formal depression self-report tool. The Guidelines for Adolescent Depression in Primary Care (GLAD-PC) had not been updated since 2008.
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Alzheimers Disease

Mental Health | Preclinical Alzheimer's Already Affects Nearly 47 Million in US

Almost 47 million Americans have brain pathology that places them on a trajectory to Alzheimer's disease (AD), and that number is growing, researchers report.

 
"We were surprised by the magnitude of the numbers. We found that, in 2017, 46.7 million Americans had preclinical Alzheimer's disease – amyloidosis, neurodegeneration, or both.
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