Heritage Behavioral Services Blog

By Shaun Heasley A new ranking crunches the numbers to assess the nation’s best and worst cities for those with Overland Park, Kansas is # 1 disabilities. The analysis from the consumer finance website WalletHub compares the country’s 150 most populated cities using 21 different metrics designed to evaluate cost of living, quality of life and access to health care. Overland Park, Kan. comes in at number one on the list followed by Scottsdale and Peoria, Ariz., Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla. Rounding out the bottom five are Worcester, Mass., Moreno Valley and San Bernardino, Calif., Jersey City, N.J. and Providence, R.I. The analysis gave extra weight to factors including each locale’s employment rate, poverty level and median earnings specific to people with disabilities. Other considerations included housing affordability, cost of in-home care services, walkability and the availability of doctors and special-education teachers. WalletHub said the ranking is meant t...

By Shaun Heasley Symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may mask signs of autism in young children, ADHD and ASD have high Co-morbidity Rate researchers say, often delaying diagnosis for years. Among children with both autism and ADHD, autism diagnosis was delayed by an average of three years in kids flagged with ADHD first, according to findings published online this month in the journal Pediatrics. For the study, researchers looked at information on nearly 1,500 kids with autism collected from their parents through the 2011–2012 National Survey of Children’s Health. Just under half of the children were also diagnosed with ADHD. Children first thought to have ADHD alone were 30 times more likely than other kids with both conditions to receive an autism diagnosis after age 6, the study found. While autism and ADHD can present with similar symptoms — like inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity — the conditions are unique and clinicians shou...

By Michelle Diament The U.S. Department of Labor said this week that Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, New York and Washington will share in the grants totaling nearly $15 million. Each state’s labor department or workforce development agency will use the money to address various needs of jobseekers with disabilities including improving job training, facilitating the transition from school to work or offering customized approaches for those with significant needs. The grants come with a mandate that states collaborate with disability service providers, educational institutions and businesses. “Our country succeeds when everyone is given the opportunity to succeed,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. “The grants we are awarding today will increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities by connecting them to job-driven training programs that provide them with the skills to compete for high-demand industry jobs.” The funding is part of the Labor ...

"We have a lot of scientifically verified psychosocial treatments, and yet it's very difficult for consumers to access them," says Brandon A. Gaudiano, a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University................... Things have changed since the 1960s —  but there's still a long way to go. Many in the field are now saying it's long past time to bring evidence-based treatment to the practice of mainstream mental healthcare. A few efforts are finally moving the needle in that direction............... The NIMH has recently announced an Experimental Medicine Initiative , designed to bring the rigor and specificity of other fields of medicine to psychiatry, and — more specifically — psychotherapy, better-known as talk therapy. Read more >>>>>>>>>

NIH-funded Study is the First Look at Antipsychotic Prescriptions Patterns in the U.S. Anti-psychotics Used More in Boys than Girls  Despite concerns over the rising use of antipsychotic drugs to treat young people, little has been known about trends and usage patterns in the United States before this latest research, which was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).  Boys are more likely than girls to receive a prescription for antipsychotic medication regardless of age, researchers have found. Approximately 1.5 percent of boys ages 10-18 received an antipsychotic prescription in 2010. Read more >>>>>>

A woman who spent 30 years of her life believing that she suffered from cerebral palsy, only to learn that she had in fact been misdiagnosed and almost all of her symptoms could be cured with just one pill, insists she feels no resentment or anger about her doctor’s life-changing error. Jean  Sharon Abbott Jean Sharon Abbott 38, from Plymouth, Minnesota, was told she had spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy, when she was just four-years-old. But after three decades of suffering from muscle spasms, weakness, near immobility, as well as undergoing painful surgical procedures, she learned at the age of 33 that she actually had dopa-responsive dystonia (DRD), a rare, yet treatable, muscle disorder............ .........And while Jean realized that there are so many things she wants to try now that she can, she still insists that she doesn't have any regrets about receiving her diagnosis so late in life. As someone who believes that everything happens for a reason, she ...

 (CNN REPORT):  Forget horoscopes or fortune tellers. There's a new way to tell your future, and it involves a much more reliable medium: human neuroscience. A new study looks at over 70 scientific publications about brain scans such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or electroencephalography, noninvasive tests that measure brain activity. The paper that runs in the latest edition of Neuron concludes that doctors might have more success treating some patients if they examined the way a person's brain functioned first. Brain scans have been used to make basic discoveries about human behavior for decades, but they are not routinely ordered to determine someone's overall health or course of treatment in the way as blood test are used. This new study suggests technology in this area has become so advanced that approaches to treatment would be more effective if brain scans were used more routinely. For instance, when someone is being treated f...