Anxiety Treatment Today
Alleged Ponzi schemer to get drug treatment in jail
TEXAS, United States, Thursday January 27, 2011 – Fraud accused Allen Stanford will have to remain in jail to get the treatment he needs for an addiction to anti-anxiety medication, a judge ruled yesterday as he put in writing an earlier ruling that the former billionaire is unfit to stand trial.
US District David Hittner said that the alleged Ponzi schemer would not be allowed to go to a private facility as his lawyers had requested. He said Stanford would get what he needed at a prison hospital and would also receive further psychiatric testing to determine his competence to stand trial later on.
“The court’s finding that Stanford is incompetent…does not alter the court’s finding that Stanford is a flight risk and that no combination of conditions of pretrial release can reasonably assure his appearance at trial,” Hittner wrote.
Stanford’s trial stems from allegations that he defrauded investors of US$7 billion through the sale of certificates of deposit at the Stanford International Bank in Antigua. Prosecutors say he conducted a Ponzi scheme in which earlier investors are paid not from returns on their investments, but with the money paid in by later investors.
He was to face 21 charges in a trial that was scheduled to start Monday. But after Hittner heard from one government and two defence psychiatrists earlier this month that Stanford had been taking high doses of anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs that left him unable to assist in preparing his own defence, the judge postponed the trial indefinitely and said he would set a new date only after Stanford’s had detoxified and was declared competent.
In his written ruling, Judge Hittner said while the three psychiatrists could not identify the exact cause of Stanford’s diminished mental capacity, they all agreed it could be one or a combination of over-medication, which has led to an addiction; brain damage caused by the head injury he sustained in September 2009 in a prison fight; and/or Major Depressive Disorder, also known as clinical depression.
All the psychiatrists agreed that Stanford should be withdrawn from his medications, a process that could take up to six months.
Judge Hittner has advised both the defence and prosecutors to diligently prepare their cases in the meantime.
When Worries Never End: Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Some people are worriers, or are just a little more anxious than others. But when that anxiety starts to take over your life, when you find you can’t make it through the day without getting worked up about something, it’s more than just anxiety. It might be generalized anxiety disorder.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Endless Worry
Unlike phobias or other more specific anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, isn’t a fear or worry about one particular thing or things. Instead, it’s constant worry — not about major events, but about the little things that you do every day. This level of anxiety is usually considered a disorder when it continues for more than six months and starts to affect daily life. People with generalized anxiety disorder excessively worry about things like their job, their money situation, their health problems, and their loved ones.
“People who have generalized anxiety feel it in multiple situations. They describe feeling tensions that they cannot first label as tension-producing, that they feel are innocuous situations, and in effect they live a life in which they have a sense of foreboding about everything,” says Charles Goodstein, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University Langone Medical Center. “They cannot localize it.”
Other symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include:
Always feeling edgy or tense
Constant anxiety and worrying
Anxiety that is excessive given the circumstances (irrational anxiety)
Having a hard time concentrating
Feeling shaky, tired, and cranky
Frequent headaches
Insomnia and other sleep problems
Physical symptoms like upset stomach or diarrhea, difficulty catching your breath, rapid heart rate, and sweating
Almost seven million adults in the United States deal with generalized anxiety disorder, a little over 3 percent of the total population. While anyone can get the disorder, twice as many women as men have it. And generalized anxiety disorder can strike as early as childhood, although symptoms may not show up until middle age or later.
Hypericum perforatum treatment: effect on behaviour and neurogenesis in a chronic stress model in mice
Extracts of Hypericum perforatum (St. John’s wort) have been traditionally recommended for a wide range of medical conditions, in particular mild-to-moderate depression.
The present study was designed to investigate the effect of Hypericum perforatum treatment in a mouse model of anxiety/depressive-like behavior, induced by chronic corticosterone administration.
Methods: CD1 mice were submitted to 7 weeks corticosterone administration and then behavioral tests as Open Field (OF), Novelty-Suppressed Feeding (NSF), Forced Swim Test (FST) were performed. Cell proliferation in hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) was investigated by both5-bromo-2′-deoxyuridine (BrdU) and doublecortin (DCX) immunohistochemistry techniques and stereological procedure was used to quantify labeled cells.
Golgi-impregnation method was used to evaluate changes in dendritic spines in DG. Hypericum perforatum (30mg/Kg) has been administered for 3 weeks and then neural development in the adult hippocampus and behavioral changes have been examined.
Results: The anxiety/depressive-like state due to chronic corticosterone treatment was reversed by exogenous administration of Hypericum perforatum; the proliferation of progenitor cells in mice hippocampus was significantly reduced under chronic corticosterone treatment, whereas a long term treatment with Hypericum perforatum prevented the corticosterone-induced decrease in hippocampal cell proliferation.
Corticosterone-treated mice exhibited a reduced spine density that was ameliorated by Hypericum perforatum administration.
Conclusion: These results provide evidence of morphological adaptations occurring in mature hippocampal neurons that might underlie resilient responses to chronic stress and contribute to the therapeutic effects of chronic Hypericum perforatum treatment.