Yesterday I spent the day with an amazing group of youth (ages 12 to 18) at the 2nd annual “Talk at the Top” youth mental health awareness summit. The summit was held on Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver BC.
The day started off with a program of empowering young people that have experienced metal health challenges first hand and where brave enough to seek the help they needed. One of the speakers (seen in this TED talk – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3yqXeLJ0Kg) gave an amazing account of suicidal ideation and depression that almost resulted in him taking his own life at the age of seventeen. It was very powerful.
The focus of the summit was to promote awareness of mental health concerns by breaking down the social stigma through the encouragement of open discussion about emotions and feelings with friends, loved ones, counsellors, physicians or specialists. Beyond these immediate sources of support, we also had great speakers from a number of other resource based groups.
http://keltymentalhealth.ca/ — http://www.forcesociety.com/ — http://www.crisiscentre.bc.ca/ — http://www.northwestvancouver.cmha.bc.ca/ — http://www.familyservices.bc.ca/
Since the event was sponsored by Bell Canada, a representative from Bell outlined the amazing commitment of Clara, a young woman that will be riding across Canada to raise awareness on ending the stigma around mental health. Bell seems very committed to supporting mental health initiatives in Canada with over 62 million dollars in contributions coast to coast. Visit the “Lets Talk” facebook page to find out more about Clara’s big ride. https://www.facebook.com/BellLetsTalk
Dr Allan Burgmann, a very friendly man and one of the psychiatrists from Lions Gate Hospital spoke about some of the major healthcare access issues for youths with mental health challenges on the north shore. He told the amazing story about the outcome of last years summit resulting in 10 new dedicated hospital beds for youth seeking psychiatric care at North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Hospital. He also outlined the major classes of mental health conditions, being “depression-based”, “anxiety-based” or conditions that involve “hearing or seeing things”.
Finally, I was also given the honour to speak about my experience with mental health. In preparing for what I thought would be a 5 minute talk that turned into 15 minutes, I thought about all of the amazing clients that I have seen over the years that have come to me seeking support for anxiety, depression, insomnia, schizophrenia, bipolar and dementia. It occurred to me that although many people come to me directly seeking support for their mental health concern, many more individuals, through our discussions, identify some degree of mental health concern that correlates to the physical symptoms that brought them to my office. I feel very fortunate that I have the time, in my practice, to discuss the effects that mental health related concerns can have on physical health issues, such as digestion, immune function, heart health or hormonal imbalances. My talk outlined the importance of diet, digestion and exercise in the support of mental health concerns, along with the practice of mindfulness and meditation in supporting the treatment of mental health conditions.
Thank you to JAMA for supporting my beliefs. This recent review article outlines the success of meditation in the treatment of mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and chronic pain.
Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-beingA Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
JAMA Internal Medicine – http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1809754&resultClick=3
Madhav Goyal, MD, MPH1 et al – Original Investigation January 06, 2014
ABSTRACT
Many people meditate to reduce psychological stress and stress-related health problems. To counsel people appropriately, clinicians need to know what the evidence says about the health benefits of meditation.
Objective: To determine the efficacy of meditation programs in improving stress-related outcomes (anxiety, depression, stress/distress, positive mood, mental health–related quality of life, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, pain, and weight) in diverse adult clinical populations.
Evidence Review: We identified randomized clinical trials with active controls for placebo effects through November 2012 from MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, PsycArticles, Scopus, CINAHL, AMED, the Cochrane Library, and hand searches. Two independent reviewers screened citations and extracted data. We graded the strength of evidence using 4 domains (risk of bias, precision, directness, and consistency) and determined the magnitude and direction of effect by calculating the relative difference between groups in change from baseline. When possible, we conducted meta-analyses using standardized mean differences to obtain aggregate estimates of effect size with 95% confidence intervals.
Findings: After reviewing 18 753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety (effect size, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.12-0.64] at 8 weeks and 0.22 [0.02-0.43] at 3-6 months), depression (0.30 [0.00-0.59] at 8 weeks and 0.23 [0.05-0.42] at 3-6 months), and pain (0.33 [0.03- 0.62]) and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight. We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (ie, drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies).
Conclusions and Relevance: Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress. Thus, clinicians should be prepared to talk with their patients about the role that a meditation program could have in addressing psychological stress. Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior.