Being a recovered alcoholic and boozeless for nearly 14 years, you can imagine how wide my eyes opened when I read recent headlines about research on lomazenil.

Sober Pill Might Prevent People From Getting Drunk

Could New Drunk Antidote Help Drinkers Drive?

A Pill to Stay Sober????

New Pill Let’s You Drink Without Getting Drunk

The commotion began when some zealous journalists got loosey-goosey with the facts – claiming that researchers at Yale University had released results of a preliminary study showing that the drug lomazenil, when taken before drinking, weakens the effect of alcohol.

Well, turns out that is not exactly true. According to folks at Yale, there has been no study at Yale about lomazenil’s ability to thwart the effects of alcohol. Yale is NOT developing a “sober pill.”

Certain places intimidate the heck out of me, like the supplement aisle at any health food store. Whoa.

I just wish I had some Harvard expert telling me whether Omega-3s, St. John’s Word, SAM3 and folate would help my depression.

Voila! Next thing I know I’m at a fundraiser for psychiatric research at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital  in this oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, (also very intimidating) listening to Dr. Marlene P. Freeman, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and expert in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Lord knows I wasn’t there as a philanthropist. I’m a journalist – I used my last buck to tip the valet. But every year Michelle and Howard Kessler, who own the intimating, oceanfront mansion, invite me to their fundraiser because they believe – regardless of how much money you have or do not have – “no family goes untouched.”

Since these are the heavy hitters in the world of philanthropy, Mass General brings in its best researchers – like Dr. Freeman.  Among all of Dr. Freeman’s titles, positions and research, she chaired the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) – which focused on the potential benefits of Omega-3 fatty acids, St. John’s Wort, SAMe, folate, light therapy, acupuncture, exercise and mindfulness based psychotherapies in treating psychiatric disorders.

First of all, it’s pretty cool that the APA is taking CAM so seriously. Second, this whole event could not have happened at a better time because I am about to run out of my Omega-3 supplement and was wondering whether it was worth investing in some more.

And the answer is…yes.

Audrey Gruss has no problem talking about her mother’s depression — even to a large audience in a ballroom at an elegant hotel in Palm Beach, where everything and everyone looks so refined and polished. She speaks candidly – not as a victim but as a daughter. It is her way of taking at swipe at the stigma that still stifles families who need help.

“Hope is a very important word. It is also my mother’s name,”  Audrey told a crowd at a fund-raising luncheon at The Breaker’s Hotel last Friday. Thirty five years ago Audrey’s’ mother had a “nervous breakdown.” She went away to a hospital. The doctors told the family very little about their mother’s condition.

“That was an era when cancer was thought to be contagious,” she said. “Patients weren’t told very much.”

Over the years her mother tried medications. “At certain time she was balanced but not totally.” Five years ago, Audrey’s mother died. About the same time Audrey became interested in the work of Dr. Jaak Panksepp, an Estonian born psychologist and neuroscientist who coined the term “affective neuroscience” – the study of the neural mechanisms of emotion.

To anyone who has depression, affective neuroscience is common sense. Of course emotions are related to activity in our brains. We might not be able to tell you how emotions affect our hypothalamus,  cingulate cortex and hippocampi but we know there is something going on up there and it is not good.

I went back and read article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that started the debacle called “The Newsweek Article.” I am even more convinced that circulation trumped sound journalism in the Newsweek article.

Authors of the study published  in JAMA base their findings on the results of six, randomized placebo-controlled trials of TWO ANTIDEPRESSANTS. Let me say that again: TWO ANTIDEPRESSANTS.

“Expensive Tic Tacs”

That phrase keeps rolling around in my head…

“Expensive Tic Tacs”

That’s what saved my life?

“Expensive Tic Tacs”

I just finished reading the controversial cover story – ANTIDEPRESSANTS DON’T WORK – in Newsweek‘s Feb. 10 edition. I don’t know where to start. How about

IS THERE AN EDITOR IN THE HOUSE????!!!!

I went to the Ryan Litch Sang Bipolar Foundation’s annual dinner dance in Palm Beach on Sunday night. I did not know a soul besides Joyce and Dusty Sang, Ryan’s parents, whom I met a couple of years ago when I wrote a story about the Sangs’ efforts to raise money for research into early onset bipolar disorder and to help find an empirical test for bipolar.

At age five, Ryan began exhibiting symptoms of Bipolar Disorder, a serious mental illness which manifests itself with recurring episodes of mania and depression. Unbeknownst to everyone, Ryan had decided to stop all prescription mood stabilization medications because he did not like their powerful side effects.

He believed he could control his illness, a decision all too common with Bipolar Disorder. When Ryan suddenly entered a manic episode, he had nothing to help stabilize his brain chemistry. He had not slept in days, and in order to sleep, he self-medicated. Tragically, Ryan passed away in his sleep. Ryan was 24-years-old.

It was a swank affair – black tie, champagne and lots of beautiful people  with eye popping bling. Ruh-roh. My idea of jewelry is the permanent henna tattoo that wraps around my left wrist. I felt a teeny bit intimidated with my fake diamond earings, my one and only snazzy dress and my rental car. Thank God for Crest Whitestrips. At least I could stand there and smile if I nothing else.

But, no, as soon as I was introduced by my gracious host, I felt fine. “Christine has just written about book about her depression, bipolar and alcoholism…” Wow. That kind of intro usually provokes stammering and raised eyebrows. But not here. Everyone at this party had been touched by bipolar – whether a child, sibling, parent or other loved one. We all shared this one, very private secret about which we rarely speak. We all “get it” – as I like to say.

The walls fell down and, man, did we talk. It was so amazing to hear others tell their stories – what worked for them and what didn’t, …

On Thursday former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, 82, will do what she has done for over 30 years – bring together doctors, policy makers and consumers to draft policies that will decrease stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses and promote positive policy change on mental health issues.

Mrs. Carter’s annual Symposium on Mental Health Policy is one of the best kept secrets in the ranks of mental health advocacy. Although the symposia are not open to the public, they can be viewed in realtime on the Carter Center’s website. The idea is to bring stakeholders together – not only to listen to each others’ problems but to create solutions that address the needs and goals of all.

I like to think that things happen when they happen for a reason. There are no coincidences in life, just synchronicity. How else can you explain Congress debating health care reform in Washington on the same day that Rosalynn Carter opens this year’s symposium, entitled Fixing the Nation’s Broken Behavioral Health Care System? It’s destiny – good karma.

So when you get to work on Wednesday check your calendar for Thursday and Friday. Make some time to listen in to the symposium – even for a few minutes, for a little inspiration. Sometimes, just listening to others care so deeply about what you care for and hearing how badly they want to help you is enough to get you through the day.

Someone wants to help you. Her name is Rosalynn.

As someone who has depression, bipolar and alcoholism, I love to read about research. My problem is that I often cannot understand a word of what I am reading. I cannot even pronounce half of the words, which is why I have to thank The New York Times columnist David Brooks and NARSAD for their recent efforts to make neuroscience intelligible and palatable.

Last Sunday Brooks had a simple column on a recent academic conference of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society.  Normally I would not read a snooze-o-rama like this – especially on a Sunday morning. But the headline sucked me in - The Young and the neuro - and Brooks’ first paragraph held my attention:

“When you go to an academic conference you expect to see some geeks, gravitas and graying professors giving lectures. But the people who showed up at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society’s conference in Lower Manhattan last weekend were so damned young, hip and attractive.”

Thank you David Brooks and the editor who wrote the headline. You got me. Because of your clever writing I now know that dominant behavior activates the reward center of the brain in Americans,  but in the Japanese that center of the brain was more likely to be activated by subordinate behavior.

A region of the brain in American and Chinese subjects activates when they see members of their own group endure pain, but at lower levels when watching others endure pain. “These effects may form the basis of prejudice.”

Brain scans of Yankee and Red Sox fans showed their “ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens were activated” when they watched highlights of their own team’s games but neither reacted much when watching an Orioles-Blue Jays game. I am not sure what this means. It could be simply be a statement about the quality of play by the Orioles and Blue Jays. Or it could mean “that we are awash in social signals, and any social science that treats individuals as discrete decision-making creatures is nonsense.”

Why is any of this important? There are two reasons:

1. We know how other parts of the body work but the brain …

Being a geek at heart, I was delighted yesterday when the NIH released data on $5 billion in grants it has awarded with stimulus funds. I sliced and diced the data, extracted the mental health grants and sorted them descending by the amount of the grant. Click here to find out who got how much and what for.

There are 388 mental health grants worth about $207 million. The two biggest grants – about $10 million each  - were awarded to investigators at Yale and the University of Southern California to create a “Transcriptional Atlas of Human Brain Development”  and to the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for Military Medicine to develop “Modifiable Risk and Protective Factors for Suicidal Behaviors in the Army.”

About $2.6 million funds mental health research affecting African Americans. Nine grants, totaling $1.1 million, will fund research on mental health among Hispanics.

What is up with Dr. Thomas Szasz?

I know Szasz is the name to drop when I want to rile up a debate about the state of psychiatry in America. As a proponent of the Anti-Psychiatry movement in the 60′s, Szasz ticked off – and continues to tick off – mainstream psychiatry with his belief that mental illness is a metaphor for bad and bizarre behavior and that the pharmaceutical industry and mainstream medical community have perverted treatment for these problems.

But Szasz went way over the top with an article in the Wall Street Journal on July 15. I have a problem Szasz’ comparison of car repairs to health “repairs.” Bizarre.  Big difference between a humane society’s responsibility to pay for my car repairs versus my body “repairs.”

“The concept of reimbursable health-care service rests on the premise that the medical problem in need of servicing is the result of involuntary, unwanted happening, not the result of voluntary, goal-directed behavior. Leukemia, lupus, prostate cancer, and many infectious diseased are unwanted happenings. Are we going to county obesity, smoking, depression and schizophrenia as the same kinds of diseases?”

I don’t know where he gets that idea. I have never categorized medical problems “in need of servicing” under reimbursable health care as either voluntary or involuntary maladies. Carry Szasz’ logic a few steps further and you have to ask – who gets to decide whether a medical problem is voluntary or involuntary? I hope it is not Szasz.

Why wouldn’t we lump depression and schizophrenia in with “involuntary, unwanted happenings” such as leukemia and lupus? It has been nearly 50 years since Szasz began making his argument that mental illness should not be classified as a disease. Maybe back then, before the invention of CAT, PET and other technologies used in neuroimaging, Szasz’ theory kinda made sense.  But come on. In 1961, the year Szasz published his controversial book, The Myth of Mental Illness, IBM introduced the Selectric typewriter. That is how advanced technology was.

How much science do we need before we stop classifying mental illnesses as character defects or bad behavior? And let’s not use the argument that if …