Picky Eating Registry

Last week, researchers at The University of Pittsburgh and Duke University launched the first national registry of picky eating in adults.

We all know a picky eater - someone who just won’t eat broccoli or strawberries. And there are all types of selective eating for health or cultural or religious reasons.

But researchers say there is a psychological difference between selective eating and picky eating. Marsha Marcus runs the Center for Overcoming Problem Eating at Western Psych. With colleagues at Duke, she has develop an Internet registry that they hope will help researchers better understand the causes and effects of picky eating.

"It's only for a very few people where these problems become sufficiently extreme where they can interfere with a persons well being, their social life, jobs, interpersonal relationships," she said.

Marcus is part of a group that’s reviewing diagnostic criteria for the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the unofficial bible of psychiatry. Picky eating, now a childhood disorder will include adults and be renamed Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. The new DSM is scheduled for a 2013 release.

The registry is called the Finicky Eating in Adults or FAD and so far, more than 1,500 people have signed up. Marcus does not expect that they are all diagnosable picky eaters- but she says the information will help them determine between normal weird eating and picky eating.

HUD Money Comes to The Commonwealth

More than 21 million federal dollars will be helping Pennsylvania’s low-income seniors and people with mental and developmental disabilities get housing.

The money will come from The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD. It’ll help non-profit developers produce accessible housing to the low-income elderly and people with disabilities, groups who typically have difficulty securing affordable housing.

The money will be split up among facilities in Philadelphia, Verona, Erie, New Kensington and Beaver Falls.

Jeffrey Huber is the CEO of Supportive Services in Beaver Falls. His organization is getting over a million dollars to rehabilitate an existing building into permanent housing for nine low-income people with chronic mental illness.
"A lot of the people that we serve if it weren’t for the HUD programs that we’re involved with they wouldn’t have a place to call home."

Maria Bynum, who works for HUD says more than providing a place to live, this money will also help provide a sense of self.

"For someone whose on a limited income its important to be able to afford a place where you can age with grace and dignity and be proud of where you live," she said.

HUD is also funding projects in 45 other states.

Therapy Dogs Help the Ailing

No matter who you are, its hard to keep a bright outlook when you have a life-limiting or terminal illness. Therapy dogs can make rounds in hospitals and hospices and comfort some very sick people. We made medical rounds with them. Listen to the story here.


In this photo, Crystal Stoyanoff gets a visit from Draco, a therapy dog.

Chef Speaks About Life Behind Bars and Over A Stove

Chef Jeff Henderson Jeff Henderson, a chef on the Food Channel spoke to local ex-offenders and at-risk youth in Homestead on Thursday.

Eugene Ziegler was among the audience members who asked Chef Jeff Henderson for advice. Ziegler is a 52 year old Marine Veteran and trained cook. He’s also a recovering drug addict and ex-offender. He’s got post-traumatic stress disorder. And he says, low self-esteem. It’s been hard for him to find work.

Like Ziegler, Henderson is a former felon. A former drug-trafficker, he spent ten years in prison where he learned to cook. Upon release, he worked his way up to becoming an executive chef at top restaurants, got a TV show and authored a book.
Although he achieved fame as a chef, Henderson said he’s often asked to speak to ex-felons and at-risk youth about his life.

Makinma Gustave, 35, has been in and out of prison over the last eight years. The Homestead woman said she finds Henderson’s story inspiring.

Ex-offenders have a higher unemployment rate than the general public.

County Overdose Initiative Holds Meeting

In light of the Methadone Accountability Package proposed earlier this month, members of the Allegheny County Overdose Initiative held a meeting in Oakland to discuss overdose prevention strategies. They heard from speakers Robert Newman and Holly Catania, who do overdose prevention work in New York and have collaborated with members of the initiative here.

The Methadone Accountability Package includes bills that would keep track of methadone deaths and prohibit driving while on methadone. It also includes controversial bills that would require drug-users be users for a certain length of time to be eligible and would require two failed non-methadone attempts to get off of drugs before becoming eligible for a prescription.

Methadone deaths have been rising for the last ten years but Newman said that was due to doctors prescribing methadone for pain.

Money Follows The Person

A federal initiative is helping institutionalized Pennsylvanians move into the community. It's called Money Follows the Person - and is representative of a shift in the way health care and social services are delivered.

It’s a 29 state federal effort to move people out of long-term living facilities like nursing homes or institutions. The person determines how their federal and state money will be spent. They make modifications to their personal homes or pay the health care providers they chose, for example.

In Pennsylvania, Money Follows the Person is a spin-off of the Nursing Home Transition Program, which had been helping people move into the community and linking them to services, transportation and delivered meals. Although there is an initial up-front cost to moving people, the program should ultimately save states and the federal government money.

The programs are part of a larger cultural movement of de-institutionalization following a 1999 Supreme Court decision. It required services be provided in the least restrictive setting possible.

Listen here.

House of Hope

When UPMC shuttered Braddock Hospital earlier this year, they left few of their programs operating in the borough. Among them is House of Hope. It provides shelter and supports homeless, drug-addicted pregnant women and new mothers through the early stages of recovery. UPMC might be moving the program out of Braddock- which would deal another blow to an already distressed community. This story is part of our continuing coverage of behavioral health issues. Listen to it here.

Former Mayview State Hospital Land Sold

The state has found a buyer for the land Mayview State Hospital sat on. It’s a coal company. They‘re paying a half million dollars for nearly two hundred acres - that includes a coalmine.

Early estimates of what the land would go for were in the multiple millions. After all, it covered South Fayette and Upper St Clair townships - two of the more affluent communities in the area.

That it would go for less than what it was worth was expected- this was good land but old buildings filled with asbestos and lead paint that would most likely be demolished.

But the agreement the state made to sell the land for $505,505 dollars to Aloe Brothers LLC of Mount Washington has left members of the mental health community deeply disappointed. State Senator John Pippy who co-chaired the Mayview task force said he was also let down by how much the land sold for.

Advocates wanted the land to be sold at a fair market price and for the proceeds of the sale to go into a trust for community based mental health services to benefit those the hospital had served. The more money for the land –the more in the trust.
Mayview State Hospital opened in the late 1800’s and housed and treated thousands of people for mental illness. It closed in 2008.

The state- ordered appraisal valued the land at 7.8 million. But the buildings were a 13 million liability. That left the land at an appraisal of negative 5.2 million.
John Paul Jones is Director of the Governors Southwest Regional Office.

The appraisal was not made public and the land was put on the market. They received two bids- the losing bid was for 130,000.

The state will retain mineral rights.

Concerns of Marcellus shale oil drilling were raised at a public hearing held in St. Clair Township on Thursday night. State Senator John Pippy who co-chaired the land task force said as legislators they would try to prevent that from occurring.

Disappointment was expressed repeatedly by many of those attending the meeting who said the land should have sold for more. They said the sale could have been a great source of revenue for services potentially strained by state budget cuts.

Rev. Sally Jo Snyder, with the Consumer Health Coalition has been helping organize members of the mental health community to advocate through this process. The task force was set up to talk assess the environmental and economic use of the land. Their advocacy shifted the discourse. So, aside from the disappointment in the assessment and sale of the land, she says there have been victories. A memorial for what the hospital was and the thousands of people that passed through it will be on the property. And it has been empowering for those that have come out to speak at the meetings.

Last month, Senator Pippy introduced Senate Bill 1339, which would place the net proceeds of the sale into a mental health and retardation services account that would be handled by the state Department of Public Welfare. With the sale of the land, after accrued state costs that would be about 350,000 thousand dollars.
Listen to the full report by DUQ's Erika Beras.

Researchers Developing Phone Application To Treat Depression

If your phone is indispensible and you use it to check email, take pictures and listen to music then why shouldn’t you use it to treat an illness? Local researchers are testing a phone application they’ve developed that might help people with depression.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, used to treat depression, often consists of homework – where a therapist and patient come up with unique activities to assist in their treatment. These are supposed to be done independently. Judy Callon, a research assistant professor at The University of Pittsburgh’s School of Nursing worked to develop the application with researchers at Carnegie Mellon. She says many people often don’t do their independent treatments but with the convenience of them being on one’s cell phone – they might.

"When you do the homework you do get better faster and it really does improve the clinical outcome. So my thought was if we made use of something, an article that was near to us all the time, that might help us do our homework all through the day that it might really help depressed patients get better faster," she said.

The phone will be tested in the next few months. Callan hopes if the application tests successfully, that it would be downloadable. She stresses that it would be used in addition to, not in place of therapy.

One Kind Word Hopes to Curtail Parental Outbursts

A mother loses her temper with her son in a grocery store. A father yells at his children on a crowded bus - if your just an onlooker - what do you do - what can you do? A local campaign is hoping to curtail those types of outbursts and possibly cut down on incidents of child abuse.

One Kind Word is the joint creation of Family Communications - the program Fred Rogers founded nearly forty years ago and Family Resources, an organization that works against child abuse. The name comes from Rogers himself - sometimes, he said, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person.

The idea is you witness an incident of parental rage or neglect and to intercept a touchy situation in a non-reactionary way.

Listen to the story here.

Interview with US Surgeon General

Last week, Regina Benjamin came to Pittsburgh for the Women's Health and The Environment Conference.

She spoke with DUQ's Erika Beras about the initiatives her office will focus on during the next few years and how a healthy environment can mean a healthy body.

"If you as an individual have high blood pressure, a pill won't continue to take care of it if you are constantly in an unhealthy community. If you are worried about how to put food on a table, its hard to get your blood pressure down," she said.

She also spoke about how health care legislation will change her job and the way medical care is administered, the work she hopes to do with HIV education in girls and women and her hopes to cut down on youth, domestic, workplace and street violence.

Listen to the conversation here.

National Alliance of Mental Illness Holds Annual Regional Conference

The changes in the way mental health care will be delivered with the passage of health legislation in Washington and with state budgets continuously slashing their budgets was among the topics discussed at the tenth annual National Alliance of Mental Illness conference held Friday and Saturday at a hotel near the airport.

About three hundred people attended the conference and listened to about a dozen speakers discuss advocacy, building relationships with lawmakers and confronting challenges in the mental health system were some of the other topics discussed.

Michael Fitzpatrick, the National Director of NAMI said there were some real challenges and opportunities in the mental health in America. "I think the passage of health care reform, the passage of parity law in 2008, coupled with the recession which is playing havoc with state budgets is going to create an environment where things are going to change dramatically," he said.

Mental Health America Hosts Annual Legislative Breakfast

About 130 people attended a day-long event where they listened to lectures, spoke with legislative staff members and learned to be better advocates.

Mental Health America of Allegheny County hosted their seventh annual legislative breakfast and advocacy training on Friday.

The event was held in the county Human Services Building. Rachel Freund, Director of Community Outreach at Mental Health America organized the event. She said it is held locally and not in Harrisburg because so many of the attendees have disabilities making it more difficult and costly for them to travel.

Among the issues discussed were the recent cuts to Supplemental Security Income and rent rebates to personal care home residents.

Representatives were at the breakfast from the offices of Representative Dan Frankel, Representative Randy Vulakovich and Senator Jay Costa.

Proposed Mental Health Legislation

Two proposed pieces of legislation may change the way mental health services are delivered in Pennsylvania.

Some say its a step in the right direction. Others say it's a breach of our constitutional rights - and too costly for our state to bear.

House Bill 2186 and Senate Bill 251 would amend the 34-year-old Mental Health Procedures Act so families, physicians or officials could obtain court-ordered outpatient treatment for the severely mentally ill - without their consent.

Listen to the story here.

New Research Provides Insight Into Decision Making Process

New research from Carnegie Mellon University researchers suggest that replaying events in the brain may have less to do with creating long term memories than with an active decision making process.

In the study conducted in 2008 and published this month in the journal Neuron, rats had electrodes recording the brain activity of rats as they navigated a maze. In previous studies, rats were measured moving in a linear fashion. Working at The University of Minnesota, they monitored certain neurons, called place cells, which fire in response to physical locations. They enabled the researchers to identify where an event was being replayed based on which place cells were firing. So for example, a rat might be in one place but the firing of the cells showed that it was replaying the events that occurred in another place. They found that rats would replay the path they had experienced less often and that replay is not just important in subsequent moments but important in mapping an entire environment.

The study was funded by The National Institutes of Health, The National Science Foundation and The Pennsylvania Department of Health.

American Counseling Association Meets in Pittsburgh

The American Counseling Association is holding their annual conference at The David L. Lawrence Convention Center over the next four days. 3,600 counselors will be attending. They will include everything from mental health counselors to guidance counselors to marriage counselors. They will attend educational sessions, listen to speeches and browse an exhibition hall full of textbooks and services they may be able to utilize.

Although there are different types of counselors at the conference they all attend the same workshops which include topics such as social justice counseling and self-injurious behavior in the classroom. David Kaplan, Chief Professional Officer of The American Counseling Association says that the counselors can learn from other counselors that they might not normally have the opportunity to interact with.

The conference is co-sponsored by The American Counseling Association.

Peal Conference Held In Cranberry

The PEAL (Parent Education and Advocacy Leadership Center) held their fourth annual conference in Cranberry Tuesday and Wednesday. The organization helps parents of children with disabilities in 43 Pennsylvania counties navigate special education systems.

Workshops held at the conference included teaching children with disabilities about sexuality, navigating medical assistance and learning what rights children have in the classroom. The workshops were attended by equal parts professionals and parents. Some workshops were held in Spanish.

Ceil Belasco the Director of Training for the Peal Center said the conference lays the groundwork for what the organization does year round.

Western Psych Will Use Federal Stimulus Funding to Study the Benefits of Counseling with HIV Screening

Western Psych is one of nine sites nationwide to receive funding from The National Institutes of Health to study if rapid HIV testing and counseling produce healthier results for those who test negative for the virus than testing alone. Western Psych will use Allegheny County's Health Department's STD clinic as their study site.

The $12.3 million dollar grant was awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Western Psych applied for the grant along with medical institutions in Miami and San Francisco. The sites selected across the country will represent a good cross section of Americans says Dr. Antoine Douaihy, Medical Director of Addiction Medicine Services at Western Psych and the study's chief researcher in Pittsburgh.

Researchers will begin recruiting for the study in a couple of weeks and will have done all of the research within 2 years. Requirements to participate are that participants use the county's health department clinic, be at least 18 years old, be HIV Negative or not know their status and be able to stay in touch with researchers.

Douaihy says physicians have been pushing to make rapid HIV testing and counseling an HIV prevention strategy. The CDC has recommended that prevention counseling not be required as part of the HIV screening programs and medical settings. This has been a point of controversy.

He says this will have public health implications in terms of researchers determining what sort of counseling reduces risky behavior.

Autism Through The Lifespan #9- Life After Autism

This week during Morning Edition and All Things Considered we've been examining Autism's impact through the lifespan. Experts say the best autism research is conducted after someone dies. That requires donating the brain. In 2003, Laura Walsh's son Jason died in 2003 from complications associated with the flu. He had been diagnosed with PDD-NOS, a form of autism. When he died his family donated his brain to the Autism Tissue Program. Since the program's inception in 1998, over a hundred brains have been donated. Listen to the story here.


To hear all of the stories in the series click here.

If you are interested in learning more about autism visit these websites:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention www.cdc.gov/ncBddd/autism
Autism Speaks www.autismspeaks.org
Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare www.dpw.state.pa.us
National Institutes of Health www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/autism/detail_autism
Pennsylvania Department of Education www.portal.state.pa.us

Autism Through the Lifespan #8 - Research

This week during Morning Edition and All Things Considered, we are exploring Autism's impact through the lifespan as part of our continuing behavioral health coverage. Pittsburgh is a national hub for autism research - it has one of six research centers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The center is run by neurologist Nancy Minshew from The University of Pittsburgh. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University also work with the center studying everything from infant behavior to language capacity in adults. Listen to the story here. To hear all of the stories in the series, click here.