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olivialum

Mental Health Care in West Africa Is Often a Product of Luck - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-often-a-product-of-luck.html

shared by olivialum on 12 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A growing number of innovative groups have begun experimenting with a similar approach in Africa and Asia: providing therapy without clinics or doctors, relying instead on mobile nurses, cheap generic drugs and community support systems.
  • In impoverished parts of the world where psychiatry is virtually nonexistent, they say, it is the only way to begin reaching the millions of people in need.
  • “Here, if we had to wait for a psychiatrist, the people who desperately need treatment would never get it,”
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • slash rates of premature death from mental disorders by a third by 2030.
  • By one analysis, which includes Western countries and developing regions like West Africa, depression, drug abuse and schizophrenia are on track to be the three leading causes of lost economic output by 2030.
  • Among the successes have been group therapy for rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo, family and individual counseling for survivors of torture in Myanmar, and talk therapy and medication for people with depression in rural India.
  • But without reliable support, follow-up and medical supplies — particularly psychiatric drugs when needed — interventions can quickly lose traction, no matter how well trained and devoted the workers are.
  • One moment, she was dozing off during a rest period; the next, she felt the presence of strange men coming after her. She screamed at them to stop. “My shouting didn’t stop the men; they kept coming for me,” she said. “So, what did I do? I ripped off my school uniform and ran.”
  • The medical staff had little training in how to handle a psychotic break: the hallucinations and delusions characteristic of schizophrenia. They sent her home, where the sensation of being hunted seeped back into her thoughts.
  • Sometimes, she ran out onto the open savanna to escape the demons pursuing her.
  • Family members took turns keeping watch and exhausted traditional methods of healing. Precious animals were sacrificed to drive away the spirits disturbing her. Healers administered herbal powders, and one applied a pale dye to her face and body in an effort to purge demons.
  • Mental illness is a source of shame here, as in most of the world, and families do not advertise its presence. Yet each community has a chief or subchief responsible for keeping an eye out for the sick.
  • One is known as task sharing.
  • The second is community self-help.
  • The third is raising awareness
  • The evidence that a combination of these services can lead to lasting improvement for people with severe mental illnesses is thin, but a foundation is being laid.
  • “The key thing is that it’s not simply home-based care for people with schizophrenia,” Laura Asher, who is running the study, said by email. “It also involves awareness raising and community mobilization.”
  • the cost of these programs is minute compared with the cost of standard psychiatry
  • $8 per client per month on average, according to Peter Yaro, its executive director. In the United States, it costs $200 to $700 for a single appointment with a psychiatrist, depending on the provider, the type of care and the location.
  • In global cost-benefit terms, economists typically rate health care programs by the amount of disability they reduce per dollar. Historically, mental health interventions have scored poorly compared with efforts that save young lives, like neonatal care or treatment of diarrhea. A new analysis of mental health strategies in Ethiopia, for instance, found that treating schizophrenia with generic medications was about as cost-effective as treating heart disease with a combination of drugs, like aspirin and a statin — and much less cost-effective than treating depression or epilepsy. The findings, though preliminary, suggest that treating psychosis is relatively costly.
  • the studies do not take into account the effect of chronic psychosis on an entire family. “The person with psychosis becomes a full-time job for someone else in the family, and depending on how aggressive the person is, maybe more than one person,” said Dr. Simliwa Kolou Valentin Dassa, a psychiatrist in neighboring Togo
  • And if the disorder is seen as a result of a curse on the family, carried down through generations — a common interpretation here — the entire clan comes under suspicion.
Kay Bradley

Opinion | How Trumpism May Endure - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-capitol-lost-cause.html

shared by Kay Bradley on 10 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The story demands a religious loyalty.
  • Mr. Trump’s Lost Cause takes its fuel from conspiratorial myths of all kinds, rehearsed for years on Trump media and social media platforms. Its guiding theories include: Christianity under duress and attack; large corrupt cities full of Black and brown people manipulated by liberal elites; Barack Obama as alien; a socialist movement determined to tax you into subservience to “big government”; liberal media out to crush family and conservative values; universities and schools teaching the young a history that hates America; resentment of nonwhite immigrants who threaten a particular national vision; and whatever hideous new version of a civil religion QAnon represents.
  • The Confederate Lost Cause is one of the most deeply ingrained mythologies in American history. It emerged first as a mood of traumatized defeat in the 1860s, but grew into an array of arguments, organizations and rituals in search of a story that could win hearts and minds and regain power in the Southern states. It was initially a psychological response to the trauma of collective loss among former Confederates. It gained traction in violent groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and in the re-emergence of the Democratic Party’s resistance to Reconstruction.
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  • Crucially, the Lost Cause argued that the Confederacy never fought to preserve slavery, and that it was never truly defeated on battlefields.
  • Confederate Lost Cause ideology
  • All Lost Causes find their lifeblood in lies, big and small, lies born of beliefs in search of a history that can be forged into a story and mobilize masses of people to act politically, violently, and in the name of ideology.
  • By the 1890s, the Lost Cause was no longer a story of loss, but one of victory: the defeat of Reconstruction. Southerners — whether run-of-the-mill local politicians, famous former generals or women who forged the culture of monument building — portrayed white supremacy and home rule for the South as the nation’s victory over radicalism and Negro rule.
  • glory of America
  • But it does seem to be tonic for those who fear long-term social change;
  • liberalism; taxation; what it perceives as big government; nonwhite immigrants who drain the homeland’s resources; government regulation imposed on individuals and businesses; foreign entanglements and wars that require America to be too generous to strange peoples in faraway places; any hint of gun control; feminism in high places; the nation’s inevitable ethnic and racial pluralism; and the infinite array of practices or ideas it calls “political correctness.”
  • border walls; ever-growing stock portfolios; access to the environment and hunting land without limits; coal they can burn at will; the “liberty” to reject masks; history that tastes of the sweetness of progress and not the bitterness of national sins.
  • Kay Bradley on 10 Jan 21
     
    "Mr. Trump's Lost Cause takes its fuel from conspiratorial myths of all kinds, rehearsed for years on Trump media and social media platforms. Its guiding theories include: Christianity under duress and attack; large corrupt cities full of Black and brown people manipulated by liberal elites; Barack Obama as alien; a socialist movement determined to tax you into subservience to "big government"; liberal media out to crush family and conservative values; universities and schools teaching the young a history that hates America; resentment of nonwhite immigrants who threaten a particular national vision; and whatever hideous new version of a civil religion QAnon represents."
Lexi Gentry

Volunteers, Many Once Refugees Themselves, Help as Guides in Vienna - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-help-as-guides-in-vienna.html

shared by Lexi Gentry on 25 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Lexi Gentry on 25 Sep 15
     
    VIENNA - At the migration center in the east wing of the main train station here, Ragad al-Rachid, a petite 19-year-old psychology student and a Syrian Muslim, is immersed in the logistical details of helping dozens of people a day adjust to new lives in her adopted country.
Kay Bradley

Al-Qaeda central: the definitive guide | The AfPak Channel - 0 views

afpak.foreignpolicy.com/...a_central_the_definitive_guide

Pakistan

shared by Kay Bradley on 16 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Kay Bradley on 16 Sep 10
     
    Thanks, Matthew Schweitzer!
quinnlewis

Syria's refugee crisis in maps: a visual guide (Wired UK) - 1 views

www.wired.co.uk/...rope-syria-refugee-crisis-maps

shared by quinnlewis on 30 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • quinnlewis on 30 Oct 15
     
    Follow up on the Syrian refugee crisis. I know we have sort of stopped talking about this in class because of individual projects but I think we should still stay in the loop. The Syrian conflict has been pushing citizens out of their homes since 2011, but the internal turmoil caused by shifting borders between different factions since March 2014 has been particularly tumultuous. The UN undersecretary estimated in August 2015 that 250,000 civilian deaths have been caused by the conflict. Today world leaders are meeting to discuss the power of Assad and it's going to be interesting to see the results/conclusion they draw.
Kay Bradley

Opinion | Choose a Gift That Changes Lives - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...itable-holiday-gift-guide.html

shared by Kay Bradley on 23 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Educate a girl. My grand prize winner is Camfed (originally called the Campaign for Female Education), which helps girls in African countries get an education.
  • Send a young person to college. Another prize winner is OneGoal, which mentors low-income students in the United States, helping them graduate from high school and succeed in college. OneGoal ensures that Black lives matter: 96 percent of participants are students of color, and it provides a bridge for them to complete high school and get a solid start in college.
  • Restore a person’s sight. My final prize winner is the Himalayan Cataract Project, also known as Cure Blindness, which fights blindness in Asia and Africa. This, too, is a bargain: The surgery can cost as little as $25 per person, or $50 for both eyes.The Himalayan Cataract Project was founded by Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepali ophthalmologist who helped develop a cataract microsurgery technique (the “Nepal method”), and Dr. Geoff Tabin of Stanford University Medical School
  • Kay Bradley on 23 Nov 20
     
    "Educate a girl. Send a young person to college. Restore a person's sight. By Nicholas Kristof Opinion Columnist"
Kay Bradley

The Political Economy of Venezuela and PDVSA - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs - 1 views

gjia.georgetown.edu/...economy-of-venezuela-and-pdvsa

Venezuela hyperinflation inflation Latin America petrostate petroleum economy international Less Developed World:

shared by Kay Bradley on 16 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Under the direction of Luis Giusti in the 1994-1998 period, PDVSA’s production soared. This trend changed in 1999, when Hugo Chavez became Venezuela’s president and introduced Chavismo as the guiding economic doctrine.
  • Chavez responded by purging PDVSA of its professionals en masse, replacing them with “reliable” hands—those loyal to Chavez’s socialist regime.
  • This trend has left Venezuela’s output drastically lower than when Chavez took power in 1999.
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  • with capital expenditures far below the value of equipment that is being consumed each year by depreciation and amortization.
  • On top of PDVSA’s reduced capital stock and its deteriorating quality, there has also been a drop in the stock and quality of its human capital.
  • It is important to note that PDVSA’s decreased output is not due to dwindling oil reserves,
  • Venezuela’s reserves—which are the world’s largest, at 9.26 billion barrels
  • At the end of 2018, Exxon’s depletion rate was 6.74 percent per year—a rate comparable to that realized by most major oil companies. That rate implies that it would take 9.9 years for Exxon’s oil reserves to be halfway depleted. That is 370.5 years earlier than when PDVSA would deplete half of its reserves
  • The country with the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela is plagued by a mismanaged, state-owned oil company in a death spiral—PDVSA.
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