Signatures 126 total
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Name: Cynthia Dougherty on Apr 24, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: Maria Ludlam on Apr 25, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: Bobbie Jo Denton on May 7, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: Debbie Cristiani on May 8, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: Bonnie Benis on Jun 10, 2008Comments: Stop the madness, we are losing so many of Our Loved ones to these drugs.We need to have monitoring to control these substances. Larry H Benis(Bubba) 11/14/85 - 10/9/05 Death due to MethadoneFlag
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Name: Tammy Ochs on Jun 12, 2008Comments: Methadone killed my son Carrington this has to stop he was only 14 yrs old and I found him dead on my birthday morning please stop methadone deaths www.harmd.orgFlag
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Name: Melissa Jones on Jul 10, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: Terri Floyd on Aug 17, 2008Comments: Keep our children safeFlag
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Name: Methadone Cures CANCER on Aug 18, 2008Comments: Unrelenting Grief May Be Sign of Distinct Syndrome By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 4, 2008; A06 After Janice Van Wagner's mother died of breast cancer two years ago, her sense of loss was overwhelming. "I was devastated," said Van Wagner, 34, of Los Angeles. "I felt like a piece of me had gone missing. It was like I was split in two." While most people grieve when someone close to them dies, the emotional intensity tends to recede with time. But for some, like Van Wagner, their pain persists, sometimes for months or even years, often making it impossible to resume a normal life. "I was kind of stuck in a repetitive thinking about the suffering that she went through in the last month of her life and the last few weeks," Van Wagner said. "I just kept reliving that over and over again in my mind." This unrelenting form of mourning, which affects an estimated 10 percent to 20 percent of people who have lost someone close, is gaining recognition as a distinct psychological syndrome known as "complicated grief." Now, in the first attempt to study it with brain scanning technology, researchers have found a biological clue that appears to help confirm the existence of the syndrome and explain why it happens. "This is very important," said Camille B. Wortman, a professor of psychology at Stony Brook University in New York. "I think it has very important implications for how grief is conceptualized and how it is treated." While cautioning that the findings need to be confirmed and explored by additional research, others agreed. "This shows that there's actually a difference in the brains of people who have the syndrome compared to the ones who don't," said Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. "Some people are still confused by the fact that it does resemble regular grief." For the study, Mary-Frances O'Connor of the University of California at Los Angeles and her colleagues conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 11 women experiencing complicated grief, including Van Wagner, and 12 others who grieved more normally following the death of a mother or sister from breast cancer. During the scans, which show what parts of the brain are active at a given moment, each woman was asked to look at a picture of her lost loved one, with words superimposed to remind her of the death, or at similar pictures of strangers. "I wanted to know if there is something different in the brain when people are processing their grief in those who are adapting well and those who are not adapting well," O'Connor said. "The question was: Are their brains processing their grief differently" In all the women, the parts of the brain involved in physical and emotional pain activated only when they saw the pictures of their loved ones. But in the women experiencing complicated grief, another area also lighted up. Called the nucleus accumbens, it is part of the brain's reward system, the researchers report in a paper being published this month in the journal NeuroImage. "At first, we found this very strange," O'Connor said. "It seemed like it would be a good thing to experience a reward. So why would you find this in a group that is not doing well" One of the hallmarks of complicated grief, however, is a persistent sense of longing for the lost one and a tendency to conjure up reveries of that person. "It's an intense feeling of wanting that person back," Van Wagner said, noting it was sometimes so overwhelming that music became unbearable because it reminded her too much of her mother. "It's an extreme yearning." Because the nucleus accumbens is involved in anticipating a reward, this might explain why people suffering complex grief are unable to move on, O'Connor and others suspect. "This is the part of the brain involved in knowing that you want something," she said. "When people who are not adjusting well are having these sorts of thoughts about the person, they are experiencing this reward pathway being activated. They really are craving in a way that perhaps is not allowing them or helping them adapt to the new reality." The same brain system is involved in other powerful cravings, such those that afflict drug addicts and alcoholics. "One reason they are stuck is they are getting something pleasurable about thinking about and immersing themselves in memories of the deceased," said Holly Prigerson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "It's like they're addicted to the happy memories." The findings could help explain why drugs used to treat depression are generally ineffective for complicated grief: They affect a different brain system involving the neurotransmitter serotonin. Drugs that affect the dopamine, a different chemical messenger that is involved with the nucleus accumbens, might be more effective.Flag
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Name: Jamie Murphy on Sep 26, 2008Comments: I am waiting for the phone call that my beautiful 21 year old daughter has died from roxicontins. She buys them from people who are prescribed to them but will sell because of the cash value on the streets. I am disgusted by the lack of caring from the community, law enforcement, judicial system ,news media, and the Government regarding the abuse of this drug.Flag
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Name: Tracy Kiel on Sep 29, 2008Comments: In memory of my little brother, Phil KielFlag
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Name: Marybeth Bronscheer on Oct 14, 2008Comments:Flag
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Name: JILL R on Oct 31, 2008Comments: AS A RECOVERING RX JUNKIE ALSO WORKING IN THE DUAL DIAGNOSIS FIELD FOR DOUBLE DIGIT YEARS--FLORIDA MUST CHANGE ITS LAWS!Flag
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Name: Billie Faulk on Dec 25, 2008Comments: In loving Memory of my brother JP FaulkFlag
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Name: Anonymous on Apr 7, 2009Comments:Flag
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Name: David Smith on Apr 29, 2009Comments:Flag
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Name: Ellen A. on Jun 29, 2009Comments: My beautiful daughter became a victim of the over-prescription of OxyContin. Thankfully she is still with us and currently in recovery but we are forever watchful. This drug owns its victims. During a traffic stop she was arrested because she had 1/2 a pill in her possession along with the paraphernalia required to smoke it. The ensuing legal problems (drug court and eventually jail because she could not stay clean) may have saved her life but in other ways the legal system has ruined her. We need hospitals and help for these people. They are sick people, not criminals. Stop the over-prescription of this drug before it ruins an entire generation. Stop the "mom and pop" pharmacies that fill the prescriptions for the drug dealers who then rush right out to their parking lots to sell the junk before returning with another prescription. Send police to sit in these parking lots and the parking lots of the "drug pusher" pain doctors who give drugs to everyone who comes through their doors. Only a very small number of very sick people need these drugs and should only receive them in small, controlled amounts. Everything else is abuse.Flag
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Name: Jeremy Mckiernan on Sep 5, 2009Comments: methadone killed my brother when he was only 26. Their needs to be tougher laws to keep this shit off the streets. We all truly miss you jared and think of you every day.Flag
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Name: Anonymous on Sep 15, 2009Comments:Flag
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Name: Robin Cesario on Nov 9, 2009Comments: I have three adult sons living at home and are addicted to this these horrible pillsFlag
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Name: Peggy on Feb 10, 2010Comments: i want this law to be funded i had a son who died because of a dr. trying to make a dimeFlag
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Name: Eeqizzsdh on Feb 21, 2010Comments:Flag
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Name: Pharmd703 on Mar 31, 2010Comments: Hello! cedacee interesting cedacee site!Flag
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Name: Pharmb823 on Jun 30, 2010Comments: Hello! dddgbcg interesting dddgbcg site!Flag
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Name: Pharmd116 on Sep 27, 2010Comments: Hello! bdgdceb interesting bdgdceb site!Flag
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Name: Pharma737 on Oct 5, 2010Comments: Hello! bfgacdk interesting bfgacdk site!Flag