Mental Health and Substance the Law

Mental health is an important issue facing Australia today. Calculations show that about 20% of the population suffer from some mental health issues in 2012 alone. The most common mental health problems that people who suffer from anxiety and / or depression. This article looks at mental health in-law, and looks at ways to become more optimistic in overcoming these challenges.
The world-renowned authority on happiness research, Dr. Martin Seligman holds a different view in relation to mental health than the profession of clinical psychology has historically taken. Until the late 1990s, mental health has been conceived as a "What's the matter?" Providing people with the diagnosis. For example, "you're depressed!" "You can not wait!" "Bi-Polar you!" These diagnoses were based on DSM-IV. DSM-V will be released in 2013. DSM-IV symptoms for each detailed psychological problems and clinical psychologists and psychiatrists have been able to diagnose "label people" and to treat them based on that.
Seligman has played an important role in the so-called "positive psychology" movement, which departed from the "marking" or "diagnostic method" to focus on the positive. In his book, he learned optimism in detail the methods (based on research) about how you can improve your happiness and mental health (detailed later in this article) and introduced a concept called optimism. What a way that people look at the successes and failures in his life (more on this later in this article).
He continued to stare at people in the professions and the optimistic, pessimistic in the professions. For example, it is classified as pessimistic profession of the buy diazepam generic! Why? Typically, lawyers are looking into the fault, why do people or organizations can not do something? Are you going to be exposed? When working in the firm, for example, created from the mind making sure that you do not make a mistake. Ingenuity and creativity are often not encouraged. Many lawyers can get into this pessimistic mindset very quickly and stay there. Where their work is only noticed when they make mistakes. Is this a sustainable way of working? Will this negative motivation to be able to support them throughout their careers?
Happiness studies show that optimists are happier, live longer and suffer less from mental health problems in life. The question is how you can work as a lawyer and work with an optimistic mindset? Optimism about how you interpret your environment. For example, if you step back happens to be an optimist (for example, your boss / client is critical to their work), they will treat it as an isolated case and does not take feedback personally, so it does not affect their confidence in future projects work. A pessimist would react the opposite way, suggesting that the criticism or negative event is a reflection on them personally, buy valium, and that they can not change. In psychology we call this global attribution.
The first secret to become more optimistic in the law (especially as a graduate), then how do you handle criticism? When this happens (and it will) try to take it or explain it to him on the basis of the specific details of the problem rather than a global or relationship dynamics (eg, "They do not love me", "I do not fit the law"). Conversely, when positive things happen to you at work. Attribute their global character traits (eg, "I'm really suited to the law"), rather than a specific task areas (eg, "I was fortunate in this project").
To finish this article (as promised) I am going to summarize the eight evidence-based ways to improve your happiness and improve your mental health. They are:
• Count your blessings• Practice acts of kindness• Taste the joy of life• Thanks to a mentor• Learn to forgive• Invest time and energy in friends and family• Take care of your body• Develop a strategy for coping with stress and hardship

Education linked to better health, lower blood pressure

Research suggests higher education is linked to a longer and healthier life and lower blood pressure. Findings published in the journal Biomed Central show educated men and women are less likely to engage in risky health behaviors compared to men and women with lower academic levels and sustain lower blood pressure that persists for decades, even after adjusting for other health risks.

Educated men and women have lower blood pressure

The findings that come from an analysis of 3890 people followed for 30 years from The Framingham Offspring Study revealed higher education equated to lower blood pressure, reducing the chances of heart disease and stroke.
Men with more than 17 years education were found to smoke less and drink less and have lower body mass index and did women in the study, compared to study participants with less education. The study also found women who achieved higher academic levels drank half as much as men with higher educational levels.
Dr Eric Loucks from Brown University's Department of Community Health said, "Even when adjusted for socio-economic variables education is inversely correlated with high blood pressure and this positive effect of education on health is even stronger for women than men."

Blood pressure lower for years for those with more education

The researchers also found that having an advanced educational degree correlates with decades of lower blood pressure.
Compared to women who did not finish high school, those with 17 years of schooling or more had blood pressure readings that were an average, 3.26 mmHg lower. Women who attended college only had the benefit of blood pressure that was 2mmHg lower than less educated women.
For men, having a graduate degree was associated with a 2.26 mmHg difference in blood pressure versus men not finishing high school.
Even after taking into account smoking, drinking, obesity and blood pressure medication the association between lower blood pressure was evident, though the research found graduate education resulted in a 2.86 mmHg lower blood pressure reading for women and 1.25 mmHg difference for men.
Loucks found that higher education seems to have a greater impact on women's health that surpass men. In a statistical move, he indexed blood pressure readings to make them all equal at the beginning of the study period from 1971 to 2001, finding a 2.53 mmHg benefit that was steady among women, compared to the least educated. In men, the difference only 0.34 mmHg.
He explains, "Women with less education are more likely to be experiencing depression, they are more likely to be single parents, more likely to be living in impoverished areas and more likely to be living below the poverty line."
The findings from the studies suggest policy makers should focus on access to education as a matter of public health policy. Higher education was linked to better health for men and women and lower blood pressure that persisted for years, found in the Framingham Offspring Study, compared to individuals studied with lower academic levels of achievement.

Researchers Build Model Protocell Capable Of Copying DNA

Four billion years ago, modern cells were absent on our still-young planet. The simple protocells that are thought to have given rise to Earth’s earliest life forms were plentiful, but likely no more than a bit of genetic material surrounded by a hollow membrane.
Scientists have now created model protocells in the lab and demonstrated how they might have taken up the nutrients that propelled their growth. Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator Jack Szostak and his research group fabricated DNA containing vesicles in the lab and showed that nutrients could enter the model protocell. Once inside, the nutrients assembled into a copy of the protocell’s genetic material–an essential step in the origin of life.
Szostak, a molecular biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, published his team’s findings June 4, 2008, in an advance online publication in the journal Nature. The findings are the latest advance in Szostak’s long-term effort to decipher how life arose on Earth. By building simple cell-like structures in a test tube, he and his colleagues are attempting to establish a plausible path that led primitive cells to emerge from simple chemicals. Ultimately, Szostak hopes to answer fundamental questions about evolution’s earliest steps.
Cells are basically sacs encapsulated by bilayered membranes of lipids, plus proteins. A central question in evolution is how simple versions of these cells, or vesicles, first arose and began the competitive process that drove the evolution of life.
Membranes are essential components of even the simplest cells. They keep needed molecules readily accessible, and unneeded or harmful molecules safely outside. In modern cells, this barrier is rigorous: for most molecules to pass through, they must rely on the sophisticated pores, pumps, and channels that stud the membrane. Protocells, however, did not have the proteins needed to create these channels, and so scientists have long puzzled over how they could have acquired nutrients.
Szostak and his colleagues’ work shows that simpler membranes, when composed of the right kind of lipids, allow essential molecules to enter a protocell without the help of proteins–and form genetic polymers once inside.
“What we’re trying to do is to learn something about the origin of life by actually building an early cell,” says Szostak. Learning how the membrane works is a key part of that.
The membranes of modern cells are made of fatty molecules called phospholipids. The heads of the lipids are attracted to water, but the tails are not. So the lipids in the membrane arrange themselves into two layers that point in opposite directions–keeping the heads facing out toward the outside world and the watery interior of the cell, and the tails safely in the middle. Without channels, these membranes are impermeable to the nucleotides and other nutrients the cell needs.
“The cell ‘wants’–so to speak–to have control over what gets in and what gets out,” Szostak says, explaining that in modern cells, channels open or close to admit the proper molecules in the proper amounts. “But if you’re thinking about the origin of life, then obviously those complicated protein pumps and channels weren’t around.”
According to Szostak, this means that early cell membranes would themselves have had to be permeable. “You still want something that’s going to enclose the genetic material and keep it from floating away,” he says, “but you need something that’s also going to allow the building blocks of the genetic material to get in.”
Szostak’s lab had already created membrane sacs out of molecules called fatty acids–long chains of carbon atoms that make up part of the lipids in modern cell membranes. In the current study, they substituted different fatty acids with specific structural characteristics until they created a membrane with the appropriate permeability. They found that fatty acids that were branched, and therefore unable to pack tightly together, allowed sugar molecules (key building blocks of nucleotides, which in turn make up RNA and DNA) to pass through. Fatty acids with shorter carbon chains or bulky “headgroups” had a similar effect.
Guided by these findings, the group created a protocell out of fatty acids that were likely present in the earth’s early environment. They were able to get nucleotides themselves to cross the membrane, showing that early cells could have taken up such molecules without protein channels.
Szostak says that’s important, but only a part of the problem. Once inside the cell, the nucleotides need to be able to assemble into polymers that–like the DNA in modern cells–store genetic information. Modern cells replicate their DNA by “unzipping” the two strands of the molecule, and then using the individual strands as templates to create two daughter strands, again with the help of proteins. The second half of Szostak’s experiment showed that his protocell could have carried out the template-copying part of the reaction.
The group created a protocell containing a single-stranded genetic molecule–a DNA template. Then, says Szostak, “we added nucleotides to the outside of the [protocell], let them diffuse across the membrane to the inside, and then take part in a template-copying reaction”–all without the help of proteins.

Simple Membranes Could Allow Nutrients To Pass Into Primitive Cells

When the first cells developed, how could they bring molecules from the environment into their living interior without the specialized structures found on the modern cell membrane? A research team from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has found that the sort of very simple membrane that may have been present on primitive cells can easily allow small molecules – including the building blocks of RNA and DNA – to pass thorough. Their report will appear in the journal Nature and is receiving early online release.
“We have found that membranes made from fatty acids and related molecules – the most likely components of primitive cell membranes – have properties very different from those of the modern cell membrane, which uses specialized pumps, channels or pores to control what gets in and out,” says Jack Szostak, PhD, of the MGH Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, the report’s senior author. “Our report shows that very primitive cells may have absorbed nutrients from their environment, rather than having to manufacture needed materials internally, which supports one of two competing theories about fundamental properties of these cells.”
How nutrients could get into cells without the specialized mechanisms of the modern cell membrane has been a mystery. The environment in which primitive cells formed probably included many types of fatty acids, which could have been supplied through a couple of scenarios. Fatty-acid molecules could have been formed by the action of heat and minerals deep beneath the earth’s surface and then brought to the surface through deep-sea vents, hot springs or geysers; or they could have come to the earth’s surface on meteorites. No matter the original source, when fatty acids are concentrated in water, they will naturally assemble into membranes which then close into tiny spherical structures called vesicles.
Szostak’s team carefully analyzed vesicles comprised of different fatty acid molecules and identified particular features that made membranes more or less permeable to potential nutrient molecules. They found that, while large molecules such as strands of DNA or RNA could not pass through fatty acid membranes, the simple sugar molecules and individual nucleotides that make up larger nucleic acids easily crossed the membrane.
To further explore the function of a fatty acid cell membrane, the researchers used activated nucleotides they developed for this study that will copy a DNA template strand without needing the polymerase enzyme usually required for DNA replication. After placing template molecules inside fatty-acid vesicles and adding the activated nucleotides to the external environment, they found that additional DNA was formed within the vesicles, confirming that the nucleotide molecules were passing through the fatty-acid membranes.
“Today we have complex cells living in a chemically simple environment, but the primitive environment was chemically very complex, allowing for the synthesis of complex organic chemicals that cannot be formed in today’s environment,” Szostak explains. “We think that the first cells were very simple and assembled from molecules present in localized environments on the early earth.”
For many years, Szostak’s team has been working on the development of a ‘protocell’ that would replicate probable features of the earth’s first cells. “The chemistry of nucleic acid replication is the remaining hard part,” he says. “We’re putting a lot of effort into nucleic acid chemistry, but there are also other interesting and important questions – like how cells made the transition from very leaky early membranes to today’s very impermeable membranes – that we are starting to study.”

People Are Out of Joint as LA Shuts down Most Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

The LA City Council approved an ordinance on Tuesday that would close down most of the 1,000 medical marijuana dispensaries making the use of marijuana in the remaining outlets illegal.
The city counsel met Tuesday and voted to close down the majority of medical marijuana dispensaries. This is a set back for backers of medical marijuana who worked for years to get it legal. It is a victory for community groups that have complained about the increase of the dispensaries near residential neighborhoods, schools and parks.
“These are out of control,” Councilman Ed Reyes, chairman of the Council’s planning and who oversaw the writing of the ordinance. “Our city has more of these than Starbuckses.” Los Angeles has more of the outlets than any other city in the dozen or so states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
The measure, which passed on a 9-to-3 vote, is to impose strict rules on the location of the dispensaries. The remaining ones are to be moved to more densely industrial zones and will have to restrict their hours. The ordinance will limit the number of dispensaries. to 70, but it appears that there will be even fewer.
Many pot peddlers said today that they will be unable to find suitable locations because the City Council also added such tough restrictions. It imposes stringent security measures and requires them to operate as nonprofit collectives, with each patient limited to having cannabis prescriptions filled from just one dispensary. "To us it looks like the council has a de facto ban on medical marijuana," said Kris Hermes, spokesman for the pro-medical marijuana group Americans for Safe Access.
They also said that landlords, aware that there are very few buildings that can meet the tight location restrictions, are already jacking up rents. "We are prepared to go forward and stop this ordinance," said Dan Lutz, who operates the Green Oasis dispensary. "I regret that we have to go this route."
Officials with the Los Angeles Police Department said they are working on a plan to close the shops that were not properly registered, but are hoping for voluntary compliance with the law.

Tune-Deaf People May Hear Sour Note Unconsciously

People with tune deafness aren’t able to tell when a musician accidentally strikes the wrong note in a song, but their brains know the difference. Researchers from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found that people with tune deafness, an auditory processing disorder in which a person with normal hearing has trouble distinguishing notes in a melody, are able to detect a wrong note unconsciously.
Because tune deafness is a commonly occurring phenomenon that is largely inherited, the study of this disorder could enable scientists to use the tools of genetic research to better understand the differences between conscious and unconscious thought.
Neuroscientists have long been baffled by what separates the state of consciousness from unconsciousness. Other sensory disorders have been identified in which the brain perceives a stimulus outside of conscious awareness. However, because these disorders are typically caused by damage to the brain, there is an inconsistency in data from one patient to the next and researchers have difficulty finding a sufficient number of volunteer patients for clinical trials.
"The prevalence of tune deafness is surprisingly high–perhaps as much as 2 percent of the population is tune deaf–and it exists in an otherwise normal, uninjured brain," said James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD. "These factors, combined with the fact that tune deafness is largely genetic in origin, now raises the possibility of using tune deafness as a new way to study consciousness."
A person who is tune deaf is unable to perceive pitch, reproduce melodies, or identify deviations in a melody. According to geneticist Dennis Drayna, Ph.D., one of the study authors, not only is music not enjoyable for people with tune deafness, many of them don’t fully understand what music is. "For severely affected tune-deaf people, Yankee Doodle is no different than traffic noise in Manhattan. It’s fairly meaningless to them," he said.
Dr. Drayna worked closely with neuroimaging scientist Allen Braun, M.D., and others in NIDCD’s Division of Intramural Research to randomly screen 1,218 individuals using an online version of the Distorted Tunes Test. The Distorted Tunes Test is a standardized survey that tests a person’s ability to identify whether or not a short melody is played correctly.
The researchers then selected those volunteers who scored in the bottom 10 percent, screened them for hearing loss and other factors, and arrived at seven subjects with severe tune deafness who were otherwise medically normal and were willing to take part in the study. Ten healthy control subjects who performed normally on the Distorted Tunes Test also took part in the study.
Dr. Braun, Joseph McArdle, Ph.D., and others then used electroencephalography (EEG), a brain imaging technique that places electrodes around a person’s head and measures the electrical impulses of millions of neurons in the brain, to study these subjects further. The researchers measured the volunteers’ responses as they listened to an altered version of the Distorted Tunes Test in which the incorrect melodies had a single wrong note at the end. Volunteers listened to 102 familiar melodies, roughly half of which were correct, and half of which contained the errant last note. The researchers then sifted through the EEG data to isolate the brain’s response to a specific stimulus–in this case, the right or wrong note.
Of principal interest were two signals that brains normally generate when they are presented with a stimulus that doesn’t match what the brain expects to hear, such as the wrong note in a song. The first, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is a large negative signal that occurs roughly 200 milliseconds after the unexpected stimulus is heard; the second signal, the P300, is a large positive signal occurring roughly 300 milliseconds after the unexpected stimulus.
Because tune-deaf people consistently don’t recognize when a wrong note is played or sung, the researchers hypothesized that their brains would not generate the MMN or P300 signals, and as expected, this was true for the MMN signal. However, in the case of the P300 signal, tune-deaf volunteers were processing the wrong note in the same way as the normal participants, even though they weren’t consciously aware of the deviation. Other brain signals demonstrated that correct notes were being processed equally well for both tune-deaf and normal volunteers.
As for how a brain can register a wrong note without the person being aware of it, the researchers explain that the MMN and P300 signals are generated in different parts of the brain. The MMN is generated near the primary auditory cortex, in the brain’s temporal lobe, while the P300 is generated in the frontoparietal cortex, downstream from the auditory cortex. Normal brains process sounds in a series, with the frontal and parietal cortices receiving signals that have already been processed in the auditory cortex. In someone with tune deafness, however, the direct route for processing the wrong note may be disrupted, and signals are possibly being routed to the two regions through parallel pathways independent of each other. In this way, information about a wrong note may not be reaching the auditory cortex at all, while information reaching the frontoparietal cortex is not consciously perceived.
The researchers hope to conduct studies to better pinpoint the locations from which the MMN and P300 signals originate in the brain. In addition, the researchers will continue to pursue genetic studies on the causes of tune deafness which, if found, could help them and others grapple with the very puzzling notion of consciousness at the cellular and molecular level.

A Flexible Work Arrangement May Have Health Benefits

New research published in the Cochrane Library’s Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews has found that having flexibility in work schedules can have both physical and mental health benefits.
Examples of flexible or alternate work arrangements include self-schedule start and end times, telecommuting from home, job sharing, and gradual or partial retirement options.
In a review of 10 previous studies that included more than 16,000 people, researchers from Durham University and University of Newcastle, both in the U.K., and the University of Montreal found that having the ability to have more flexible work options in order to meet personal needs was associated with improvements in blood pressure, sleep quality, and overall mental health due to a reduction in stress.
The review also found that flexible work schedules was associated with improvements in alertness and heart rate, as well as secondary health outcomes such as perceived social support in the workplace and a sense of community.
Time spent at the workplace is often greater than the time spent with families and in personal pursuits. The consequences of losing an overall work-life balance can result in conditions such as obesity, heart disease, and certain cancers due to factors such as increased use of packaged and convenience foods (ie fast food), decrease in the amount of time spent doing physical activity, and the lack of sleep from anxiety.
Workplaces can use this study to their advantage. A worker who gets the appropriate amount of sleep, for example, is less tired and more productive during working hours. Having time to dedicate to one’s health can reduce overall healthcare costs for employers as well. And happy employees are often more engaged with company activities.
Flexible working options are becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the United Kingdom. In fact, last April, the British government extended a policy to allow parents of children aged 16 and under to request an alternative working arrangement to accommodate home life. The previous policy was restricted to parents of young children, aged six and under.