Kozel shares tools and techniques for preventing depression, suicidal thoughts

Sep 29, 2021

September was National Suicide Prevention Month, and Florida State University has many programs and resources that provide tools and resources in spreading awareness, and many free or reduced cost resources for suicide prevention and enhancing mental health.

“FSU provides many effective tools for treating depression and dramatically reducing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Depression cannot currently be cured but can be managed so that people can live very productive and happy lives," says Dr. Kozel, a Professor and the Mina Jo Powell Endowed Chair in Neurological Sciences at Florida State University who works in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine.

Resources available for confidential communication include the FSU Counseling and Psychology Services, who are available to talk 24/7 at 850-644-8255. University Health Services can be reached at 850-644-6230. Students in an emergency are encouraged to contact the Florida State Police Department at 850-644-1234. These resources for mental health and suicide prevention can be used to refer a friend as well.

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Sep 26, 2021

FSU News

Kozel shares tools and techniques for preventing depression, suicidal thoughts

PRESS RELEASE

Jacob Goetz, Staff Writer

September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and Florida State University has many programs and resources that provide tools and resources in spreading awareness.

With suicide being declared a health epidemic by the World Health Organization, experts at Florida State shared their input and the accessibility of suicide prevention resources offered at FSU. Many of these resources are free and available at any time.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, suicide among college students is the second leading cause of death. College students are affected by suicide for many different reasons, some of the most common being depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation, sexual assault and financial stress.

Looking for the signs of poor mental health or suicidal tendencies can be an important factor as well. According to the Center for Disease Control, individuals who are experiencing suicidal tendencies have similar indicators. These include increased alcohol or drug use, extreme mood swings, visible signs of anxiety, withdrawal from a class or other social engagements and giving away valued possessions.

With college being a high-stress environment, these individual units of measurement for a change in mental health can occur almost instantaneously. To prevent these negative thoughts and behaviors, FSU offers many tools and resources for suicide prevention.

According to the Noles C.A.R.E. page, a suicide prevention program both online-based and in-person, FSU students have several different tools and resources available for them.

An expert of mental health at Florida State University shared his insight on the services offered at Florida State University for depression and suicide prevention. Dr. Andrew Kozel is a Professor and the Mina Jo Powell Endowed Chair in Neurological Sciences at Florida State University who works in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine. Dr. Kozel first shared his insight on the causes of suicidal thoughts and helpful prevention techniques.

“Depression as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors do not have a single cause," Kozel said. "They are the result of a complex mixture of biology, psychology and environment. Sometimes these episodes appear to have clear precipitants like a trauma or significant loss but can occur without these obvious precipitants as well.”

Dr. Kozel then went on to share helpful tools and techniques for preventing depression and suicidal thoughts. Dr. Kozel said that several tools have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing a person's likelihood of experiencing negative thoughts.

“Engaging in healthy behaviors will benefit your brain similar to the rest of your body," Kozel said. "These include regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, keeping a regular sleep-wake cycle, maintaining social connectedness, limiting toxins such as alcohol or marijuana, and seeking help when symptoms occur.”

Dr. Kozel was able to add insight on the effectiveness of the mental health resources Florida State University offers.

“FSU provides many effective tools for treating depression and dramatically reducing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Depression cannot currently be cured but can be managed so that people can live very productive and happy lives". Dr. Kozel said that many of the free or reduced cost resources available at Florida State are effective in reducing depression and suicide prevention.

"These treatments such as psychotherapy and medications will work for the majority of patients. There are some patients, however, who cannot either tolerate these treatments or for whom they are not effective. We are leading several research efforts to study new treatments at FSU including various forms of neuromodulation.”

According to the association, treating your mental health is just as important as treating your physical health. Many different resources and techniques proven by the association have been successful in helping others prevent suicidal tendencies.

Individuals who want to prevent suicidal tendencies in others also have access to many mechanisms. Five suggestions according to the Center for Disease Control are to ask someone about their mental health and regularly check-up with friends to ensure they are okay, keep them safe by trying your best to reduce triggers of depression or limit their access to lethal objects, listen to their experiences and what they need at that moment, help them connect and socialize and stay connected and follow up on their mental health status.

News of the Week

Study explores how COVID-19 influenced decisions of resource-limited mothers

BY: ELIZABETH CHAILOSKY , ANNA PRENTISS | PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has left many families feeling vulnerable. A new Florida State University study suggests single mothers have been put in a particularly tough spot when choosing childcare or schooling.

Melissa Radey, a professor in the College of Social Work, and Joedrecka Brown Speights, a professor in the College of Medicine, conducted a study that explored how COVID-19 influenced the economic, social, psychological and physical well-being of low-income, single-mother families during the early months of the pandemic.

Their article, “I Don’t Have Much of a Choice: Low-Income Single Mothers’ COVID-19 School and Care Decisions,” suggests that single mothers have had “no choice” in their school and care decisions during the pandemic.

“The lack of choice mothers feel in the care decisions for their young children during the COVID-19 pandemic is concerning,” Radey said. “We talked to mothers about their care decisions for Fall 2020, and the angst mothers feel likely continues today amid the surge of Delta-variant COVID-19 cases.”

The study showed that mothers’ decisions mainly centered around three themes — the fear of the COVID-19 virus, work requirements and child needs.

“Putting children first led to limited options,” the study noted. “Few mothers contemplated options beyond trying to meet necessities; mothers made decisions largely on the basis of constraints.”

“During the interviews, it was clear the majority of mothers focused on their children’s safety and financial well-being,” Radey said. “The bottom line was that all mothers wanted to do what was best for their children when making decisions.”

Radey and Brown Speights, with the help of internal funding from the FSU Office of Research, interviewed 34 low-income single mothers about their experiences during the pandemic.

Race was the only socioeconomic factor that seemed to influence the decision-making process. Given the high levels of mistrust in government officials, Black mothers were more likely to select home-based care than white mothers.

“We need to find ways to increase choice,” Radey said. “Providing timely, accurate information about the risk of COVID-19 and available care options is one first step to promote informed choice as well as the well-being of these vulnerable families.”

The study has been selected to feature in Wiley’s Research Headlines, a prestigious publishing company. Wiley’s Research Headlines is known for sending summaries of the most newsworthy research to thousands of journalists and media personnel across the country.

“So much of what we have heard about the impacts of COVID-19 on families comes from popular media accounts,” said Jim Clark, dean and professor of the College of Social Work. “This research study uses ‘experience–close,’ social science methods to hear directly from single mothers about their pandemic experiences, especially the difficult decisions they face in caring for their children. Dr. Radey and Dr. Brown Speights have produced a sobering analysis.”

Radey and her team hope that this data will help inform efforts to aid single-mother families as they make essential childcare decisions during emergency situations in the future.

For more information, visit https://csw.fsu.edu/.

News of the Week

Sutin, Todd part of NIH grant team investigating how sleeping in low oxygen affects body weight and health

BY: KATHLEEN HAUGHNEY | PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 |

A Florida State University researcher has received a National Institutes of Health grant to investigate how daily low oxygen exposure affects weight, body composition and metabolic health.

Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology Claire Berryman will receive $2.25 million over five years to examine whether a healthy, calorie restricted diet combined with sleeping in an environment that mimics oxygen levels of higher elevations can be used as an intervention to help individuals with obesity lose weight and improve health.

Berryman and her team will follow 60 participants over eight weeks. Participants will receive a tent and generator system that creates a low oxygen or a normal oxygen environment around their bed in their home. The low oxygen environment will be similar to the oxygen levels in Aspen, Colorado and the normal oxygen environment will mimic sea level.

Participants will sleep in the tent for at least eight hours each night. The idea for the research stems from work Berryman conducted as a postdoctoral researcher with the Army, looking at how body weight, energy expenditure and appetite were altered in military personnel operating at high elevation.

“Military personnel living and working at high altitude for three weeks lost more than double the amount of weight we would expect under the same conditions at sea level,” she said. “This was detrimental to a population trying to maintain body weight, muscle mass and peak performance.”

Though Berryman’s initial work had looked at personnel trying to maintain their current weight and muscle mass, she wondered how that environment could affect body fat, particularly in those struggling with weight loss.

“We want to see if overnight low oxygen exposure, when used in combination with a healthy, low calorie diet, makes weight loss easier to achieve and maintain,” she said.

There are several ways low oxygen exposure may alter body weight and metabolic health. Research has shown our bodies burn more calories while at rest in low oxygen compared to normal oxygen environments, likely due to activation of the nervous system. Researchers also have found that appetite decreases with exposure to lower oxygen levels, possibly due to increased levels of the hormone leptin. When leptin levels are increased, appetite is suppressed, making it easier to eat smaller portions. Finally, low oxygen environments have been shown to shift our body’s fuel preference to use more glucose and, over time, improve glucose and insulin concentrations.

Participants in the study will be between the ages of 22 and 45 with a body mass index between 30 and 40 kg/m2. For adults, a person with a BMI of 30 kg/m2 or more is considered obese.

Participants also will be provided with all their meals during this period to standardize food and nutrient intake.

“A big part of this intervention is the diet,” Berryman said, “We know proper diet and exercise are the cornerstone of good health. If shown to be beneficial, low oxygen exposure would be recommended in combination with diet and exercise, not as a replacement. So, we wanted to test our hypothesis in the context of current recommendations for weight loss, which include consuming a well-balanced, calorie restricted diet.”

In addition to Berryman, several other FSU researchers will contribute to this work. Professors Robert Hickner and Chester Ray and Assistant Professor Stephen Hennigar from the FSU College of Health and Human Sciences, Professor Angelina Sutin and Physician and Associate Professor Gregory Todd from the FSU College of Medicine, Associate Professor Hongyuan Cao from the FSU College of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Eric Ravussin from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center are co-investigators on the grant.

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Sep 16, 2021

FSU Behavioral Health at Apalachee Center

WCTV

Apalachee Center, FSU partner to provide necessary mental health care

PRESS RELEASE

The uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic can take its toll on mental health. The Apalachee Center and Florida State University have teamed up to help bring the necessary mental health to better serve the community.

The FSU Behavioral Health at Apalachee Center clinic is the first of its kind in the state and helps provide mental health services to anyone in the community.

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Sep 15, 2021

Tallahassee Democrat

Capital Medical Society honors outstanding physician, gives posthumous Humanitarian award

PRESS RELEASE

Two physicians with ties to the Florida State College of Medicine were honored at the Capital Medical Society's Celebration Awards Dinner. Dr. Sergio Ginaldi, a former clinical assistant professor, was posthumously presented the I.B. Harrison, M.D. Humanitarian Award. Dr. David Saint, who taught cardiac physiology to Program in Medical Sciences (PIMS) students at FSU, was presented the Outstanding Physician Award at the Sept. 14 event held at the FSU University Center Club.

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Sep 14, 2021

NBC2 News

COVID-19 numbers improving; experts warn it could be short-lived

PRESS RELEASE

By NBC2 News
Sept. 14, 2021

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Daily COVID-19 cases and hospitalization numbers have steadily dropped over the past three weeks in Florida, but infections disease experts said the reprieve could very well be short-lived.

Daily case averages are at their lowest point since late July and hospitalizations are lower than they’ve been since early August. That comes as great news to Governor Ron DeSantis.

“The fortunate news is we’re seeing the declines all across the state,” said Governor DeSantis at a Tuesday press conference.

The Delta wave brought the highest daily case numbers and hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic.

Infectious disease experts said while they knew Delta would be bad, they didn’t predict it would be as devastating as it has proven to be.

“Three out of our 10 deaths that have been recorded in Florida have been since Delta,” said Dr. Christopher Uejio, a public health expert at Florida State University.

And while recent numbers may be painting an optimistic picture, UF epidemiologist Dr. Cindy Prins pointed to last year’s winter spike as a reason Floridians shouldn’t let their guard down.

“I think we’re still going to see another peak associated with that Thanksgiving and also winter holiday travel,” said Dr.Prins. “So it’s a worry. We’re much closer to that than we were last year and we may not get a really good break from this.”

Last year’s winter spike was worse than that seen over the summer. Experts said individual decisions will determine whether this year follows the same path.

“If everyone is trying to see their family members in the state over the holiday break, we should expect another increase again,” said Dr. Uejio.

CDC models project Florida’s current Delta wave will bottom out in October, roughly the same time period the state began experiencing its winter wave last year.

Both scientists we spoke with agreed COVID isn’t likely going away any time soon.

They said ultimately vaccinations and natural immunity will hopefully reduce caseloads and improve health outcomes to a tolerable level.