Recovery Assistants Foundation is a charitable organization that offers hope for recovery for those struggling with mental health conditions such as ADD, ADHD, depression, addictions, bi-polar, anxiety disorders and the results of childhood abuse.

The Foundation provides support services and programs designed to treat the whole person, by addressing their needs in the areas of mental, physical, nutritional and spiritual wellness -a holistic approach to healing.

Healthy Minds For a Healthy Community - Impact on Lives

* Individuals are given the emotional, mental and financial support they need to balance brain chemistry.

* By receiving a clear diagnosis, behaviors improve and stigmas are replaced with knowledge.

* Clients learn to function in their lives - becoming more productive at work, home care, in dealing with debt/financial issues, and participation in life.

* Communication skills are improved allowing marriages and families to unite and relationships to heal.

* Children show positive change in behavior - self esteem and communication increases, grades improve, violence decreases, friendships and other relationships get better.

* Parents are prepared with resources to care for their child and empowered with knowledge of their child’s physical and emotional needs.

* Skills are learned to heal from abuse and develop boundaries.

* Leaders maintain integrity and passion for what they are called to do - gaining confidence to teach, disciple and lead with health and wholeness.

* Individuals have the resources to stay clean and sober from addictions.

* Goals that clients have set are achieved in every area of life from education and employment to spiritual walk and character development.

* Through counseling, support groups and other resources, clients become healthy and create positive change in their community.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

From past research, it's known that the children of mothers who smoked during pregnancy are at greater risk of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).

Young people with ADHD are not only at increased risk of starting to smoke cigarettes, they also tend to become more seriously addicted to nicotine and more vulnerable to environmental factors such as having friends or parents who smoke.

It appears that those with more ADHD related symptoms such as prominent inattention, distraction, overactivity or impulsivity of the smokers, the more serious their dependence on nicotine.

Dr. Timothy Wilens, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and co-author of a recent study, stated that, "it looks like interplay between the dopamine system, more substantially related to ADHD and addiction, and the cholinergic system related to smoking is probably important". (The study was supported in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.)

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Popularity: 15% [?]

Chronic, heavy marijuana use during adolescence, which is a critical period of ongoing brain development, is associated with poorer performance on thinking tasks, including slower psychomotor speed and poorer complex attention, verbal memory and planning ability.

Research supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows that it is evident even after a month of stopping marijuana use. There may be partial recovery of verbal memory functioning within the first three weeks of abstinence from marijuana, but complex attention skills continue to be affected.

Not only are their thinking abilities worse, their brain activation to cognitive tasks is abnormal. The tasks are fairly easy, such as remembering the location of objects, and they may be able to complete the tasks, but the adolescent marijuana users are using more of their parietal and frontal cortices to complete the tasks. Their brain is working harder than it should.

Girls may be at an even greater risk than boys.

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Popularity: 14% [?]

Methamphetamine is one of the most addictive and neurotoxic drugs of abuse and it produces large increases in dopamine, a brain chemical associated with feelings of pleasure and reward — both by increasing dopamine’s release from nerve cells and by blocking its reuptake.

Using positron emission tomography (PET) to track tracer doses of Methamphetamine in humans’ brains, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory found that meth was slow to clear the brain.

“This slow clearance of methamphetamine from such widespread brain regions may help explain why the drug has such long-lasting behavioral and neurotoxic effects.” Methamphetamine is known to produce lasting damage not only to dopamine cells but also to other brain regions, including white matter, that are not part of the dopamine network" stated chemist Joanna Fowler, lead author on the study.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

Seminar on Drug Free Solutions to Mental Health Disorders: Nutrition, Mindfulness & Detoxification

By Dr. Charles Gant

The seminar outline includes substance abuse and dependence, ADHD, anxiety disorders, and a roadmap to brain healing.

Seminar Objectives

1- Understand the true meaning of the DSM IV definition of mental disorders as heterogeneous (many causalities).

2- Contrast drug treatments (disease suppression) and drug free nutritional treatments (life enhancement) goals and objectives, and define appropriate roles for both in the treatment of mental disorders.

3- Compare the four main kinds of interventions utilized by both Conventional and Non-conventional and distinguish subspecialties in each area and their roles.

4- Differentiate the four kinds of molecular interventions (nutritional/detoxification, bio-identical hormones, herbal and pharmaceutical) and critique these based on safety, efficacy, cost and difficulty of administration for various acute and chronic disorders.

5- Contrast Orthomolecular approach (nutritional restoration, detoxification, bio-identical hormone replacement approach) with pharmacological approach and discuss how both approaches can be combined to provide the best care.

Seminars 2008

October 15 - Indianapolis, Indiana
October 16 - Cincinnati, Ohio
October 17 - Columbus, Ohio

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Popularity: 13% [?]

Many people are unfamiliar with the term “Naturopathy.” The definition is presented here as recorded by Congress in 1931 in The Federal Dictionary of Occupational Titles, Section 079.101-014, "Naturopathic Physician." This definition is based on a law passed by Congress in 1929 and signed into law by President Coolidge and is still in effect today. This law recognizes Naturopathy as an independent and non-medical healing art.

"Diagnoses, treats and cares for patients, using a system of practice that bases treatment on physiological functions and abnormal conditions on natural laws governing the human body: Utilizes physiological, psychological and mechanical methods, such as air, water, light, heat, earth, phototherapy, food and herb therapy, psychotherapy, electrotherapy, naturopathic corrections and manipulation, and natural methods or modalities, together with natural medicines, natural processed foods, and herbs and nature’s remedies. Excludes major surgery, therapeutic use of x-ray and radium, and the use of drugs, except those assimilable substances containing elements or compounds which are components of body tissues and are physiologically compatible to body processes for maintenance of life."

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Popularity: 13% [?]