- Behavioral HealthGeneral Page Tier 3BlogCue the shocking emoji: A staggering 90 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 are using social media. When used correctly, there are benefits to social media, but the negative impacts are contributing to this country’s historic mental health crisis. Excessive use can lead to cyberbullying, low self-esteem, addictive behavior, peer pressure and unrealistic expectations of how their body should look. Dr. Rakesh Goyal—a psychiatrist at Luminis Health—estimates that nearly 70 percent of his young patients have experienced a negative impact to their mental health because of social media. It’s become such a problem several Maryland school districts are now suing social media companies alleging their addictive platforms are contributing to mental health problems among teens. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy even issued a warning recently, calling the impacts of social media on children an “urgent crisis.” It should be a wake-up call for all of us. That’s why we’re here to help. Pros of Youth Social Media Use Let’s first begin with the positive aspects of social media. Teens can stay connected with friends, meet new ones with shared interests, find a sense of community and feel more accepted, as well as explore and express themselves. Of course, each child is different, and you know your child better than anyone. It’s important to realize the impacts of social media can depend on what they do and see online, their preexisting strengths or vulnerabilities, and their living environment. Those between the ages of 10 to 15 years old are especially vulnerable to the influence of social media because their brains and emotions are still developing. Growing Brains and Evolving Emotions The brains of preteens, typically between the ages of 10 to 12 years, undergo changes that make social rewards start to feel much more satisfying. Receptors for oxytocin and dopamine—our “happy hormones”—increase, making young teens extra sensitive to attention and admiration from others. At the same time, adolescents are passing through a stage of psychological development in which they give a lot of importance to acceptance and validation from their peers. The number of views, likes and shares are often important to social media users. It can cause small bursts of dopamine in our brains. Young people especially crave more and more of the “happy hormone” release. At the same time, a hurtful comment or being ignored by others can cause negative self-esteem and extreme sadness. Protecting Your Child There are steps you can take with your child to encourage responsible use of social media and limit some of its negative effects. Consider these tips: Delay the age at which your child can use social media to 13 and above. Educate your child about the risks, pitfalls and red flags of social media use, especially about sharing personal information online. Monitor your child’s social media accounts and let them know beforehand that you’ll be doing so. You can mute accounts that are inappropriate. Set reasonable limits on how much time your child can spend on social media each day; include parameters about what time of day they are allowed to use it. Remind them to treat others on social media the same way they would treat others in person. If they wouldn’t say something out loud, they shouldn’t say it online. Be an example of healthy social media use for your child and report problematic content. Social media is here to stay. But we must ensure teenagers enjoy the its benefits while protecting their mental health. If your teen is feeling depressed and needs immediate help, Luminis Health has a dedicated Behavioral Health Urgent Walk-In Care at our Lanham campus. It’s open Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. No appointment necessary. Learn more about our services here. Author Rakesh Goyal, MD, is a psychiatrist at Luminis Health specializing in children and adolescents.0
- Physical TherapyGeneral Page Tier 3BlogFalls Prevention Awareness Week is Sept. 21-25. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: One in four Americans ages 65 and older falls each year. Every 11 seconds, an older adult receives treatment in the emergency room for a fall. Every 19 minutes, an older adult dies from a fall. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury. They most common cause of nonfatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults. As we age, our homes provide new challenges and obstacles. These challenges and obstacles remain unseen until a problem arises. Our bodies also undergo subtle (or not so subtle) changes that create a fall risk. Even in our own home. Our homes are our castles and should be places that are safe and comfortable regardless of any physical limitations. Most people prefer to stay in their homes as they age, but are unsure of how to make changes if/when needed. When faced with mobility or cognitive changes or decline, the preference to stay at home may not remain realistic without adapting the current living environment. Here are some tips and tools to reduce the risk of falling at home and improve your ease of mobility. Clear walking pathways: Remove cords, papers, shoes, pet toys and laundry from your walking paths. Also, be aware of slippery surfaces and spills on the floor. Clean up or cover up a spill immediately. Beware of uneven surfaces in your home: Changes in flooring surfaces and sunken living areas that are not highly contrasted are easy to miss. You may fall and trip on these surfaces. Highlight steps with lighting or color striping. Work with a contractor to eliminate transition strips from carpet to tile. Even throw rugs, if not secured, are enough of an uneven surface to trip you. Add good lighting inside and outside your home: Dark hallways, poorly lit closets, stairs without lighting, doors to enter/exit the home and outside walkways without lighting increase your risk for falling. Home improvement stores have many lighting options to resolve this problem. Add supports in the bathroom: Consider adding grab bars next to your toilets as you enter or exit your shower. There are many fashionable options available at home improvement stores and various online vendors. Make your stairs safe: If you must navigate stairs to enter/exit your home or within your home, please use a well-installed railing for the full length of the stairs. It is best to install two railings if possible and have stairs carpeted. Stairs that are chipped, crumbling or with loose railings are risky. Please get these repaired. Organize frequently used items at home within your reach: Remember what your “strike zone” looked like playing baseball or softball? This is the zone you should store your most frequently used items. Getting up and down from the floor or using ladders in the home can prove difficult so, if you are unsteady, make these changes ASAP. Read the AARP HomeFit Guide: AARP has an online and printed edition guiding you on a room-by-room, area-by-area home inspection to identify fall risks and provide solutions for these risks. Visit the AARP website for details. At Anne Arundel Medical Center, we have a specialized fall prevention program. We send specially trained clinicians to your home to provide feedback on how to optimize the safety of your home while preserving the components that you love. Next, we recommend a follow-up appointment in our outpatient clinics. At our outpatient clinics, we provide intervention to minimize the risk of falls. All steps are designed so you return home with a program tailored to your specific needs to continue to maintain a lifestyle to lower your risk of falls. Our goal is to help our loved ones age in place. This allows them to live their life in the home they love. Author Marilyn Pfeiffer and Jennifer Buchanan are physical therapists at Anne Arundel Medical Group (AAMG) Physical Therapy.0
- Employee SpotlightGeneral Page Tier 3BlogWhen you hear the words “information systems,” the first thing you probably envision is the basement of Wayson Pavilion. A space filled with computers, boxes piled on top of each other and the sound of incessant typing and clicking as our team of techs work on solving the next work ticket in queue. You probably also hear a steady hum of chatter as they talk into their headpieces assisting callers with questions or problems. All of these mental pictures are correct. Throw in there some numbers, a couple of emails and mix it with dedication, passion and commitment. “What folks don’t see behind the scenes is that we’re all champions,” says Monica Creek, systems analyst and September Champion Award winner. “Our world in IS goes beyond just sitting at a desk and looking at a computer. We have to figure out the best ways to make life easier, make things more meaningful and make the patient experience much easier when they come in the door.” Before joining Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC), Monica was training as a medical assistant in Arlington, Va. She also trained as a nursing assistant, but that venture didn’t last too long. “I went for my first clinical procedure where I had to demonstrate certain competencies,” she recalls. “While I was doing an incision and drainage with a patient, he started to scream and I started to get butterflies in my stomach. That’s when the physician there with me confirmed I was not going to be a nurse.” Today she laughs about it and is grateful for the experience. Her medical field experience, paired with her love for administrative tasks and analytical thinking, are skills that have led Monica to find her dream job. After getting tired of hours spent commuting, Monica decided it was time to move closer to home and look for new opportunities. Shortly after applying to AAMC, she received a call and, ultimately, the position. “I understand the concept of day-to-day patient care, though I’m not a nurse,” she says. “Sometimes that clinical aspect helps me make the picture more real for the other analysts I work.” The analytics world is not only about data. Monica and her team use analytics to solve all sorts of problems, whether it’s improving discharge turnaround times so patients can leave the hospital and go home in a timely fashion or making workflows more meaningful for staff. “Being a system analyst can be very challenging because you need to understand operationally the application you support as well as the lives of our caregivers,” Monica says. “Coming back every day to keep trying to solve issues is what brings me the greatest joy in what I do. Health care is very complex and there’s never one solution for every single thing. I enjoy coming to work knowing that we still have to work on this and that it’s not about applying a Band-Aid to a situation.” Pro tip: “Jump at every moment that comes your way. Try it and, if you don’t like it, take ‘door number two.’ I’m a single mom and I teach that to my children every single day. Don’t get caught up in what went wrong, think about how you can make things better. That’s my philosophy. Who cares if we made a mistake? If we were all perfect, we wouldn’t be here.” If you know a great individual or a fantastic team going above and beyond to make a difference, make sure to let us know! Looking for a career in health care? We invite you to join a diverse and collaborative team of professionals working together to innovate the future of health care for our entire region. Check out our career opportunities.0
- Weight Loss, PediatricsGeneral Page Tier 3BlogChildhood obesity is a debilitating disease that can affect children physically and mentally. As a child, it’s easy to gravitate toward snacks that come in bright, colorful wrapping or grab a tasty, sugary drink without thinking much of the long-term effects. But, if your child combines consistent poor diet choices with other factors, this can lead to childhood obesity. Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic in the U.S., with the percentage of children and adolescents affected by obesity tripling since the 1970s. Data shows one in five school age children and young people in the U.S. has obesity, making it the most common chronic disease of childhood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Parents should be aware of factors that contribute to childhood obesity. These include genetics, metabolism, eating behaviors and physical activity, sleep schedule and negative events that a child might have experienced. There are health risks linked to childhood obesity that can have a harmful effect on the body in more than one way. Obese children can experience high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes, breathing problems and joint discomfort, among other conditions. Obese children are also susceptible to psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. It’s important that you help your child develop a healthy relationship with food from the very beginning. My best advice for parents and guardians is to keep it practical, primarily focusing on nutrition and physical activity. Here are some steps in preventing childhood obesity: Develop a healthy relationship between a child and food. Focus on the health factor, not the body factor to prevent developing a negative relationship between a child and food. Be careful how you talk about weight. Tell your child you want to help them focus on eating foods that are healthy. Eat healthy. Eating five or more servings of fruits and veggies per day can reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, cancer and early death. Get more hours of exercise per day. I recommend 60 minutes every day. This includes walking or any other aerobic activity. An easy way to make exercise fun is for your child to get involved in a team sport, play with other children in the park or go biking. If you yourself practice this, your child will be more likely to do it and develop it as a habit. Remember, they look up to you! Stay away from sugary drinks and snacks. Focus more on the produce aisle and stay away from high sugar drinks and high calorie snacks. Limit these to special occasions so your child begins to develop the habit of having these every once in a while and not as frequently. Instead, try a new fruit or vegetable every month. Practice mindful eating. We tend to eat more when we’re distracted. Instead of watching TV, practice mindful eating and being present. This also allows for more family time and having conversations with each other. Sleep. This is very important. If your child sleeps less than nine hours a night, he or she is more likely to be obese. Make sure your child has a regular sleep schedule. This will also help your child have the energy he or she needs to get through the day. If needed, consider seeing a nutritionist. It won’t be an overnight change, but you can start by changing your child’s diet and encouraging healthy weight loss (no more than two pounds a week if they’re a child or adolescent, and no more than one pound per month if they’re between two and five to make sure they get the nutrition they need to grow). When you make these little changes, you’re setting them up to make good decisions for the rest of their lives. Author Deon Edgerson-George, MD, is an internal medicine physician and pediatrician at Luminis Health Primary Care.0
- Behavioral Health, PediatricsGeneral Page Tier 3BlogAs a parent of four, I understand how stressful it can be to carry that title. Being a parent means carrying a world of responsibilities. We have to watch out for all sorts of external triggers – think peer pressure, social media and school shootings – to help our children navigate through this world as best as possible. And we’re also needed to help them through their various developmental stages. One of those stages is puberty and all the mood swings that come with it. If you’re a parent, you’ve probably experienced the eye-rolling, the snappy response out of nowhere, and the need to ask the same question multiple times before something gets done (asking them to look up from their phone during dinner!). Sometimes those behaviors are normal, it’s your child navigating new emotions and developmental changes. But sometimes, it’s a result of something more than just puberty or “kids being kids.” I have been working in the mental health field for the past 30 years and a lot has changed. What used to be a slight increase in mental health problems reported over the years has turned into an ever-increasing peak. But why? Think about everything that society has dumped on kids nowadays: Anxiety based on school safety, higher expectations, challenging curriculums and, of course, there’s social media. This is a lot of “weight” for a child to carry. How do you know what’s normal and what’s not? Here are a few warning signs that can help you tell if your child needs another layer of support and/or professional help: Elementary Age Change in behavior or change in play (hitting, bullying, biting). Intensity of emotions (anger or fear). Increased physical complaints. Change in sleep patterns (nightmares). Difficulty concentrating. Middle School Age Prolonged or strong feelings of irritability or anger. Difficulty relating to peers. Thinking and/or talking about suicide. Avoidance of friends and social activities. Confused thinking or problems concentrating. High School Age Excessive worry or fear. Feeling excessively sad or low. Extreme mood changes. Abuse of substances (alcohol and drugs). Thinking and/or talking about suicide. The best thing you can do as a parent is provide a safe, nurturing home and community with realistic limits on social media and screen time. Give them a sense of stability and a true balance of exercise, activities, nutrition, family meals and something I call the “gift of time” for optimal emotional health. The gift of time is listening without interruption and giving one’s full attention if even for 15-30 minutes a day. Take the time to listen – really listen – to your child without interruption and judgement. Encourage them, foster their independence and above all, love them unconditionally! Providing stability among our world’s instability is one of the most critical components to supporting our children and teenagers. Ask questions, find resources and learn more at askAAMC.org/HealthyMinds. Author Cindy Radovic, MA, BA, BSN Board Certified, is the manager of Mental Health Services at Anne Arundel Medical Center’s (AAMC) Emergency Department. To schedule an appointment with her, call 443-481-3519.0
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