Chesapeake health education program and department of veterans affairs

It is our mission to equip these professionals with the skills needed to serve our veterans, and to provide support to the veterans themselves as they transition back into everyday life successfully. The veterans we serve know all too well the experiences of a life lived in near poverty conditions, sleeping in cheap hotels, or living in overcrowded and substandard housing conditions.

The common goal is to achieve independent, stable, permanent housing in their respective communities. Our History CHEP originated in as an organization with the sole purpose of providing quality continuing education to health care professionals. How do we directly support our veterans? Transitional Housing — a highly personal, caring and stable living environment located in three central areas of need throughout the east coast: Perry Point, MD, Washington, DC, and Charleston, SC Life-saving support to include case management, vocational rehabilitation, financial management skills and life skills training Read some of the amazing success stories of our CHEP Veterans.

Our Unique Funding Model Sets Us Apart We are able to fund our housing support efforts in three unique ways: Fees for services Our premier planning and delivery of local accredited continuing education training seminars and national conferences for healthcare providers When you take a CHEP course, you are not only receiving much needed training and continuing education, but dollars from each program go directly to fund transitional housing program needs.

The Virginia Department of Veterans Services recruits and screens candidates worldwide and assists with job placement. The hiring decisions, general scope of practice, and potential credentialing and educational opportunities are determined by the MMAC partner healthcare systems. Navy Medical Corps Officer.

To find out more, visit www. VA's TIDES project demonstrated the value of an evidence-based collaborative approach to depression management that has now been successfully incorporated into the VA system. The TIDES project provided guidelines for collaboration between mental health and primary care specialists with support for assessment and triage, patient education, and proactive follow-up of patients with symptoms of depression. The guidelines have helped VA systematically integrate collaborative care for depression into primary care settings throughout the VA health care system.

Several types of depression medications, or antidepressants, are used to treat depression and conditions in which depression is a component of the disease such as bipolar disorder. These drugs improve symptoms of depression by increasing the availability of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. It is believed that these chemicals help regulate brain circuits that affect emotions. Often, the first antipsychotic medication physicians choose for their patients does not work well.

Study researchers are working to determine research-based next steps for outpatients with major depressive disorder who have not had satisfactory outcomes to standard first-step treatments. The team will attempt to determine for which patients, and under what circumstances, it is better to switch to other antidepressants, versus augmenting the first medication that was prescribed. Researchers will also look at the results of augmenting the first medication with atypical antipsychotics, a newer generation of drugs used to help treat depression.

These results will be compared with those achieved by switching to or augmenting the first medication with more "typical" medications first developed in the s.

These "first generation" antipsychotics include Haldol and Thorazine. In the study, the research team recruited Veterans aged 58 or older with major depression. The Veterans were randomly assigned to receive either telemedicine or same-room psychotherapy.

The team found that telemedicine-delivered psychotherapy produced similar outcomes to in-person treatment. After a year of treatment, 39 percent of telemedicine patients and 46 percent of in-person therapy patients were no longer depressed, according to structured clinical interviews. The team concluded that telemedicine is a good option for depressed older adults who have barriers to mobility, have some kind of stigma, or are geographically isolated.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation— Researchers at eight VA medical centers throughout the nation are conducting a cooperative study CSP No. The therapy is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat refractory treatment-resistant depression, but past studies have typically not included patients who also have other mental conditions—such as PTSD or substance abuse—along with their depression.

Such combinations are more common in VA patients than in the general population. In TMS, clinicians take an electromagnetic coil, charge it with electricity, and apply it to specific points on the skull. The result is a targeted magnetic field that can affect brain cells in a specific area.

Participants in the study receive a minute session of this kind, five days per week, for six weeks. Researchers use the electronic coil to stimulate the participants' prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for emotions and mood regulation. It is helping to determine how psychological factors influence the outcomes of patients with coronary heart disease.

A total of 1, patients in the San Francisco area, including Veterans, were enrolled in the study between and Researchers have followed them ever since to understand the association between psychological factors and cardiovascular events.

A paper by study researchers, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provided evidence that the link between depression and heart disease may hinge largely on behavioral factors associated with depression, such as lack of exercise and increased rates of smoking.

The most recent study by the Heart and Soul team, published in , further explored whether depression is mainly a cause or a consequence of poor health behaviors. The team found that among patients with coronary heart disease, depressive symptoms were linked to a range of lifestyle risk factors.

These risk factors included smoking, low levels of physical activity, poor sleep quality, and poor medical adherence. The research showed that each of these lifestyle factors significantly worsened over a five-year period in depressed individuals, more so than in individuals who were not depressed.

This lends credence to the idea that depression is primarily a cause of poor health behaviors, rather than a consequence. Researchers continue to study this question, with the goal of generating additional insights to help guide prevention and treatment.

Mental disorders and heart attack risk— By examining the health histories of more than , Veterans over a seven-year period, researchers from the St. Louis VA Medical Center reported , in , that those with depression are at about 40 percent higher risk than others for having a heart attack.

General anxiety and panic disorder seem to raise the risk to a similar extent, and posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD also raises the risk—but to a lesser degree. Researchers are continuing to study whether treating these mental disorders reduces heart risk. Vascular depression— In a follow-up study, whose results were published in , researchers found that those who had depression in middle age were at an increased risk of developing vascular depression depression caused by reduced or blocked blood flow to the brain in old age, and that their mid-life depression could be a causal risk factor.

Ischemic heart disease— In , researchers at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System reported that Veterans with depression are more likely to complain of increased chest pain related to ischemic heart disease. Ischemia is a condition in which blood flow, and therefore oxygen, is restricted or reduced in a part of the body. Ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary artery disease, is the term given to heart problems caused by narrowed heart arteries. The research team's findings indicated that changes in depression symptoms could affect the perception of a patient's chest pain, or angina.

The greater the perception of chest pain, regardless of the actual extent of the disease, the greater the likelihood of cardiac intervention. Multiple procedures and tests are both costly and can adversely affect quality of life. In their study of Veterans, the team found that Veterans whose depression had begun recently were the ones most dramatically affected, reporting more chest pain and physical limitations, along with poorer quality of life.

Veterans who were persistently depressed also reported more problems in these areas than those with ischemic heart disease who were not depressed. Researchers use that data to improve VA's clinical performance. Cardiac catheterization is used to diagnose and treat cardiovascular conditions. During the procedure, a long thin tube called a catheter is inserted in an artery or vein in the groin, neck, or arm, and is threaded through the blood vessels to the heart. The procedure allows cardiologists to investigate what's going on in the heart, or to open blocked arteries impeding blood flow.

Nearly 3, of those Veterans were women. The researchers found that women Veterans who underwent the procedure tended to be younger and more obese than men, and that they were more likely to have PTSD or depression. They were also significantly less likely to have obstructive coronary disease, and consequently were less likely to have been prescribed heart medications.