NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – April 27, 2009 – Reducing on-the-job stress and strain may lower the risk of depression, new research shows.
Over a 10-year period, workers who initially reported having high-strain jobs but then later reported perceiving their jobs as being less stressful were at the same risk of major depression as their peers [...]
Archive for April, 2009
29 Apr
Easing job stress may ward off depression
28 Apr
Lithium and the Brain
Lithium And The Brain: New Light On Bipolar Treatment Drugs
ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2009) — Lithium has been established for more than 50 years as one of the most effective treatments for bipolar mood disorder. However, scientists have never been entirely sure exactly how it operates in the human brain.
Now, new research from Cardiff University scientists [...]
27 Apr
How Cigarettes Calm You Down
ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2009) — The calming neurological effects of nicotine have been demonstrated in a group of non-smokers during anger provocation. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions suggest that nicotine may alter the activity of brain areas that are involved in the inhibition of negative emotions such as [...]
26 Apr
Herbal Remedy: Teens & Cannabis
Herbal Remedy: Teens Often Use Cannabis For Relief, Not Recreation, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2009) — When legal therapies let them down, some teens turn to cannabis. A new study, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Substance Abuse, Treatment, Prevention and Policy suggests that around a third of teens who smoke cannabis on a [...]
26 Apr
Pain Relievers Appear Ineffective In Preventing Alzheimer’s In The Very Elderly
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009) — A new study shows that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as the pain relievers ibuprofen and naproxen, do not prevent Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. Instead, the risk of developing dementia in the study’s very elderly population (most were over age 83 when they developed dementia) was 66 [...]
25 Apr
Meditation Hopeful for Depression
Meditation Provides Hope For People With Depression
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009) — People with severe and recurrent depression could benefit from a new form of therapy that combines ancient forms of meditation with modern cognitive behaviour therapy, early-stage research by Oxford University psychologists suggests.
The results of a small-scale randomised trial of the approach, called mindfulness-based cognitive [...]
25 Apr
U.S. spends $9 billion on child mental illness
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – April 22, 2009 – Treating depression and other mental disorders in U.S. children cost $8.9 billion in 2006, making mental illness the most expensive condition to treat in childhood, U.S. government researchers reported on Wednesday.
An estimated 4.6 million children were treated for mental disorders in 2006 at an average cost of $1,931 [...]
19 Apr
My Sweet Emma
What do you do when your dog of age 16 passes away? Do you get another one right away? Is that taking the memory away from the other dog? What to do. My little toy poodle, Casey died in November 2008 of old age – it was a truly distressing time. I was adamant with [...]
18 Apr
Death Certificates Incomplete for Suicide Victims
FRIDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) — About half of those who commit suicide have been diagnosed with a mental disorder.
But fewer than 10 percent of their death certificates list mental disorder as a contributing factor, a new study shows.
Incomplete death certificates make it more difficult for health-care policymakers to create prevention strategies, said lead researcher [...]
18 Apr
Addiction Drug May Help Ease Fibromyalgia
FRIDAY, April 17 (HealthDay News) — Low doses of an inexpensive drug called naltrexone — already used for years to treat drug addiction — helped reduce pain and fatigue in women with the painful disorder fibromyalgia, a new study has found.
“Physicians have been using this off-label for a while,” said study co-author Jarred Younger, an [...]
16 Apr
Antidepressants underused in the elderly: study
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – April 16, 2009 – The results of a postmortem toxicology study indicate that elderly people who commit suicide usually do not have antidepressant medications in their systems at the time of death.
Antidepressants were found in less than 1 in 4 victims overall, and in even fewer of those in the [...]
16 Apr
The ICU and Post-stay Depression
In The ICU, Use Of Benzodiazepines, Other Factors May Predict Severity Of Post-stay Depression
ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2009) — Psychiatrists and critical care specialists at Johns Hopkins have begun to tease out what there is about a stay in an intensive care unit (ICU) that leads so many patients to report depression after they go home.
In [...]
15 Apr
Asperger syndrome linked to cortisol response
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – April 15, 2009 – Upon awakening, there is normally a surge in cortisol, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland and released in response to stress. Now, UK researchers report that this response is absent in adolescent boys with Asperger syndrome, which may explain some of the symptoms of [...]
15 Apr
Feeding Tubes and Advanced Dementia?
Do Feeding Tubes Help Or Harm In Advanced Dementia?
ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2009) — Family members grappling with the decision to allow a feeding tube for a relative with advanced dementia will find little comfort from a new review of evidence.
Poor food intake is common in individuals with dementia for a variety of reasons. In advanced [...]
9 Apr
Cognitive Behavior Therapy Eases Anxiety for Older People
The technique lessens worries more than usual care, study finds
TUESDAY, April 7 (HealthDay News) — For older adults, anxiety is an increasingly common problem, and new research suggests that cognitive behavior therapy may help them ease their worries more than standard care does.
Researchers found that people over age 60 who were treated with [...]
8 Apr
Mental Health Problems In Childhood May Predict Later Suicide Attempts In Males
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2009) — Most males who commit suicide or need hospital care for suicide attempts during their teen or early adult years appear to have high levels of psychiatric problems at age 8, according to a new report. However, later suicide attempts in females are not predicted by mental health issues at this [...]
8 Apr
Psychotherapy Can Ease Post-Surgical Depression
Two techniques worked for patients after heart bypass procedures, study finds
MONDAY, April 6 (HealthDay News) — Two non-drug treatments — cognitive behavior therapy and supportive stress management — seem to be more effective than usual care for treating depression in patients who’ve had coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, a new study finds.
About 20 percent [...]
3 Apr
Coming Face To Face With Autism
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) — In the first study of its kind researchers will use video clips of spontaneously produced facial expressions in a real life social context to explore emotion recognition in autism.
This research, carried out at The University of Nottingham, will go beyond the more artificial emotion recognition tasks that have previously been [...]
3 Apr
Post-traumatic stress common in migraine sufferers
By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – April 03, 2009 – Adults who suffer migraine headaches are more apt to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the general population, a new study suggests. And having PTSD and migraine may lead to greater headache-related disability.
”Taken together, our findings suggest that identification and treatment of PTSD in [...]
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