Many immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. have post-traumatic stress disorder and those with severe cases "can be in denial about what happened to them" in their home countries, "avoid overwhelming memories, or refuse treatment because of lingering fears of past dealings Read more…
A study published in the February 2009 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine reports that a highly reliable depression screening tool known as the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) used across the United States and Europe can be effectively administered in resource poor Africa to HIV/AID Read more…
Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE Alternext US: RNN), a leader in development of innovative therapeutics for life-threatening and life-debilitating diseases, announced today that it has initiated a Phase IIa clinical trial for SerdaxinTM, for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). The Serdaxin Phase IIa study calls for the recruitment of up to 100 patients to evaluate its preliminary efficacy in treating Read more…
Teenagers who smoke could be setting themselves up for depression later in life, according to a groundbreaking new Florida State University study.
Psychology Professor Carlos Bolanos and a team of researchers found that nicotine given to adolescent rats induced a depression-like state characterized by a lack of pleasure and heightened sensitivity to stress in their adult lives. The findings, published online in Read more…
A study in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP was the first to use twin data to examine the longitudinal link between sleep problems and depression. Results of this study demonstrate that sleep problems predict later depression; the converse association was not found. These findings are consistent with the theory that early treatment of sleep problems may protect children from the development of depression.
Results of the study indicate that the Read more…
A PhD thesis defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has investigated the relationship between adolescents’ perception of their physical qualities and their psychological well-being and unwellness.
Self-concept may be defined as the totality of perceptions that each person has of themselves, and this self identity plays an important role in the psychological functioning of everyone. To Read more…
A new study from Indiana University suggests that even meager levels of physical activity can improve the mood of people with serious mental illnesses (SMI) such as bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia.
The study, published in the November issue of the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, both reinforces earlier Read more…
Students’ successes in the first grade can affect more than their future report cards. In a new study, University of Missouri researchers found links among students’ weak academic performance in the first grade, self-perceptions in the sixth grade, and depression symptoms in the seventh grade.
"We found that students in the first grade who Read more…
Chronic fatigue syndrome is more likely to be developed in individuals who experience trauma in childhood, according to an article released on January 5, 2008 in the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. This may be in conjunction with a suggested biological pathway, involving neuroendocrine dysfunctions associated with the early trauma in Read more…
Almost a quarter of Australian children are living with a parent who has a mental illness, according to new research published in the January issue of the Psychiatric Bulletin.
Of these, just over 1 % (or approximately 60,000 children) have a parent who has a severe Read more…
A network of emotion-regulating brain regions implicated in the pathological worry that can grip patients with anxiety disorders may also be useful for predicting the benefits of treatment.
A new study appearing online Jan. 2 reports that high levels of brain activity in an emotional center called the amygdala reflect patients’ hypersensitivity to anticipation of adverse events. At the same time, high Read more…
Brain cells can adopt a new chemical code in response to cues from the outside world, scientists working with tadpoles at the University of California, San Diego report in the journal Nature this week.
The discovery opens the possibility that brain chemistry could be selectively altered by stimulating specific circuits to remedy low levels of neural chemicals that underlie some human ailments.
Dark tadpoles don pale camouflage when exposed to bright light. Read more…
For patients with mild- to moderate- Alzheimer’s disease, cognitive
decline was not slowed by the administration of high-dose vitamin B
supplementation in an article released on October 14, 2008 in JAMA.
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a degenerative neurological disease that is
a common form of dementia. There has been evidence that an amino acid
naturally produced in the body, homocysteine, is present in higher
levels in cases of Alzheimer’s patients, and homocysteine’s
relationship Read more…
An Internet program helps to reduce depressive symptoms and prevent episodes of clinical depression in adolescent patients at risk, reports a study in the February issue of the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and Read more…
A new study shows that antidepressant drugs which only affect serotonin, often used as first choice treatments, may not be best for depression in people with Parkinson’s disease. The new research is published in the December 17, 2008, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Depression affects up to 50 percent of people Read more…
Postpartum depression (PPD) can lead to poor sleep quality, recent research shows. A study published in the current issue of the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing shows that depression symptoms worsen in PPD patients when their quality of sleep declines.
Sleep deprivation can hamper a mother’s ability to care for her infant, as judgment and concentration decline. Buy Read more…
Depression causes patients with advanced cancer to die sooner than they should, say scientists at the University of Liverpool.
In a six-month study patients who were found to be depressed had a 7% increased chance of dying and this percentage increased depending on the severity of the depression. Read more…
Are genes destiny? Alternatively, are we simply the products of our environment? There is a growing sense that neither of these two possibilities fully captures the essence of the risk for psychiatric disorders. New light is being shed on the complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors as the result of growth in the field of epigenetics. While genetics is the study of how variation in gene sequence or "genotype" influences traits or Read more…
Researchers at the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University were recently awarded a $3.7 million grant from The National Eye Institute to study depression in patients diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Barry W. Rovner, M.D., director of Clinical Alzheimer’s Read more…
Women who smoke are at greater risk of developing major depressive disorder, according to new research published in the October issue Read more…
One of the few studies to look at the effects of religious participation on the mental health of minorities suggests that for some of them, religion may actually be contributing to adolescent depression.
Previous research has shown that teens who are active in religious services are depressed less often because it provides these adolescents with social support and a sense of belonging.
But new research has found that Read more…
Results of a new study call into question recent clinical guidelines issued by leading cardiovascular groups, including the American Heart Association, which recommend patients with cardiovascular disease be screened for signs of depression and treated accordingly. The study, published in the November 12 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association and conducted by an international Read more…
In a large group of Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes, depression was associated with a higher death rate from all causes during a two-year study period. The findings are published in the October 2008 Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Lead author Dr. Wayne Katon, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington (UW), Read more…
A new study has found that the more a teenager is exposed to television and other electronic media the higher are his/her chances of developing depression symptoms in young adulthood - this is especially the case for young men, says a study published in Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA/Archives journal.
The authors explain that depression is the leading cause of non-fatal disability worldwide. It tends to start during adolescence Read more…
1. New ACP Guideline Looks at Effectiveness of Drugs Used to Treat Depressive Disorders
Second generation treatments for depression are all equally effective according to a new clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians (ACP). The guideline is published today Read more…