Risk factors for sex offending

Sexual offenses can lead to terrible long and short-term consequences for their victims including post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. A German study of 51 inmates in a high-security forensic hospital compared those who had been convicted of sex offenses with those who had been convicted of other crimes. The researchers found that the sex offenders were more likely to be narcissists and more likely to have been sexually abused as children.

Dudeck, Manuela ... [et al] - Forensic inpatient male sexual offenders : the impact of personality disorder and childhood sexual abuse Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology December 2007, 18(4), 494-506

Anxiety in children - long-term effects

Anxiety disorders in children are quite common and associated with significant impairment in academic, social and psychological functioning. A study of 149 Black children from low-income backgrounds in the U.S. assessed their anxiety at five and then checked on their progress after seven years. Those who were highly anxious at five had poorer academic achievement and less acceptance among their peers and were more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.

Grover, Rachel L., Ginsburg, Golda S. and Ialongo, Nick - Psychosocial outcomes of anxious first graders : a seven-year follow-up Depression and Anxiety 24(6), 410-42-

OCD and Body Dysmorphic Disorder

The relationship between Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is unclear and some psychiatrists think that BDD is part of the same family, or even a variation of OCD. A U.S. study of 295 people compared those with OCD, those with BDD and those with both conditions. The groups were fairly similar demographically, became ill at about the same age and suffered for about the same amount of time. However, people with BDD had poorer insight than those with OCD and were more likely to be delusional. Subjects with BDD were also significantly more likely than those with OCS to have suicidal thoughts, depression and substance abuse problems.

Phillips, Katherine A. ... [et al] - Obsessive-Compulsive disorder versus Body Dysmorphic Disorder : a comparison study of two possibly-related disorders Depression and Anxiety 24(6), 399-409

Imaginary friends and verbal hallucinations

One of the most interesting psychological features of young children are their relationships to their imaginary friends. Between 28-65% of young children have imaginary friends and contrary to stereotypes of such children being emotionally disturbed, withdrawn and shy recent research has shown having an imaginary friend to be associated with positive developmental outcomes. Some psychologists have wondered how having an imaginary friend in childhood might affect development in adulthood and have observed how talking to an imaginary friend bears a similarity to symptoms of psychopathology such as verbal hallucinations. A study of 80 young children (4-8) in Australia and the north of England asked them whether they had an imaginary friend and then carried out a jumbled speech task on them which measures participants' likelihood of perceiving words in meaningless but speech-like auditory stimuli. The researchers found that those children who had an imaginary friend were more likely to report hearing words and phrases in the jumbled speech task independent of their age, sex and verbal ability. The findings of the study were consistent with the hypothesis that engaging with imaginary friends is one aspect of a general susceptibility to imaginary verbal experiences.

Fernyhough, Charles ... [et al] - Imaginary companions and young children's responses to ambiguous auditory stimuli : implications for typical and atypical development Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry November 2007, 48(11), 1094-1101

Intercountry adoption and mental illness

Intercountry adoption is increasingly common and currently involves more than 40,000 children a year in over 100 countries. Large numbers of children adopted from foreign countries are now reaching adulthood, the age of onset for most serious mental disorders, yet little is known about the effects of inter-country adoption on children's mental health. A study of children in Denmark who were adopted from abroad has found that they had a 2.9 times greater risk of developing schizophrenia than native Danes. The increased risk was independent of age at, or the region of, adoption, mental illness among foster parents, the age of foster parents or whether the foster parents lived in the city or the countryside. The foster mother's own children also had an increased (1.92 times) risk of developing schizophrenia. The researchers were not sure why this might be so but speculated that it could be due to hereditary factors in the children, traumatic experiences suffered by children prior to adoption or the disruption caused by the adoption and resettlement process itself.

Cantor-Graae, Elizabeth and Pedersen, Carsten Becker - Risk for schizophrenia in intercountry adoptees : a Danish population-based cohort study Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry November 2007, 48(11), 1053-1060

Seasonality and bipolar disorder

Approximately 10% of all cases of mood disorders show a seasonal pattern of recurrence but this figure is thought to be higher in bipolar disorder with some studies showing that 20% of this group have some element of seasonality in their symptoms. Some studies have shown peaks of depression in the autumn and peaks of mania in early spring and late summer while other studies have shown little difference in hospitalization rates with the seasons. A ten-year Spanish study of 325 people with bipolar disorder found that 25.5% of them showed a seasonal pattern of symptoms. There were no demographic differences between those with seasonal and non-seasonal forms of bipolar disorder. People with seasonal bipolar disorder were more likely to have the bipolar II form of the condition and were more likely to have more depression than mania. However, people with a seasonal aspect to their bipolar disorder were no more likely to be suicidal, hospitalized or suffer from psychosis.

Goikolea, J. M. ... [et al] - Clinical and prognostic implications of seasonal pattern in bipolar disorder : a 10-year follow-up of 302 patients Psychological Medicine November 2007 37(11), 1595-1599

Suicidality in adolescence

Suicidality in adolescence and young adults is a well-recognised public-health problem and globally suicide is the fifth leading cause of death in young people taking between 100,000 and 200,000 lives a year. A study of 1,684 young adults in Canada examined whether they had ever had any thoughts about taking their life, their suicide attempts and their completed suicides. The researchers found that approximately 1 in 500 of the group killed themselves. About 33 % of the participants had thought about killing themselves and 9.3 % had made at least one suicide attempt. Over half of those who had attempted to kill themselves had made their first attempt before the age of eighteen. Women were more likely than men to make suicide attempts but men were four times more likely than women to succeed in killing themselves. Apart from gender other risk factors for suicide were disruptive behaviour, childhood anxiety, child abuse and suicidal thoughts.

Brezo, Juliana ... [et al] - Natural history of suicidal behaviors in a population-based sample of young adults Psychological Medicine November 2007, 37(11), 1563-1574

How video games can help you have a nice day

A team of psychologists at McGill University in Canada have been developing a series of video games to train people in social situations to focus more on positive feedback rather than being distracted and deterred by perceived social slights or criticisms. The games are based on the emerging science of social intelligence, which has found that a significant part of daily stress comes from our social perceptions of the world. The games have already produced encouraging results in the lab but the researchers wanted to see what effect they had in a more life-like situation. They studied 23 employees at a call centre in Montreal who had to click on the one smiling face among a screen of frowning ones as quickly as possible while a control group played a different game without the smiling faces. The study lasted a week with the employees filling out daily questionnaires about their self-esteem and stress levels. At the end of the study both groups cortisol levels were measured as cortisol is considered to be an important marker of stress. The group playing the game with the smiling faces had 17% less cortisol than the other group.

You can read more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/10/24/video-game-lowers-stress-hormone/1446.html

Hearing messages : an early warning sign for schizophrenia ?

A new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine suggests that a tendency to extract messages from meaningless noise could be an early warning sign for schizophrenia. 43 people with 'prodromal' symptoms - meaning they exhibited early warning signs of psychosis such as social withdrawal, mild perceptual alterations, or misinterpretation of social cues were played overlapping recordings of six speakers reading neutral texts which made the words virtually incomprehensible. Only four words : 'increase' 'children' 'A-OK' and 'Republican' were consistently reproduced. 80% of the participants who 'heard' phrases of four or more words in length went on to develop schizophrenia whereas only 6% of people who heard no phrases developed the condition. Ralph Hoffman, the lead author of the study, said 'A tendency to extract message-like meaning from meaningless sensory information can, over time, produce a 'matrix of unreality' that triggers the initial psychotic phase of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.' You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/10/25/hearing-messages-in-noise/1450.html

How socialising can boost your brain power

Two studies carried out by researchers from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research have shown how social interaction can boost people's brain power. The first study looked at 3,610 people between the ages of 24 and 96. Their mental functioning was assessed and their level of social interaction was measured by asking them how often they phoned friends, neighbours and relatives and how often they got together. After controlling for variables such as age, education, race/ethnicity, gender, marital status and income, as well as physical health and depression the researchers found that the higher the level of the participants' social interaction the better their cognitive functioning. In the second experiment the researchers studied 7 college students between the ages of 17 and 21 assigning them to three groups. One group had a ten minute discussion of a social issue, another goup did mental activities such as a crossword puzzle and a third, control, goup watched ten minutes of 'Seinfeld'. Then all the participants took two different tests of intellectual performance aimed at measuring their mental processing speed and working memory. The researchers found that the performance of the students in the 'social' goup was boosted - compared to the control group - by as much as the group doing the mental activities. You can find out more about this research by visiting

http://psychcentral.com/news/2007/10/30/talking-improves-memory/1460.html

Depression : different causes, different symptoms

Although there are certain 'core' symptoms of depression the precise way in which people suffer from the condition can vary from individual to individual. A study of 4,856 people with depression in Virginia, U.S. looked at their symptoms and the bad things that had happened to them over a period of 12 years and found that different negative events were associated with different symptoms. Deaths of loved ones and break-ups of relationships were both associated with high levels of sadness, anhedonia (lack of pleasure) and appetite loss and romantic break-ups were also associated with guilt. Chronic stress and failures were associated more with fatigue and sleepiness. Those who felt that no adverse event had caused their depression were more likely to suffer from fatigue, weight gain and thoughts of self-harm. Different individuals who had experienced the same events tended to suffer from similar symptoms while people who had suffered from a variety of negative experiences tended to suffer from different symptoms depending on what had gone wrong in their life.

Keller, Matthew C., Neale, Michael C. and Kendler, Kenneth S. - Association of different adverse life events with distinct patterns of depressive symptoms American Journal of Psychiatry October 2007, 164(10), 1521-1529

Depression in and around pregnancy

Around one in ten women suffer from depression, either during their pregnancy or in the first year after delivery. The consequences of this can be devastating inhibiting the woman's ability to perform daily activities, to bond with her children and to relate to her husband or partner. A study of 4,398 women in the U.S. looked at the overall rates of postnatal depression and how depression carried on from before, to during, and after, pregnancy. The researchers found that overall 15.4% of the women had suffered from depression at some point. 8.7% were depressed before becoming pregnant, 6.9% were depressed during their pregnancy and 10.4% were depressed after their baby had been born. Of the women who had been depressed before becoming pregnant 56.4% were also diagnosed with depression during their pregnancy and of those who were depressed after their pregnancy 54.2% had had diagnoses of depression either while they were carrying their baby or in the 39 weeks beforehand. Most of the women had received antidepressants although they were less likely to take them while they were pregnant. The researchers concluded that there was a high degree of continuity between women's mental states before, during and after pregnancy and that this meant that there should be a similar continuity of care in the treatment of the women.

Dietz, Patricia M. ... [et al] - Clinically identified maternal depression before, during, and after pregnancies ending in live births American Journal of Psychiatry October 2007, 164(10), 1515-1520

Side effects and medication compliance in people with depression

People taking drugs for mental-health problems often stop taking their medication. It is thought this is, at least partially, due to the side effects of the drugs but the exact relationship between side effects and non-adherence to medication is unclear. An eighteen-month U.S. study of 406 people between 18 and 75 followed them up three months after their admission for depression to see what side effects they had suffered and whether they were still taking their medication. One in four of the patients had stopped taking their drugs. Among the side effects noted only 'change in weight' and 'anxiety' were significant predictors of discontinuation. Experiencing one or more 'extremely' bothersome side effect(s) was associated with a doubling of the risks of discontinuation but side effects less severe than this were not significant predictors. There were no differences among the antidepressants in terms of side effects or discontinuation rates.

Goethe, John W. ... [et al] - Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor discontinuation : side effects and other factors that influence medication adherence Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology October 2007, 27(5), 451-458

Spit, sprays and psychiatric drugs

Xerostomia is the sensation of having a dry mouth and is often caused as a side effect of psychotropic drugs. Lack of saliva can cause taste disturbances, bad breath and mouth ulcers and can affect speech, chewing and swallowing. In some patients it becomes impossible to stimulate normal saliva production and artificial saliva substitutes are used. However, a two-week French trial of a new oxygenated glycerol triester oral spray has yielded promising results. After two weeks people using the spray had less dry mouths and less speech and taste problems than people using artificial saliva. The new spray was also seen as better tasting than artificial spit.

Mouly, Stephane J. - Efficacy of a new oral lubricant solution in the management of psychotropic drug-induced xerostomia : a randomized controlled trial Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology October 27(5), 437-443

Domestic violence in the U.S.

Every year approximately 5.3 million women in the U.S. suffer from domestic violence resulting in nearly 2 million injuries and 1,300 deaths. Approximately 10 million children in the U.S. witness domestic violence within their families putting them at risk for developing long-term emotional problems and becoming violent themselves. It is estimated that the annual cost of domestic violence in the U.S. is $4.1 billion. A study of 14 men about to enter a programme for wife-beaters found that two main themes were pre-eminent in their thoughts : they felt a lack of justification for their partner's behaviour towards them and they minimized and justified their violent behaviour towards the victim and other people.

Smith, Marilyn E. - Self-deception among men who are mandated to attend a batterer intervention program Perspectives in Psychiatric Care October 2007 43(4), 193-203

Puppetry and parenting in central Europe

The quality of a child's family relationships plays a crucial role in its development and researchers have found fairly consistent evidence linking parenting styles to children's social behaviour. Children from families that are characterized by more conflict and lower expressiveness and cohesiveness tend to show more mental-health problems than other children. Recently researchers have begun to look more closely at pre-school children as it is believed that this is when many problems start to develop. There is an increasing range of methods available to psychologists to assess feelings and emotions in this age group and a team of researchers in Switzerland and Germany used puppets to study 153 children. They found that the children's representations of the family environment were the only predictor of good and bad changes in the children's mental state between the ages of five and six. A large number of negative parental representations at five predicted an increase in conduct problems at six and a large number of positive parental representations at five predicted an increase in good behaviour at six.

Stadelmann, Stephanie ... [et al] - Associations between family relationships and symptoms/strengths at kindergarten age : what is the role of the child's parental representations Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry October 2007, 43(10), 996-1004

Loneliness in the nursery

Loneliness has been defined as a 'sad subjective state resulting from dissatisfaction with one's social experiences'. However, whereas some children seem to enjoy playing alone and do not feel lonely when doing so others may experience loneliness even when they are in a room full of other children. There is a growing body of evidence linking loneliness to psychological problems and from middle to late childhood loneliness appears to be a marker for problems such as anxiety, low self-esteem and aggression. In adolescence and adulthood loneliness becomes increasingly associated with social anxiety and depression as well as obesity and alcoholism. A Canadian study of 139 5-6 year-olds looked at loneliness and its effects in this age group which has had little research so far. The researchers found that loneliness was associated with anxiety, aggression and peer exclusion. There was a difference between the children who were able to play happily by themselves and those who were reticent, spending their time watching other children without joining in and staring into space. Interestingly boys suffered more from loneliness than girls ; perhaps because it is seen as less socially acceptable for boys to be shy than girls.

Coplan, Robert J., Closson, Leanna M. and Arbeau, Kimberley A. - Gender differences in the behavioral associates of loneliness and social dissatisfaction in kindergarten Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry October 2007 48 (10), 988-995

Reducing restraint in New York

Restraint and seclusion are 'last-resort' tactics that are used when a psychiatric patient presents an imminent risk to either themselves or others. They can cause emotional trauma, physical harm to patients or staff and even death as well as exposing hospitals to litigation and criminal prosecution. Researchers in New York looked at three different interventions aimed at reducing the use of restraint and seclusion. These were : decreasing the initial amount of time patients spent in restraint or seclusion, education of staff concerning identification of patients at risk of restraint or seclusion and early interventions to avoid crises and the use of coping questionnaires to assess patient preferences for dealing with agitation. After more than five years of the new policies the number of patients restrained was reduced, the hours of restraint fell, the number of patients secluded 'decreased significantly' and the mean hours of seclusion 'decreased markedly'. There were also significant decreases in patients absconding, fights and assaults.

Hellerstein, David J. – Decreasing the use of restraint and seclusion among psychiatric inpatients Journal of Psychiatric Practice September 2007, 13(5), 308-317

Depression, spirituality and gender in adolescence

Girls are twice as likely as boys to become depressed during adolescence, a trend that persists into adulthood. Much research has been devoted to looking into this disparity and one of the most robust protective factors identified so far is spirituality - a sense of closeness with God, feelings of interconnectedness with the world or an awareness of a transcendent dimension. Relational spirituality incorporates the idea that daily experience can be organized and understood through dialogue with God. A study of 615 adolescents in the U.S. found that, overall, both levels of depression and relational spirituality were higher in girls. Daily spiritual experiences, forgiveness and religious coping were associated with less depression - but only in girls.

Desrosiers, Alethea and Miller, Lisa - Relational spirituality and depression in adolescent girls Journal of Clinical Psychology October 2007, 63(10), 1021-1037

Religion and psychotherapy - what works ?

In recent decades psychologists have increasingly recognised the need to address spiritual and religious issues in mental health treatment, particularly when working with highly religious clients and there is an increasing amount of research to show how religousness may be effectively integrated within interventions and psychotherapy. However, there has been less research into which kinds of religious interventions are effective and when is the best time to raise religious issues in therapy. A U.S. study of 152 clients at a counselling centre sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has found that out-of-session religious interventions were seen as more appropriate than in-session ones although the in-session interventions were seen as more helpful. Specific interventions that were considered to be helpful included : referencing scriptural passages, teaching spiritual concepts, encouraging forgiveness, involving religious community resources and conducting assessments of client spirituality.

Martinez, Jennifer S., Smith, Timothy B. and Barlow, Sally H. - Spiritual interventions in psychotherapy : evalutions by highly religious clients Journal of Clinical Psychology October 2007, 63(10), 943-960