Goals and grief

It's normal to feel grief and sadness after the death of a loved one yet for some people the effects can be much worse. People who go on to develop what psychologists call prolonged grief disorder (PGD) experience persistent yearning for their lost loved ones, difficulty in accepting their loss, numbness and a shattered sense of identity. Paul A. Boelen from Utrecht University in the Netherlands looked into how people's goals and wishes for the future affected their grieving process in a study of 160 bereaved people. The participants in the study were asked to write down seven important personal goals and to complete questionnaires designed to measure their levels of PGD and depression. The study found that more severe PGD was associated with goals which were less specific, felt to be - at least partially - beyond people's control, and which had a lower perceived likelihood of being achieved. Mourners with more PGD had goals that were associated with loss and feelings rather than with work, education or relationships.

Boelen, Paul A. - Personal Goals and Prolonged Grief Disorder Symptoms Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy doi: 10.1002/cpp.731

Diabetes and depression

There is good evidence of a link between diabetes and depression and new research from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that the link could work in both directions. The researchers studied 65,381 women who were aged between 50 and 75 in 1996. The women filled out a questionnaire about their medical history at the start of the study and every two years thereafter. Over the course of the study 2,844 of the women developed type 2 diabetes and 7,415 developed depression. The women with depression were about 17% more likely to develop diabetes, even after taking into account other risk factors such as physical activity and weight, while the women with diabetes were 29% more likely to develop depression.

Pathological gambling and suicide

People with gambling problems are not only at risk financially they are also far more likely to kill themselves. 5% of people who kill themselves are pathological gamblers and gamblers are three times more likely to kill themselves than people who don't bet. Researchers from the Universite de Montreal studied 122 suicides which took place between 2006 and 2009, 49 of whom were pathological gamblers. The gamblers had twice as many personality disorders as the other suicides and were three times less likely to seek help before they killed themselves.

Study gives thumbs up to Canadian family intervention

There has been a lot of research recently into ways in which the Government, health services and other public bodies can intervene early in the lives of disadvantaged children to help them do better later on in life. One such initiative is the Better Begginings, Better Futures project which has recently been studied by researchers from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. The researchers compared 959 children, 601 of whom were between four and eight and took part in the project and 358 of a similar age who formed a control group. Follow-up data on the children was collected when they were in years 3, 6, 9 and 12 at school. The study found improvements in social and school functioning in the children who took part in the project and fewer emotional and behavioural problems at school. By year 12 the children who took part in the study were less likely to have committed a property crime and their parents were reporting greater feelings of social support, happier marriages and better family functioning. The project proved cost-effective as the Government ended up spending less money helping each child because they did better in the long term.

Study backs religious and spiritual therapies

Religion can be defined as adherence to a belief system and practices associated with a tradition in which there is agreement about what is believed and practiced whereas spirituality can be defined as a more general feeling of closeness and connectedness to the sacred. In recent years psychotherapists have been trying to incorporate both - where appropriate and where the patient wants it - into psychotherapy. A team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University reviewed 46 studies, covering a total of 3,290 people, into the effectiveness of 'religious accommodative' and 'nonreligious spirituality' therapies. They found that patients receiving these therapies showed greater improvements in psychological and spiritual outcomes than those receiving alternative secular therapies.

Worthington, Everett L. ... [et al] - Religion and Spirituality Journal of clinical psychology: in session 67(2), 1--11

Resistance, reactance and psychotherapy

Despite expressing a sincere wish to recover some patients behave in almost exactly the opposite way from that suggested by their psychotherapist - something sometimes called patient resistance. However, a team of researchers from Palo Alto University in California thought that patient resistance was a term which was too pejorative to patients and decided to call it patient reactance instead in an acknowledgement that the therapist's approach could also play a part in this happening. The researchers looked at 12 studies into this issue covering a total of 1,102 participants. They found that those patients who were more inclined to follow their therapist's advice benefited more from a more directive approach (i.e. being told what to do) whereas patients who had high levels of resistance/reactance benefited more from a nondirective approach.

Beutler, Larry E. ... [et al] - Resistance/Reactance Level Journal of Clinical Psychology: in session Vol. 67(2), 1-10 (2011)

Child abuse and drug addiction

Child abuse is known to be a risk factor for a number of different mental-health problems and antisocial behaviour. Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York studied 143 people in an attempt to find out more about this. 48 of them were child molesters, 25 were recovering opiate addicts and the rest formed a healthy control group. The participants were asked whether they had suffered adult sexual advances while they were children or if they had had sexual intercourse with someone at least five years older before they were 13. The participants who were child molesters or recovering opium addicts had lost their virginity at a younger age than the healthy controls. However, while the child molesters were more likely to have been abused themselves the recovering addicts were no more likely to have suffered child abuse than the control group. But, this was a relatively small study and a number of other researchers have found a link between child abuse and drug addiction.

Cohen, Lisa J. ... [et al] - Comparison of Childhood Sexual Histories in Subjects with Pedophilia or Opiate Addiction and Healthy Controls: Is Childhood Sexual Abuse a Risk Factor for Addictions? Journal of Psychiatric Practice 16(6):394-404, November 2010

New approach bears dividends after 7/7 attacks

People caught up in attacks by terrorists often suffer from psychological as well as physical trauma yet studies of what happened after events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings and the 9/11 attacks show that those caught up in them do not always contact their GP or get the help they need. Following the July 2005 attacks in London the U.K.'s Department of Health set up a Trauma Response Programme. They used contact details of people known to have been caught up in the attacks from a variety of sources including the telephone help-line NHS Direct, hospitals, charitable relief funds and the police. People received a letter or a telephone call and a brief two-page questionnaire designed to ascertain mental-health problems. At the same time a media campaign advertised the programme and encouraged individuals to contact it. The programme contacted 910 people of whom 596 filled out the questionnaire. 217 people were adjudged to need treatment and they received either trauma-focused cognitive behaviour therapy or eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). The treatments were found to be very effective and gains made in treatment were maintained one year later.

Brewin, C. R. ... [et al] - Outreach and screening following the 2005 London bombings: usage and outcomes (2010), 40, 2049–2057
Psychological Medicine

Most people don't stay the course with antidepressants

Most people who take antidepressants give them up before they are supposed to. Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Health studied 7,525 people who were starting antidepressant treatment. They found that 56% stopped taking their medication during the first four months and only 25% continued their treatment for more than 11 months. Only 22% of the sample completed their treatment although women were more likely to carry on taking the pills than men and those who took more than one kind of medication stuck with their pills better than those who just took antidepressants. Doctors recommend taking antidepressants for at least six months.

Premature babies have more problems at six

Children born between 34 and 36 weeks into their mothers' pregnancies could be at greater risk of developing cognitive and emotional problems. Researchers from Michigan State University studied a group of children born between 1983 and 1985 and compared at what stage during their mothers' pregnancies they were born to information collected when they were six. The children born between 34 and 36 weeks had lower levels of cognitive performance and higher levels of behavioural problems even after accounting for socioeconomic factors and maternal IQ.

Talking and trauma

Talking or writing about trauma that one might have experienced (emotional disclosure) is widely seen as being therapeutic for people but the evidence about this is mixed and the best way of achieving it is unclear. Researchers from Wayne State University in Detroit looked into this issue in a study of 214 people who had 'unresolved stressful experiences.' Some of the participants formed a control group while the rest of them had a 30-minute session of either written or private spoken disclosure, talking to a passive listener or talking to an active facilitator. After six weeks both the disclosure groups and the control group showed similar reductions in stress i.e. disclosure had no more effect than the passage of time. However, those people who had spoken or written about their experiences did show more post-traumatic growth; something defined as finding meaning in the experience, changing one's priorities, seeing new possibilities, increasing understanding and appreciation of life, improving relationships and making spiritual changes. There was no difference between the different methods of disclosure in the amount of post-traumatic growth they engendered.

Slavin-Spenny, Olga M. ... [et al] - The Effects of Different Methods of Emotional Disclosure: Differentiating

Post-Traumatic Growth From Stress Symptoms Journal of Clinical Psychology  DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20750

Genes and anorexia

A team of researchers from the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has been looking into the genetics of anorexia nervosa. They studied 4,736 people, 1,003 of whom had anorexia and compared their genes. The study found that variations in two genes - OPRD1 and HTR1D - increased the risk of developing the condition. However, most scientists think that although genes might increase the risk of developing mental-health problems the true causes of these conditions lie in a combination of genetics and people's upbringing and experiences.

Girls less likely to be diagnosed with autism even if their symptoms are just as bad

Girls are less likely to be diagnosed with autism than boys even if their symptoms are just as bad. Previous research has shown that boys are four times as likely to have autism than girls but not everyone with symptoms of autism receives a diagnosis. Researchers from the universities of Bristol and Exeter used information from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to look into this issue further. They found that even in children with similar levels of autism symptoms boys were more likely to be diagnosed with the condition. Although autistic symptoms were worse in children with older mothers these children were much more likely to receive a diagnosis suggesting that older mothers might be better at identifying problems in their children and more confident in dealing with health professionals. Ethnic origin, social class and marital status did not predict an increase in either autism diagnosis or symptoms.

Albumin and cognitive decline

Having a protein called albumin in one's urine can be a symptom of disease and new research suggests that it could also be linked to cognitive decline. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston studied 1,200 women over 70 who were tested on their cognition and provided urine samples. The women were assessed every two years until they had been tested three times. The women who had albumin in their urine suffered cognitive decline at a rate between two and seven times quicker than would be expected during the normal ageing process. In another study researchers from Stanford University studied 19,399 people over 3.8 years, 1,184 of whom developed cognitive impairment. The people with albumin in their urine were 31-57% more likely to develop cognitive impairment.

PTSD and cardiovascular disease

Researchers from the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration Center have been strengthening the research linking post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to heart disease. The researchers looked at the medical records of 286,194 veterans, 637 of whom had scans showing the thickness of their arteries. About three quarters of the veterans with PTSD had hardening of the arteries compared to 59% of those without PTSD. The veterans with PTSD were nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to die (of all causes) during the course of the study. Among the veterans with calcium build up in their arteries those with PTSD had a 48% greater risk of death overall and a 41% greater risk of dying fom cardiovascular disease.

Body clocks, genes and depression

People suffering from depression can often suffer from sleep problems as well, particularly waking up early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep again. Researchers from Ohio State University compared 30 people with a history of depression to 30 people who had never had it. They looked into levels of a substance called messenger RNA related to four genes which help govern people's body clocks. The participants who had had depression had a higher level of activity in the 'Clock' gene suggesting that they had a problem with their body clocks.

HRT and dementia

Researchers from the Kaiser Permanente health organization in the U.S. have been looking into the effects of hormone therapy on women's risk of developing dementia. They took a large sample of women and asked them about their hormone use during middle age and old age; 1,524 of the women were diagnosed with dementia during the course of the study. The study found that women who took the hormones in both middle age and old age had a similar risk of dementia while women who took hormones only in old age had a 48% higher risk of developing it. Women who took hormones only in middle age had a 26% lower risk of developing dementia.

Delayed gratification and ADHD

One could say that the ability to delay gratification - not to want everything right here and right now - is one of the hallmarks of becoming a mature, civilized human being, albeit one sadly missing from a lot of people. The inability to take the long-term view is sometimes thought to be one of the symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a team of researchers from Oregon Health & Sciences University sought to test this theory in a study of 58 seven-to-nine-year-olds. The children were asked whether they wanted to receive a smaller sum of money straight away or a larger one at some point in the future. Once the effect of IQ was taken into account the children with ADHD were no more likely to opt for instant gratification than the children without it.

Wilson, Vanessa B. ... [et al] - Delay discounting of reward in ADHD: application in young children

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02347.x

Old musicians stave off brain decay

The auditory cortex is the part of the brain that deals with processing sound and new research from the University of Toronto suggests that in older musicians it might be better preserved than in other adults of a similar age. The researchers studied a group of musicians and a group of non-musicians on an active-listening task - where they were told to focus on the sounds - and a passive listening task where they carried out another activity. During the tests the researchers used electroencephalography to measure the activity in the participants' brains. During the periods of attentive listening the older musicians' brains performed as well as younger adults whereas the older participants who weren't musicians showed a decline with age.

Energy drinks and drink problems

Students often drink so-called energy drinks, which contain large amounts of caffeine, so they can either study or stay up longer socialising. However, new research by scientists at the University of Maryland suggests that they could also lead to more students developing a drink problem. The researchers studied more than a 1,000 students who were asked about their consumption of energy drinks and alcohol over the last year. Those who drank energy drinks once a week or more were more likely to get drunk at an earlier age and drink more per drinking session, and were more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who used them less. The researchers thought that this was in part because the energy drink counteracted some of the effects - if not the damage - of the students' drinking.