Bipolar disorder - more episodes = more unhappiness

For people suffering from bipolar disorder episodes of mania and depression can come and go throughout their lives. Researchers from the University of Granada in Spain looked at the psychiatric histories of 108 people diagnosed with bipolar disorder and have concluded, not surprisingly perhaps, that the more episodes people have the worse their quality of life. More than three previous manic episodes, current depression, smoking and being less well-educated were associated with problems in finding and holding down a job. Difficulty with social function increased with the number of hospitalizations, with multiple previous episodes of depression, in those who had lack of social support, and with current depression.In addition, individuals with bipolar disorder who were older, who showed potential signs of alcohol abuse, who had been hospitalized more often, or who had had repeated manic episodes, had more difficulty with family life.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Diet and ADHD - is junk food a risk factor?

Researchers from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Perth, Australia, have been looking into the links between diet and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and have found that children who eat a healthier diet are less likely to develop it. The researchers looked into the diets of 1,800 teenagers and classified them into 'healthy' diets - high in fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grains, fish, omega-3 fatty acids, folate and fibre - and 'Western' ones which featured more takeaways, sweets and junk food and were higher in total fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt. Having a 'Western' diet was found to be linked to a greater risk of ADHD.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Crystal meth and pregnancy - not a happy combination

Taking crystal meth is never the greatest of ideas and a new study by researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles shows how harmful it can be for women to take it while they are pregnant. The researchers compared 276 women who were taking crystal meth while they were pregnant with 34,055 other women; all the women gave birth at a hospital in Phoenix between 2000 and 2006. The meth users were nearly three times as likely to have a premature birth and more likely to have a caesarean section. 20% of them had uncontrolled high blood pressure while nearly 10% of them suffered placental abruption in which the placenta separates from the uterus before delivery. The babies of the meth users were six times more likely to suffer ill health and four times more likely to die.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Nitric Oxide - the prime suspect for brain-cell death

Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease are all characterized by the early death of brain cells but what makes brain cells give up the ghost? Researchers from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in the U.S. have been looking into the role of a gas called nitric oxide. The gas attaches itself to other molecules in the brain and was found to 'leap' from one set of proteins, called caspases, that normally start cell death to another protein XIAP that normally inhibits it. This is a double whammy for brain cells which are 'programmed' to die when either XIAP has nitric oxide attached to it or when caspases don't. If the scientists can find out how to stop nitric oxide transferring from one molecule to another that could be a breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Background music at work? Turn that racket down for better performance

Background music at work is either an aid to concentration, a pleasant distraction or a pain in the neck according to who you ask but does it actually help people to concentrate? Nick Perham from the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff studied people as they attempted to recall a list of eight consonants in the order they were read out. Five different 'conditions' were used. In one participants had catchy pop music as a background, in another they had thrash metal, in a third they had a series of constantly changing numbers being read out and in a fourth they heard the same number being repeated over and over again. Finally some luckier participants got to carry out the task in silence. The participants listening to pop music, thrash metal and a changing series of numbers all did equally badly with the participants listening to an unchanging background and working in silence doing best. No doubt parents will be glad of some evidence to back them up as they tell their children to turn that &*%^ racket down.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Could new tests help suicide prediction?

Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death among adults under 65 in the U.S. so predicting who might kill themselves could save a considerable number of lives. At the moment most attempts at prediction are based on people's answers to a series of questions and - because people might not wish to own up to thoughts about suicide - are scarcely better than tossing a coin. Researchers at Harvard University have developed two tests that they hope will improve this process. In the first test the participants had to identify the colour of different words on screen, the idea being that suicidal individuals would pay more attention to words relating to suicide than other words. In the second test participants were tested on how strongly they associated themselves with words related to either life or death/suicide. The first test predicted suicide within the next six months more accurately than well-known risk factors such as a history of suicide attempts, patients' reported likelihood of an attempt and doctor's predictions. In the second test those participants with strong associations between themselves and death/suicide were six times more likely to attempt to kill themselves within the next six months.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

CBT shows long-term gains for childhood phobias and anxiety

Phobias and anxiety disorders in childhood do not always go away over time and can increase the risk of worsening mental-health problems, teenage pregnancy, dropping out of high school and not going on to college and university. There is now quite a lot of evidence that exposure-based cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) which aims to gradually get people used to what they are frightened of and change their thinking about it is effective at treating these problems but little research has been done into its long-term effectiveness. A team of researchers led by Lissette M. Saavedra from RTI International in North Carolina studied 67 people who had received exposure-based CBT as children and followed them up between eight and 13 years later to see how they were getting on. The study found that the participants' problems were still under control a long time after treatment.

Saavedra, Lissette ... [et al] - Cognitive behavioral treatment for childhood anxiety disorders: long-term effects on anxiety and secondary disorders in young adulthood Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry August 2010, 51(8), 924-934

Young, free, worried and gloomy

Some research has suggested an increase in depression and anxiety among children and adolescents over the last few decades. But are children really getting gloomier and more anxious or is the increase down to improved awareness and better diagnosis? A team of researchers led by Stephan Collishaw from Cardiff University compared two groups of 16- and 17-year-olds who filled out the same assessment tool in 1986 and 2006. In 1986 4,524 children and 7,120 parents filled out the assessment tool and in 2006 719 adolescents and 734 parents completed it. The study found that girls and their parents reported more emotional difficulties in 2006 than in 1986 and boys' parents did too. Twice as many young people reported frequent feelings of depression and anxiety in 2006 as in 1986. Some symptoms were more prevalent in 2006 than in 1986 such as worry, irritability and fatigue while others - loss of enjoyment and worthlessness - stayed the same. Social class, family breakdown and ethnicity all had no effect on children's increasing gloom and anxiety.

Collishaw, Stephan ... [et al] - Trends in adolescent emotional problems in England: a comparison of two national cohorts twenty years apart Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry August 2010, 51(8), 885-894

Intensive intervention cuts child abuse

Intensive interventions can dramatically reduce levels of child abuse in at-risk families. Researchers from Southern Methodist University in Dallas studied 35 families on the at-risk register. Half of them received intensive support in which they were taught how to pay attention and play with their children, how to listen and comfort them, how to offer praise and positive attention, how to give appropriate instructions and commands and how to respond to misbehaviour. They were also given access to materials and resources such as food banks and Medicaid. The other families received normal levels of support from social services. Only 5.9% of the families who received the intensive intervention were later referred to social services for child abuse compared to 28% of the other families.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Smoking, ADHD and high-school dropouts

Teenagers who smoke or have been diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are more likely to drop out of school. Researchers from the University of California, Davis studied 29,662 people asking them about their mental health as teenagers, whether they took drugs, smoked or drank when they were at school and whether they had dropped out of high school. The study found that 28.6% of the students with ADHD had dropped out compared to 26.6% with mania and 24.9% with a mood disorder. However, smoking was even worse with 29% of students who smoked dropping out of school. Using drugs and drinking increased dropout rates but only if pupils smoked as well; once smoking was taken into account drink and drugs had no effect on dropout rates.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Bleak outlook for older alcoholics' partners

There has been quite a lot of research into the problems experienced by the spouses of people with drug problems among younger and middle-aged groups but much less on how a partner's drink problem affects older people. A team of researchers from Stanford University in California studied 167 people with an average age of 59.6. They fell into three groups; one group had partners who had never had a drinking problem, one group had partners who had had a drinking problem but had managed to get over it over the course of the 10-year study and the third group had partners who had a drink problem at the start and end of the study. At the start of the study the people whose partners had drink problems drank more themselves, had poorer health, were more depressed and had worse social lives than those whose partners did not drink. The spouses whose partners managed to give up drinking over the course of the study became comparable to the partners of non-drinkers by the end. However, the spouses of people who continued drinking heavily drank more, suffered more as a result of their drinking and had friends who approved more of drinking.

Moos, Rudolf H. ... [et al] - Spouses of older adults with late-life drinking problems: health, family and social functioning Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs July 2010, 71(4), 506-514

Drug use and suicide

In the U.S. suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in adults between 18 and 65. There is a link between drug problems and an increased risk of suicide but the specific risk factors among drug users are poorly understood. A team of researchers from the Ann Arbor Department of Veterans Affairs compared 854 drug users who killed themselves between 2002 and 2006 and 4,228 drug users who didn't. Of those people who killed themselves 70% did so by violent means such as shooting or hanging themselves or jumping off a tall building. Diagnoses of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were all associated with an increased risk of violent and non-violent (e.g. taking a deliberate overdose, gassing oneself) suicide. People who took drugs from the opium family or who took more than one kind of drug were more likely to kill themselves in a non-violent fashion.

Ilgen, Mark A. ... [et al] - Violent and nonviolent suicide in veterans with substance-use disorders Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs July 2010, 71(4), 473-479

Schizophrenics at greater risk in hospital

People with schizophrenia are already known to suffer from worse health than the rest of the population and now a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that they may also be more at risk when they go into hospital for treatment. The researchers used data from 2002-2007 which covered 269,387 hospitalizations of people with schizophrenia and 37,092,651 hospitalizations of unaffected people. They found that patients with schizophrenia were more likely to have complications such as pressure sores, infections, blood infections, respiratory failure or pneumonia after surgery, deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism. The researchers put the disparity down to the difficulties people with schizophrenia have in communicating with other people, the fact that nurses and doctors might ignore them if they complained and put this down to their mental-health problem, and the side effects of the drugs that people take for their schizophrenia.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Affectionate mothers and resilient children

Babies shown lots of affection by their mothers tend to cope better with stresses and strains as adults. Researchers from Duke University in North Carolina studied 482 people. When they were babies the researchers watched how their mothers treated them and rated them as having low, normal or high levels of affection. The participants were then tracked until they were, on average, 34 and assessed on how they dealt with stress, hostility and anger, sensitivity and anxiety. Those people with mothers who had given them high levels of affection handled all types of distress better and were particularly good at dealing with anxiety. The research fits in with attachment theory in which the quality of the attachment between a child and its primary caregiver (usually its mother) is held to influence its subsequent psychology and relationships with others.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Shame, trauma and depression

Shame is a powerful emotion rooted in how we think other people perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. It can guide our behaviour, influence our feelings about ourselves and shape a sense of our self-identity and our feelings of social acceptability and desirability. Some researchers think that memories of shame can have similar effects to memories of trauma, effects such as intrusiveness, flashbacks, unpleasantness and stressfulness. Two researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal looked into this issue in a study of 811 people. They found that shameful memories did indeed share similar qualities with traumatic ones. Shameful experiences in childhood were associated with current feelings of shame as an adult both in relation to other people and oneself. Feelings of shame in the present were significantly related to depression and those people whose shameful memories were more traumatic had more severe depression symptoms.

Matos, Marcela and Pinto-Gouveia, Jose - Shame as a traumatic memory Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy July-August 2010, 17(4), 299-312

Depression and decision making

One of the less well-known symptoms of depression is indecisiveness. People with depression can have problems making decisions because they lack concentration, see things negatively, have less self-confidence and motivation and think things over too much. Researchers from the University of Meunster in Germany studied 85 people, 40 of whom were being treated in hospital for depression. They found that the depressed participants suffered more from 'decisional conflict' (upsetting feelings related to indecisiveness) than those without depression. In the healthy participants decisional conflict was only linked to the complexity of the task whereas in the depressed participants decisional conflict was linked to low self-confidence, lack of concentration and thinking things over too much.

van Randenborgh, Annette, de Jong-Meyer, Renate and Heuffmeier, Joachim - Decision making in depression: differences in decisional conflict between healthy and depressed individuals Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy July-August 2010 17(4), 285-298

Education and Alzheimer's disease

Having a longer education might not stop people's brains decaying physically but it can help them to stave off symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. A team of researchers from England and Finland studied the donated brains of 872 people taking part in the Epidemiological Clinicopathological Studies in Europe (ECLIPSE) study. They found that - as was the case with previous studies - people who had been educated longer were less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's. However, there was no difference in the changes in the brain associated with the condition between well-educated and less well-educated people suggesting that being better educated helps people deal with changes to the brain better rather than preventing them in the first place.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Eating disorders and perfectionism

Having perfectionist tendencies is a potential risk factor for developing an eating disorder yet only a few studies have been carried out into this. A team of Portuguese researchers investigated this issue further in a study of 997 middle and high-school students. They found that socially-prescribed perfectionism (not saying the wrong thing or making a fool of oneself) was associated with eating disorders in both boys and girls whereas self-oriented perfectionism (getting 100% in tests) was only associated with eating problems in girls.

Bento, C. ... [et al] - Perfectionism and eating behaviour in Portuguese adolescents European Eating Disorders Review,July-August 2010, 18(4), 328-337

Teenage dieting and eating disorders

Dieting is widely recognised as a risk factor for eating disorders in adolescence. However, not all dieters develop an eating disorder so why do some teenagers trying to lose weight develop problems while others don't? A team of Finnish researchers studied 81 adolescent dieters with an average age of 15 to find out. They found that the children could be divided into four groups. Some dieted for vanity - to achieve what they thought was a desirable body weight. These children dieted by leaving out high-fat foods and sweets. Some children were genuinely overweight and dieted for health reasons and also had a sensible approach to dieting and exercise. However, other children dieted either because they were depressed and thought that losing weight would improve their mood or because they had a feeling that they were fat even though their weight was normal. These children were much more likely to try and lose weight unhealthily by skipping meals, eating very little and exercising intensely and were fifteen times more likely to develop an eating disorder.

Rasmus, Isomaa ... [et al] - Psychological distress and risk for eating disorders in subgroups of dieters European Eating Disorders Review July/August 2010, 18(4), 296-303

Resources for Alzheimer's caregivers

Rachel Davis from the radiologydegree.com website has compiled a very useful list of the Top 50 online resources for people looking after someone with Alzheimer's disease. You can find Rachel's list here

http://radiologydegree.com/top-50-online-resources-for-families-coping-with-alzheimer%E2%80%99s/

or by clicking on the link in the title of this post.