Greater involvement leads to greater workplace stress

Workers who feel themselves to be more central to, or involved in, their organisation are more likely to suffer from workplace stress. Researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto surveyed 2,737 people, 18% of whom said that their job was highly stressful. The odds of having high stress were greater if workers were managers or professionals, if they thought their poor performance could have a detrimental effect on other people or if they worked long or variable hours. Workers who felt that poor job performance could result in physical injury, damage to their company's equipment or reputation or a fincancial loss were twice as likely to report high stress. Having a large commute or entertaining or travelling for work also increased the risk of stress. Those who were men, who were single and under 25 and who worked in a small business were more likely to be less stressed.

Migraines change brain but don't affect cognition

People who suffer from migraines and severe headaches do show changes to their brain over time but don't show symptoms of cognitive decline. Researchers from Inserm and the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris studied 780 people over 65. They studied them over 10 years using MRI (magnetic-resonance imaging) brain scans and performed cognitive tests of their 'orientation in time and space,' short-term memory and capacity and speed to correctly carry out specific tasks. The results showed that 21% of the sample suffered from severe headaches of whom 70% had migraine. The MRI scans showed that those who suffered with headaches were twice as likely to 'have a large quantity of microvascular brain lesions.' However, there was no difference in cognitive function between those with and without headaches.

Parents' divorce linked to increased risk of suicidal thoughts in men

Boys whose parents divorce could be more likely to think about killing themselves when they become adults. Researchers from the University of Toronto studied 6,647 adults of whom 695 had experienced their parents getting divorced while they were children. Once other factors such as parents being unemployed, being drug addicts or physically abusing their children were taken into account girls whose parents had divorced were no more likely to think about committing suicide; however, even after taking all these factors into account boys whose parents had split up were still twice as likely to think seriously about killing themselves.

NICE updates anxiety guidelines

The U.K.'s National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has updated its guidance on the treatment of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). It says that patients should not be offered benzodiazepines or antipsychotics but should be educated about their condition and actively monitored. If this does not work patients should be offered low-intensity psychological interventions such as self-help groups or books and the chance to join psychoeducational groups. Patients who do not respond to this should be considered for cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), applied relaxation or drug treatment while those most at risk of self-harm should be offered a specialist assessment of their needs and risks.

Brief intervention offers hope to insomnia sufferers

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have been looking into the effectiveness of a very brief therapy for adults with insomnia. They studied 79 older adults, with an average age of 72. Half received printed educational material aobut sleep and half received a brief behavioural treatment made up of one 45-60 minute face-to-face session, on 30-minute follow-up session and two 20-minute phone calls - a therapy much briefer than the usual six or eight-hour long appointments with a clinical psychologist. The behavioural instruction told the participants to stay in bed if they didn't feel sleepy and to have regular bed and waking-up times and also told them about the biology of sleep and body clocks. Two thirds of the people in the brief-treatment group improved after four weeks compared to only one in four in the other group. By the end of the trial 55% of the participants in the treatment group no longer had insomnia compared to only 13% in the other group, improvements which were sustained for at least six months.

Toddler tantrums, self-control and adult problems

Children who are badly behaved and impatient at three are already at risk of having problems as adults. Researchers from Duke University in North Carolina studied 1,000 people in New Zealand in a long-term study which followed them from early childhood to adulthood. Those children who were unable to tolerate frustration, lacked persistence, had difficulty sticking with a task, couldn't wait their turn and who acted before thinking when they were toddlers were more likely to have problems with their finances, be single parents, have a criminal record, smoke, drink too much and have a drug problem as young adults. The badly-behaved toddlers were also more likely to end up with breathing problems, gum disease, sexually-transmitted diseases, inflammation, overweight and high cholesterol and blood pressure. However, those people who were badly-behaved as toddlers but who later improved their self-control were at no greater risk of developing problems.

Parent-training programmes for autism

Parents of children with autism often attend training programmes to help them cope and with the hope that they will improve their child's symptoms and behaviour. A programme called Early Bird is aimed at pre-school children and a programme called ASCEND  has been running for parents of older children in the Bradford area for the last five years. There has been little research into the effectiveness of these programmes so researchers from Bradford District Care Trust studied 79 parents (who had 58 children between them) attending the programme between 2004 and 2007. 88% found the course useful or very useful and parental knowledge and skills improved significantly across a range of learning outcomes. Scores on the Developmental Behaviour Checklist showed a significant reduction in problem behaviour which was associated with the parents learning improved skills in behaviour management.

Pillay, Mini - Autism Spectrum Conditions - Enhancing Nurture and Development (ASCEND): An evaluation of intervention support groups for parents Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry January 2011, 16(1), 5-20 

Family support and depression

High levels of support from one's family are associated with a more rapid recovery from depression while low levels are linked to people being ill for longer. However, there have been few long-term studies into this issue. Researchers from Stanford University studied 373 depressed people over a 23-year period. They found that higher family support was associated with less severe depression at the start of the study and a quicker recovery over the 23-year period. Women with supportive families reported the most rapid recovery from depression.

Kamen, Charles - Family Support and Depressive Symptoms: A 23-Year Follow-Up Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol. 67(3), 215-223 (2011)

Which kids get hooked on tobacco?

Many children have a quick puff on a cigarette from time to time but not all of them go on to get hooked on tobacco. Researchers from Columbia University in New York studied 660 children, all of whom had smoked a cigarette when they were first interviewed in Year 6. The children were then followed up in Year 10 to see whether they had become hooked on tobacco. The researchers found that enjoying a first puff on a cigarette, having parents who smoked, being hooked in Year 6 and smoking more in Year 6 had the strongest effects on adolescent nicotine dependence in Year 10. Perceived peer smoking and teenage behaviour problems were less important factors.

Hu, Mei-Chen ... [et al] - Risk and protective factors for nicotine dependence in adolescence

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02362.x

Escitalopram and hot flushes

The antidepressant escitalopram could reduce hot flushes in menopausal women. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine studied 205 women over an 8-week period. Half were given escalitopram and half were given a placebo. After the eight-week trial the number of hot flushes experienced by the women declined by 47% in the group taking escitalopram and 33% in the group taking the placebo. Interestingly at a three-week follow-up those who had taken escitalopram had more hot flushes than those who had taken the placebo. The researchers' interpretation of this was that the flushes increased because the escitalopram had an effect on them but it could, of course, also mean that the placebo was more effective in the long term!

Video games and mental health - II

Following an earlier study of problematic gaming in young children in Singapore researchers from Yale School of Medicine have been looking into the effects of video games in older children. They surveyed 4,028 adolescents about their gaming and behaviour. 51.2% played video games, 76.3% of boys and 29.2% of girls. For most boys there were no negative consequences of playing the games and they were even linked to a decreased likelihood of smoking. However, among girls gaming was associated with getting into serious fights and carrying a weapon to school. A small percentage of the sample (4.9%) admitted to having problems cutting back on their gaming with boys being more likely to say this than girls. In this group problem gaming was linked to regular cigarette smoking, drug use, depression and getting into serious fights.

Child abuse and false confessions

Compliance involves people responding favourably to requests. In some cases this can be a good thing but in other instances it can lead to people making false confessions when pressure by the police, people being pressurised by their peers to commit crimes and people taking the blame for others' midemeanours. Some studies have shown a significant association between adverse events in people's childhoods, such as physical and sexual abuse, and the tendency to make false confessions and a team of researchers from King's College London and the University of Iceland looked into this further in a study of 113 people receiving outpatient treatment for substance misuse. They found that 64% of the sample reported more than one type of abuse and that compliance was significantly related to parental neglect and physical and sexual abuse. People who suffered from stress and low self-esteem were more likely to have suffered neglect as children while people who were more compliant were more likely to have been sexually abused. Suffering from more than one type of abuse had a multiplying effect on people's tendency to be compliant.

Gudjonssson, Gisli Hannes,  Sigurdsson, Jon Fridrik and Tryggvadottir, Hjordis Bjorg - The relationship of compliance with a background of childhood neglect and physical and sexual abuse The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology DOI: 10.1080/14789949.2010.524707

Remind me who you are again ...

For people like me, on the wrong side of 40 and hopeless at remembering faces, researchers at Harvard University and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire have got bad news - things aren't likely to get any better as we get older. The researchers tested 44,000 volunteers, aged between 10 and 70, on a variety of skills, including the ability to recognise computer-generated faces. They found that skills at other mental tasks, such as remembering names, peaked at around 23-24. However, on the face-recognition task skill rose sharply from age 10 to 20, continued increasing slowly through people's 20s and reached a peak of 83% correct responses in people aged between 30 and 34. Perhaps those of us who are a bit older should start practising our bluffing techniques!

Mum's iron puts kids on their mettle

Iron deficiency is the most common and widespread nutritional disorder in the world, affecting around 2 billion people. Iron is essential for the development of the central nervous system and early iron deficiency can interfere with nerve development, biochemistry and metabolism. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health studied 676 school-age children in Nepal. Their mothers had participated in a trial in which some of them received iron and folic acid supplements while they were pregnant while others didn't. The children whose mothers had received the supplements had better intellectual function, executive function and fine motor skills than those whose mothers had had no supplements.

Video games and mental health

Researchers from the University of Iowa have been studying the effects of video games on children in Singapore. The researchers surveyed 3,034 children between years 3 and 8 every year between 2007 and 2009. 83% of the children in the study played video games and the average time spent playing was between 20.5 and 22.5 hours a week. 9% of the children were classifiied as being addicted to video games. Playing games for more than 30 hours a week, lack of social competence, less-than-average empathy and greater impulsivity all contributed to the addiction. The children who were more addicted to the games were more likely to become anxious and depressed, to develop social phobias and to peform poorly at school.

Suicidal surgeons

A U.S. study by researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has found alarming levels of depression and suicidal thoughts among surgeons. Doctors are known to have a higher suicide rate than the rest of the population but this is thought to be because they have access to, and knowledge about, drugs. 7,905 surgeons - a response rate of 31.7% - answered a survey about depression and suicidal thoughts. 6.3% said they had thought about killing themselves in the last year. Older surgeons were more likely to report suicidal thoughts with surgeons who were 45 or over having one-and-a-half to three times the rate of suicidal thoughts as the rest of the population. Being married and having children were associated with lower levels of suicidal thoughts but being divorced raised the risk as did recently having made a surgical error or suffering from burnout. Only 26% of those who had had suicidal thoughts had sought help from a psychiatrist or psychologist.

Schizophrenia and shrinking brains

Brain scans could be used to help people at risk of developing schizophrenia so that they can be offered help before they become unwell. Schizophrenia is known to run in families and researchers from Edinburgh University compared 146 people with a family history of the illness, but who had suffered no symptoms themselves, with 36 healthy controls. All the participants were between 16 and 25 at the start of the study and were not taking anti-psychotic medication; they had brain scans every 18 months over a 10-year period. The study found that the participants who later went on to develop schizophrenia suffered from an acceleration of brain shrinkage before they became unwell. It is known that accelerated brain shrinkage occurs in people with bipolar disorder, or manic-depression, and schizophrenia, but until now it was not known whether these changes occurred before people became ill, as a result of their illness or as a side effect of their medication. The loss of brain tissue occurred in areas of the brain associated with personality, decision making and social behaviour.

Miserable materialists

People who want the latest type of toys and gadgets could be more depressed than people who are happy with what they have already got. Researchers from Murray State University in Kentucky asked 101 men and women how they felt about a range of gadgets including mobile phones, digital cameras, mp3 players, TVs, game consoles, laptops, cars, designer clothes and jewellery. The participants were asked whether they liked what they owned and, if not, how much they wanted a newer version. The people who were more materialistic and who longed for new gadgets had lower feelings of 'life satisfaction.

Colleges fail to pick up depressed students

Universities and colleges could be failing to pick up on, and offer help to, students who are depressed. Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois studied 1,622 college students going to medical appointments for other health problems. They screeened them for depression with a seven-question survey and found that between a quarter and a fifth of them were depressed with about 2-3% having had suicidal thoughts. The research also found that students who took more exercise were less likely to be depressed.

Brain structures and video-game performance

Researchers from the University of Illinois have been looking into the links between brain structures and learning. They studied 34 people looking at brain activity in structures called the caudate nucleus, the putamen and the nucleus accumbens. The caudate nucleus and the putamen are thought to be active when people learn new motor skills and in tasks that require people to come up with strategies and transfer their attention from one thing to another, while the nucleus accumbens processes emotions associated with reward and punishment. The participants spent time training and practising on a video game called Space Fortress. Activity in the caudate nucleus and the putamen - although not the nucleus accumbens - was found to be a good predictor of how well people picked up the game and could explain between 55 and 68% of the variation in the participants' performance.