Counting the psychological cost of Deepwater Horizon

In April 2010 there was an explosion and fire on a BP-licensed oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico resulting in millions of gallons of oil spilling out into the Gulf. Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Florida, Gainesville have been looking into the psychological impact of the spill in a study of 94 people; 71 of whom lived in Florida and 23 of whom lived in Alabama. The study found raised levels of anxiety and depression in people living in Alabama, where the oil reached the shore, and in Florida where it didn't. Both groups had similar high levels of worry about the impact of the spill on the environment, health and seafood safety. However, the levels of psychological distress were higher among people who had suffered income loss because of the spill. They felt significantly more tension, anger, fatigue and overall mood disturbance than those whose income had not been affected and these people also had lower scores for psychological resilience.

Anger and anxiety

Some researchers think that anxiety and anger are linked and that a genetic predisposition to over-react to things, or to see them as a threat, leads some people to worry and fret, developing an anxiety disorder, while others become angry and lash out. Other people think that the anger felt by people with an anxiety disorder is due to the depression that they often also feel and not their anxiety. Researchers from Florida State University used information from 5,692 people who took part in the National Comorbidity Survey. They found that there was a link between anxiety and anger, independent of depression, but that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and panic disorder were 'not consistently associated with anger experience and expression.'

Hawkins, Kirsten A. and Cougle, Jesse R. - Anger problems across the anxiety disorders: findings from a population-based study Depression and Anxiety doi: 10.1002/da.20764

Child poverty and mental distress

Adults who are poor are also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, however, despite what common sense might suggest the research into how poverty affects the mental health of children and young people is inconclusive. A team of French researchers used information from a study of 941 people. The participants in the study were aged between four and 18 when it started in 1991 and were followed up in 1999. The study found that the children from low-income families in 1991 were 74% more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression in 1999. Children in families whose income either decreased or stayed persistently low between 1991 and 1999 were 2.44 times more likely to suffer from psychological distress.

Melchior, Maria ... [et al] - Family income and youths' symptoms of depression and anxiety: a longitudinal study of the French Gazel youth cohort Depression and anxiety 27(12), 1095-1103

Tough childhoods, emotional reactivity, depression and anxiety

To some extent everybody suffers from stress but some people seem to get more worked up about it than others, something psychologists call emotional, or stress, reactivity. Psychologists have known for a long time that adverse childhood experiences can make people more prone to suffer from depression and anxiety as adults and some think that increased emotional reactivity is one of the ways it might do this. A team of researchers from Harvard School of Public Health looked into this in a study of 268 men who were studied from late adolescence over a seventy-year period. They found that people with better overall childhood environments and a greater number of environmental strengths were at a smaller risk of developing depression or anxiety as adults. Families from poorer backgrounds and with childhood environments characterized by greater conflict and adversity had higher emotional reactivity and higher emotional reactivity in turn predicted the development of adult mood and anxiety disorders.

McLaughlin, Katie A. ... [et al] - Childhood social environment, emotional reactivity to stress, and mood and anxiety disorders across the life course Depression and anxiety 27(12), 1087-1094

Mothers' mental health and children's feeding problems

Mothers' eating disorders, depression and anxiety are all known to cause feeding difficulties in their children, however, there have been few studies investigating how eating disorders interact with mothers' other mental-health problems to create feeding difficulties in children. A team of researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London studied 10,902 women taking part in the long-term Avon Longitudinal Study of Parenting and Children. They found that mothers having an eating disorder had a direct effect on children's feeding problems and also had an indirect effect by making women more depressed and anxious. Having a child with feeding difficulties also increased the mothers' distress over time.

Micali, Nadia ... [et al] - Maternal eating disorders and infant feeding difficulties: maternal and child mediators in a longitudinal general population study Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02341.x

Getting to the bottom of why people worry

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), or chronic worrying, is the most common anxiety disorder and, in any one year, is thought to affect around 2.7% of the population. Two thought processes that are believed to underly GAD are intolerance of uncertainty and what psychologists call negative metacognitive beliefs - worry about worry. Intolerance of uncertainty is a predisposition to react negatively to an uncertain event or situation - to assume that the worst is going to happen. People who are intolerant of uncertainty assess ambiguous situations as being stressful, disturbing and unacceptable and show increased perceptions of threat in situations that are relatively harmless. Worrying about worrying can lead to unhelpful behaviour and ways of controlling one's thoughts that actually lead to more worry in the long-term. Researchers from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne studied 119 people in an attempt to investigate these issues further. Their study also looked into the effects of 'parentification' - a situation in which children end up looking after people who are supposed to be looking after them. The idea behind this was that these children are asked to carry out tasks that they are not really capable of which makes them less confident, and more anxious about, their ability to handle difficult situations in the future. The researchers found that intolerance of uncertainty and negative metacognitive beliefs were both associated with an increase in GAD symptoms. However, once the researchers had taken into account the effects of depression parentification was not associated with an increased propensity to worry.

Tan, Shary ... [et al] (2010) Metacognitive, cognitive and developmental predictors of generalised anxiety disorder symptoms Clinical Psychologist 14 (3), 84 - 89

Herbal remedies for anxiety - what works and what doesn't

Researchers from the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Los Angeles, have been reviewing research into nutritional supplements for treating anxiety. They pooled the results of 24 studies involving more than 200 participants. They found that extracts of passionflower and kava were effective as were L-lysine and L-arginine but that St John's Wort and magnesium supplements were not. There were no serious side effects from any of the herbal remedies.

Yoga and mental health

A study by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine has added more evidence to support the psychological benefits of yoga. Participants in their study were divided into two groups. One group practiced yoga three times a week for an hour while another group walked for the same length of time. The participants were asked about their mood and levels of anxiety throughout the study and the researchers measured the levels of a substance called GABA in their brains, low levels of which are associated with depression and anxiety. Those who practiced yoga reported a more significant decrease in anxiety and greater improvements in mood than those who walked and over time positive changes in the participants' mental states - whether they walked or did yoga - were associated with increased levels of GABA.

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

Students in counselling more distressed but less suicidal

College students going for counselling are more depressed and lonely than they were ten years ago but less likely to think of killing themselves. Researchers from Hofstra University in New York State looked at the records of 3,256 college students who had had college counselling at a mid-sized private university between September 1997 and August 2009. They found that the percentage diagnosed with a mental disorder rose from 93% in 1998 to 96% in 2009. The percentage of students with moderate-severe depression rose from 34% to 41% and these students were frequently socially isolated, depressed and on medication. In 1998 11% of those who attended counselling took psychiatric drugs - mostly for depression, anxiety and ADHD - while in 2009 24% did so. However, the number of students seeking counselling who had thoughts about killing themselves in the last couple of weeks fell from 26% in 1998 to 11% in 2009. The researchers did, however, stress that the results applied to students who had sought out counselling and that there was no evidence that students in general had become more unhappy over the course of the study.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on 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

Anxious mums and sickly babies

Mothers who suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety during their pregnancy might be more likely to have sickly babies. Researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands asked 174 women in the last third of their pregnancies to fill out questionnaires about their stress and anxiety levels. They also measured their levels of cortisol - a hormone linked to stress - in their saliva. Even after controlling for other relevant factors, the researchers found that the variance in infant illness and antibiotic use was predicted by prenatal anxiety and stress: 10.7 percent for general illness, 9.3 percent for respiratory problems, 8.9 percent for skin conditions, and 7.6 percent for the use of antibiotics.

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

CALM programme helps tackle anxiety symptoms

Researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle have been looking into more flexible ways to help people suffering from anxiety. Their study looked into the effectiveness of an intervention called CALM - Coordinated Anxiety Learning and Management - which offers a choice of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), medication or both together backed up with computerised CBT and training for primary-care clinicians in promoting adherence and 'optimising medications.' 1,004 people between the ages of 18 and 75 took part in the study with half taking part in the programme and the other half receiving 'care as usual.' The anxiety symptoms of the participants taking part in the programme were significantly better after 6,12 and 18 months.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/189415.php

Art therapy, anxiety and asthma

Children with asthma can often also suffer from anxiety; something that tends to make their condition worse. Anya Beebe, an art therapist at the National Jewish Health in Denver led a study into whether art therapy could help children with asthma feel less anxious. The study involved 22 children between the ages of 7 and 14 with persistent asthma. 11 of them received art therapy and the rest received 'care as usual.'The children were tested using several standardized measures for coping skills, anxiety, worry, self-concept, and quality of life before the first therapy session, at the end of the last session and six months later. At the end of seven weeks, the art therapy group had lower anxiety and higher quality-of-life and self-concept scores than the group that didn't have art therapy. The improvements persisted, although they were not as pronounced, six months later.

You can find out more about this research at

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE64K5MZ20100521?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

Exercise, illness and anxiety

Having a chronic illness can sometimes lead to the development of anxiety - something that can lower people's quality of life and make them less likely to follow their treatment plans. Researchers from the University of Georgia have been looking into the effectiveness of exercise in reducing this anxiety in a review of 40 studies covering nearly 3,000 patients with a variety of medical conditions. The researchers found that, on average, the patients who exercised regularly reported a 20% reduction in anxiety symptoms. Exercise sessions greater than 30 minutes were better at reducing anxiety than those of less than 30 minutes but programmes of exercise of between 3-12 weeks were actually more effective than those of more than 12 weeks- perhaps because they were less daunting for the participants.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/02/24/exercise-helps-to-reduce-anxiety/11681.html