ADHD in adulthood

Although AttentionDeficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally been thought of as a childhood condition there is evidence that in a high proportion of cases it carries on into adulthood. ADHD in adulthood can be a serious risk factor for a number of other mental-health problems such as antisocial personality disorder, substance misuse and depression and is also linked to a lower level of education and higher levels of unemployment, divorce, criminality and road-traffic accidents. A review of studies into adult ADHD found that its prevalence was around 2.5%. Younger people and men were most likely to show symptoms of the condition which declined in prevalence with age.

Simon, Viktoria ... [et al] - Prevalence and correlates of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: meta-analysis British Journal of Psychiatry March 2009, 194(3), 204-211

Treating insomnia in primary care

Most people who go and see their GP have some problems sleeping. 50% report occasional insomnia and 19% chronic insomnia. Sleep problems can lead to more health concerns, less physical activity, less vitality and more emotional problems. The most common treatment is sleeping tablets but behavioural treatment is just as effective, has no side effects and lasts longer. A U.S. study looked at the effectiveness of a brief treatment provided by psychologists based in G.P.'s surgeries. The treatment included sleep-hygiene education (telling the participants to avoid coffee, alcohol, smoking and napping and to take more exercise), stimulus control (only going to bed when sleepy, not reading or watching TV in bed, getting up and doing something else if unable to sleep), relaxation techniques and a self-help book 'Say Good Night to Insomnia.' By the end of the study 83% of the 29 participants were spending more than 85% of the night asleep compared to only 14% at the beginning.

Goodie, Jeffrey L. ... [et al] - Using behavioral health consultants to treat insomnia in primary care: a clinical case series Journal of Clinical Psychology March 2009, 65(3), 294-304

Keeping people with mental-health problems out of prison

Every Primary Care Trust in England should set up a team of mental-health professionals to make sure criminals with mental-health problems are identified, and, if possible kept out of prison. That's the recommendation of a new report from the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health which claims that services have developed in a piecemeal and haphazard way and calls for spending on this area to be tripled. The report says that diverting criminals with mental-health problems into community health services is good value for money and leads to more people getting better.

You can find out more about the report at

http://www.scmh.org.uk/publications/diversion.aspx?ID=593

Brainwriting or brainstorming

Many companies use brainstorming but studies have shown that it can be surprisingly ineffective. Louder people dominate, lazy people take it easy and say nothing and shy people are too scared to say anything. Another way for a group to come up with ideas is 'brainwriting.' Four group members write ideas on a piece of paper in silence. Each group member has a different colour ink so that it is possible to tell where an idea comes from. Once a piece of paper has four ideas on it it is thrown into the middle and another piece of paper is started. The second stage of the process involves group members going to the corners of the room and trying to remember as many of the ideas as possible. In the final stage of the process group members work alone for 15 minutes in an attempt to generate even more ideas. An early study found that brainwriting generated more ideas than brainstorming although more research is needed.

You can find out more about brainwriting at

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/02/forget-brainstorming-try-brainwriting.html

If it's eight it must be turquoise

Synaesthesia is a mixing of senses and perception, so that, for instance, the number 9 is associated with the colour orange, or France with the taste of apples. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh tested 615 children, aged six-seven at 21 UK schools for a particular kind of synaesthesia where numbers are linked to colours. The researchers found that 1.3% of the children had this form of synaesthesia. The colour associated with each number remained constant over time and more links were added as the children grew up. The average child with synaesthesia had 10.5 number-colour links when aged six-seven and 16.9 links a year later.

You can find more information about this study at

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-common-is-synaesthesia-among.html

To sleep, perchance to dream

Scientists are still unsure about why we dream and why we dream about certain things rather than others. A series of studies by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University looked into the significance people give to dreams and found that most people believed they contain important, hidden truths. One study of 149 students in the U.S., India and South Korea asked them to rate different theories about dreams. In all three countries an overwhelming majority of the students believed that dreams revealed hidden truths about themselves or the world. In another study 182 commuters at a Boston train station were given four different scenarios about things that had happened the night before a plane trip: that the nation's security threat had been raised to orange, that they had consciously thought about their plane crashing, that a real plane crash had occured on the route they were about to take or that they had dreamt about a plane crash. Dreaming about a plane crash was more likely to make people change their travel plans. A third study asked 270 people in the U.S. to remember a dream they had had about someone they knew. People gave more importance to pleasant dreams about people they liked than about people they didn't and gave more importance to unpleasant dreams about people they disliked. Finally, when people were asked about their religious dreams religious people were inclined to take seriously any dream involving God, whereas agnostic people only took the dream seriously if God had asked them to do something pleasant.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217125544.htm

Negative emotions in schizophrenia

Negative facial emotions are more common in people with schizophrenia according to a review of psychologists' clinical interviews carried out by a research student at Stockholm University. The study found that negative feelings, such as disgust and contempt, were the most common ones in the patients' facial expressions. The expressions remained the same in a number of different interviews and regardless of who was carrying them out.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223083350.htm

Familiarity and risk

We all have to take decisions about risk in our lives yet we don't always have the information to do so. Researchers at Michigan University presented students with made-up lists of food additives and roller-coaster rides and asked them to rate how dangerous the additives might be and how thrilling the rides were. The additives or roller-coaster rides with the most complicated or difficult-to-pronounce names were rated as the most dangerous or thrilling. The study fits in with previous research which suggests that people rate familiar things as less risky than unfamiliar ones, regardless of the real risks involved.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090220102245.htm

Text and the sexes

An analysis of text messages sent in to an Italian TV programme has shed light on the different ways men and women use new technology to communicate. The study, carried out by researchers at Indiana University, found that women used more characters than men, were more likely to use abbreviations such as gr8 and used more emoticons (smiling and frowning faces). This contrast with previous research on verbal conversation in which men were found to talk more while women were more polite.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210162031.htm

Heroin clinics help users and neighbourhoods

Heroin is sometimes provided to drug addicts at medically-supervised clinics as this is thought to lessen the risk of overdose, and of picking up infections such as hepatitis C. One such initiative is the NAOMI project - the North American Opiate Medication Initiative. Researchers at the University of Montreal looked at the impact of the NAOMI project on the surrounding areas. They found no evidence of an increase in criminal acts or deviant behaviour and a decrease in the quantity of drug-injecting debris such as syringes, needle covers, spoons etc. Participants in the project reduced their consumption of illegal drugs by 70%, their criminal activity by 36% and improved their health (measured by the scores on a questionnaire) by 20%.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217141524.htm

Postnatal depression and diabetes

Pregnant women and new mothers with diabetes could be at an increased risk of developing postnatal depression. A study of 11,000 pregnant women in New Jersey between July 2004 and September 2006 found that the women with diabetes had nearly twice the risk of suffering from postnatal depression. Previous research has linked diabetes with depression and the link held true for women with type 1, type 2 and gestational (linked to pregnancy) diabetes. The study was carried out by researchers at Harvard Medical School and looked at the six months before a woman gave birth and the year afterwards.

You can find out more about this research at

http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKN2442131420090224?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&sp=true

Peering into the virtual world

Worldwide nearly 45 million people play virtual reality games such as Everquest II and Second Life and the amount of (real) money involved would make this parallel world the seventh largest economy in the world. As relationships in these games leave a digital trace it is actually easier to track social networks in this world than in the 'real' one. A study by researchers at Northwestern University in the U.S. looked at which kind of people played Everquest II and how they related to each other using data from the game and questioning 7,000 participants. They found that players tended to underestimate how much time they spent playing the game and were more likely to say they were depressed than the rest of the population. Women preferred to play with men but were the most dedicated and satisfied users and players were substantially older than the teenage stereotype. Perhaps the most surprising finding was that players tended to play with people that they knew or who were from the same geographical area; people 10km from each other were more likely to be partners than those 100km away from each other.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090214162754.htm

Music, memories and MRI scans

People's memories can often be triggered by music and a study of 13 students by researchers at the University of California, Davis looked to see what happens in people's brains when this was going on. The students were played excerpts of 30 different tunes, chosen to have been in the charts when they were growing up, at the same time as they had magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. After each excerpt the student responded to questions about the tune including whether it was familiar or not, how enjoyable it was and whether it was associated with any particular incident, episode or memory. How many memories a tune triggered corresponded to the amount of activity in the upper part of the medial pre-frontal cortex; part of the brain where memories of our past are supported and retrieved. This part of the brain is one of the last to be affected by Alzheimer's disease and it has often been observed that tunes can bring back memories in Alzheimer's sufferers when little else does.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223221230.htm

Child abuse, suicide and genes

Our genes are not our destiny and what happens to us can affect them just as much as they affect us. A study of the brains of 36 people who died suddenly compared 12 suicide victims who had suffered from abuse (either physical, sexual or by neglect), 12 suicide victims who had not suffered abuse and 12 people who had died accidentally. Child abuse alters the body's response to stress and increases the risk of suicide and the researchers (from McGill University in Canada) looked for changes in genes involved in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal function. They found genetic changes in a gene called the neuron-specific-glucocorticoid receptor in the abuse victims but not in the other suicide victims, or the accident victims, confirming findings from previous studies on rats.

You can find out more about this research at

http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKTRE51M6HZ20090223?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

Anger and heart problems

The idea that people can get so cross they give themselves a heart attack could be true - at least in people who already have a heart problem. Previous studies have linked wars, earthquakes and even the World Cup to temporary increases in heart attacks. Researchers at Yale University studied 62 people who had heart disease and who had been fitted with an implantable defibrillator which gives an electric shock to correct dangerously irregular heart rhythyms. They were asked to remember a recent incident which had made them angry and the electrical instability in their heart was measured. The researchers found that anger did increase this electrical instability. The participants were followed over the next three years and those who had shown the greatest electrical instability in response to anger were 10 times more likely to have an irregular heartbeat. It is unclear whether anger has similar damaging effects in people with healthy hearts.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUKTRE51M7EE20090223?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&sp=true

Soft signs and schizophrenia

Neurological soft signs (NSS) are subtle motor and sensory deficits frequently found in people with schizophrenia. A German study of 64 people looked at the links between NSS and brain structure. They scanned 42 people with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls and asked people to fill out a questionnaire designed to find out their NSS. The researchers found that NSS scores were significantly higher in patients than in the control group. NSS were significantly associated with reduced grey and white matter in the pre- and post-central gyrus, pre-motor area, middle and inferior frontal gyri, cerebellum, caudate nucleus and thalamus.

Thomann, P. A. ... [et al] - Neurological soft signs and brain morphology in first-episode schizophrenia Psychological Medicine March 2009, 39(3), 371-379

Childhood trauma and schizophrenia: nature and nurture?

The idea of gene-environment interaction is becoming increasingly influential. It can be defined as the genetic control of sensitivity to environmental factors or as the environmental control of the way genes work. One such interaction between nature and nurture is that between childhood trauma which has been associated with psychosis not only in schizophrenia but also in bipolar disorder. A study of 138 first-degree relatives (siblings or parents) of people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder looked at the links between childhood trauma scores and schizotypy (unusual thought patterns that can be the precursor of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder). They found that there was a link between childhood trauma and schizotypy in the relatives of the schizophrenia sufferers but not in the relatives of the bipolar sufferers suggesting that an interaction between a gene predisposing people to schizophrenia, and childhood trauma was behind the increase in schizotypy.

Schurhoff, F. ... [et al] Self -reported childhood trauma correlates with schizotypal measures in schizophrenia but not bipolar pedigrees Psychological Medicine 39(3) March 2009, 365-370

Puncturing the Penrose hypothesis

The Penrose hypothesis holds that there is an inverse relationship between the number of prison inmates and the number of psychiatric hospital beds in a population i.e. as one goes up, the other goes down. This was thought to be because there was a relatively-fixed proportion of people in a society in need of containment and if they were not in a psychiatric hospital they would be in a prison or vice versa. A number of studies have found that a fall in available hospital beds occured at the same time as a rise in prisoner numbers. Most of the authors of most of these studies concluded that the decline in psychiatric hospital populations was a cause of increased prison populations suggesting that the same people who may have been hospitalized at one time were later imprisoned. Other researchers observed the same relationship but argued that different factors affected the number of hospital beds and the number of prison places. However, despite the regular publication of national statistics for prisoners and psychiatric hospital patients there has been no study replicating Penrose's original one in 1939. An analysis of data from 179 countries by researchers in Australia found that in high-income countries there was no link betweeen prison population and the number of beds. In low- and middle-income countries there was a positive correlation i.e. as hospital beds went up so did prison places and vice versa . The researchers thought that this might be because countries built more of both as their economic circumstances improved.

Large, Matthew M and Nielssen, Olav - The Penrose hypothesis in 2004: patient and prisoner numbers are positively correlated in low- and middle-income countries but are unrelated in high-income countries Psychology and psychotherapy: theory, reserahc and practice March 2009, 82(1), 113-120

Who gets psychodynamic therapy?

Little is known about the kind of people who are referred for psychodynamic psychotherapy. A study by researchers in London and Coventry collected data from fourteen psychotherapy services about 1,136 service users. It found that most of them were in the moderate-to-severe range of psychiatric severity. 95% of them met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder (mostly anxiety and mood disorders) and/or a personality disorder. 82% of the service users were found to be suitable for treatment although there were relatively-high rates of treatment rejection by service users and treatment drop-out.

Chiesa, Marco ... [et al] - Psychiatric morbidity and treatment pathway outcomes of patients presenting to specialist NHS psychodynamic psychotherapy services: results from a multi-centre study Psychology and psychotherapy: theory, research and practice March 2009, 82(1), 83-98

Stigma and schizophrenia

A survey of 732 people with schizophrenia in 27 countries, carried out by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, has revealed the amount of discrimination they face in their everyday lives. The survey found that

• 47% reported discrimination in making and keeping friends
• 43% had experienced discrimination from family members
• 27% had experienced discrimination in intimate or sexual relationships
• 29% had suffered from prejudice while trying to find or keep a job
• 64% hadn't bothered to apply for work, training or education because they expected to fail or face discrimination
• 55% anticipated discrimination when seeking a close relationship
• 72% said that they felt a need to conceal their diagnosis of schizophrenia

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=news&id=116177&cn=7