FRIDAY, July 31 (HealthDay News) — A growing number of Americans now have a positive opinion on psychiatric medications, a new study contends.
About five out of six people surveyed felt psychiatric medications could help people control psychiatric symptoms, but many also expected the medications could help people deal with day-to-day stresses, help them feel better about themselves and make things easier with family and friends. Read More
TUESDAY, July 28 (HealthDay News) — A new study shows that gloomy days are linked with memory and other cognitive problems in people suffering from depression.
Previous research has shown that many people feel their moods shift with shifting skies, with more depression linked with less sunlight, but this is the first time that light exposure and cognition have been paired, stated the authors of a study appearing in the July 28 online issue of Environmental Health. Read More
SUNDAY, July 19 (HealthDay News) — Thanks to high-profile celebrities like Brooke Shields, postpartum depression is out of the closet and discussed as something to recognize and treat.
But less well known is depression during pregnancy — a common problem as well, and one that also can be risky for the unborn baby, experts now know.
A depressed woman, for instance, is more likely to give birth early, increasing health risks for the baby.
Depression during pregnancy is more common than most people believe, agree Dr. De-Kun Li, a reproductive perinatal epidemiologist in the research division at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., and Dr. Diana Dell, a psychiatrist and obstetrician-gynecologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. Read More
THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) — More than 40 percent of the U.S. soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seen at VA hospitals suffer from mental health disorders or psychosocial behavioral problems, a new study shows.
Curiously, the researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center found that most mental health diagnoses were not made in the first year that a veteran entered the VA health-care system, but several years after. This finding supports the recent move to extend VA benefits to five years of free health care, which allows VA doctors the time to detect and treat more mental illness in returning combat veterans, the researchers noted. Read More
TUESDAY, July 7, 2009 (Health.com) — If you’re feeling down, it can be hard to tell if you’re experiencing a temporary case of the blues or a serious depression. Now a group of researchers say there’s a relatively easy way to figure out if some young adults are at greater risk of psychiatric problems or drug abuse—just ask about their family.
It turns out that the more family members you have who have been diagnosed with major depression, anxiety disorders, or drug or alcohol dependence, the greater the chances that you will too, according to Terrie E. Moffitt, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and colleagues, whose study was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Read More
TUESDAY, June 30 (HealthDay News) — Don’t automatically blame mom: A crying, colicky baby can be just as much the result of dad’s state of mind, Dutch researchers report.
Other studies have found that depression among mothers can be related to excessive crying or colic, a common problem with newborns, but the researchers said that little was known about whether fathers’ emotions and behavior also have an effect. Read More
FRIDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may not be plagued by poor health and shortened lives if they repress their combat experiences, new research suggests.
“The finding goes against the grain,” acknowledged study author and Vietnam army veteran Joseph Boscarino, a senior investigator at the Geisinger Center for Health Research in Danvillle, Pa. “Because the concept that talking about your trauma and analyzing your fears and emotions is always the best policy goes back to Sigmund Freud, and for decades it’s kind of been taken as a given.” Read More
TUESDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) — A new analysis upends a previous, highly acclaimed study that had concluded that a particular gene variation was associated with an increased risk of major depression.
The new analysis did, however, verify the portion of the earlier finding that showed more stressful life events translate into a substantially higher risk for depression.
“Mental disorders are the most complex of all diseases,” said study senior author Kathleen Ries Merikangas, a senior investigator and branch chief of genetic epidemiology research in the Intramural Research Program at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. “We’re learning more about how genes can control the different biologic pathways in the brain but, more importantly, how that brain is wired to respond to environmental factors. We’re at the very primitive stages of knowledge.” Read More
THURSDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) — Sedatives greatly increase the risk of suicide in the elderly, Swedish researchers say.
In their study, hypnotic medication also was linked with a greater likelihood of suicides in older people. “Sedative treatment was associated with an almost 14-fold increase of suicide risk in the crude analysis and remained an independent risk factor for suicide even after adjustment for the presence of mental disorders,” wrote Anders Carlsten, of Gothenburg University. “Having a current prescription for a hypnotic was associated with a fourfold increase in suicide risk in the adjusted model.” Read More
TUESDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) — Teens who face a high risk of depression because their parents struggle with the disease can be helped with a behavioral therapy program geared to help such children manage their depressive tendencies, a new study suggests.
However, the approach appears to be less successful among those children whose parents are actually in the midst of a depressive episode while the treatment is being offered. Read More
