What's the difference between worry and panic? Your brain knows, though until now many scientists didn't. Recent research by Wendy Heller, Ph.D., shows that the two states originate in different cerebral hemispheres -- and that previous research had often confused them.
Scientists studying anxiety had produced conflicting reports of its site in the brain, says Heller, because they failed to distinguish anxious apprehension (worry) from anxious arousal (panic). In an effort to sort out the two, Heller and her colleagues compared the brain activity of a group of people who often felt anxious apprehension and...
A Spiritually Inclined Student Is A Happier Student: Study Finds Link Between Faith And Mental Health
October 27, 2004
(USA TODAY) -- College students who participate in religious activities are more likely to have better emotional and mental health than students with no religious involvement, according to a national study of students at 46 wide-ranging colleges and universities.
In addition, students who don't participate in religious activities are more than twice as likely to report poor mental health or depression than students who attend religious services frequently.
Being religious or spiritual certainly seems to contribute to one's sense of psychological well-being, says Alexander Astin, co-principal investigator for the study of 3,680 third-year college students. The study was released this week by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Those who participate in religious activities also are less likely to feel...
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDayNews) -- If you have a child or teenager who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, a new study strongly suggests that cognitive-behavior therapy should be part of any treatment plan.
The study, which appears in the Oct. 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that cognitive-behavior therapy was more effective at relieving the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder than treatment solely with the antidepressant sertraline (Zoloft). However, the study also found a combination of the two was the most effective of all.
"We examined the relative benefit of three active treatments -- cognitive-behavior therapy alone, medication management alone, a combination of...
TUESDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDayNews) -- Mice who were given the generic equivalent of Prozac soon after they were born were prone to anxiety and depression as adults, new research concludes.
Even though the study was not done in humans, it does raise questions about the safety of antidepressants in pregnant women and in young children.
"It seems a reasonable conclusion that these medications are probably acting differently in an underdeveloped nervous system than in a developed nervous system," said Dr. Jay Gingrich, senior author of the study, which appears in the Oct. 29 issue of Science. Gingrich presented the results Tuesday at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.
The findings come less than two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated stronger "black box" warnings -- the government's strongest safety alert -- for all antidepressants. That move was largely an outcome of a continuing controversy over...
It is a sad fact of life that disparities in insurance coverage and stigma collaborate to keep access to mental health care lagging behind physical health care for everyone. Overall, only one third of Americans with a mental health problem get care. Still, the percentage of African Americans receiving needed care is half that of whites.
California psychologist Gloria Morrow contends that the distrust and stigma that blacks feel about mental-health treatment stem in part from difficulty in finding a therapist to whom they can comfortably relate. African Americans comprise less than 2% of licensed psychiatrists in California and less than 4% of mental-health providers nationally. Mental-health practitioners "don't 'get it' when they are working with people who don't look like them," she insists.
One effect is to shift sufferers into care settings...
The areas of the brain involved in learning fears have been known, but new research now identifies the areas involved in extinguishing those fears.
"We have been able to identify neural circuits of extinction learning in humans," said study author Elizabeth Phelps, an associate professor of psychology and neural science from New York University. "This is important, because extinction is a model we can use to look at how we get rid of fears we have learned."
Phelps and her colleagues found the area called the amygdala is a key in both learning and unlearning fears. They also found the ventral medial prefrontal cortex is critical for the long-term extinction of fears, according to their report in the Sept. 16 issue of Neuron.
If you feel your heart skip a beat, it's probably nothing serious, says an article in the July issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource.
It's likely that your heart didn't actually skip a beat, and what you felt was an early extra heartbeat. When your heart has an early heartbeat, it delays a little longer than normal before it beats again. To you, that may feel like your heart actually skipped a beat.
brain protein that regulates sleep and anxiety may offer a target for the development of new drugs to treat conditions such as sleep and anxiety disorders and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In research with rodents, University of California, Irvine scientists found that neuropeptide S (NPS) increases alertness, suppresses sleep and...
NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Reintegration, a non-profit organization working to improve the lives of persons with mental illness, today announced that applications for the 2005-2006 Lilly Moving Lives Forward Reintegration Scholarship are currently available. Interested candidates can now obtain the application from the Center For Reintegration's website at http://www.reintegration.com/. The application deadline is January 14, 2005.
Sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company, the scholarship program was designed to help persons with...
* More than 54 million Americans have a mental disorder in any given year, although fewer than 8 million seek treatment (SGRMH, 1999).
* Depression and anxiety disorders — the two most common mental illnesses — each affect 19 million American adults annually (NIMH, 1999).
* Approximately 12 million women in the United States experience depression every year — roughly twice the rate of men (NIMH, 1999).
* One percent of the population (more than 2.5 million Americans) has schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 1998).
* Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, affects more than 2 million Americans (NIMH, 2000).
* Each year, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa affect millions of Americans, 85-90 percent of whom are teens and young adult women (NMHA, 2000).
* Depression greatly increases the risk of developing heart disease. People with depression are four times more likely to have a heart attack than those with no history of depression (NIMH, 1998).
* Approximately 15 percent of all adults who have a mental illness in any given year also experience a co-occurring substance abuse disorder, which complicates treatment (SGRMH, 1999).
* Up to one-half of all visits to primary care physicians are due to conditions that are caused or exacerbated by mental or emotional problems (CFHC, 1998).
If you're having trouble dozing at night, the resulting fatigue you feel may be the least of your problems: Insomnia may often be a symptom of a more serious mental disorder.
About a third of U.S. adults suffer from insomnia, yet less than 5% see a physician to treat the problem. Perhaps they should, say Washington State University (WSU) researchers who have found a link between insomnia and...
There are things we can change about ourselves and things we cannot. Concentrate your energy on what is possible -- too much time has been wasted.
This is the age of psychotherapy and the age of self-improvement. Millions are struggling to change. We diet, we jog, we meditate. We adopt new modes of thought to counteract our depressions. We practice relaxation to curtail stress. We exercise to expand our memory and to quadruple our reading speed. We adopt draconian regimens to give up smoking. We come out of the closet or we try to become heterosexual. We seek to lose our taste for alcohol. We seek more meaning in life. We try to extend our life span.
Sometimes it works. But distressingly often, self-improvement and psychotherapy fail. The cost is enormous. We think we are worthless. We feel guilty and ashamed. We believe we have no willpower and that we are failures. We give up trying to change.
On the other hand, this is not only the age of self-improvement and therapy, but also the age of...
Sugar addiction is more than a trite expression people use to describe their sweet tooth. A pattern of fasting and overloading on sugary foods may foster dependence, according to a study published in Obesity Research.
"People with a genetic predisposition for addiction can become overly dependent on sugar, particularly if they periodically stop eating and then binge," warns Bart Hoebel, Ph.D., a psychologist at Princeton University who led the study. "Laboratory experiments with rats showed that signs...
While short spurts of stress can boost the immune system, lengthy doses lead to a breakdown of immune function, says a study in the July issue of the Psychological Bulletin.
Canadian and American researchers analyzed the findings of 293 studies that included a total of 18,941 people. This review of previous research confirmed that stress does alter the immune system.
An advisory panel of the FDA (USA) accepted publicly that antidepressants can bring on suicidal thoughts in a number of teenagers who are being treated for depression. According to the panel, there should be stronger ‘black box’ warnings on the drugs. The problem here is that the warning should not deter people who need antidepressants from taking them.
The leading cause of teenage deaths in the USA is accidents, followed by homicides, followed by suicide. In many cases, intensive counselling alone does not help teenagers with depression. The health professional, and the parent(s) have a challenge in treating the depression. In most cases the antidepressants help the patients.
Antidepressants that work well with adults also work well for the majority of teenagers and young people.
Health experts are asking that the warnings on the drugs should emphasize close observation of the teenager during the...
A good dose of exercise may help ease your depression or anxiety.
Even just 10 minutes of moderate exercise can improve your mood, says an article in the July issue of Mayo Clinic HealthSource.
Benefits of exercise include:
Summary: States that human stomach has neurotransmitters similar to the brain. Functions of the stomach; How does the stomach communicates with the brain.
Ever get a gut feeling about someone, or I anxious butterflies in your stomach? That's because you have a second brain in your bowel, according to Michael Gershon, M.D., author of The Second Brain (HarperCollins, 1999), and a neurobiologist at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Gershon recently explained to PT how an independent network of over 100 billion neurons in the gut not only signals our bodies to stress but causes illness.
Q Why do we need a second brain?
A Most importantly, to...
Anxiety and Depression Together
The disorders are two sides of the same coin. Over the past couple of years, clinicians and researchers alike have been moving towards a new conclusion: Depression and anxiety are not two disorders that coexist. They are two faces of one disorder.
Are you anxious or are you depressed? In the world of mental health care, where exact diagnosis dictates treatment, anxiety and depression are regarded as two distinct disorders. But in the world of real people, many suffer from both conditions. In fact, most mood disorders present as a combination of anxiety and depression. Surveys show that 60-70% of those with depression also have anxiety. And half of those with chronic anxiety also have clinically significant symptoms of depression.
The coexistence of anxiety and depression...
WINSTON-SALEM, NC -- September 7, 2004 -- Pediatricians are diagnosing and treating a growing number of children with behavioral health problems. However, they do not always feel comfortable or sufficiently trained to fill this new role, according to a study from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.
The study involved interviews with community pediatricians who estimated that an average of about 15 percent of the children they see have behavioral health problems, said Jane Williams, Ph.D., lead author of the study. The report was published in the September issue of Pediatrics.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common behavioral health disorder seen by pediatricians, she said. The pediatricians “expressed a high level of comfort with the diagnosis and frequently or occasionally prescribed stimulants” to treat it.
But when a child is suffering from anxiety or depression, the pediatricians felt...
The Food and Drug Administration will examine clinical trial data for thousands of depressed adults to see if they, like children, suffered increased suicidal thoughts and behaviors while taking antidepressants.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting FDA deputy commissioner, could not say how long the exhaustive analysis would take or how much it would cost.
It’s blamed for causing a range of symptoms and health problems, but stress isn’t all bad.
Stress has become something of a buzzword in recent times, but it can have different effects, depending on its nature, duration and the individual concerned, says a new report. Two researchers from the Universities of Kentucky and British Columbia have analysed nearly 300...
Fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan could lead to problems for Muslims taking oral prescription drugs, says an article in this week's issue of the British Medical Journal.
This year, Ramadan begins Oct. 15. During this month, adult Muslims must refrain from consuming any food, beverages and oral drugs between dawn and dusk. Many Muslim patients who have chronic diseases choose to fast even though Islamic rules say they don't have to, the article noted.
Gender matters when it comes to how people deal with mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder.
The difference between men and women may be evident in how they react to such disorders, which symptoms are most prominent, and whether or not they seek help.
For example, women are twice as likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than men, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health...
Debates about the safety and effectiveness of treatments for depression miss a basic reality about the disease: most people affected by it do not seek help at all, and those who do commonly neglect to complete counseling or drug regimens recommended by doctors. For at least a third of the people who try them, treatments of any kind fall short, surveys show.
But improving success rates may be a matter of picking up the phone, according to a report today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a large-scale, 18-month study, doctors in Seattle found that ...
During the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, my house convulsed in the dark. I leaped from my bed to the hall doorway moments before a bookcase fell across the spot where I had been sleeping. Was my action a gamble or a calculated risk? Was I lucky? When we buy stock, change jobs, buy more computer technology, get married or buy a lottery ticket are we gambling or taking a calculated risk? What's luck got to do with it?
In these turn of the century years, chaos and change bring disruption and opportunity to almost every area of our lives. Job security, gender roles and viable opportunities are in continual change. To keep our balance, survive and thrive we need to be clear and focused in our actions. Every choice we make, including the choice to do nothing, involves some kind of risk. A gamble has a high probability of loss. A calculated risk has a much higher probability of a positive outcome. Knowing the difference is essential to our success.
To make successful decisions and take positive action we must be in the realistic present. Emotional decision making can be lethal when governed by unexamined personal weaknesses and wounds from childhood. Finding and resolving old patterns of emotional highs and lows increases our ability to make a calculated risk. Even if old patterns are not resolved, acknowledging them and setting them aside during decision making can create better chances for being a winner.
Here is a comparison check list of traits and tendencies for gamblers and calculated risk takers.
BETHESDA, MD -- September 29, 2004 -- If you missed your morning coffee and now you have a headache and difficulty concentrating, you might be able to blame it on caffeine withdrawal. In general, the more caffeine consumed, the more severe withdrawal symptoms are likely to be, but as little as one standard cup of coffee a day can produce caffeine addiction, according to a Johns Hopkins study that reviewed over 170 years of caffeine withdrawal research.
Results of the Johns Hopkins study should result in caffeine withdrawal being included in the next edition of the DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered the bible of mental disorders, and the diagnosis should be updated in the World Health Organization's ICD, or The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.
"Caffeine is the world's most commonly used stimulant, and it's cheap and readily available so people can...