SEATTLE, Oct 26, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- A just-released three-year study finds type 2 diabetes and depression can be a fatal mix.
Researchers found patients whose type 2 diabetes was accompanied by minor or major depression had higher mortality rates, compared with patients with type 2 diabetes alone.
Researchers at the University of Washington and at Group Health Cooperative, a large, Seattle-based health plan, surveyed and then followed 4,154 patients with...
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS -- October 27, 2005 -- The antidepressant escitalopram failed to show any efficacy compared to placebo in subjects with compulsive shopping disorder or kleptomania in two pilot trials.
Results were presented here at the 18th European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) Congress on October 24th.
In the first trial, Lorrin M. Morran, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Director, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic, Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, California, United States, and colleagues assessed the response to escitalopram among 26 women with a mean age of 29 years who had been diagnosed with compulsive shopping disorder.
Dr. Koran said those women who responded over an initial 7-week phase were...
Recently considered rare and mysterious psychiatric curiosities, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder-MPD) and other Dissociative Disorders are now understood to be fairly common effects of severe trauma in early childhood, most typically extreme, repeated physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.
In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) was changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), reflecting changes in professional understanding of the disorder resulting from...
Cyclothymia is a chronic bipolar disorder consisting of short periods of mild depression and short periods of hypomania (lasting a few days to a few weeks), separated by short periods of normal mood. Individuals with cyclothymia (thymia: from the Greek word for the mind) are never free of symptoms of either depression or hypomania for more than two months at a time. In 1980 the classification of cyclothymia was changed in the DSM-IV from Personality Disorder to Mood Disorder.
Though the above description portrays cyclothymia as a mild disorder, it is so only relative to...
Alternative names
Hyperventilation; Breathing - rapid and deep; Overbreathing; Fast deep breathing; Respiratory rate - rapid and deep.
Definition
Hyperventilation is rapid or deep breathing, usually caused by anxiety or panic. This overbreathing, as it is sometimes called, actually leaves you feeling breathless.
When you breathe, you inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Excessive breathing leads to low levels of carbon dioxide in your blood, which causes many of the symptoms that you may feel if you hyperventilate.
Considerations
Feeling very anxious or having a panic attack are the usual...
Consumer, professional, legislative and regulatory organizations are increasingly calling for the development and adoption of evidence-based therapies, based on demands for quality services and expectations that outpouring of dollars and time are rewarded by beneficial outcomes. In child and adolescent mental health, growing public concerns over safety, in particular with psychotropic medications, and the recognition that psychiatric impairment is a major factor within other social service systems has further fueled the demand for empirically based interventions.
Randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) with adequate sample sizes and defined study populations are the standard for characterizing an intervention as evidence-based (Cochrane Collaboration, 2002). A listing of all RCTs in child and adolescent psychiatry is beyond the scope of this commentary (for a review, see McClellan and Werry [2003]). This review will outline interventions with the best research support. Fortunately, although the literature remains limited, the number of well-conducted studies is increasing.
Psychopharmacology
An estimated 6% of young people under the age of 20 in the United States receive...
Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline has sent a warning letter to doctors, advising that the antidepressant Paxil may be linked to a slightly higher risk of birth defects in babies exposed to the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy. The company also has added the warning to its Paxil label. This comes on the heel of a new study requested by the Food and Drug Administration.
On the AutAdvo list, one of the NT members asked about sensory overload. This is certainly a topic of importance, given how strongly it affects the life of the autistic person, so I posted a rather detailed reply. I was surprised by the feedback I received for that post... it was overwhelmingly positive, and several people asked that I post it on my site so that others can read it. I was happy to do that, certainly, as helping NTs to understand autistics is one of the purposes of this site.
I will include the original citations from the post to which I replied, since the responses I typed were geared toward the questions as posted. Those original questions will have the greater than '>' symbol in front of them.
> What type of sensory overload? Is it auditory, visual, other, all?
It is different with each of us, but the short answer is 'all.' It can be any of the senses... I know that loud noises, or even persistent quiet ones, add significantly to the sensory load, and certain types of noises are worse than others. In time, my nervous system will return to normal if no other loads are placed on it, but if there are more noises or other loads present, the stress level will build faster than I can burn it off, and I will get overloaded.
I have described it like this. It is as if there is a reservoir of sorts that each of us has. This reservoir starts off empty, but the things we experience throughout the day fill it up. Any sensory load (which I define as stimulus that the nervous system is describing to the brain-- in other words, anything that can be felt) or other nervous system load will cause the reservoir to take on more fluid. It does not have to be unpleasant-- even pleasant kinds of sensory load (like enjoying a movie at a theater-- I like it, but it does present a notable sensory load) fill up the reservoir. Things like the smell of people's perfume, bright lights...
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...