NEW YORK - The round-the-clock availability that cell phones and pagers have brought to people’s lives may be taking a toll on family life, a new study suggests.
The study, which followed more than 1,300 adults over 2 years, found that those who consistently used a mobile phone or pager throughout the study period were more likely to report negative “spillover” between work and home life...
Suppose you could erase bad memories from your mind. Suppose, as in a recent movie, your brain could be wiped clean of sad and traumatic thoughts.
That is science fiction. But real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event...
Initial results of the nation's largest clinical trial for depression have helped clinicians to track "real world" patients who became symptom-free and to identify those who were resistant to the initial treatment. Participants treated in both medical and specialty mental health care settings experienced a remission of symptoms in 12 to 14 weeks during well-monitored treatment with an antidepressant medication. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), used flexible adjustment of dosages based on quick and easy-to-use clinician ratings of symptoms and patient self-ratings of side effects.
About a third of participants reached a remission or virtual absence of symptoms during the initial phase of the study, with an additional 10 to 15 percent experiencing some improvement. Subsequent phases of the trials will help....
A protein that seems to be pivotal in lifting depression has been discovered by a Nobel Laureate researcher funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
"Mice deficient in this protein, called p11, display depression-like behaviors, while those with sufficient amounts behave as if they have been treated with antidepressants," explained Paul Greengard, Ph.D., a Rockefeller University neuroscientist who received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries about the workings of such neuronal signaling systems. He and his colleagues found that p11 appears to help regulate signaling of the brain messenger chemical serotonin, a key target of antidepressants...
Archaic stereotypes and discrimination are painful reminders that mental illnesses are still stigmatized.
You've probably heard the words, tossed out loosely, without a care — words like "psycho," "schizo" and "wacko." Or you've seen the jokes on television about "loony bins" and characters in straightjackets. You might even have read about the government official who quipped that a congressman must be "off his meds and out of therapy."
But if you or a loved one has a mental illness, you know that these words and gimmicks aren't just harmless fun. Rather, they perpetuate the stigma attached to mental illness. Stigma is painful and shaming, but you can both cope with it and combat it.
Stigma is a mark of disgrace or shame. It has four components:
Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes
People with synesthesia--whose senses blend together--are providing valuable clues to understanding the organization and functions of the brain
When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues--so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded. And when Jeff Coleman looks at printed black numbers, he sees them in color, each a different hue. Blakeslee, Jones and Coleman are among a handful of otherwise normal people who have synesthesia. They experience the ordinary world in extraordinary ways and seem to inhabit a mysterious no-man's-land between fantasy and reality. For them the senses--touch, taste, hearing, vision and smell--get mixed up instead of remaining separate.
Modern scientists have known about synesthesia since 1880, when Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, published a paper in Nature on the phenomenon. But most have brushed it aside...
Videoconferencing, Web sites and other electronic media offer faster, cheaper care--without the stigma of parking in front of the shrink's office.
A sheriff's deputy pulls up to the emergency room at Scott County Hospital in rural Oneida, Tenn., with an agitated, disoriented passenger who appears to need psychiatric care, maybe even immediate hospitalization. But no one at the county hospital is trained to make that decision. The nearest qualified person is 59 miles across the state, at the Ridgeview Psychiatric Hospital in Oak Ridge.
Only a few years ago a member of Ridgeview's Mobile Crisis Team would have driven for 90 minutes, mostly over winding back roads, to Oneida. During that long wait, the distressed patient could not...
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After years of ignoring the most pervasive fear in human history, it is time to examine its roots dispassionately. For such a purpose, we need only call upon the appropriate rules for evaluating historical evidence.
Let a comet appear in the sky. Let the “zeroes” line up on a calendar. Let the weather turn stormy, or world events grow unsettled. When such things occur they will invariably trigger a cultural response—the “doomsday anxiety”, a fear of the end of the world.
Today little attention is given to the historic origins of this cultural syndrome. However, only a few years ago it reared its head...
WASHINGTON - Anti-depressants, such as Prozac and similar drugs, help many patients overcome their often disabling psychiatric disease and do not increase the risk for suicide, according to two large studies being published today that counter recent concerns about the popular medications.
The findings from two independent, federally funded studies — the first of their kind — spurred some psychiatrists to call for the Food and Drug Administration to re-evaluate its warnings about the drugs...