Feature Channels: Mental Health

• share
• favorite_border

Penn Medicine researchers found that patients who did not respond to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety in childhood had more chronic and enduring patterns of suicidal ideation at 7 to 19 years after treatment. This study adds to the literature that suggests that successful CBT for childhood anxiety confers long-term benefits. The complete study is available in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

• share
• favorite_border

People with diabetes are more prone to anxiety and depression than those with other chronic diseases that require similar levels of management.

• share
• favorite_border

Rejected by a person you like? Just “shake it off” and move on, as music star Taylor Swift says. But while that might work for many people, it may not be so easy for those with untreated depression, a new brain study finds.

• share
• favorite_border

Violence during the civil war in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996 resulted in the development of significant mental health problems and conditions for the county’s people, according to a new multi-institution study from researchers under the Guatemala-Penn Partnership.

• share
• favorite_border

Genetic factors help to explain the commonly found association between low back pain and depression, suggests a large study of twins in the March issue of PAIN®, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Pain. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

• share
• favorite_border

New initiative provides tools and resources to help suicidal people and concerned observers

• share
• favorite_border

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry examines suicidal ideation and psychotic experiences among more than 11,000 adults who were 18 and older. The data were drawn from a large general-population based sample of U. S. households households identified through the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (2001-2003).

• share
• favorite_border

Although essential marine omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D have been shown to improve cognitive function and behavior in the context of certain brain disorders, the underlying mechanism has been unclear. In a new paper published in FASEB Journal* by Rhonda Patrick, PhD and Bruce Ames, PhD of Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI), serotonin is explained as the possible missing link tying together why vitamin D and marine omega-3 fatty acids might ameliorate the symptoms associated with a broad array of brain disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

An Iowa State professor has new perspective as to the challenges veterans face when seeking mental health care. It’s an issue Alicia Carriquiry was aware, but she never fully understood the need until listening to veterans testify about their situation.

• share
• favorite_border

What the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act really means for veterans seeking mental health care

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Stacey C. Cahn, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, discusses triggers, treatments and the prevalence of anorexia, the deadliest eating disorder.

• share
• favorite_border

The science behind many anti-depressant medications appears to be backwards, say the authors of a paper that challenges the prevailing ideas about the nature of depression and some of the world’s most commonly prescribed medications.

• share
• favorite_border

Many mental health therapists use treatments that have little evidence to support them. A new multi-institution study led by Penn Medicine has found that an organization’s culture and climate are better predictors of the use of evidence-based practices than an individual therapist’s characteristics in the treatment of children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

Patients who increased doses of opioid medicines to manage chronic pain were more likely to experience an increase in depression, according to Saint Louis University findings in Pain.

• share
• favorite_border

Study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found increased risk of suicide associated with short-term air pollution exposure

• share
• favorite_border

Latino adolescents who experience discrimination-related stress are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and issues with sleep, according to research led by NYU. These mental health outcomes were more pronounced among Latino teens born in the U.S. to immigrant parents, as opposed to foreign-born teens.

• share
• favorite_border

The study found that extremely low birth weight babies whose mothers received a full course of steroids prior to giving birth are at even greater risk for psychiatric disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) are studying chronic stress and depression, with a focus on endocannabinoids, which are brain chemicals similar to substances in marijuana.

• share
• favorite_border

Cannabinoids may be involved in the weight gain that occurs in people with schizophrenia who are treated with the antipsychotic olanzapine, according to a pilot study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology by researchers at the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM) and Université de Montréal (UdeM).

• share
• favorite_border

UNC School of Medicine researchers have shown that brain scans can predict which patients with clinical depression are most likely to benefit from a specific kind of talk therapy.

• share
• favorite_border

Sharp and significant increases in suicides followed select financial crisis events and austerity announcements in Greece, from the start of the country’s 2008 recession to steep spending cuts in 2012, Penn Medicine researchers report in a new study published online this week in the British Medical Journal Open, along with colleagues from Greece and the United Kingdom.

• share
• favorite_border

Encouraging adversaries to have more interpersonal contact to find common ground may work on occasion, but not necessarily in the U.S. Senate, according to new research.

• share
• favorite_border

Psychopathic violent offenders have abnormalities in the parts of the brain related to learning from punishment, according to an MRI study led by Sheilagh Hodgins and Nigel Blackwood.

• share
• favorite_border

New Albright College research suggests contour integration impairment is trait-related or a symptom of schizophrenia.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of South Carolina researchers find that young adults who accumulated higher amounts of debt incurred from student loans reported higher levels of depressive symptoms, even with adjustments for parental wealth, childhood socioeconomic status, and other factors.

• share
• favorite_border

Classic psychedelic drugs include LSD, psilocybin and mescaline. This new School of Public Health research is published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have produced an approach that completely protects animal models against a type of genetic disruption that causes intellectual disability, including serious memory impairments and altered anxiety levels.

• share
• favorite_border

As the United States population has doubled since 1955, the number of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States has been cut by nearly 95 percent to just 45,000, a wholly inadequate equation when considering that there are currently 10 million U.S. residents with serious mental illness. A new viewpoint in JAMA looks at the evolution away from inpatient psychiatric beds, evaluates the current system for housing and treating the mentally ill, and then suggests a modern approach to institutionalized mental health care as a solution.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Postpartum depression (PPD) may have a diverse clinical presentation and this has critical implications for diagnosis, treatment and understanding the underlying biology of the illness, a new study finds.

• share
• favorite_border

It’s normal for a very young child to have tantrums and be otherwise disruptive, but researchers have found that if such behavior is prolonged or especially intense, the child may have conduct disorder. The Washington University team, led by senior investigator Joan L. Luby, MD, recommends that children who exhibit these symptoms be referred to mental health professionals for evaluation and possible intervention.

• share
• favorite_border

Depression and other behavior changes may show up in people who will later develop Alzheimer’s disease even before they start having memory problems, according to a new study published in the January 14, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

• share
• favorite_border

Depression and behavioral changes may occur before memory declines in people who will go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

• share
• favorite_border

Neurobiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center found a surprising and paradoxical effect of abuse-related cues in rat pups: those cues also can lower depressive-like behavior when the rats are fully grown. This could shed light on why certain cues associated with early life abuse can reduce stress in those same individuals as adults.

• share
• favorite_border

A Georgia State University School of Public Health researcher's web-based training program has been proven to not only reduce the likelihood of college-age men becoming involved in sexual assaults, but also to intervene to stop an assault from happening.

• share
• favorite_border

For Jewish Americans, going to synagogue makes a difference for health, according to a study of five large Jewish urban communities by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A significant portion of state and federal prisoners are not receiving treatment for mental health conditions, according to research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health.

• share
• favorite_border

o your neighbors have their house lights on? Is their walk shoveled? Are the newspapers and mail piling up? You might want to knock on the door and check on them, says Debbie Jansky, assistant manager, Gottlieb Home Health & Hospice. “Winter is isolating for us all but when really bad weather hits, the chronically ill or elderly really suffer the most,” she says.

• share
• favorite_border

Why do some people develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while others who suffered the same ordeal do not? A new UCLA discovery may shed light on the answer.

• share
• favorite_border

Even with modern genomewide analysis techniques, it has proven difficult to identify genetic factors affecting risk for depression, according to a topical review in the January issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

• share
• favorite_border

In a two-year longitudinal study involving 13 intensive care units in four U.S. hospitals, researchers found that better physical functioning — basic and complex activities considered essential for maintaining independence — is associated with remission of general anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team at McGill University has for the first time convincingly identified a network of neurons in a particular area of the brain, the lateral prefrontal cortex, that interact with one another to promptly filter visual information while at the same time ignoring distractions. It’s a discovery with potentially far reaching implications for people who suffer from diseases such as autism, ADHD and schizophrenia.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study looked at police officers in the New Orleans area during and after Hurricane Katrina. The results suggested that they were shielded from PTSD by the protective qualities not only in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but years later as well.

• share
• favorite_border

When faced with making choices, but lack sufficient evidence to guarantee success, our brain uses elapsed time as a proxy for task difficulty to calculate how confident we should be, a team of neuroscientists has found. Their findings help untangle the different factors that contribute to the decision-making process.

• share
• favorite_border

“We found a clear difference between people with a mental illness who are incarcerated for a crime and those declared not criminally responsible for a crime and then hospitalized at a psychiatric institution.” - Dr. Alexandre Dumais

• share
• favorite_border

Stimulants use such as cocaine and amphetamine is associated with a nearly two-fold greater likelihood of suicidal behaviour amongst people who inject drugs, say researchers at the University of Montreal and the CHUM Research Centre. Drug addiction had already been identified as a major risk factor for suicide, and it is in fact the cause of ten percent of deaths among drug users. The data from this groundbreaking study could help develop and evaluate more appropriate suicide prevention efforts in this highly vulnerable population.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study links ADHD and conduct disorder in young adolescents with increased alcohol and tobacco use. The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center study is among the first to assess such an association in this age group.

• share
• favorite_border

The Hogg Foundation of Mental Health has created a free comprehensive guidebook on Texas’ entire mental health care system. The goal of the book is twofold: To help consumers of mental health understand their options, and to help policymakers and advocacy groups build a case for increasing more state funding for services and programs.