Feature Channels: Mental Health

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In the current online issue of PLoS ONE, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say they have identified a set of laboratory-based biomarkers that can be useful for understanding brain-based abnormalities in schizophrenia. The measurements, known as endophenotypes, could ultimately be a boon to clinicians who sometimes struggle to recognize and treat the complex and confounding mental disorder.

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Specific types of "mindfulness practices" including Zen meditation have research-proven benefits for patients with certain physical and mental health problems, according to a report in the July Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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A study of university students is the first evidence to refute the supposed link between depression and the amount of time spent on Facebook and other social-media sites.

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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) today released two reports regarding substance abuse. The first indicates that youths between the ages of 12 and 17 are far more likely to start using most substances during the summer than during other parts of the year. The second report of data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) system shows that the rate of increase in drug-related emergency department (ED) visits slowed from an average annual rate of 18.2 percent in the years between 2005 and 2008, to an average annual rate of 6.1 percent in the years 2009 and 2010.

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A team of researchers have found that schizophrenia or bipolar disorder seen in parents or siblings was associated with increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study was published online by Archives of General Psychiatry on Monday, July 2.

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A new study reveals a simple strategy that people can use to minimize how angry and aggressive they get when they are provoked by others.

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An interdisciplinary team of scientists have successfully tagged a protein that regulates the neurotransmitter serotonin with tiny fluorescent beads, allowing them to track the movements of individual molecules for the first time. This capability makes it possible to study the manner in which serotonin regulates mood, appetite and sleep at a new level of detail.

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Women with moderate to severe depression had substantial improvement in their symptoms of depression after they received treatment for their vitamin D deficiency, a new study finds. The case report series will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society’s 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

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A national survey identifies which U.S. military veterans may be at most risk of aggression after deployment and what strategies could potentially help reduce likelihood of violence when service members return home.

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The hormone oxytocin - often referred to as the "trust" hormone or "love hormone" for its role in stimulating emotional responses - plays an important role in Williams syndrome (WS), according to a study published June 12, 2012, in PLoS One.

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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) unveiled a new toolkit to help prevent suicide. Preventing Suicide: A Toolkit for High Schools aims at reducing the risk of suicide among high school students by providing school administrators, principals, mental health professionals, health educators, guidance counselors, nurses, student services coordinators, teachers and others guidelines for identifying teenagers at risk and resources for taking appropriate actions to provide help.

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A commonly available pharmaceutical drug with anti-inflammatory properties and a nutritional supplement thought to have antioxidant effects are now being tested at UTHealth as add-on therapies for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

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Loneliness – the unpleasant feeling of emptiness or desolation – can creep in and cause suffering to people at any age. But it can be especially debilitating to older adults and may predict serious health problems and even death, according to a new study by UCSF researchers.

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Racial discrimination could lessen the mental-health benefits usually associated with better socio-economic position for African-American men, finds a new study by Darrell L. Hudson, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

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While youth suicide is declining overall, the rate of youth suicide in rural America has remained steady. A key to helping rural families with children at risk of suicide is frank discussion of guns according to a new study.

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Western Illinois University Department of Health Sciences Assistant Professor Amanda Divin and her colleague, Keith Zullig, an associate professor in the West Virginia University School of Public Health, recently conducted and published a study that explores non-medical prescription drug use and depressive symptoms in college students.

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The June issue of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD) features a special section focused on the impending release of the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), an update to psychiatric diagnosis standards. JNMD is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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Patients ages 13 to 24 given opioids for pain more than twice as likely to become addicted if they have mental health disorder, study finds.

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Mayo Clinic researchers, in collaboration with other research institutions and youth mental health experts, are publishing new guidelines for primary care providers and mental health specialists to manage the common but often complex problem of childhood aggression. The goals include improving diagnosis and care and avoiding inappropriate use of medication.

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New study finds that patients with poor mental health function may experience more communication challenges during physicians visits if accompanied by a loved one.

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Patients with mental health disorders, particularly schizophrenia, have higher rates of cigarette smoking and more difficulty quitting. Physicians at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School researching effective smoking cessation treatments have found that the drug varenicline is an effective tool at helping schizophrenics quit smoking without causing undue harm.

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The family meal is often touted and encouraged for its social and health benefits, but a new Cornell University study questions the nature of this association, finding that the perceived benefits may not be as strong or as lasting once a number of factors are controlled for.

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Researchers have identified a protein necessary to maintain behavioral flexibility, which allows us to modify our behaviors to adjust to circumstances that are similar, but not identical, to previous experiences. Their findings may offer new insights into addressing autism and schizophrenia—afflictions marked by impaired behavioral flexibility.

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Infants ignore information that is too simple or too complex, focusing instead on situations that are “just right,” according to a new study. Dubbed the “Goldilocks effect” by the University of Rochester team that discovered it, the attention pattern sheds light on how babies learn to make sense of a world full of complex sights, sounds, and movements.

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Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy (DDP), pioneered at Upstate Medical University for symptoms of borderline personality disorder, depression, suicide attempts, is one of the first types of psychodynamic psychotherapy to be included in the registry of evidence-based treatments.

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Fat Bastard’s revelation “I eat because I’m depressed and I’m depressed because I eat” in the Austin Powers film series may be explained by sophisticated neuroscience research being undertaken by scientists affiliated with the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CR-CHUM) and the university’s Faculty of Medicine.

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Patient care nationwide may be affected when research on medications contain only ‘good news’ – especially when the research is industry-funded.

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Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered a protein that appears to play an important regulatory role in deciding whether stem cells differentiate into the cells that make up the brain, as well as countless other tissues. This finding, published in the April Developmental Cell, could eventually shed light on developmental disorders as well as a variety of conditions that involve the generation of new neurons into adulthood, including depression, stroke, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current “field guide” form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the May 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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In a new study analyzing Internet usage among college students, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have found that students who show signs of depression tend to use the Internet differently than those who show no symptoms of depression.

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Child abuse or neglect are strong predictors of major health and emotional problems, but little is known about how the chronicity of the maltreatment may increase future harm apart from other risk factors in a child’s life. In a new study published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, child welfare expert and a professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how chronic maltreatment impacted the future health and behavior of children and adults. “For every measure studied, a more chronic history of child maltreatment reports was powerfully predictive of worse outcomes,” Jonson-Reid says.

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Perfume ads, beer billboards, movie posters: everywhere you look, women’s sexualized bodies are on display. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

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Last year, 45.9 million adult Americans had a mental illness, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Survey on Drug Use and Health. These conditions affect individuals, their families and loved ones, and communities. Unfortunately, many individuals do not receive needed services and treatment. In fact, estimates show that one-fifth to one-third of the uninsured are people with mental and substance use disorders. People with mental illnesses also experience disparities in income, employment, education, homelessness, full community participation, and most tragically – life expectancy. Outdated misperceptions, myths, and prejudice lead to many of these outcomes.

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Babies born to women with sensitivity to gluten appear to be at increased risk for certain psychiatric disorders later in life, according to research by scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore.

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Diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia isn’t a frenetic medical emergency, but quick, comprehensive response at its onset may have a profound effect on limiting its severity and progression. The UAB First Episode Schizophrenia Clinic, which has opened to treat patients with a new diagnosis, is the only such clinic in Alabama and one of the few in the country.

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Among adults with depression and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, or both, a collaborative care intervention incorporating a team-centered care approach is associated with improvements in depression-free days and quality-adjusted life-years, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication.

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Depressive symptoms that are present in midlife or in late life are associated with an increased risk of developing dementia, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication.

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Brain networks may avoid traffic jams at their busiest intersections by communicating on different frequencies, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University Medical Center at Hamburg-Eppendorf and the University of Tübingen have learned.

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Following are highlights of presentations that will be given by researchers from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center at the upcoming American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual meeting in Philadelphia (May 5–9, 2012).

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There's a high rate of depression among patients with hepatitis C, but a standard treatment for the disease includes a drug, interferon, that can cause depression.

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Study finds reduction in cortisol when using new mouthpiece, which may improve post-exercise recovery time

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New findings could help explain why women are more likely than men to have coronary symptoms after emotional upsets

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Commonly prescribed anti-depressants appear to be doing patients more harm than good, say researchers who have published a paper examining the impact of the medications on the entire body.

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A regulator of glucocorticoid receptors may provide a path towards resilience to stress by modulating glucocorticoid signaling in the brain.

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As childhood and adolescent deaths from infectious diseases have declined worldwide, policymakers are shifting attention to preventing deaths from noncommunicable causes, such as drug and alcohol use, mental health problems, obesity, traffic crashes, violence and unsafe sex practices.

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While mood disorders like depression or anxiety tend to negatively affect treatment for allergies and chronic rhinosinusitis, the same cannot be said for patients with nasal obstructions such as deviated septum, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital.

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A pair of neuroscientists from Vanderbilt and Harvard Universities has proposed the first neurobiological model for third-party punishment. It outlines a collection of potential cognitive and brain processes that evolutionary pressures could have re-purposed to make this behavior possible.

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Childhood exposure to lead dust has been linked to lasting physical and behavioral effects, and now lead dust from vehicles using leaded gasoline has been linked to instances of aggravated assault two decades after exposure, according to researchers at Tulane University and Colorado State University.



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Caring for a wife with breast cancer can have a measurable negative effect on men’s health, even years after the cancer diagnosis and completion of treatment, according to recent research.