Feature Channels: Mental Health

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At a recent event at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, members of the Memory Café, a program created by the Penn Memory Center exclusively for patients with memory problems, sat around four tables, each with Egyptian artifacts as its centerpiece. Museum educators went from table to table explaining – in a highly entertaining fashion – what each artifact signified in ancient times.

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Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study.

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Cold Spring Harbor, NY - Neuroscientists today publish in Neuron details of a revolutionary new way of mapping the brain at the resolution of individual neurons, which they have successfully demonstrated in the mouse brain.

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New research led by scientists from King's College London and the University of Bristol has found that a high-fat, high-sugar diet during pregnancy may be linked to symptoms of ADHD in children who show conduct problems early in life.

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Being homeless puts people at greater risk of HIV infection than those with stable housing, but targeting services to reduce risk behaviors is often complicated by fuzzy definitions of homelessness.

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Scott & White Memorial Hospital – Temple broke ground on an innovative surgical sciences facility that will bring new, advanced procedures to patients in Central Texas. The new facility, slated for opening summer 2018, will be adjacent to the hospital and will increase the hospital’s number of operating room suites from 26 to 32. Existing operating rooms within the hospital will be expanded and refreshed.

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SFU health sciences researcher Stefanie Rezansoff has published a new study on the treatment of serious mental illnesses among people who are homeless. This is the first study to investigate adherence to antipsychotic medication in this population.

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Experts give advice on parents coping with a child of autism

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There is new hope in the fight against Huntington's disease. Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes discovered that changing a specific part of the huntingtin protein prevented the loss of critical brain cells and protected against behavioral symptoms in a mouse model of the disease.

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A UCLA study is the first to show that Latinos age at a slower rate than other ethnic groups. The findings may one day help scientists understand how to slow the aging process for everyone.

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The link between overconfidence and poor decision making is under the spotlight in an international study by scientists from Monash University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.

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While medications can quickly reduce depressive symptoms, monitoring work productivity can provide unique insight into whether a patient will require additional treatments to achieve long-term remission, a new study through the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute finds.

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A so-called meta-analysis of reports on more than 4,000 patients suggests that almost one in three people discharged from hospital intensive care units (ICUs) has clinically important and persistent symptoms of depression, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine. In some patients, the symptoms can last for a year or more, and they are notably more likely in people with a history of psychological distress before an ICU stay, the investigators say.

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Jersey Shore University Medical Center is the first hospital in New Jersey to offer deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (dTMS) – a non-invasive treatment for depression that provides new hope for patients who have experienced side effects from medications or for whom medications have proven ineffective.

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Black adults rate school violence and racial inequities higher on their list of children’s health concerns than other groups, a new national poll says.

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Aerobic exercise can significantly help people coping with the long-term mental health condition schizophrenia, according to a new study from University of Manchester researchers.

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Food advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry, with approximately $1.8 billion annually aimed at children and adolescents, who view between 1,000 and 2,000 ads per year. Some studies have shown that there is a relationship between receptivity to food commercials and the amount and type of food consumed. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers studied the brain activity of children after watching food commercials and found that the commercials influence children's food choices and brain activity.

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UNC Lineberger researcher Carey Anders, MD, wants to understand why some breast cancer metastasize to the brain, and what drives them. She recently was awarded a three-year, $450,000 grant to study genetic features of breast cancer brain metastases to try to answer those questions.

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A research project has shown that an experimental model of Alzheimer's disease can be successfully treated with a commonly used anti-inflammatory drug.

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Since the 1970s, sexual assault hotlines have grown in popularity in North America as conduits for survivors, their loved ones and professionals to unite for immediate support. Today, there are more than 1,000 crisis hotline affiliates in the U.S. alone. Yet, despite their widespread use, much remains unknown or unclear about their service efficacy.

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MINNEAPOLIS – Starting medication for multiple sclerosis (MS) in people who show the beginning signs of the disease is associated with prolonging the time before the disease is definitively diagnosed, according to a long-term study published in the August 10, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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A new study by researchers at the University at Buffalo suggests that Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers may need to use a more all-encompassing approach to improve how they respond to cases of chronic neglect.

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University of Helsinki researchers have previously demonstrated that a point mutation in a gene of serotonin 2B receptor can render the carrier prone to impulsive behaviour, particularly when drunk. Now the research group has established that the same mutation may shield its bearers from obesity and insulin resistance, both of which are associated with type 2 diabetes.

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New York University Professor Joseph LeDoux has won the William James Award, an annual book prize given by Division One of the American Psychological Association, for his work Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety.

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More than 40,000 behavioral health providers across the country have been trained in aspects of military psychology by experts at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) over the past decade to help address chronic pain, depression, substance abuse, suicide, post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injury and other issues affecting some of the more than 2 million U.S. service members who deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Eating a Mediterranean diet can slow down cognitive decline.

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Schizophrenic psychoses are a frequently occurring group of psychiatric disorders caused by a combination of biological, social and environmental factors. These disorders are associated with changes to the brain structure: for example, the hippocampus in the temporal lobe is usually smaller in affected individuals than in healthy ones. It is not yet known whether these changes to the brain structure are a result of the disorders and their accompanying medications, or whether they are already present before the onset of symptoms.

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It is known that people who have attempted suicide have ongoing inflammation in their blood and spinal fluid. Now, a collaborative study from research teams in Sweden, the US and Australia published in Translational Psychiatry shows that suicidal patients have a reduced activity of an enzyme that regulates inflammation and its byproducts.

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A new graduate education program at the University of Missouri has received nearly $700,000 from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to train psychology doctoral candidates in integrated, primary health care settings, in an effort to improve health care for underserved populations with mental health and physical disorders.

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Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Wisconsin utilised a TMS-EEG device, which combines transcranial magnetic stimulation and EEG, to examine how the brain activity of people in the restful non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is affected by whether they dream or do not dream.

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The need for psychiatric services in inpatient hospitals continues to grow, according to the latest annual survey from the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems (NAPHS).

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Though the health systems in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico and Panama have considerable strengths, citizens still reported gaps in the way primary care is organized, financed and delivered in those countries. Those who had better experiences were less likely to say that their health system needed major reforms.

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Becoming a volunteer later on in life can result in good mental health and wellbeing, according to researchers from the University of Southampton and the University of Birmingham. However, the study which is published in the BMJ Open online, found these effects did not apply before the age of 40, suggesting that the association with volunteering may be stronger at certain points of the life course. The results also point to the need for further efforts to engage middle aged and older people in volunteering activities. Researchers from the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute and Birmingham’s Third Sector Research Centre reviewed over 66,000 responses by British adults to questions posed through the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).

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Hay fever may do more than give you a stuffy nose and itchy eyes, seasonal allergies may change the brain, says a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

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Scientists have clarified details in understanding the beneficial function of a type of protein normally associated with prion diseases of the brain, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly known as mad cow disease) and its human counterpart, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

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The Center for Leadership in Disability (CLD) at Georgia State University has won a federal grant to study the relationship between nature walks and behaviors associated with autism stress responses in children.

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Schizophrenia goes hand in hand with brain chemicals out of kilter, and treatment options for a major symptom aren't great. Biomedical engineers data-mined the collective scientific knowledge about working memory disturbance to build a brain chemistry simulator that lets researchers and doctors test out treatment ideas accurately.

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Iowa State University researchers have identified a protein essential for building memories that appears to predict the progression of memory loss and brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients. Their findings suggest there is a link between brain activity and the presence of this protein.

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People suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of age-related dementia sometimes have trouble recognizing friends and family or knowing what to talk about when they visit. A new app created by a group of Cornell University students offers to help patients stay connected to their memories – and thus to their friends and family – and perhaps will even help them keep a conversation going.

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Patients suffering from so-called immune-mediated neuropathies frequently have a long medical record. As there are no diagnostic tests available to reliably diagnose the disease, the diagnosis is frequently made belatedly and patients can be misdiagnosed. Accordingly, many years often pass before an effective therapy is started. However, not all patients respond to first-choice drugs even when treated immediately.

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Research has found that exercise causes more new neurons to be formed in a critical brain region, and contrary to an earlier study, these new neurons do not cause the individual to forget old memories, according to research by Texas A&M College of Medicine scientists, in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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New psychology research finds that having a positive attitude about aging makes older adults more resilient when faced with stressful situations.

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CHLA researchers report that glucose transporters, which transfer glucose from the blood to the brain, are inhibited by E. coli K1 during bacterial meningitis, leaving insufficient fuel for immune cells to fight off infection. Their findings may lead to a novel way of treating children with meningitis and reducing long-term neurological problems.

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In a recent study, combat exposure among Army enlisted women was associated with an increased likelihood of developing behavioral health problems post-deployment, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and at-risk drinking.

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A study of the impact of "boomerang fathers" -- those who cycle in and out of their children's lives -- yielded surprising results for researchers. "Boomerang fathering" provided a type of stability in a daughter's life that staved off her depressive symptoms compared to those adolescent girls whose fathers were completely absent.

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Kennedy Krieger Institute announces that Mark Furst has been named the new Senior Vice President of External Relations. In his new position at Kennedy Krieger, Furst will assist Lainy LeBow-Sachs, Executive Vice President of External Relations, to expand national recognition of the Institute’s patient care, research, special education and community programs, many of which serve children with special needs from around the country and the world. Furst has served as president and chief executive officer of United Way of Central Maryland (UWCM) since December 2009.

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When a targeted program to reduce relational aggression among at-risk girls is shared with the entire classroom, the entire class benefits—not just the aggressive girls for whom the program was developed. Pediatric researchers who developed the Friend to Friend program report on new findings in curbing nonphysical aggression among urban schoolchildren.

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For the second consecutive year, Rush University Medical Center improved in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings in the annual “Best Hospitals” issue, which became available today. U.S. News ranked Rush among the best hospitals in the country in nine specialty areas – two more than last year – and Rush improved in the rankings for eight of those specialties.

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Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center are one step closer to understanding what causes cocaine to be so addictive.