Feature Channels: Mental Health

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About 1 in 10 people have the potential to develop schizophrenia, but only 1 in 100 actually end up with this devastating illness. The challenge is in knowing why some do and some don't. Drawing from over 25 years of laboratory study, Mark F. Lenzenweger, a distinguished professor of clinical science, neuroscience and cognitive psychology at Binghamton University, thinks that not only does he have the makings of a good response to this troubling question but also how to go about finding those answers.

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University of Kentucky study reveals limitations of self-reporting tests in diagnosing disorder.

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People with schizophrenia are more likely than others to sustain medical injuries during non-psychiatric hospital stays, a large national study finds.

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For some women, planning a family can be the first step towards one of life’s most rewarding experiences. But a study led by Ryerson University researchers has found strong evidence that some HIV-positive women feel that they are being judged negatively by their healthcare providers for wanting to become moms and feel stigmatized by their physicians due to their medical condition.

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Nearly 12 million visits made to U.S. hospital emergency departments in 2007 involved people with a mental disorder, substance abuse problem, or both.

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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is providing public education messages to raise awarness about how to recognize signs and symptoms of emotional health problems and where to go for help.

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Large increases in the percentage of admissions reporting pain reliever misuse seen among all age, gender, race, ethnic groups as well as in all regions of the country.

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Columbia scientists working to combat injury-related depression, substance abuse and suicide due to unremitting, persistent pain may have discovered a new way of treating that pain: a powerful analgesic dubbed N60 that leads to neither tolerance nor addiction.

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Nearly 1 in 10 drug-related hospital emergency department visits made by adolescents involved suicide attempts – with females making more than 72 percent of these attempts.

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Cancer patients receiving care in geographically dispersed urban and rural oncology practices who participated in a program that included telephone-based care management and home-based automated symptom monitoring had greater improvement in pain and depression compared to patients who received usual care, according to a study in the July 14 issue of JAMA.

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Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy portrayed Russians as a brooding, complicated people, and ethnographers have confirmed that Russians tend to focus on dark feelings and memories more than Westerners do. But a new University of Michigan study finds that even though Russians tend to brood, they are less likely than Americans to feel as depressed as a result.

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New research finds that a history of sexual abuse, regardless of the victim’s gender or age when the abuse occurred, correlates strongly with a lifetime diagnosis of multiple psychiatric disorders.

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Next, researchers will study whether treating neuropsychiatric symptoms in MCI can delay the onset of dementia.

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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in collaboration with The Advertising Council, announced today the launch of a national public service advertising (PSA) campaign to promote recovery from mental health problems within the American Indian community by educating and inspiring young adults to talk openly about issues of mental health. The culturally-targeted PSAs seek to motivate societal change towards social acceptance and decrease negative attitudes that may surround mental illness.

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The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), in collaboration with The Advertising Council, announced today the launch of a national public service advertising (PSA) campaign to promote recovery from mental health problems within the Hispanic/Latino community by educating and inspiring young adults to talk openly about issues of mental health. The culturally-targeted PSAs seek to motivate societal change towards social acceptance and decrease negative attitudes that may surround mental illness.

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A new study finds that depressed patients show more symptom improvement when their therapists more competently follow the guidelines for delivering cognitive therapy.

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Researchers have linked rejection by a romantic partner to brain activity associated with motivation, reward and addiction cravings, according to a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

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A new study shows that having depression may nearly double your risk of developing dementia later in life. The research will be published in the July 6, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Researchers at Rush University Medical found that depressive symptoms show little change during the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The study suggests depression is a true risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and not just an early sign of the disease.

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Until now, the cause of depression in people with MS was not well understood. Now, in the first such study in living humans, researchers at UCLA suggest the cause is not psychological, but physical: atrophy of a specific region of the hippocampus, a critical part of the brain involved in mood and memory, among other functions.

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Admission rates for pregnant teens abusing marijuana and methamphetamines increased significantly from 1992 to 2007 -- Rates for substance abuse treatment admissions among Hispanic pregnant teens have risen while rates for Black pregnant teens have dropped.

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Severe depression is life threatening. So it is worth every effort to get depression under control and make life more manageable.

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Whether mom’s golden child or her black sheep, siblings who sense that their mother consistently favors or rejects one child over others are more likely to show depressive symptoms as middle-aged adults – according to a new study by Cornell University gerontologist Karl Pillemer.

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A new study released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reports that a model program, implemented to ensure that eligible individuals with serious mental illness were enrolled in Medicaid upon discharge from state correctional facilities, increased Medicaid enrollment among this group by 15 percent.

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A new study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reveals that only 777 of 13,688 (6 percent) substance abuse treatment facilities surveyed across the nation offer special programs for gay and lesbian clients.

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A University of Illinois at Chicago study says children in the nation's child welfare system who witnessed the arrest of a household member may have been psychologically traumatized by the arrest.

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UNC researchers are the first to identify brain abnormalities in children at high risk for schizophrenia shortly after birth. The finding could lead to earlier detection of schizophrenia and enable better prevention and treatment.

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One year after weight loss surgery with laparoscopic gastric banding, extremely obese adults demonstrate not only better physical health but also improved psychological health, a new study shows. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.

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There may be a biological reason why depression and stress-related disorders are more common among women than men. Neuroscientists have found that female animals are more sensitive to an important stress hormone.

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Focusing on certain PTSD symptoms may be key to treating anger among Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, according to a study led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Veterans Affairs researchers.

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Study provides trend data about increases and decreases in behavioral health problems experienced among the states.

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In what has been hailed as a breakthrough, scientists have outlined the molecular mechanism of membrane transport. The research shows how a protein transforms its shape to transport substances across the cell membrane in order to regulate transmission of the brain's messages across the synaptic gap from one neuron to another.

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A new study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) confirms the relationship between depression and abdominal obesity, which has been linked to an increased risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease.

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The ups and downs of romantic relationships have a greater effect on the mental health of young men than women, according to a new study by sociology professor Robin Simon. She found that both the harmful effects of a rocky relationship and the emotional benefits of a positive romantic relationship affect men more.

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Full-Service Partnerships (FSPs) are designed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to improve residential stability and mental health outcomes for homeless persons with serious mental illness. They are the cornerstone of California’s Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) – one of the largest mental health policy experiments in recent history.

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Between 8.5 percent and 14 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq report serious functional impairment due to either posttraumatic stress disorder or depression, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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Exposure to secondhand smoke appears to be associated with psychological distress and the risk of future psychiatric hospitalization among healthy adults, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the August print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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Genetic influences appear important in the development of gambling disorders in both women and men, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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In 2008 there were a quarter of a million drug-related emergency hospital visits by adolescents.

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A new study suggests that increasing cigarette taxes could be an effective way to reduce smoking among individuals with alcohol, drug or mental disorders. The study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, found that a 10 percent increase in cigarette pricing resulted in an 18.2 percent decline in smoking among people in these groups.

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A mission to Mars? A six-man crew will simulate a 520-day Mars mission in a Moscow isolation chamber. U.S. scientists will monitor the crew’s rest-activity cycles, performance and psychological responses to see how often sleep loss, fatigue, stress, mood changes and conflicts occur.

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Over 90 percent of psychiatric patients who received treatment in community hospitals were cared for in hospital-based psychiatric specialty units, according to a study sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and published today in Psychiatric Services.

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Antidepressants are not instant mood-lifters. But University of Michigan Medical School scientists have identified a key receptor in the brain that influences the effectiveness of serotonin-related antidepressants such as Prozac. Rather than activating all of the brain’s serotonin receptors, as current drugs do, their study suggests there’s just one critical serotonin receptor important to relieving depression and anxiety.

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Exposure to the common virus that causes cold sores may be partially responsible for shrinking regions of the brain and the loss of concentration skills, memory, coordinated movement and dexterity widely seen in patients with schizophrenia, according to research led by Johns Hopkins scientists.

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Today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s, a University of Michigan study shows.

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A Nobel Prize-winning University of Utah geneticist discovered that bone marrow transplants cure mutant mice who pull out their hair compulsively. The study provides the first cause-and-effect link between immune system cells and mental illness, and points toward eventual new psychiatric treatments.

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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) 1-800-273-TALK (8255), a network of crisis call centers located throughout the nation, has answered its two millionth call since its launch on January 1, 2005. Sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Lifeline currently responds to an average of more than 1,800 calls a day or 54,000 calls per month.

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A new study links the U.S. Air Force’s extensive suicide prevention program to a major drop in the military branch’s suicide rate since the mid-1990s.

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Physician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center will present their latest research findings at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, May 22 to 26.

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Physician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center will present their latest research findings at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, May 22 to 26. Among the most significant presentations are the following.