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Depressed teens ‘at higher risk of mental health problems in later life’

September 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Sept 1 (ANI): Teenagers who suffer from minor depression are at a higher risk of suffering from mental health problems in their adult life, says a new study.

Psychiatrists at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute surveyed 750 fourteen to 16-year-old teenagers and then interviewed them as adults, to come up with the findings.

Researchers found anxiety, severe depression and eating disorders were much more common in those 20 to 30-year-olds who had suffered from minor depression as adolescents, reports The BBC.

The report published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that 8 percent of participants had minor depression as teenagers.

By the age of 20 and 30, these people were four times more prone to developing major depression than those who did not face bouts of depression as teens.

According to the research, teens with minor depression had a two-and-a-half times increased risk of agoraphobia, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder and a threefold risk of anorexia or bulimia as adults.

The researchers defined minor depression as one which lasted for at least two weeks and had symptoms like feeling low, losing interest in activities, sleeping problems and poor concentration.

Study leader Dr Jeffrey Johnson said more research was needed to see if depression problems in teenagers were an early phase of major depressive disorder or if minor depression earlier in life contributed to the development of more serious problems later on.

Lucie Russell, director of campaigns at Young Minds, said: “Ensuring teachers, social workers and the rest of the children’s workforce have the appropriate skills and knowledge to identify when a child is showing signs of depression will enable young people to get help early before problems escalate to crisis point.” (ANI)

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China to unveil Internet addiction treatment standard by 2010

August 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Beijing, Aug. 28 (ANI): The Chinese Health Ministry will announce standard treatment for Internet addiction by the first half of 2010.

A doctor involved with the government’s research project has dismissed media reports claiming that the treatment standard will list those who surf online for more than 40 hours per week as Internet addicts, China Daily reports.

Tuesday’s report has triggered a hot debate among Chinese Internet users.

Tian Chenghua of the Institute for Psychiatric Research of Peking University clarified that University’s Hospital had been commissioned to carry out the research and make the standard.

Earlier reports said five experts from the Institute for Psychiatric Research of Central South University had been assigned by the Ministry to make the standard and announced the 40-hours-per-week as the treatment standard. (ANI)

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Significant psychological impact of child abuse seen in inpatients

May 22, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 22 (ANI): Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a history of child abuse significantly impacts a wide range of challenges facing depressed inpatients-an increase in suicide attempts, prevalence of substance use disorder, and a higher incidence rate of personality disorder.

Presenting their findings at the American Psychiatric Association 2009 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the researchers revealed that the victims also had an earlier onset of mental illness and an increase in psychiatric hospitalisations for psychiatric issues.

The impact of child abuse already is known to increase the risk of suicide, however the literature about other characteristics of depressed victims of child abuse is scarce.

The Mayo researchers say that though their study does not confirm causality, the information stresses the importance of more aggressive approaches from the public health perspective to prevent child abuse.

“A history of child abuse makes most psychiatric illnesses worse,” according to Dr. Magdalena Romanowicz, lead author of the study.

“We found that it significantly impacts the wide range of characteristics of depressed inpatients including increased risk of suicide attempt, substance abuse, as well as earlier onset of mental illness and more psychiatric hospitalizations. This new information serves as a reminder of the importance of child abuse prevention from a public health perspective,” Dr. Romanowicz said.

The researcher has revealed that plans are under way to further examine the association between child abuse and metal illness in a larger study of patients. (ANI)

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Sleep problems ‘up suicidal behaviour risk in adults’

April 1, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 1 (ANI): Adults who suffer chronic sleep problems are more likely to show suicidal tendencies than those without any insomnia complaints, a new study has found.

In the study, researchers found that the more types of sleep disturbances people had, the more likely they were to have thoughts of killing themselves, engage in planning a suicidal act or make a suicide attempt.

“People with two or more sleep symptoms were 2.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than those without any insomnia complaints,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Marcin Wojnar, a research fellow at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan in the United States and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry at the Medical University of Warsaw in Poland.

Scientists have consistently linked sleep disturbances to an increased risk of suicidal behaviour in people with psychiatric disorders and in adolescents, but it has been unclear whether the association also exists in the general adult population.

In the study, scientists examined the relationship over one year between three characteristics of insomnia (difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep and waking at least two hours earlier than desired) and three suicidal behaviours (suicidal thoughts, planning and attempts) in 5,692 Americans.

About 35 percent of those studied reported experiencing at least one type of sleep disturbance in the preceding 12 months.

The most consistent link was seen for early morning awakening, which was related to all suicidal behaviours.

People with this problem were twice as likely as those with no sleep problems to have had suicidal thoughts in the preceding 12 months, 2.1 times more likely to have planned suicide and 2.7 times more likely to have tried to kill themselves.

Difficulty falling asleep was a significant predictor of suicidal thoughts and planning.

Compared with people who reported no sleep problems, those who had trouble initiating sleep had 1.9 times the risk of suicidal ideas and 2.2 times the risk of planning suicide.

People who had trouble sleeping through the night – waking up nearly every night and taking an hour or more to get back to sleep – were twice as likely to have thought of suicide in the last year and were three times more likely to have attempted it than those who had no sleep problems.

The results were adjusted for several factors known to influence suicide, including substance abuse, depression, anxiety disorder and other mood disorders, as well as chronic medical conditions such as stroke, heart disease, lung disease and cancer.

They were also adjusted for the influence of sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, and marital and financial status.

The study is to be presented on April 1, 2009 at the World Psychiatric Association international congress ‘Treatments in Psychiatry.’ (ANI)

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Psychiatric disorders common in adults who have had anorexia

March 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 27 (ANI): After studying 51 teenagers with anorexia nervosa and an equal number of healthy persons for a number of years, a team of Swedish scientists have come to the conclusion that psychiatric disorders are common in adults who have had anorexia.

“This study is unique in an international perspective. It is the only study in the world that reflects the natural course of anorexia nervosa in the population,” says Elisabet Wentz, Associate Professor in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

In a report based on the findings of the study, initiated in 1985, the researchers point out that the groups have been investigated and compared several times as the years have passed.

They say that three women have still not recovered from anorexia, 18 years after the start of the study.

According to them, 13 people, or around 25 per cent, are on disability benefit or have been signed off sick for more than six months due to an eating disorder or other psychiatric disorder.

The research team further say that 39 per cent of the subjects have at least one other psychiatric disorder, in addition to the eating disorder. The most common of these is obsessive compulsive disorder.

However, the study’s findings also contain some positive surprises.

“Previous studies have shown that anorexia is a diagnosis with a very poor prognosis, with as many as one in five patients dying as a result of the disease. In contrast, we have not had a single death among the subjects of our study,” says Elisabet Wentz.

Studies conducted in the past have shown that infertility is a common complication for adult women who have had anorexia, as are increased risks of giving birth prematurely and of post-natal depression.

The researchers say that the women in the two groups in the current study have had essentially the same number of children, but the women who have had anorexia were younger when they had their first child.

According to them, such kids had a lower birth weight than children of women in the control group.

“None of the women who had had children still suffered from an eating disorder, but it is still more common that they worry about whether their babies are putting on weight,” says Elisabet Wentz.

The findings of the new study have been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry and in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. (ANI)

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Structural changes in brain’s cortex linked to higher depression risk

March 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 24 (ANI): A structural difference in the brain – a thinning of the right hemisphere – is linked to a higher risk for depression, according to American researchers.

Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology in psychiatry, led the research at Columbia University Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

It was found that people at high risk of developing depression had a 28 percent thinning of the right cortex, the brain’s outermost surface, as compared to people with no known risk.

The researchers said that the drastic reduction is similar to the loss of brain matter typically observed in persons with Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

“The difference was so great that at first we almost didn’t believe it. But we checked and re-checked all of our data, and we looked for all possible alternative explanations, and still the difference was there,” said Peterson.

Peterson said that the thinner cortex might increase the risk of developing depression by disrupting a person’s ability to pay attention to, and interpret, social and emotional cues from other people.

Additional tests measured each person’s level of inattention to and memory for such cues and it was found that the less brain material a person had in the right cortex, the worse they performed on the attention and memory tests.

In the study, the researchers compared the thickness of the cortex by imaging the brains of 131 subjects, aged 6 to 54 years old, with and without a family history of depression.

Structural differences were observed in the biological offspring of depressed subjects but were not found in the biological offspring of those who were not depressed.

One of the goals of the study was to determine whether structural abnormalities in the brain predispose people to depression or are a cause of the illness.

The study found that thinning on the right side of brain had no link with actual depression, only an increased risk for the illness.

But the subjects, who exhibited an additional reduction in brain matter on the left side, went on to develop depression or anxiety.

“Our findings suggest rather strongly that if you have thinning in the right hemisphere of the brain, you may be predisposed to depression and may also have some cognitive and inattention issues. The more thinning you have, the greater the cognitive problems. If you have additional thinning in the same region of the left hemisphere, that seems to tip you over from having a vulnerability to developing symptoms of an overt illness,” said Peterson.

The study is published in the upcoming early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (ANI)

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Parental depression affects children adversely

March 7, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 7 (ANI): A new study from University of Gothenburg, Sweden has found that parental depression has an adverse impact on children.

Lead researcher Britt Hedman Ahlstrom has revealed that children take on an enormous amount of responsibility for the ill parent and for other family members.

Depression changes the relationship between a parent and his/her children, since they no longer communicate with each other as they used to.

Moreover, family interplay and reciprocity also decrease. As the depressed parent withdraws from the family, children feel they have been left to themselves.

They take responsibility for both the depressed parent, siblings and themselves, when they notice that the parent cannot cope.

“The toughest burden of responsibility that children take on is ensuring that the depressed parent doesn’t commit suicide,” said Hedman Ahlstrom, a registered nurse at University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

“So children take on an extremely heavy responsibility by monitoring and keeping an eye on the depressed parent,” she added.

For children, the parent’s depression means both a sense of responsibility and a feeling of loneliness. The feelings of responsibility and loneliness include a striving and yearning for reciprocity with the parent, and for things to return to a state of normality.

“Even if the depression goes away for a time, the family is never entirely free from anxiety over it coming back. This means that there is a prolonged period of suffering associated with depression,” Hedman Ahlstrom said.

Hedman Ahlstrom suggested that health services must help the whole family

Involving the entire family when a parent becomes ill is important, both for the children and the parents. It is essential to have a well-defined level of guaranteed care on how, when and from whom the families will get support.

Psychiatric healthcare personnel meet people suffering from depression at an early stage, and therefore have the opportunity to focus the care on the family, in order to together identify ways of helping the family get through the depression.

“We need a new approach within the health services, in which the focus is on the family’s own perspective when a parent is suffering from depression,” said Hedman Ahlstrom.

“It’s vital to be aware of the whole family’s needs in terms of help and support, and not just those of the person who is ill.

“It’s particularly important to be aware of the children’s situation,” she added. (ANI)

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Consistent pattern of brain injury behind delusions uncovered

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, January 14 (ANI): Studying patients with certain delusions and brain disorders, NYU Langone Medical Center researchers have revealed a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the brain.

Research leader Dr. Orrin Devinsky says that his team’s study provides a novel theory for how delusions arise and why they persist.

Writing about the findings in the journal of Neurology, he says that the cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere lead to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions.

“Problems caused by these brain injuries include impairment in monitoring of self, awareness of errors, and incorrectly identifying what is familiar and what is a work of fiction,” said Dr. Devinsky, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“However, delusions result from the loss of these functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that ‘create a story’, a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded,” he added.

Delusions are generally described as bizarre pathologic beliefs that remain fixed despite clear evidence that they are incorrect.

“Delusions are common problems in a variety of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Psychiatric disorders with delusions, for example- schizophrenia, have been proven to have functional and structural brain pathology. But now improved diagnostic techniques are allowing us to have increased identification of neurologic disorders among other patient populations with delusions,” said Dr. Devinsky.

During the study, the research team observed that the most neurologic patients with delusions usually had lesions in the right hemisphere and/or bifrontal areas.

According to Dr. Devinsky, the right hemisphere of the brain dominates self recognition, emotional familiarity and ego boundaries.

The researcher said that when the right hemisphere of the brain gets injured, the left hemisphere tends to have a creative narrator leading to excessive, false explanations.

He further said that the resistance of delusions to change despite clear evidence that they are wrong likely reflects frontal dysfunction of the brain, which impairs the ability to monitor self and to recognize and correct inaccurate memories and familiarity assessments.

Based on their observations, the study’s authors concluded that right hemisphere lesions might cause delusions by disrupting the relation between and the monitoring of psychic, emotional and physical self to people, places, and even body parts.

This, according to them, explains why content specific delusions involve people places or things of personal significance and distort ones relation to oneself.

“Our knowledge of delusions is limited by our ability to comprehend the patients irrational thought process. The pathogenesis of delusions likely includes many mechanisms that span overlapping psychological, cognitive and neurological disorders.

Future research should explore the psychological, cognitive, and pyschologic-anatomic systems that change during the emergence and resolution of delusions as well as strategies to treat delusions,” said Dr. Devinsky. (ANI)

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Consistent pattern of brain injury behind delusions uncovered

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Research leader Dr. Orrin Devinsky says that his team’s study provides a novel theory for how delusions arise and why they persist.

Delusions are generally described as bizarre pathologic beliefs that remain fixed despite clear evidence that they are incorrect.

During the study, the research team observed that the most neurologic patients with delusions usually had lesions in the right hemisphere and/or bifrontal areas.

According to Dr. Devinsky, the right hemisphere of the brain dominates self recognition, emotional familiarity and ego boundaries.

The researcher said that when the right hemisphere of the brain gets injured, the left hemisphere tends to have a creative narrator leading to excessive, false explanations.

This, according to them, explains why content specific delusions involve people places or things of personal significance and distort ones relation to oneself.

Indian woman who burnt hubby’s genitals granted ‘home’ bail by Oz court

January 9, 2009 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Melbourne, Jan 9 (ANI): An Indian woman charged with husband”s murder after allegedly setting fire to his genitals has been granted strict home detention bail by Adelaide Magistrates Court.

Rajini Narayan, 44, was released on bail after an appearance in the court to face allegations she set her husband on fire while he slept after learning he was having an affair.

Narayan has been ordered to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet and live with her mother at suburban Magill.

She will be back in court in February, reports News.com.au.

Magistrate William Ackland also ordered the mother-of-three to accept any psychiatric assessment, monitoring, counselling and treatment considered appropriate.

Prosecutor Lucy Boord remained opposed to bail, saying there were concerns about whether Narayan fully comprehended the result of her actions.

Mr Narayan suffered major burns in the December 7 blaze and was admitted to hospital, but died last week.

Boord said Mrs Narayan told her neighbours she was a “jealous wife” and that her husband”s “penis should belong to her”.

Mrs Narayan allegedly said: “I just wanted to burn his penis so it belongs to me and no-one else … I didn”t mean this to happen”.

The fire gutted the family”s suburban Unley home. (ANI)

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Scientists link premature births to mental illness

January 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Sydney, Jan 1 (ANI): Researchers at Sweden”s Karolinska Institute have found a link between premature births and mental illness.

The study involving more than 500,000 infants found that preemies were twice as likely to be admitted to hospital for a psychiatric disorder in their early 20s than those born at full term.

Almost 5.5 per cent of those born very early had been admitted to hospital for a psychiatric disorders such as mood disorders, stress-related complaints and suicide attempts or deaths, compared to 2.4 per cent of those born at full-term.

“Pre-term birth carries some risk for psychiatric disorders requiring hospitalisation in adolescence and young adulthood,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted the researchers as saying.

During the study, the researchers tracked premature babies born from 1973 to 1979 through their medical records.

Infants, who were born at 33 to 36 weeks, were at risk with three per cent having been admitted to hospital for a psychiatric disorder.

Sydney University”s Brain and Mind Research Institute executive director Professor Ian Hickie said that premature birth disrupts a critical phase of brain development in the mid to late stages of pregnancy.

“If you”re born prematurely it”s likely that in some time that period of brain development is interrupted,” he said.

“So the critical brain connections and the critical brain pathways are probably harmed by premature birth.

“The effect on some of those brain pathways is probably continued throughout brain development,” he added.

Prof Hickie said that focussing on maternal health would decrease the likelihood of prematurity,

“There are some really common issues like smoking in pregnancy and alcohol use in pregnancy which continue to be common and contribute to premature birth and difficulties in the womb,” he said.

The study is published in the journal Paediatrics. (ANI)

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Parents should monitor their teens’ mood swings

November 3, 2008 By admin Leave a Comment

Cologne, Germany – Teenagers commonly experience mood swings and are not always approachable, and this behaviour can make it hard for parents to differentiate such emotional fluctuations from genuine depression.

Experts say it’s important for parents to monitor their teenager’s moods and seek treatment when warranted.

“Parents should make an appointment with a paediatrician, if their teenager falls into a deep depression or if there is a distinct change in the teenager’s behaviour that lasts more than two weeks,” said Ulrich Fegeler of Germany’s association of paediatricians in Cologne.

A medical examination can rule out other diseases such as under active thyroid and help with the search for a psychiatric counsellor. As in adults, some teenagers who are depressed are also more prone to suicide.

A depressed teenager can experience restlessness, anxiety, difficulty concentrating and a defiant attitude, changing from one to the other. They commonly have problems achieving, withdraw into themselves, suffer a lack of drive, fear the future and have problems with self esteem.

“Irritability, a low tolerance for frustrations and a quick temper also can indicate depression in puberty,” said Fegeler.

Statistically, the incidence of psychological diseases increases greatly from age 12. Painful experiences such as a break-up and loss, as well as certain parenting styles and hereditary factors, can trigger depression.

An estimated one in 10 teenagers suffers a depressive phase at least once before reaching adulthood. As in the adult population, females are two to three times more likely than males to be affected. (dpa)

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Depressed teens ‘at higher risk of mental health problems in later life’

China to unveil Internet addiction treatment standard by 2010

Significant psychological impact of child abuse seen in inpatients

Sleep problems ‘up suicidal behaviour risk in adults’

Structural changes in brain’s cortex linked to higher depression risk

Parental depression affects children adversely

Consistent pattern of brain injury behind delusions uncovered

Consistent pattern of brain injury behind delusions uncovered

Indian woman who burnt hubby’s genitals granted ‘home’ bail by Oz court

Scientists link premature births to mental illness

Parents should monitor their teens’ mood swings

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