Psychiatry / Psychology
Researchers find evidence linking stress caused by the 9/11 disaster with low birth weight
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Researchers have found evidence of an increase in low birth weights among babies born in and around New York City in the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Writing in the journal Human Reproduction [1], they suggest that stress may have contributed to the effect.
Professor Brenda Eskenazi and colleagues studied data from birth certificates of 1,660,401 babies born in New York between January 1996 and December 2002. They divided the babies into those born in New York City (NYC) – whose mothers would, therefore, have been living closest to the disaster zone – and those born in “upstate” New York, which they defined as anyone living outside NYC, including Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties.
Fear of crime may erode physical, mental health
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People who are worried about crime in their neighborhood tend to have worse physical and mental health than their peers who aren’t as concerned about being crime victims, UK researchers report.
“The study highlights the importance of the neighborhood, the local environment for health,” Dr. Mai Stafford of University College London told Reuters Health. “It shows that fear of crime is not just an emotional response.”
Anorexia may represent an addiction
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Scientists from France have found that anorexia and the highly addicting club-drug ecstasy activate some of the same brain pathways, a finding that may help explain the addictive nature of anorexia and other eating disorders and lead to new treatments.
In a paper published this week, Dr. Valerie Compan of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montpellier, and colleagues report that both anorexia and ecstasy reduce the drive to eat by stimulating the same subset of receptors for the neurotransmitter serotonin.
Drop in antidepressant use seen during pregnancy
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A marked fall in antidepressant use occurs when women first learn that they are pregnant, according to a report.
“It is alarming to see that there is still a fear regarding antidepressant use during pregnancy. We knew that some women were going to discontinue using their antidepressants during pregnancy but we didn’t think it would be so prevalent and inappropriately used (amongst those who remain on it),” senior author Dr. Anick Berard told Reuters Health.
“Huffing” Linked With Suicidal Behavior in Incarcerated Teens
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Inhaling, or “huffing,” the vapors of common household solvents strongly correlates with suicidal thoughts and behavior among adolescents.
That’s what researchers found in a study of 723 incarcerated youth—the first work to categorize inhalant use into levels of severity and relate this to suicidal ideas and suicide attempts in incarcerated juveniles. It is also one of the few studies to examine gender differences involved.
Common heart arrhythmia linked to dementia risk
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Atrial fibrillation, the rapid and uncoordinated beating of the upper chambers of the heart, is a fairly common disorder that has been linked to an increased risk of blood clots and strokes. Now, researchers have found that dementia occurs quite frequently in the years following a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation.
Dr. Teresa S. M. Tsang at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues identified 2837 patients first diagnosed with atrial fibrillation between 1986 and 2000, and who were followed until 2004.
Depression outreach can benefit workers, employers
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A work-based outreach and care program to help company employees with depression improves not only clinical well-being but also workplace productivity, a study shows.
As reported in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, employees seeking treatment for depression who participated in the program had fewer depressive symptoms, logged more hours on the job, and had greater job retention than similar employees receiving usual care.
Study Reveals Possible Genetic Risk for Fetal Alcohol Disorders
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New research in primates suggests that infants and children who carry a certain gene variant may be more vulnerable to the ill effects of fetal alcohol exposure.
Reported online today (Sept. 21) in Biological Psychiatry, the findings represent the first evidence of a genetic risk for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder - a condition that is characterized by profound mental retardation in its most severe form, but which is also associated with deficits in learning, attention, memory and impulse control.
Tooth loss in elderly linked to mental impairment
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Older people who have lost their teeth are at more than three-fold greater risk of memory problems and dementia, UK researchers report.
“This study essentially raises questions rather than answering them,” Dr. Robert Stewart of Kings College London, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “The measurements were taken at the same time, so we are not able to say what caused what.”
Anxiety over pregnancy linked to premature birth
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Women who are particularly anxious about their pregnancy may be at increased risk of premature delivery, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that among 1,820 pregnant women, those with the greatest concerns about their pregnancy were nearly three times more likely than those with the least anxiety to deliver prematurely. The findings are published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
Schizophrenia risk may be lower in type 1 diabetics
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The incidence of schizophrenia in patients with type 1 diabetes is less than half of that seen in people without diabetes, according to findings published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“Patients with schizophrenia have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus,” Dr. Hannu Juvonen and colleagues from the National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, point out. However, no conclusive studies have examined the relationship between schizophrenia and type 1 diabetes.
Genetic Variation Helps to Understand Predisposition to Schizophrenia
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Scientists have provided new insight into how a gene is related to schizophrenia. In a study to be published in the August 17 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Amanda J. Law, Medical Research Council Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and Visiting Scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with colleagues at NIH describe for the first time a genetic variation that causes a gene to be overexpressed in the human brain. These results may provide a new way to design better drugs to treat schizophrenia.
“Although the exact causes of schizophrenia are yet to be determined, scientists agree that the disease is in part due to genetic variations,” Law says. “These variations are not simple to understand because they don’t directly disturb the function of proteins. In our study, we identified some clues as to what goes wrong with one of these DNA variations.”
Bullying tied to mental health problems later
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Boys who bully or are victims of bullies may have a higher risk of mental health disorders as young men, a study published Monday suggests.
The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, are based on a group of 2,540 boys Finnish boys. At age 8, the boys were asked whether and how often they bullied other children, were targets of bullying, or both. Parents and teachers also answered questions about any psychiatric symptoms the boys had.
The matrix of autism
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Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as “low functioning” or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do. Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities—uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example—their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit. They often earn a dubious promotion to “idiot savant.”
The theoretical justification for this view is that prototypical autistic skills are not true intelligence at all, but really just low-level perceptual abilities. Indeed, in this view autistics are missing the big picture because they are obsessed with the detail.
Group Psychotherapy Effective for Treating Depression of Displaced African Girls
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Group psychotherapy was effective in reducing depression among displaced adolescent girls who are survivors of war in northern Uganda, though the intervention was not effective for adolescent boys, according to a study in the August 1 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on violence and human rights.
“Over 1.8 million individuals, mainly ethnic Acholi, have been internally displaced during 20 years of conflict between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been accused of human rights abuses including mass violence, rape, and the abduction of more than 25,000 children.
