Psychiatry / Psychology
Anxiety disorders linked to thyroid disease, respiratory disease, arthritis and migraine headaches
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Anxiety disorders appear to be independently associated with several physical conditions, including thyroid disease, respiratory disease, arthritis and migraine headaches, according to a report in the October 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. This co-occurrence of disorders may significantly increase the risk of disability and negatively affect quality of life.
Although depression has long been linked to physical illness, evidence supporting an association between anxiety disorders and physical health problems is more recent, according to background information in the article. Anxiety disorders include panic disorder, agoraphobia (fear of being in a situation where panic or anxiety may occur and escape from the situation might be difficult), social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Studies have found that those with phobic (fearful) anxiety may be more likely to experience sudden cardiac death, and rates of anxiety disorders are higher than expected in patients with thyroid disease, cancer, hypertension and several other conditions.
Hair helps diagnose eating disorders
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Scientists have come up with a new way to determine whether someone is suffering from an eating disorder—examining their hair.
A study released on Monday by researchers from Utah’s Brigham Young University found that examining carbon and nitrogen in the proteins of hair could reveal information about a person’s day-to-day nutrition.
Lead author Kent Hatch, from the university’s department of integrative biology, said clinicians could use this as a tool to help diagnose anorexia or bulimia because many sufferers lie or do not recognize their problem.
Gene mutation raises autism risk, study finds
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U.S. researchers said on Monday they had identified a genetic mutation that raises the risk of autism and could also explain some of the other symptoms seen in children with autism.
Although autism and similar disorders can clearly run in families, theirs is the first study to find a definitive genetic link to the disorder, which affects as many as 1 in 175 U.S. children.
Dr. Pat Levitt and colleagues at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, studied 743 families in which 1,200 family members were affected by autism spectrum disorders, which range from fully disabling autism to Asperger’s syndrome.
Public has preconceived ideas on psychiatric therapy
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Most people believe depression and schizophrenia warrant treatment with drugs and other “biological” approaches, but such care is less widely accepted for people with substance abuse problems, a new study shows.
The more likely people were to think that a mental health or substance abuse problem had biological roots—for example, genetic susceptibility or chemical imbalance—the more likely they were to support biological treatment for it, the researchers found.
“Further research is needed regarding why the US public does not endorse, overall, more formal, biologically oriented treatment options, and, specifically, medication,” Drs. Sara Kuppin of Columbia University in New York and Richard M. Carpiano of the University of Wisconsin at Madison conclude.
Battle against stress means big business
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Sarah Kugelman once suffered so much work-related stress that her doctor told her to change her lifestyle or risk dying before the age of 40.
She heeded that advice and launched a line of anti-stress skincare products as well, part of the booming so-called stress industry that experts say is worth more than $11 billion a year.
With overworked, overwrought consumers seeking cures ranging from aromatherapy to Zen meditation, the industry is predicted to grow to almost $14 billion in the next two years, experts say.
Sugar linked with mental problems in Norway study
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Oslo teens who drink the most sugary soft drinks also have more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, Norwegian researchers reported on Thursday.
Their study of more than 5,000 Norwegian 15- and 16-year-olds showed a clear and direct association between soft drink intake and hyperactivity, and a more complex link with other mental and behavioral disorders.
They surveyed the students, asking them how many fizzy soft drinks with sugar they had a day, and then questions from a standard questionnaire used to assess mental health.
Dealer in German rotten meat probe commits suicide
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A German meat distributor at the centre of a widening police probe into the sale of rotten meat and vegetables has committed suicide, police in the southern city of Munich said on Wednesday.
The 74-year-old’s company is at the heart of a European food safety scare after police last week impounded more than 120 tonnes of tainted meat, some of it more than four years out-of-date, at buildings and cold stores belonging to the firm.
They raided restaurants and launched an investigation into whether tainted produce was sold with altered sell-by dates.
Older Fathers More Likely to Have Autistic Children
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Children of men age 40 and older have a significantly increased risk of having autism spectrum disorders compared with those whose fathers are younger than 30 years, according to an article in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Autism is characterized by social and language abnormalities and repetitive patterns of behavior, according to background information in the article. Autism and related conditions, known collectively as autism spectrum disorders, have become increasingly common, affecting 50 in every 10,000 children as compared with five in 10,000 two decades ago. This increase is partially due to higher levels of awareness and changes in diagnosis processes, but could also reflect an increase in incidence of autism, according to the authors. Older parental age has previously been linked to abnormalities in the brain development of children; however, few studies have effectively examined the effect of mothers’ and especially fathers’ ages on autism.
Telephone telepathy - I was just thinking about you
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Many people have experienced the phenomenon of receiving a telephone call from someone shortly after thinking about them—now a scientist says he has proof of what he calls telephone telepathy.
Rupert Sheldrake, whose research is funded by the respected Trinity College, Cambridge, said on Tuesday he had conducted experiments that proved that such precognition existed for telephone calls and even e-mails.
Each person in the trials was asked to give researchers names and phone numbers of four relatives or friends. These were then called at random and told to ring the subject who had to identify the caller before answering the phone.
Sexual orientation seen linked to bulimia risk
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Sexual orientation may predict future bulimic symptoms, according to new research that hints that non-heterosexual adolescents are at increased risk of bulimia.
The findings also imply that “although popular explanations, such as thin ideal, body dissatisfaction, and poor self-concept, are associated with both sexual orientation and bulimic symptoms, they do not act as mediators,” the author of the study writes in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
Several studies have found people with gay, lesbian, or bisexual sexual orientation to be at heightened risk of numerous psychiatric disorders and symptoms, including suicide attempts, drug use, anxiety, and depression,
Mental illness up among Katrina survivors: study
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Hurricane Katrina doubled the rate of serious mental illness in areas ravaged by the storm but the urge to commit suicide fell, partly because survivors bonded with each other, a Harvard-led study said on Monday.
Billed as the biggest mental health study yet after Katrina killed about 1,500 people along the Gulf Coast, the survey showed that 15 percent of 1,043 survivors were diagnosed with a serious mental illness five to eight months after the storm.
That figure suggests about 200,000 people from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi face serious mental illness because of Katrina, with about a third suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and the remainder depression, said Ronald Kessler, the study’s lead researcher.
Taller people are smarter: study
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While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it’s not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality—tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds.
“As early as age three—before schooling has had a chance to play a role—and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests,” wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The findings were based primarily on two British studies that followed children born in 1958 and 1970, respectively, through adulthood and a U.S. study on height and occupational choice.
Breast-feeding reduces anxiety into childhood
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Breast-feeding’s calming effects seem to be long-lasting.
Years after being weaned, breast-fed children cope better with stressful situations like their parents’ divorce than their bottle-fed peers, researchers said on Thursday.
“In children who are breast-fed, there is less of an association between parental divorce and separation and childhood anxiety,” Dr Scott Montgomery, an epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in an interview.
New training technique is proving successful in helping excessive drinkers curb their alcohol abuse
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A new training technique developed in the UK is proving successful in helping excessive drinkers curb their alcohol abuse.
Researchers funded by the Economic and Social Research Council have experimentally tested a computer-based training programme which helps abusive drinkers pay less attention to alcohol, feel more in control of their drinking and drink less.
Researchers at the University of Wales found that excessive drinkers cut down significantly on their drinking following their participation in this project’s newly developed Alcohol Attention-Control Training Programme (AACTP). Moreover, excessive drinkers were found to have maintained this improvement at a three-month follow-up assessment.
Women who develop dementia start to lose weight a decade earlier
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Researchers in the U.S. have discovered that prior to developing dementia, women experience a decline in weight as early as 10 years before they begin to lose their memory.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota carried out a retrospective study on a group of women by analyzing the medical records of those seen by doctors in Olmsted County, who were diagnosed with the onset of dementia between 1990 and 1994.
Lead study researcher Dr. David Knopman, a Mayo Clinic neurologist says they saw that the weight of those women who developed dementia was drifting downward many years before the onset of symptoms.
