Psychiatry / Psychology
Mom’s troubles up child’s risk of behavior problems
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When a mother suffers from mental health problems and other difficulties during her child’s first year of life, the child is more likely to have behavior problems later on, new research shows. And the more problems a mother faces, the greater the risk.
“The child’s brain is really shaped by the early environment, and mom is a big part of that, especially in the first year of life,” Dr. Robert C. Whitaker of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
This study provides “evidence of how early in life there’s a transfer of difficulty from one generation to the next,” Whitaker said, adding: “Early in a child’s life is an opportune time to break that cycle.”
Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine, Alcohol, Tobacco All Affect Children’s Behavior
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Children exposed to cocaine in the womb are more likely to grow up with behavior problems - but so are those with prenatal exposure to legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco. These are the findings of a research paper by Dr. Henrietta S. Bada, chief, Division of Neonatology, professor of pediatrics, UK College of Medicine, and professor, UK School of Public Health, presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in San Francisco today.
When Bada and co-investigators from Brown University, University of Miami, University of Tennessee, Wayne State University, and Research Triangle Institute began their research, the effect of prenatal cocaine exposure on the behavior of children was unclear. With the presentation of Bada’s paper, “Prenatal Cocaine Exposure and Trajectories of Childhood Behavior Problems Through Age Nine Years,” scientists have more insight into how drug use by mothers can affect children later in life.
The nine-year study found that even adjusting for factors such as socioeconomic status, home environment, caretaker depression and other prenatal drug exposures, the trajectory of behavior outcomes for children exposed to cocaine during fetal development differed significantly across three categories—external, internal and total behavior problems—from those for children not exposed.
Britain Must Embrace Psychological Therapy for Mental Health Problems
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Britain must embrace psychological therapies on a large scale if we are to tackle our mental health problems effectively, argues a leading economist in this week’s BMJ.
Depression and anxiety disorders cost the UK around £ 17bn in lost output. New drug treatments are now available to all, but psychological therapies are not. Yet the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends psychological therapy as a cost effective treatment.
So should the Treasury support psychological therapy?
At-risk drinking risky for older men
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Elderly men who engage in “at-risk” drinking have higher mortality rates than those who abstain or drink safer amounts of alcohol, a report indicates.
The authors define at-risk drinking as excessive drinking or the “use of alcohol in amounts deemed risky in the presence of relevant comorbidities.” An example of excessive alcohol use alone would be 3 drinks per day on 4 or more occasions per week. At risk drinking would also encompass 2-3 drinks per day with anxiety disorder or gout, or while taking medication for pain or insomnia, for example.
Dr. Alison A. Moore, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues examined the effect of alcohol use and co-morbid illness on 20-year mortality in 4,691 adults who were at least 60 years of age.
Alcoholism more common in risk-taking men
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Previous research has shown that individuals with a family history of alcoholism have an increased risk of developing the condition themselves. Now, a new study has found that risk-taking behavior and male sex further increases this risk.
“There are some well-known risk factors for alcoholism that can help individuals recognize that they are at higher risk than others,” study author Dr. William R. Lovallo, of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Oklahoma City, told Reuters Health.
“In this case, that knowledge can be used wisely by parents and teachers to try to insulate young persons and help them get through their early adult years without developing an alcohol or drug problem,” he added.
Mental illness writers had industry ties
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Most of the experts who wrote the manual widely used to diagnose mental illness have had financial ties to drug makers such as research funding or stock holdings, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Writing in a new study, they called for full disclosure of the relationships between companies and the medical experts on panels that craft future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM.
“Transparency is especially important when there are multiple and continuous financial relationships between panel members and the pharmaceutical industry, because of the greater likelihood that the drug industry may be exerting an undue influence,” the researchers wrote in a study to be published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
Spain sizes up real women to fight anorexia
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Spain has launched a study into the size of average women compared with models used by the fashion industry in a bid to stop the use of ultra-thin advertising images blamed for eating disorders like anorexia.
Spain’s government hopes to show real women do not fit the fashion industry’s skinny ideals and oblige leading retail brands to display bigger sizes in shop windows and magazines.
“This ideal is impossible for most people to achieve and can end up hurting people’s health,” Health Minister Elena Salgado said in a statement this week at the launch of the study.
Unhappy marriage may harm older adults’ health
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A troubled marriage may speed the decline in health that comes with age, a study has found.
While research shows that married people often enjoy better health than singles do, a number of studies have suggested that an unhappy marriage can take a major health toll. Some, for example, have found a higher rate of heart disease among people who are dissatisfied with their marriage.
This latest study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, suggests that marital strain may be particularly damaging to older adults’ health.
Self Harm High Among Goth Youths
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Rates of self harm and attempted suicide are high within Goth youth subculture, finds a study published on bmj.com today.
Deliberate self harm is common among young people, with rates of 7-14% in the UK. It is particularly widespread in certain populations and may be linked to depression, attempted suicide, and various psychiatric disorders in later life. Contemporary Goth youth subculture has been linked with self harm, but there is little evidence to support this.
Researchers at the University of Glasgow surveyed 1,258 young people during their final year of primary school (age 11) and again at ages 13, 15, and 19. They were asked about self harm and identification with a variety of youth subcultures, including Goth.
Compulsive Behaviors Are Common from Parkinson Treatment
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People treated for Parkinson disease are prone to pathologic gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive shopping, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 58th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., April 1 - 8, 2006.
Reports have been growing in the past several years of compulsive behavior among patients with Parkinson disease who receive levodopa or dopamine agonists, the mainstays of Parkinson treatment. To examine the true extent of the problem, Valerie Voon, MD, of the National Institute for Neurologic Diseases and Stroke in Bethesda, MD, and her colleagues, conducted a prospective survey in almost 300 Parkinson patients, asking about pathologic gambling, hypersexuality, and compulsive shopping. They followed up with in-depth psychiatric interviews for those reporting any of the three compulsive behaviors.
Among their sample, pathologic gambling started in 10 patients (3.4 percent) after they began treatment, which is double the number expected based on population-wide surveys. These patients had lost an average of $150,000. Hypersexuality was seen in seven patients, and compulsive shopping in two.
Study questions health benefits of moderate drinking
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The majority of studies suggesting that “moderate” drinking helps prevent heart disease may be flawed, according to an international research group.
In a new report, researchers from the U.S., Canada, and Australia analyze 54 studies that linked how much people drink with risk of premature death from all causes, including heart disease. Researchers from the University of Victoria in British Columbia and the University of California, San Francisco led the team.
The researchers investigated a suggestion put forth in the scientific community that many of the studies conducted so far on drinking and premature death made a consistent and serious error by including as “abstainers” people who had cut down or quit drinking due to declining health, frailty, medication use or disability. When such studies show a higher death rate for abstainers than for moderate drinkers, this result may reflect the poor health of some abstainers who recently quit drinking rather than indicating a protective effect for alcohol.
Study suggests rise in autism cases may not be real
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A rise in autism cases is not evidence of a feared epidemic but reflects that schools are diagnosing autism more frequently, a study said on Monday.
Children classified by U.S. school special education programs as mentally retarded or learning disabled have declined in tandem with the rise in autism cases between 1994 and 2003, the author of the study said, suggesting a switch of diagnoses.
Government health authorities have been trying to allay widely publicized concerns that vaccines containing the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which is no longer used, were behind an autism epidemic.
Two-pronged approach may curb social phobia
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Research suggests that D-cycloserine may be a good adjunct to exposure-based therapy in individuals with social anxiety disorder, a debilitating condition marked by an excessive fear and avoidance of situations in which a person feels he or she will be judged by others, such as public speaking or even eating in front of others.
Exposure therapy, which is commonly used to combat social phobia, relies on extinction to treat the fears underlying the disorder.
Lead investigator Dr. Stefan G. Hofmann of Boston University told Reuters Health that in conducting the study “we argued that D-cycloserine ... which facilitates extinction learning in animals, should also enhance the effects of exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder in humans. Our findings seem to support this notion.”
Training People to be Better Parents
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When children’s misbehavior or delinquency creates problems, it’s not enough to deal with the children alone. Mental health professionals recommend behavioral parent training as well, reports the April issue of Harvard Mental Health Letter.
Behavioral parent training teaches parents to substitute systematic for arbitrary discipline. Parents learn how to set rules and define the consequences for disobeying them. They also learn how to negotiate with older children, how to follow through on warnings, and how to identify early signs of trouble and talk to children about these problems.
It is particularly important that parents also respond to good behavior with praise and encouragement, says the Harvard Mental Health Letter. Parents are taught to reward a child’s behavior one action at a time. They learn to point out what the child is doing right before discussing what needs improvement.
Alcohol plus energy drink only masks drunkenness
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People who combine energy drinks with their alcohol may feel more sober than they truly are, a new study suggests.
In experiments with young male volunteers, Brazilian researchers found that the men were no less impaired when they drank a mix of alcohol and the energy drink Red Bull than when they downed a standard mixed drink.
