December 2009 - Mental Health Update

Getting to grips with earworms

An earworm is a song, or fragment of a song, that gets stuck in your head and continually repeats itself. When the mountaineer Joe Simpson, for instance, was near death in the Andes all he could think about was the Boney M song 'Brown Girl in the...

Published Tue, Dec 22 2009 6:51 AM by Mental Health Update

Autism on the rise in the U.S. - nearly 1% of eight-year-olds affected

A study of 300,000 eight-year-olds in the U.S. has found that 1 in 110 has autism, a 57% increase in cases since four years ago. The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Centers for Disease Control...

Published Tue, Dec 22 2009 6:28 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Autism

ERT for BPD

STEPPS (Systems Training of Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving) has been shown to be effective in adults with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Emotion Regulation Training (ERT) is a simplified variation of the STEPPS programme which can...

Published Mon, Dec 07 2009 6:01 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Borderline Personality Disorder

Bullying at school and bullying at home

Researchers from the Universita' degli Studi di Firenze have been looking at the links between bullying at home and bullying at school. They studied 195 children aged between 10 and 12 all of whom had a sibling born within four years of them. The...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2009 6:58 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Bullying

Lead and mental-health problems

People with more lead in their bloodstream are more at risk of mental-health problems - even at levels currently considered safe. Researchers from the University of Montreal used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey covering...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2009 3:11 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Lead

Stopping sex offenders reoffending - how successful are treatments?

There is growing confidence in the ability of health professionals to predict reoffending by sex offenders but less optimism about the effectiveness of treatment. Researchers from Oxleas NHS Trust in south-east London studied 273 sex offenders who had...

Published Tue, Dec 15 2009 5:07 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Forensic Psychology

Bipolar disorder, antiepileptics and suicide risk

People with bipolar disorder are sometimes treated with antiepileptic drugs but there have been worries that these can increase people's suicide risk. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago studied 47,918 people with bipolar disorder...

Published Tue, Dec 08 2009 6:12 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Suicide, Bipolar Disorder

Nearly one in seven women binge eat

Researchers from the Universite de Montreal and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute have been surveying problem eating in a telephone survey of over 1,500 women. None of the women had been classified as anorexic before the start of the study...

Published Mon, Dec 21 2009 6:35 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Eating Disorders

Self-help groups for binge eaters

Binge-eating disorder can lead to obesity, other mental-health problems and problems at work and with friends, families and partners. Several psychological treatments have been found to be helpful in treating binge eating including cognitive behaviour...

Published Thu, Dec 17 2009 2:12 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Eating Disorders

Antidepressants and adolescents

In 2003 the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration issued a warning that some antidepressants could increase the risk of suicidal behaviour in children and adolescents. Since then the prescription of the drugs has gone down but a new study, by researchers...

Published Fri, Dec 18 2009 7:13 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Antidepressants, Suicide

MAO-A and depression.

Monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) is a chemical in the brain that breaks down other chemicals including serotonin. Serotonin is associated with good mood and high levels of MAO-A have been associated with depression. Researchers at the Centre for Addiction...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2009 2:49 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Antidepressants

Asthma/pregnancy drug may increase mental-health risks

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have been looking into the effects of drugs called beta 2 adrenergic agonists on unborn children. The drugs are used to treat asthma and to inhibit or slow down labour but the study found...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2009 3:27 AM by Mental Health Update

In 2009 around 2 million children in the U.S. had a parent in either the active or reserve component of the military. A study of some of these children by researchers from the RAND corporation found that across all age groups children from military families...

Published Tue, Dec 08 2009 6:52 AM by Mental Health Update

Culture vultures are happier and healthier

People who participate in or even just attend cultural activities such as painting, dancing or playing a musical instrument tend to feel healthier and less depressed than people who don't. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology have been...

Published Wed, Dec 16 2009 5:05 AM by Mental Health Update

Relational aggression and depression

Relational aggression includes things such as spreading rumours, gossip and socially isolating people. It has been linked to poor health and a team of researchers from Hampton University in Virginia looked into the links between relational aggression...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2009 3:11 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Depression