December 2009 - Mental Health Update

Healthy bodies and healthy minds

Mens sana in corpore sano - a healthy mind in a healthy body - was one of the most popular sayings in traditional education. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg and the University of Southern California looked at the data for all 1.2 m Swedish...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2009 6:41 AM by Mental Health Update

Depression in USAF personnel

Timothy S. Wells of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio has been studying more than 40,000 U.S.A.F. personnel who served between 2000 and 2006. They found that among those who experienced combat in Iraq and...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2009 6:16 AM by Mental Health Update

Grumpy men and glowing women - gender and facial expressions

Researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Quebec have been looking into the links between gender and facial expression. They showed people a series of androgynous faces and asked them to say whether they were men's or women's...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2009 5:38 AM by Mental Health Update

Depression in new mothers

About one in ten people in the U.S. suffers from depression with women being twice as much at risk as men. Depression can affect the way people bring up their children with mothers' and children's development being affected. A team of researchers...

Published Mon, Dec 14 2009 3:30 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Depression, Parenting

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

Getting to the bottom of youth violence

Researchers from Texas A&M International University have been looking into some of the risk factors that lead children to become violent. They studied 603 children between the ages of 10 and 14 and their parents. 15% of the children said that they...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2009 7:42 AM by Mental Health Update

Reading help rewires kids' brains

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have shown that remedial help for children who are poor readers can actually alter their brain structure as well as helping them with their reading. The scientists studied 72 children. 47 were poor...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2009 7:20 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development

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

Tobacco smoke and behaviour problems

Exposure to tobacco smoke in the womb can lead to behaviour problems by the age of ten. Researchers from Munich studied 5,991 children and their parents. They found that children who had been exposed to tobacco smoke in the womb were 1.9x more likely...

Published Fri, Dec 11 2009 6:22 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development

Sleep problems and hyperactivity

Researchers from the Universite de Montreal have been looking into the links between lack of sleep and hyperactivity in small children. 2,057 mothers answered yearly questionnaires about how well their children slept and their hyperactivity. The study...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2009 3:50 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: ADHD, Sleep Disorders

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

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

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

Purple grape juice and memory loss

There is evidence that a healthy diet can reduce people's risk of Alzheimer's disease and new research suggests that drinking purple grape juice can reduce, or even reverse, memory loss. In a small-scale trial researchers from the University of...

Published Wed, Dec 09 2009 2:28 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alzheimer's Disease

Antidepressants and personality

Antidepressants could affect people's personalities as well as their moods. Researchers from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois studied 240 volunteers. They gave 120 the antidepressant paroxetine, 60 received cognitive behaviour therapy Read...

Published Tue, Dec 08 2009 7:42 AM by Mental Health Update