February 2010 - Mental Health Update

CBT and low back pain

Lower back pain is a very common problem and affects one in three adults in the U.K. each year with an estimated 2.5 million people seeking help from their GP. There is thought to be a psychological component to low back pain and researchers at Warwick...

Published Fri, Feb 26 2010 3:52 AM by Mental Health Update

Personality and post-natal depression

There are well established links between people's personality, the way they think about the world and their vulnerability to depression but it is less clear whether these factors have the same influence on people's tendency to develop postnatal...

Published Fri, Feb 26 2010 2:16 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Postnatal Depression

What patients think about involuntary treatment

All over the world large numbers of people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals. The laws governing this are controversial and in the U.K. are governed by the 2007 Mental Health Act. Most laws are based on the assumption that people who are compulsorily...

Published Fri, Feb 26 2010 1:51 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Inpatients

Binge drinking and the military: abstinence makes the will grow stronger

In 2008 nearly 185,000 new members were recruited to the U.S. armed forces. Navy and air-force personnel are forbidden to drink alcohol and smoke during their basic training and researchers from RTI international in North Carolina looked at how much people...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 8:14 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alcohol Problems

Tobacco, drug use and genetics

Around 60% of adolescents have smoked a cigarette at some point in their lives and around a third have smoked during the last month. Tobacco is often seen as a gateway to cannabis and other drugs but some scientists dispute this 'gateway' theory...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 7:44 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Substance Abuse, Genetics

Young people, mental health and the Internet

Young people often find it difficult to access mainstream mental-health services partly because of the stigma associated with mental-health problems. One way round this is to use the Internet and a team of researchers from University College Cork surveyed...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 7:09 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Telemedicine

Boys, girls and ADHD

Little is known about the effects of gender, on ADHD over time and on the links between ADHD and other mental-health problems. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the State University of New York studied 471 children with ADHD in a long...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 6:46 AM by Mental Health Update

ADHD and time perception

People with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) often have problems with their perception of time but it is unclear whether this is due to difficulties in estimating how much time has elapsed or by the fact that they become distracted by other...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 6:27 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: ADHD

Exercise, illness and anxiety

Having a chronic illness can sometimes lead to the development of anxiety - something that can lower people's quality of life and make them less likely to follow their treatment plans. Researchers from the University of Georgia have been looking into...

Published Wed, Feb 24 2010 7:49 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Service Users' Health, Exercise and Mental Health, Anxiety

Belief in a caring God and depression

New research from Rush University in Chicago suggests that belief in a caring God can improve people's response to treatment for depression. Previous research has suggested that religious belief can help prevent people developing depression in the...

Published Wed, Feb 24 2010 7:24 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Depression, Religion and Mental Health

Obesity and cognitive function

A forty-year study of Swedish twins between 1963 and 2002 has found that those who had a higher body-mass-index when they were middle-aged had 'significantly lower general cognitive ability' and 'significantly steeper decline' than their...

Published Wed, Feb 24 2010 4:41 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Obesity

Depression, obesity and stress

Cortisol is a hormone that is produced in reaction to stress. It is also produced more when people are depressed and plays a role in regulating people's metabolisms. There is thought to be a link between depression, cortisol and obesity but no-one...

Published Wed, Feb 24 2010 4:13 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Obesity, Depression - in adolescence, Stress

Omega-3s and psychosis

Early intervention has been found to lead to much better results for people with schizophrenia and psychosis. This often takes the form of antipsychotic drugs but they have serious side effects and their use is controversial in people who have yet to...

Published Tue, Feb 23 2010 8:14 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychosis, Omega-3

Exercise, schizophrenia and growing your hippocampus

Neural plasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt over time. People with schizophrenia show changes in their brains and it could be the case that they have less neural plasticity than other people. People with schizophrenia also have smaller...

Published Tue, Feb 23 2010 7:48 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Schizophrenia, Neuroscience, Exercise and Mental Health

Stereotype threat, social skills and schizophrenia

Stereotype threat is the feeling that one is the target of demeaning stereotypes and has been found to affect performance among a number of different people doing a number of different tasks. Interestingly people do not have to actually be treated in...

Published Tue, Feb 23 2010 7:09 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Schizophrenia, Social Skills Training, Stigma