November 2010 - Mental Health Update

Premature babies have more problems at six

Children born between 34 and 36 weeks into their mothers' pregnancies could be at greater risk of developing cognitive and emotional problems. Researchers from Michigan State University studied a group of children born between 1983 and 1985 and compared...

Published Tue, Nov 23 2010 2:28 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development

Children's memories and trauma

Psychologists have researched how people's memories of a traumatic event can effect how likely they are to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of it. They've found that among adults with PTSD and acute stress disorder (ASD...

Published Wed, Nov 17 2010 1:53 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: PTSD

HRT and dementia

Researchers from the Kaiser Permanente health organization in the U.S. have been looking into the effects of hormone therapy on women's risk of developing dementia. They took a large sample of women and asked them about their hormone use during middle...

Published Fri, Nov 19 2010 2:03 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alzheimer's Disease, HRT

Brothers, sisters and bullying

Older brothers are more likely to bully their younger siblings than older sisters. Researchers from the Universita' degli Studi Di Firenze in Florence studied 195 children, aged between 10 and 12. They found that children with older brothers were...

Published Tue, Nov 02 2010 6:44 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Bullying

Faces, places and perception

A Canadian brain-scanning study has shed new light on the differences in the way older and younger people process visual information. Researchers from the University of Toronto used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare brain activity in younger...

Published Wed, Nov 03 2010 2:27 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Neuroscience

Boosting self-esteem in patients with eating disorders

People with eating disorders can often have low self-esteem, difficulties in relating to others and feelings of dissatisfaction about their relationships. A team of researchers from Barcelona looked into the effectiveness of a group-therapy programme...

Published Wed, Nov 10 2010 1:31 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Eating Disorders, Self Esteem

One-day communities for personality disorder

The U.K. Government and mental-health services have been making attempts to improve services for people with personality disorders. Sometimes these involve residential therapeutic communities but day therapeutic communities which people take part in once...

Published Tue, Nov 09 2010 1:55 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Personality Disorders, Therapeutic Communities

Major review gives thumbs up to self-help

In guided self-help patients take home a standardized psychological treatment and work through it more or less independently. The treatment can be written down in a book or be available via a web site, television, video or audio and some support is given...

Published Wed, Nov 10 2010 1:54 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Telemedicine, Psychotherapy, Bibliotherapy

Old musicians stave off brain decay

The auditory cortex is the part of the brain that deals with processing sound and new research from the University of Toronto suggests that in older musicians it might be better preserved than in other adults of a similar age. The researchers studied...

Published Wed, Nov 17 2010 2:51 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Neuroscience

Problem-solving and binge eating

Previous studies have shown that people with eating disorders often have poor interpersonal problem-solving skills and a lot of therapy for these problems aims to improve these skills. However, there has been little research into problem-solving skills...

Published Thu, Nov 11 2010 7:27 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Eating Disorders

Adoption, institutions and executive function

Previous research has shown that children who have spent at least some part of their life in an institution tend to have problems with executive function - which is defined as a combination of working memory, the ability to inhibit one's behaviour...

Published Thu, Nov 11 2010 8:05 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Child Psychology

Getting better slowly or gradually - does it make a difference?

People having psychotherapy quite often make sudden gains, displaying abrupt and substantial improvements in symptoms from one session to the next. Sudden gains have been investigated in the context of randomised controlled trials (RCTs), tightly-controlled...

Published Mon, Nov 08 2010 3:35 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychotherapy

Motivation, depression and psychotherapy

Over the last 20 years researchers have begun to recognise that other factors - apart from the kind of treatment used and the nature of people's mental-health problems - affect whether psychotherapy gets people better or not. Two of the most important...

Published Fri, Nov 12 2010 3:28 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychotherapy

Child abuse and drug addiction

Child abuse is known to be a risk factor for a number of different mental-health problems and antisocial behaviour. Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York studied 143 people in an attempt to find out more about this. 48 of...

Published Thu, Nov 25 2010 3:47 AM by Mental Health Update