December 2010 - Mental Health Update

Anger and anxiety

Some researchers think that anxiety and anger are linked and that a genetic predisposition to over-react to things, or to see them as a threat, leads some people to worry and fret, developing an anxiety disorder, while others become angry and lash out...

Published Wed, Dec 15 2010 3:14 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Anxiety, Anger

Acceptance and anxiety

When James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause is asked 'What are you rebelling against?' he replies 'What have you got?' and people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) feel much the same about worry. Acceptance-based behavioural...

Published Wed, Dec 15 2010 2:20 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Anxiety Disorders, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Fear and psychopathy

Children with psychopathic traits feel emotions less strongly and have less empathy for other people and recent research suggests that they may feel fear less than other people. A team of researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health in the...

Published Wed, Dec 15 2010 1:56 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychopathy

Mums, dads and social anxiety

Social anxiety disorder can lead to depression and anxiety and can impede people's functioning in jobs and relationships. It is often thought to run in families but the genetic risk is modest suggesting that parenting and environment play a part too...

Published Tue, Dec 14 2010 8:42 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Social Anxiety

Violent crime - keeping it in the family

Violent behaviour can be made more likely by sociological, biological and psychological factors. All of these affect families as well as individuals and it is no surprise that violent crime tends to run in families. Researchers from the Karolinska Institutet...

Published Mon, Dec 13 2010 7:57 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Violence

Ethnicity and PTSD

To be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) people have to have experienced a traumatic event, to have developed symptoms and to have sought help from - and been diagnosed by - medical professionals. Researchers don't really know whether...

Published Mon, Dec 13 2010 7:33 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: PTSD, Diversity

Measuring the burden of care

As more and more mentally-ill people are looked after in the community the responsibility for looking after them tends to fall on their relatives. A team of researchers from Karlstad University in Sweden looked into the 'burden of care' of 226...

Published Mon, Dec 13 2010 6:53 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Service Users' Families

Child abuse and alcohol problems

Child abuse is a big public-health problem with 794,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. in 2007. It is a risk factor for a number of different problems including alcohol abuse, but less is known about this link in boys than in girls. Researchers from the...

Published Wed, Dec 08 2010 5:22 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Abuse, Alcohol Problems

Coping style and psychotherapy

People tend to cope with problems and difficulties in different ways. Some people bottle things up and become anxious and depressed while others show less sympathy to others, behave insensitively and become angry. Psychologists call these techniques internalizing...

Published Wed, Dec 08 2010 3:41 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychotherapy

Psychosis and suicide

The long-term risk of suicide after a first episode of psychosis is unknown although most researchers think it is probably higher than the rate in the rest of the population. Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London studied...

Published Wed, Dec 08 2010 3:22 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Psychosis, Suicide

Bipolar disorder and recovery from depression

Some researchers think that people with depression who also show some of the symptoms of bipolar disorder are less likely to respond well to treatment. A team of researchers led by Roy H. Perlis from Harvard Medical School looked into this issue in a...

Published Wed, Dec 08 2010 2:34 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Depression, Bipolar Disorder

Charting the path from childhood delusions to mental illness

Although only around 1% of people suffer from full-blown schizophrenia or psychosis hallucinations or delusional beliefs - psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) - are more common and some psychologists think they are a risk factor for developing mental illness...

Published Mon, Dec 06 2010 3:31 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Psychosis, Schizophrenia

Child poverty and mental distress

Adults who are poor are also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, however, despite what common sense might suggest the research into how poverty affects the mental health of children and young people is inconclusive. A team of French researchers...

Published Mon, Dec 06 2010 3:11 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Depression, Anxiety

Tough childhoods, emotional reactivity, depression and anxiety

To some extent everybody suffers from stress but some people seem to get more worked up about it than others, something psychologists call emotional, or stress, reactivity. Psychologists have known for a long time that adverse childhood experiences can...

Published Mon, Dec 06 2010 2:30 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Depression, Child Abuse, Anxiety

Helping children with autism by teaching them to be copycats

As most children develop they acquire the ability to imitate other people, pay attention to the same things and reflect others' moods - something psychologists call socially-synchronous behaviour. Unfortunately children with autism do not develop...

Published Mon, Dec 06 2010 2:06 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Autism