March 2011 - Mental Health Update

Why quality is as important as quantity in the jobs market

Politicians and economists spend a lot of time thinking about levels of unemployment and about how to get unemployed people back into the workplace but much less about the quality of jobs on offer. However, a new study led by Peter Butterworth from the...

Published Tue, Mar 15 2011 3:31 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Employment

Understanding the causes of prenatal depression

Many women suffer from postnatal depression but they can also suffer from prenatal depression as well. Anxiety and depression during pregnancy can result in premature birth or low birthweight and can affect children's health even into their early...

Published Tue, Mar 15 2011 4:16 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Depression - in pregnancy

Mothers' depression and children's problems

Mothers' depression can also put their children at risk of developing mental-health problems. Researchers from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health studied 80 women with depression and their children who were aged between seven and 17. The...

Published Wed, Mar 16 2011 2:38 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Depression

Breastfeeding and brighter babies

Scientists have already found a number of benefits to breastfeeding one's babies and a new study by researchers at Oxford University and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University has found that an increase in children's...

Published Wed, Mar 16 2011 3:28 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development

Alzheimer's decline could start much earlier

People with Alzheimer's disease could start going downhill years before they develop the condition. Researchers from the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago studied 2,071 older adults who were all free of dementia at the beginning of the...

Published Wed, Mar 16 2011 3:13 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alzheimer's Disease

Earlier drinkers more likely to turn to the bottle to relieve stress

Children who have their first alcoholic drink at an early age are known to be at a greater risk of developing alcohol problems later in life and new research suggests that they may be especially vulnerable when they are suffering from stress. Researchers...

Published Wed, Mar 16 2011 2:55 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alcohol Problems, Stress

Coping strategies and binge eating

Researchers from the University of Oviedo in Spain have been looking into the prevalence and causes of binge eating and in particular how people's coping styles affect how likely they are to binge eat. They studied 1,913 children between 12 and 18...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 2:47 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Eating Disorders

Why misery guts might have the last laugh

One might think that being cheerful, worrying less and taking things easy would be the passports to a long and healthy life but new research from the University of California, Riverside suggests that this could be wrong. The researchers used information...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 3:55 AM by Mental Health Update

Cracking the puzzle of callous children

Badly-behaved children who also have callous and emotional traits such as a lack of guilt, no empathy with other people and a callous use of others are more likely to become serious and long-term criminals. However, there is limited evidence about what...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 3:22 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Psychopathy

Atrial fibrillation and dementia risk

Atrial fibrillation is a disturbance in people's heartbeat. It is harmless in itself but can increase the risk of stroke. A new study , by researchers at the University of East Anglia, suggests that those people who have atrial fibrillation after...

Published Thu, Mar 17 2011 4:37 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Alzheimer's Disease

Green fingers help older adults stay blooming

Green fingers could be just the thing to keep people young in spirit as they get older. Researchers from Texas A & M and Texas State Universities studied 298 people over 50. They found that people who gardened were more satisfied with their lives...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 2:38 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Older People, Gardening

Having children - short-term struggles, long-term happiness

Parents of crying babies, temperamental toddlers and troublesome teenagers should draw comfort from a new study which shows that while having more children makes younger parents less happy the opposite is true for older parents. The World Value Surveys...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 3:37 AM by Mental Health Update

How parents can stop their children binge drinking

Anna-Karin Danielsson from the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has been looking into the factors behind teenage binge drinking in her Ph.D. thesis. She monitored 1,200 pupils aged between 13 and 19 between 2001...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 3:10 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Alcohol Problems, Parenting

Higher up and happier at work sleep better

Researchers from the University of Surrey have been looking into the links between people's working lives and the quality of their sleep. They used data from the Understanding Society survey of 40,000 households carried out by the Institute of Social...

Published Fri, Mar 18 2011 4:45 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Sleep Disorders

Siblings, autism and theory of mind

Theory of Mind (ToM) can be defined as the ability to work out what other people are thinking and how this might affect their behaviour. In most children ToM shows a significant advance between the ages of three and five. However, the development of ToM...

Published Mon, Mar 21 2011 2:48 AM by Mental Health Update

Filed under: Child Development, Autism