Mental Health

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Global prevalence and burden of depressive and anxiety disorders in 204 countries and territories in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic    The Lancet

Bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression, is a mental health disorder characterized by emotional extremes. People with bipolar disorder typically experience periods of abnormally elevated or irritable moods and increased energy (known as mania or the milder hypomania) and periods of depression. They may also experience mixed episodes that share features of both mania and depression. These periods of being up and down are more extreme than normal mood swings. They represent a marked shift in a person's normal mood, energy, and behaviors, and endure for at least several days to weeks. Bipolar symptoms can begin at any time throughout your lifetime, but they most often first appear between the ages of 15 and 24. Getty Images / KatarzynaBialasiewicz Types There are several different types of bipolar disorders, which vary in their severity. Their shared defining feature is the presence of mania or hypomania. Most of the time, peo...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Is Schizophrenia Genetic? Here's What to Know About How Hereditary Schizophrenia Is    Parade

"TO DEFINE TRUE MADNESS," said Shakespeare's Polonius in Hamlet , "What is't but to be nothing else but mad?" He may well have been right. But that doesn't seem to be the view of the specialists paid to treat the mentally ill. For more than four decades, leading American psychiatrists have been obsessed with the problem of diagnosis. The ever-fatter volumes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM ) of the American Psychiatric Association have produced enormous profits for the organization that publishes them. The third edition brought in $9.3 million. The fourth was still producing $5 million a year more than a decade and a half after its publication in 1994, and its most recent incarnation, the fifth edition of 2013, sold $20 million worth of copies in its first year. Less clear than their profitability is whether any of these documents has advanced our understanding of mental illness or brought us closer to identifying diseases that actually ex...

Approximately 2.8% of people in the United States live with bipolar disorder, a mental health disorder characterized by fluctuating moods and energy levels, including highs (manic episodes) and lows (depressive episodes). Individuals managing bipolar disorder may experience episodes of mania, hypomania, depression, or mixed states. Rapid cycling is a specifier of bipolar disorder and characterized by frequent and distinct mood episodes that occur over a 12-month period. Moods can fluctuate over hours, days, or months. It can be present with any type (bipolar 1 or bipolar 2) of the condition. Getty Images Symptoms Rapid cycling describes a characteristic of bipolar disorder in which a person cycles between at least four episodes in a 12-month period. Almost half of all people with bipolar disorder will experience rapid cycling at some point. It is usually temporary, but it can persist. The symptoms a person may experience during rapid cycling...

This article was originally published here Early Interv Psychiatry. 2021 Oct 8. doi: 10.1111/eip.13227. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT AIM: To explore the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic first wave in Quebec, Canada on practices in early intervention services (EIS) for first-episode psychosis, including reorganization of clinical and administrative practices and teleconsultation use. METHODS: Adopting a cross-sectional descriptive study design, a 41 questions online survey was sent to the team leaders of all the 33 Quebec EIS, of which 100% responded. Data were collected from 18 May to 4 June 2020 and analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Programmes were categorized as urban/non-urban and results were compared between these. RESULTS: All 33 existing Quebec EIS (16 urban and 17 non-urban) completed the survey. Among them, 85% did not experience redeployment of EIS team staff and 58% reported stable frequency of patient interactions, either in-pe...

Bipolar disorder involves episodes of mania, depression, or hypomania. These shifts in mood are the key characteristic of this mental health condition, but it's not unusual for people living with bipolar disorder to also have symptoms of psychosis. Bipolar with psychotic features can closely resemble schizoaffective disorder. People living with this condition have combined symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — a mix of mania or hypomania, depression, and psychosis. This complex array of symptoms can make schizoaffective disorder harder to diagnose. The fact that schizophrenia, like bipolar and schizoaffective disorders, can involve depression and psychosis only adds another layer of complication. Some experts believe the significant overlap between these three conditions suggests they occur on something of a spectrum: Bipolar disorder at one end, schizophrenia at the other, and schizoaffective disorder representing a midpoint between the two. For now, experts still reco...

SPECIAL REPORT: EXPLORING SIDE EFFECTS Not long ago, tranquilization was an important goal of psychopharmacology, and sedation was integral to this therapeutic effect. Major tranquilizers (ie, antipsychotics) sedated psychosis and mania, while minor ones (ie, benzodiazepines) calmed the anxious mind. Even antidepressants were thought to benefit from sedation, in part because insomnia is a symptom of depression, but also because of concerns that patients might act on suicidal impulses if their energy improved before their depression did. 1 Those ideas were put to rest in the 1990s, as nonsedating medications proved just as effective as their sedating predecessors. Rather than forewarning suicide, early increases in energy and physical activity are actually a predictor of antidepressant response. 2 Improved functioning is the goal in psychopharmacology, and sedation usually does not contribute to that goal. Sedation is sometimes desirable and sometimes not. It is desirable when treating...