Mental Health

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Remitting neuropsychiatric symptoms in COVID‐19 patients: Viral cause or drug effect?    Wiley

A person with schizophrenia may experience delusional thinking, including paranoid thoughts. It may not be possible for the person to distinguish between this and regular thinking. Schizophrenia affects a person's perception and can involve hallucinations and delusions. When these happen, it can be hard to know what is real and what is not. Paranoid delusions can cause a person to fear that others are watching them or trying to harm them. Also, a person experiencing a delusion may believe that media such as the television or the internet are sending them special messages. These feelings and beliefs can cause severe fear and anxiety, disrupt daily life, and limit a person's ability to participate in work and relationships, including those with family. Studies suggest that nearly 50% of people with schizophrenia experience paranoia. Schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it encompasses several linked conditions, symptoms, and traits. Before 2013, healthcare professi...

An estimated 7 million adults in the U.S. live with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes dramatic shifts in a person's mood, energy and ability to think clearly. Its effects can be disabling; an estimated 83% of people with bipolar disorder had serious impairment, the highest rate among mood disorders. Bipolar disorder is also highly stigmatized, resulting in the spread of misinformation and misconceptions about the condition. On my journey to recovery from bipolar disorder, I have encountered the condition's challenges, as well as society's misperceptions. I have encountered people who believe that all that people with bipolar disorder enjoy manic episodes. I have seen other people who believed mania was an amusing spectacle; instead of helping people during a manic episode, they might stare or laugh, even encouraging the dangerous behaviors. And I have experienced just how harmful the manic and depressive episodes can be. But I hav...

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DMDD officially appeared as a diagnosable condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) in 2013. Prior to this recognition, "children were being diagnosed prematurely with bipolar disorder, but as they developed, they would not actually have bipolar disorder," according to Matis Miller, a licensed clinical social worker in Lakewood, New Jersey, the founder and director of The Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy and the author of The Uncontrollable Child . DMDD "includes frequent and chronic moodiness [and] a lot of irritability," says Boston-based clinical psychologist Alisha Pollastri, Ph.D., principal investigator of the Laboratory of Youth Behavior. But the symptoms go beyond the typical tantrum. "They are much more severe, much more frequent and inconsistent with the child's developmental level," she says. For example, there may be a 10-year-old having tantrums that look like something you would expect ...

Abstract Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) are a multifactorial condition associated with both physical and psychological factors. Stress has been known to trigger or worsens TMD. We aimed to investigate whether the novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic aggravates depression in patients with painful TMD, and the factors that affect their level of depression. We included 112 patients with painful TMD (74 females, 38 males; mean age: 35.90 ± 17.60 years; myalgia [n = 38], arthralgia [n = 43], mixed joint–muscle TMD pain [n = 31]). TMD was diagnosed based on the Diagnostic Criteria for TMD Axis I. Physical pain intensity was recorded using the visual analog scale (VAS); psycho-emotional status (depression: Beck Depression Inventory [BDI], anxiety: Beck Anxiety Inventory [BAI], and generalized stress related to COVID19: Global Assessment of Recent Stress [GARS]) was investigated twice (before [BC] and after COVID-19 [AC]). Additionally, factors affecting BDI-AC were i...

In a commentary-response article published this past week for the journal Child and Adolescent Mental Health , Peter Tyrer, a personality psychologist, engaged in what some might call heated rhetoric—or perhaps even "fighting words." Tyrer is a well-known and prolific personality researcher with a focus on tracing the history and evolution of personality disorder categories from antiquity to the present as well as psychometric, longitudinal, and construct validation research. In his commentary, written in response to a larger debate about whether clinicians should diagnose personality disorders in adolescence, Tyrer argues in favor of retaining personality disorder constructs by advocating for the normalization of personality disorder pathology in general. Tyrer points out that he has his own personality pathology and that some degree of personality pathology can be seen as universal. These observations are well-taken and supported by empirical evidence on the high ra...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Family begged for help with son's mental illness. Now he's charged with Belleville murder    Belleville News-Democrat

Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition that causes changes in a person's mood, energy levels, concentration, and ability to carry out daily activities. Bipolar depression is the low mood typical in people with bipolar disorder. Medications can help manage symptoms, stabilize mood, and improve general well-being. Bipolar disorder is a lifelong mental health disorder. Many people with the condition will require continuous long-term treatment to manage symptoms. Symptoms include high and low moods, which are known as mania and depression. A psychiatrist will recommend medications alongside other interventional therapies to treat bipolar depression. This article discusses medications for bipolar disorder, their side effects, and other treatment options. Medications are typically the first-line treatment for bipolar depression. However, most treatment plans include a combination of medication, psychotherapy, and lifestyle modifications. A person's symptoms and type of bipola...

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A 6-year-old boy began hearing voices coming from the walls and the school intercom telling him to hurt himself and others. He saw ghosts, aliens in trees, and colored footprints. Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD, a psychiatrist at Boston Children's Hospital, put him on antipsychotic medications and the frightening hallucinations stopped. Another child, at age 4, had hallucinations with monsters, a big black wolf, spiders, and a man with blood on his face. While children are known for their active imaginations, it's extremely rare for them to have true psychotic symptoms. Through chromosomal array testing, both children were found to have copy number variants or CNVs, meaning deletions of duplications of chunks of their DNA. Toda...