Mental Health

Source: Deposit Photos In a world where so many of us are struggling to get enough sleep, the issue of sleeping too much might seem like a luxury problem.  It’s actually not. Like insufficient sleep, oversleeping is a sign of disordered sleep. It may be connected to a mental health issue such as depression . It’s often a signal that a person is experiencing poor sleep quality, and it can be a sign of a clinical sleep disorder , including obstructive sleep apnea or narcolepsy.  Sleeping too much is linked with many of the same health risks as sleeping too little, including heart disease, metabolic problems such as diabetes and obesity, and cognitive issues including difficulty with memory . Similar to people who sleep too little, people who sleep too much have higher overall mortality risks.  We talk a lot about insufficient sleep, and the risks that a lack of sleep poses for physical health, mood, relationships , and performance. But oversleeping isn’t somet...

January 29, 2019 Share this content: Patients with ADHD had a higher number of hypomanic or manic symptoms during depressive episodes than those without ADHD. In patients with major depression, having a comorbid diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD ) is associated with bipolar diathesis, mixed features, multiple psychiatric comorbidities, and a more unstable disease course, according to a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders . Giulia Vannucchi, MD, from the Psychiatry Unit, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Italy, and CREA, Research and Clinical Center, San Sebastiano Foundation and NEUROFARBA Department, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, and colleagues evaluated a sample of 2777 patients with a major depressive episode (MDE) who were enrolled in the multinational study BRIDGE-II-Mix Study to find patients who met the criteria for ADHD. Investigators identified 61 patients (2.20%) who had comorbid...

“Why you deh suh sad all de time man?” “You ain’t talking to nobody… you just deh by yuhself.’’ How many of us can relate to using these expressions towards someone we know and care about? Have we stopped to think that maybe this person might be suffering from a mental health condition? Let’s say that condition is depression. Do we view depression as a state of insanity? Are we informed about the type of depression the person is facing? How can we support them while they are going through this difficult situation and should there be some sort of specialised care? Before delving into these questions, let’s ask ourselves what depression really is. Depression is a mental health condition that negatively affects the way we feel, think and behave. We have no real idea of the origin of depression but it has been linked to a variety of biological, psychological and environmental factors. The good news is that once properly diagnosed, depression is treatable. Mental illness and, in this ca...

Sis Bowman, Columnist Published 10:00 a.m. ET Jan. 27, 2019 It is so hard to believe that the first month of the year is nearly finished. The older I get the faster time races by. It really seems that we just celebrated New Year’s Eve and here we are almost to February. I recently discovered that there is such a thing as a holiday hangover. And no I am not referring to alcohol. Apparently the joy of Christmas dissipates about the second or third week of January and a major depression sets in. Not to mention the Ohio weather doesn’t help provide much happiness.  Don’t despair. We still have January holidays left to celebrate. Today is National Chocolate Cake Day. You would think that is pretty straight forward, but no. Somebody decided to do a scientific study of chocolate cake. One thousand people were interviewed about their consumption of the delicious dessert. It seems that 58 percent of those questioned chose chocolate cake over vanilla when given a choice.  The ...

PLATTSBURGH — Family to Family is a lifesaver for those with a loved one with a mental illness. The National Alliance on Mental Illness of Champlain Valley presents the 12-week program starting Wednesday, Feb. 6. “This is something we try to do on a semi-regular basis, but we need to have a certain number of people in order to make the class worthwhile,” said Theresa Bennett, a trained facilitator. “It’s for any loved one of a person with a major mental illness. That can be a friend. That can be a parent. It doesn’t need to be a caregiver.” KNOWLEDGE IS POWER The program is not for people who have a mental illness. “This is an educational opportunity for people who live with someone or have a loved one in their life and would like to learn more about what it feels like for the person to have a major mental illness,” she said. “It’s geared toward people who are loved ones because they’re the ones who need to have the most knowledge.” Family to Family offers many coping skills, ...

Robust evidence supports a protective relationship between objectively-assessed physical activity and major depression risk, according to findings from a two-sample mendelian randomization study. “The most convincing evidence to date that physical activity is associated with a reduced risk for depression comes from meta-analyses of prospective studies, which are high quality yet still limited by the breadth of behavioral, social and genetic confounders that cannot be fully ruled out in observational designs,” Karmel Choi, PhD, from the Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Psychiatry . Using a genetically informed method for assessing potential causal inference, Choi and colleagues evaluated the bidirectional relationships between physical activity and depression. The researchers examined independent genetic variants linked to two physical activity phenotypes — self-reported and objective accelerometer-based — and to major depre...

January 24, 2019 Share this content: While ECT is effective for major depressive disorder treatment, using brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels as a biomarker has yet to prove useful. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has demonstrated 80% to 90% efficacy in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), an illness that is often refractory to medication. 1 ECT is favored among clinicians whose patients are psychotic, suicidal, or have failed on medication. 1 Why Researchers Measure BDNF To determine who would most benefit from ECT, researchers have turned to biomarkers for objective measurement. 1 Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is part of the neurotrophin group that influences much of the central nervous system, particularly in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus. 1 Because BDNF stimulates and develops new neurons, it is considered a surrogate marker for MDD. 1 In previous studies, patients with MDD treated with antidepressants showed a rise in serum BDNF levels....

Nearly 20,000 future doctors will graduate from U.S. medical schools this spring and embark on the residency training to launch their careers. Right now, they’re choosing which hospitals and health systems they’d most like to train at. But a new study suggests that their mental health during the crucial first year of training — called internship — may greatly depend on the nature of the program they enter. LISTEN UP: Add the new Michigan Medicine News Break to your Alexa-enabled device, or subscribe to our daily audio updates on iTunes , Google Play and Stitcher . Writing in the journal Academic Medicine , a team from the University of Michigan and the Medical University of South Carolina found that for internal medicine interns, certain program factors were associated with depressive symptoms. Internal medicine residency programs whose trainees reported the longest working hours, the least helpful feedback from faculty, and the least valuable inpatient training rotation experie...

By Carina Wolff, Source: Bustle Having depression might seem like it would be something obvious, but not all people who are depressed experience the typical symptoms of major depression. If you’re feeling down and frustrated for prolonged periods of time but are still able to get through your day-to-day life,  you may have walking depression.  Although walking depression — sometimes called smiling depression — isn’t a clinical term, it’s what is used colloquially to refer to someone who feels depressed and unhappy, but is still able to walk, talk, and get through their day while seeming just fine to everyone on the outside. Read more Post Views: 19 http://bit.ly/2FM6P4U

Yale researchers have discovered several genetic variants that signal the risk of serious suicide attempts and noted some variants have also been linked to major depressive disorder, they report Jan. 17 in the journal Translational Psychiatry . The whole genome analysis for the first time identified a genetic overlap between suicide attempts and major depression, the authors say. Research has shown that suicide seems to run in families but there have been few efforts to search for genes that might confer increased risk. Worldwide, more than 800,000 people died by suicide in 2015. Senior author Joel Gelernter , the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics and of neuroscience, and lead author Daniel Levey , a postdoctoral researcher at Yale, wanted to find genetic variants that influence the risk of serious suicide attempts. They conducted a genome-wide association study of almost 2,500 European Americans and more than 3,800 African Americans. They ruled out...