Paranoia News and Research

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Paranoia is a mental disorder in which a person has an extreme fear and distrust of others. A paranoid person may have delusions that people are trying to harm him or her.

Brits over-react to threat of crystal meth

In order to prevent the illegal production of the highly addictive drug, crystal meth, authorities in Britain are considering making some cold medicines available on a prescription-only basis.

26 Apr 2007

Indian woman infected with HIV forced to abort her own baby

According to officials in India, a pregnant HIV-positive woman was forced to abort her own foetus after doctors and nurses in the government hospital in Kolkata in eastern India, shunned her and told her they would not help her undergo an abortion.

5 Sep 2006

Prospective Huntington At Risk Observational Study

Doctors have completed the first step of a unique medical research study, evaluating 1,001 individuals at risk of developing Huntington's disease who do not know - nor do they want to know - whether they carry the genetic defect that causes the condition.

8 Aug 2006

"Magic" mushrooms create profound mystical experience and change behaviour

A group of healthy well educated volunteers appear to have achieved some sort of profound mystical experience that led to behaviour changes lasting for weeks after taking a drug derived from 'magic mushrooms'.

12 Jul 2006

Hallucinogen in mushrooms creates mystical/spiritual experiences

Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in "sacred mushrooms" can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.

11 Jul 2006

Altered activity in receptor pair points to further complexity in schizophrenia pathology

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists at the City University of New York, have identified a striking dysregulation in neuronal receptor activity in the postmortem brain tissue from patients with schizophrenia.

18 Jun 2006

Study identified characteristics of caregivers that may increase symptoms in dementia patients

Troublesome symptoms that accompany dementia - including wandering, hallucinations and restlessness - may increase if the patients' caregivers are young, less educated, over-burdened or depressed.

23 May 2006

Olanzapine appears to lower or delay full-blown psychosis

For young people who clearly seem to be developing early signs of schizophrenia, treatment with the antipsychotic drug olanzapine appears to lower or delay the rate of conversion to full-blown psychosis, according to an article by a Yale School of Medicine researcher in the May issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.

3 May 2006

Skin patch to treat ADHD gets the green light

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. has approved a skin patch to control attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children.

10 Apr 2006

Man takes 40,000 ecstasy pills in nine years

Researchers from London University have revealed details of a man who claims to have taken 40,000 ecstasy pills over nine year period.

5 Apr 2006

Anabolic steroids flip the adolescent brain's switch for aggression

Anabolic steroids not only make teens more aggressive, but may keep them that way into young adulthood. The effect ultimately wears off but there may be other, lasting consequences for the developing brain.

27 Feb 2006

Steroids trigger long lasting aggression in teens

According to a U.S. study steroids may have a lasting effect on teenagers' brains, and could even flip the adolescent brain's switch for aggression which may last for at least two years.

27 Feb 2006

Memory aids help people with schizophrenia remember things just as well as healthy people

When encouraged to use memorization strategies commonly employed by healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia can be helped to remember information just as well as their healthy counterparts, a process that in itself seems to spur a normalization of memory-related activities in the brains of people with schizophrenia, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

6 Jul 2005

Electroshock therapy speeds improvement in schizophrenia patients

Shock therapy, a controversial practice conjuring frightening images of behavior control, still has a place in schizophrenia treatment, a newly updated research review shows.

20 Apr 2005

Schizophrenia may arise from a single genetic defect

Researchers have long puzzled over the apparently multiple causes of complex developmental disorders such as schizophrenia. Individuals seem to be predisposed to the disease by a tragic, mysterious combination of genetics, prenatal trauma, viral infection, and early experience.

16 Feb 2005

Sméagol, a 587 year old, hobbit-like male of no fixed abode had issues

The mental health of Tolkien's character Gollum has long been a mystery to Lord of the Rings fans, who have argued the nature of Gollum's ‘mental illness' on over 1300 websites –did he have schizophrenia or was he suffering from multiple personality disorder? UCL scientists now diagnose the famous character in a paper published in this week's British Medical Journal (BMJ).

21 Dec 2004

Large increase in male mentally ill drug abusers

The amount of mentally ill male drug abusers has increased by more than 79% in five years across England and Wales, finds research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

16 Nov 2004

Approval of Abilify (aripiprazole) for the treatment of acute bipolar mania

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceutical have announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Abilify (aripiprazole) for the treatment of acute bipolar mania, including manic and mixed episodes associated with bipolar disorder.

4 Oct 2004

Researchers get a grip on marijuana

Now researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine are a step closer to understanding how the drug's active ingredients - tetrahydrocannabinol and related compounds, called cannabinoids - may exert their effects.

16 Sep 2004

Difficulties in performing day to day tasks could indicate the presence of mild cognitive impairment

Mild Cognitive Impairment, forgetfulness without dementia being present, is a term described as a subtle decline in thinking abilities. A person with MCI, for example, may experience memory problems greater than normally expected with aging, but that person does not show other symptoms of dementia, such as impaired judgment or reasoning, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

21 Jul 2004