Psychiatry News and Research

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Psychiatry is the treatment, study and prevention of mental disorders.

Aggressive behaviour on acute psychiatric wards: prevalence, severity and management

Psychiatric nurses have a one in ten chance of being physically injured by an aggressive patient over the course of a year and many more suffer emotional distress because of the verbal abuse they receive while working in these difficult and challenging environments.

12 Apr 2007

Internet can help people identify depression

This is the conclusion of a study published in BMC Psychiatry, which demonstrates that a Chinese online tool for assessing depression is both accurate and reproducible, and may offer a way to identify the growing number of people suffering from depression.

11 Apr 2007

Lithium increases gray matter in bipolar brains

Neuroscientists at UCLA have shown that lithium, long the standard treatment for bipolar disorder, increases the amount of gray matter in the brains of patients with the illness.

11 Apr 2007

Talk therapy during school helps teens with depression

Training school social workers to lead “talk therapy” sessions during the school day can help teens and pre-teens recognize and begin to overcome mild depression, anxiety and anger problems, research is showing.

11 Apr 2007

Parents well poised to help children overcome bulimia nervosa

Common practice in the treatment of adolescent eating disorder patients has been to exclude the parents. Many experts consider parents part of the problem and thus keep them away during therapy.

10 Apr 2007

Hope for victims of eating disorders in Britain

They say anorexia is the biggest killer of any psychiatric disorder; Department of Health, figures show as many as 15% of cases result in death.

8 Apr 2007

War study has implications for understanding male and female psychology

A man's health and behavior are more adversely impacted by war and the associated disruption than a woman's---as evidenced by the dramatic jump in non-combat mortality for Croatian men during the Croatian War of Independence, a new study shows.

5 Apr 2007

Milk, water, fruits and vegetables worsen taste of cigarettes

Milk does the body good -- and may help smokers break the habit, say researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

5 Apr 2007

Stanford technique directly controls brain cell activity with light

Every thought, feeling and action originates from the electrical signals emitted by diverse brain cells enmeshed in a tangle of circuits.

5 Apr 2007

UT Metroplex institutions to collaborate on biomedical research

Researchers from the three University of Texas campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area are combining their expertise in biomedical science, engineering and physical sciences on projects aimed at solving real-world medical problems.

5 Apr 2007

Study looks at the prevention of adolescent substance abuse

Why do young people smoke cigarettes or use alcohol or drugs? What skills do they need to avoid starting these habits? A new study by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College shows that competence skills can reduce adolescent substance use over the long term, even when friends smoke or use alcohol.

5 Apr 2007

Use of stimulant drugs may be linked to a higher risk for stroke

The use of stimulant drugs, including cocaine and amphetamines, may be linked to a higher risk for stroke, according to a report in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

4 Apr 2007

Men and women who wait to have babies later in life may increase their children's risk for autism

The study investigated 132,844 children born at Kaiser Permanente hospitals in its Northern California region over a five-year period (1995-1999) and identified 593 children who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

4 Apr 2007

Effectiveness of psychosocial treatments for bipolar disorder

This is a follow up study to one released last Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effects of antidepressants in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Both studies, called STEP-BD, were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

4 Apr 2007

Intensive psychotherapy most effective for treating bipolar depression

Patients taking medications to treat bipolar disorder are more likely to get well faster and stay well if they receive intensive psychotherapy, according to results from the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD), funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

4 Apr 2007

Less children and teens taking antidepressants

The number of children and teenagers prescribed antidepressant medications appears to have decreased following public warnings about suicidal behavior potentially associated with the drugs, according to a report published in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

4 Apr 2007

Significant gaps in knowledge about mental disorders in the Asia-Pacific region

While ANZ mental health researchers have an outstanding record of collaboration and publishing internationally, most of this activity relates to rich countries in North America and Europe. "

4 Apr 2007

Intensive therapy helps in battle against bipolar disorder

New results from the largest federally funded bipolar study ever conducted show that patients who receive psychotherapy in addition to medication get better faster from bipolar disorder's debilitating depression and stay better longer, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher involved in the study.

4 Apr 2007

Study suggests there's a role for religious institutions to play in the fight against HIV

HIV-positive people who say religion is an important part of their lives are likely to have fewer sexual partners and engage in high-risk sexual behavior less frequently than other people with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a study issued today by the RAND Corporation.

4 Apr 2007

Antisocial behaviour in boys leads to poor health in men

A study of over 500 men born in the early 70s in Dunedin reveals that the costs associated with antisocial behaviour may be much higher than previously thought. The research led by scientists from the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre based at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London is published in Archives of General Psychiatry.

3 Apr 2007