Mental Health News and Research

Latest Mental Health News and Research

Exercise may be best treatment for depression

The Mental Health Foundation in it's report - "Up and Running", says exercise might well prove to be a more effective treatment for some forms of depression than pills, and GPs should be offering all patients with depression a programme of exercise to help overcome their symptoms.

29 Mar 2005

Study links colic, maternal depression to family problems

Some families with new babies face excessive infant crying, or colic. And some new mothers go through maternal post-partum depression (PPD) following childbirth. Neither situation is considered healthy, but a recent study published in the Infant Mental Health Journal has found that the combined impact of colic and PPD can have a highly toxic outcome. Researchers have linked colicky babies and maternal depression to decrease in overall family functioning.

29 Mar 2005

Depression and anxiety affects one in two breast cancer patients

Almost half of all women with early breast cancer experience depression or anxiety in their first year after diagnosis, reveals a study published in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

29 Mar 2005

Patients with Hepatitis C have a significant decrease in their health-related quality-of-life

Patients with Hepatitis C virus (HCV) have a significant decrease in their health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL), although treatment success can mitigate this negative effect.

28 Mar 2005

Retirement communities need to do more to help residents cope with loneliness and depression

As the nation’s population ages, greater numbers of people are moving into assisted living and other retirement communities. While these facilities offer many advantages to the elderly, a recent research article concludes that they should consider doing more to alleviate the loneliness and depression that their residents often experience.

28 Mar 2005

Mental health service costs offset by savings in other public sectors

Penn State researchers have found that reduced expenditures for inpatient hospitalization, the juvenile justice system, the child welfare system and the special education system offset the costs of the improved mental health services delivered to youth through the system of care approach now being tried in communities in every state in the U.S.

28 Mar 2005

Heart attacks can be triggered by physical exertion and emotional stress

Philip Strike and Andrew Steptoe of University College London, in a review published in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, of dozens of studies done between 1970 and 2004 have come up with compelling evidence that indicates that people with a history of heart disease, can trigger heart attacks, some of them fatal, by physical exertion and emotional stress.

23 Mar 2005

Pregnant women should exercise to keep depression away

While much research focuses on healthy babies for pregnant mothers, little has been published about the physical and emotional health and changes that the mothers go through themselves.

23 Mar 2005

Single mothers at higher risk for depression

A recent study showed that low-income single mothers have a very high prevalence of depressive symptoms. This research, led by Ann Peden, ARNP, BC, DSN at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing was focused on 205 volunteer women with children between the ages of 2 and 6 who were at high risk for depression.

23 Mar 2005

Use of major opioid drugs combined with a history of previous relapse increased the likelihood of another relapse

The risk of relapse is significantly increased for health-care professionals treated for substance use disorders if they have coexisting psychiatric illness or a family history of substance abuse.

23 Mar 2005

Women who are HIV-positive or are abused are more likely to think about or attempt suicide

The Hopkins study, consistent with previous research, sheds new light on the extent to which being in an abusive relationship compounds suicide risk for HIV-positive women in particular. This latest study is published in the March/April 2005 issue of Women’s Health Issues

22 Mar 2005

Physical exertion and emotional stress can trigger heart attacks in people with a history of heart disease

Authors Philip Strike and Andrew Steptoe of University College London point out that the triggers for heart attacks may be quite different from the factors that lead to development of coronary heart disease over the long term, such as cigarette smoking, lack of exercise, work stress, social isolation, anxiety and depression.

22 Mar 2005

Depression appears to be a major cause of insomnia in people with HIV

Patients in the last stages of HIV infection with full-blown AIDS and those who have suffered some kind of brain impairment as a result of the disease are also more likely to suffer from insomnia, the reviewers conclude in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

22 Mar 2005

New study to evaluate Pegasys and Copegus to treat hepatitis C in liver transplant patients

Roche has initiated a new study to evaluate treatment strategies to reduce post-transplant recurrence of hepatitis C infection with the most prescribed hepatitis C treatment combination in the U.S., Pegasys (peginterferon alfa-2a) and Copegus (ribavirin, USP).

21 Mar 2005

Sixteen per cent of people who use cannabis for medical reasons say that their doctor suggested it

"The results of our UK survey, including the extent of use and reported effects, lend support to the further development of safe and effective medicines based on cannabis" says lead author Dr Mark Ware principal investigator and pain physician at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) Pain Centre.

21 Mar 2005

Images of brain activity may hold clues to the onset of schizophrenia

Images of brain activity may hold clues to the onset of schizophrenia in people at high risk for the disease, according to a study headed by psychiatry researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

21 Mar 2005

A new method for analysing the therapy process

In clinical settings, therapy processes are complex dynamical systems where several variables are constantly interacting with each other. In general, the underlying mechanisms are difficult to assess.

21 Mar 2005

Drugs alone are not enough for fighting obsessions and compulsions

Both medication and psychotherapy are effective in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, they both have disadvantages. A group of researchers at the La Sapienza University studied the long-term effectiveness of integrated treatment compared with medication alone.

21 Mar 2005

Does depression predict mortality in heart attacks?

A group of Danish investigators, headed by Per Bech (Hillerod) surveyed the the literature on depression in patients with myocardial infarction to assess the methodological quality and to test whether depression leads to an increased postmyocardial infarction mortality.

21 Mar 2005

Costs of antidepressants could have funded effective alternatives

Some of the costs of prescribing antidepressant drugs over the last decade could have been used to deliver psychological treatments of proven effectiveness, finds a study published online by the BMJ.

21 Mar 2005