February, 2010
Children More Prone to Stress Thrive Depending Upon Home Environment
There are so many negative things about stress, it is a wonder it doesn’t have a more prominent focus in medical research. A new study by scientists at the University of British Columbia, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley and featured in Science Daily, examines the role of stress in children.
Those children who tend to be significantly reactive to stress tend to be more vulnerable to adversity and experience more behavior and health problems than their peers. This new longitudinal study suggests that highly reactive children are also more likely to do well when they are raised in supportive environments.
“Parents and teachers may find that sensitive children, like orchids, are more challenging to raise and care for, but they can bloom into individuals of exceptional ability and strength when reared in a supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment,” said Jelena Obradović, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Stanford University, a University of British Columbia professional when she led the study.
In this study, researchers found that children with significantly stronger biological reactions to a series of mildly stressful tasks designed to look like challenges in their daily lives were more affected by their family contexts, whether they were good or bad.
In contrast with what the researchers were expecting, these children were also more likely to thrive when they were raised in caring, low-stress families due to their sensitiveness to the supportive and nurturing qualities of such environments.
“The study tells us that when children are highly susceptible to stress, it’s not always bad news, but rather should be considered in terms of the type of environment they live in,” explained Obradović.
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Researcher Develops Technique for Quick Diagnosis of Mental Conditions
Is it really as easy to detect depression and other mental conditions as it is to detect a heart problem? It may be as a diagnostic technique invented by a Monash University researcher could make diagnosis and treatment a much more simple and rapid task.
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Childhood Abuse Identified as Culprit in Higher Risk for Osteoarthritis Later
There are a number of problems that can emerge in an individual’s life as a result of abuse they suffered as a child. The latest research into this field demonstrates that adults who experienced abuse as a child have 56 percent higher odds of osteoarthritis compared with those who have not been abused.
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Study Shows Drug Treatment May Reverse Onset of Schizophrenia
The onset of schizophrenia can drastically change a person’s life and to try and better treat the disease, researchers everywhere are trying to develop easier ways to predict the occurrence.
According to a Science Daily release, the prior existence of schizophrenia in the family is not enough to determine whether or not it will affect one individual. Prof. Ina Weiner of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Psychology noted that the developmental disorder can actually be triggered in the womb by infection, even though it usually manifests in early adulthood.
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Depressed People More Likely to Feel Gray, Not Blue
People with anxiety and depression are most likely to use a shade of gray to represent their mental state. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medical Research Methodology describe the development of a color chart, The Manchester Color Wheel, which can be used to study people’s preferred pigment in relation to their state of mind.
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Depression in Pregnancy Linked to Children’s Antisocial and Violent Behavior
Children from urban areas whose mothers suffered from depression during pregnancy are more likely than others to show antisocial and violent behavior later in life. Furthermore, women who are aggressive and disruptive in their own teen years are more likely to become depressed in pregnancy, so that the mothers’ history predicts their own children’s antisocial behavior. These are the conclusions of a new longitudinal study conducted by researchers at Cardiff University, King’s College London, and the University of Bristol. The research appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.
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Substance Abuse Problems Can Masquerade As Other Psychiatric Disorders
Getting an accurate diagnosis can be complicated, and even elusive, when substance use is involved. The effects of substance use can masquerade as other mental health issues and psychiatric disorders. For this reason, many substance users who seek treatment will be misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed at some point. This is often a frustrating process. It’s not uncommon, for example, for one’s diagnosis to be unclear for some time especially if there are significant symptoms that could be attributed to a condition other than substance use. Further, it is also not uncommon for diagnoses to change throughout the course of treatment.
One of the major difficulties in obtaining an accurate diagnosis is that substance users often have a very complicated history of symptoms and stressors. Individuals who have used substances over a long period of time may have symptoms directly related to substance use and another disorder simultaneously. Also, especially for people who have had only brief periods of sobriety, it is not always possible to understand where past symptoms have come from. In these cases, history — although perhaps given honestly — is not always enough. A substantial period of abstinence may be required before a thorough evaluation can be completed and other disorders are diagnosed or ruled out.
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Alcoholics: Are You Too Good for AA?
Maybe you know you have a problem with alcohol. Or, maybe you haven’t had the guts to admit it yet. But you are slowly becoming aware that things are deteriorating around you at a fairly rapid rate. You just can’t seem to put your finger on the cause – or you don’t want to. Perhaps you’ve tried to “cut down” your drinking in the mistaken belief that this would somehow make things better, allow you to see the situation more clearly and figure out where to go next. Nothing good comes out of this strategy, however, and you find yourself deeper in the pit of despair, hating yourself, but still you insist you’re darned well going to figure this out on your own.
Cambodian Refugees and Gambling Disorders
The Cambodian refugees that have settled in the United States may suffer high rates of trauma (Marshall, Schell, Elliott, Berthold & Chun, 2005). In order to treat this trauma, it is also important to understand how the trauma manifests itself in behaviors, such as substance abuse, employment dysfunction or gambling disorders.
Recent research examined the correlation between socio-demographic variables and trauma with disordered gambling. The study was conducted by Marshall, Elliott and Schell in 2009.
New Compound Could Become Important Antidepressant
Chemists at Oregon State University have discovered and synthesized a new compound that in laboratory and animal tests appears to be similar to, but may have advantages over, one of the most important antidepressant medications in the world. A patent has been applied for on the compound, and findings on it published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Continued animal studies and human clinical trials will be necessary before the compound could be approved for human medical use, researchers say.
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