Psychiatry / Psychology
Rare sleep disorder may be a harbinger of dementia
More than half of people with a rare sleep disorder develop a neurodegenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s disease, within 12 years of being diagnosed, results of a Canadian study published Wednesday indicate.
So-called “REM sleep behaviour disorder” affects a small percentage of the population, Dr. Ronald B. Postuma, at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues explain in the journal Neurology. It is characterized by a loss of the normal muscle relaxation while dreaming and is seen most often in men aged 50 and older. REM sleep behaviour disorder should not be confused with insomnia, night terrors, or confusional arousals.
Small studies have identified REM sleep behavior disorder as a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease and dementia. To investigate further, Postuma’s team conducted a follow-up study of 93 patients diagnosed with unexplained REM sleep behavior disorder between 1989 and 2006. The average time from diagnosis to last evaluation was 5.2 years.
Child’s ADHD Diagnosis Is Tied to Mother’s Health Status
The probability of having one’s child receive an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis involves a mother’s own medical conditions and her use of health services prior to having the child, a new study finds.
What is not clear, however, is whether the effects are due to biological, environmental or psychosocial factors — or some combination of these.
The new study implies “that the diagnoses and health care utilization that a mother receives prior to having her child is predictive of having a child who is diagnosed with ADHD,” said G. Thomas Ray, lead author. “Our study raises the possibility that certain types of mothers — those who get or seek diagnoses and who use more health services — may be more likely to seek ADHD diagnoses for their children.”
New approach successful for most eating disorders
UK researchers have identified a type of treatment that can help most people with eating disorders, with lasting results.
“Now for the first time, we have a single treatment which can be effective at treating the majority of cases without the need for patients to be admitted into hospital,” lead researcher Dr. Christopher G. Fairburn of the University of Oxford commented in a press release.
“Eating disorder not specified,” in which a person has disordered eating patterns but doesn’t meet criteria for bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa, is the most common type of eating disorder, followed by bulimia nervosa, Fairburn and his team note in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Eighty percent of patients undergoing outpatient treatment for an eating disorder fit into one of these two categories, but the best treatment for patients with non-specified eating disorders has not been studied.
Nail biters to be treated in a special treatment centre in the Netherlands
The world’s first treatment centre for nail biters is to open in the Netherlands next month.
Nail biters to be treated in a special treatment centre in the NetherlandsDirector of the new centre in Venlo, Alain-Raymond van Abbe of the Institute for Pathological Onychophagy (IPO) says he and his team have invented an aid to make nail-biting impossible.
“This is the first place ever to tackle this very serious problem,” he explained. “We are expecting clients from all over the world.”
Cancer patients’ depression tied to family woes
Treating cancer patients’ depression may help their children stay mentally healthy too, new research in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests.
Dr. Florence Schmitt of the University Hospital of Turku in Finland and her colleagues conducted a study of 381 families in which a parent had cancer. They found that, overall, the families of cancer patients were doing well, but that an ill parent’s depression or physical impairment was linked to worse family function.
“Support systems need to be more family-oriented and child-centered in their approach to cancer psychosocial care,” Schmitt and her team write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Domestic violence may raise kids’ abuse risk
Mothers who experience violence or aggression at the hands of an intimate partner are at greater risk for maltreating their children than mothers who do not experience intimate partner abuse.
Intimate partner aggression and violence “impacts the whole family, raising health risks for children in the home as well as adult victims,” Dr. Catherine A. Taylor told Reuters Health.
Moreover, the presence of intimate partner aggression and violence appears to confer a unique burden of maltreatment risk to children, Taylor, of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and colleagues have found.
Cascading effect of even minor early problems may explain serious teen violence
How do minor behavior problems and experiences early in life lead to serious acts of violence in teenagers? A group of researchers has found that the answer may lie in a cascading effect in which early life experiences lead to behaviors and new experiences that lead to yet other experiences that culminate in serious violent behavior.
The researchers found that children who had social and academic problems in elementary school were more likely to have parents who withdrew from supervision and monitoring when the children entered middle school. When this happened, children were more likely to make friends with other children who had deviant behavior, and this ultimately was more likely to lead teens to engage in serious and sometimes costly acts of violence. Interestingly, violent outcomes in girls followed largely the same developmental path as those for boys.
“The findings indicate that these trajectories are not inevitable but can be deflected at each subsequent era in development, through interactions with peers, school, and parents along the way,” notes Kenneth A. Dodge, William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and psychology and neuroscience, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, and the study’s lead author. “Successful early intervention could redirect paths of antisocial development to prevent serious violent behavior in adolescence.”
Personal rehab helpful for multiple sclerosis
Results of a study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry suggest that an individualized rehabilitation program effectively reduces disability in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“Persons with MS are expected to have a normal lifespan and live for many decades with a range of problems,” Dr. Fary Khan, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues write.
In order to assess the effectiveness of rehabilitation in MS patients, the researchers conducted a study with 101 patients who were randomly assigned to an individualized program or standard care.
Holidays Don’t Have to be Difficult for People with an Eating Disorder
Many people equate the holidays with food – big meals equals big times. Americans, especially, attach a lot of social and personal value to what, and how, we eat, often through family rituals or attitudes. For many, family gatherings are positive events, but for the 9 million men, women or young people who have an eating disorder, the holidays, without proper planning, can feel like nightmares.
Three out of four American women have “disordered eating” behavior, and 10 percent have an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder, says Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., the William and Jeanne Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the UNC School of Medicine’s department of psychiatry and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program. Her latest book, “Crave: Why you binge eat and how to stop,” is due out in early 2009.
If you have an eating disorder, plan ahead. Bulik and the UNC Eating Disorders team offer the following suggestions to navigate the food minefields of the holidays:
PTSD Symptoms Linked to Increased Risk of Death After Heart Events
Individuals who receive implantable cardiac defibrillators after a sudden heart event appear more likely to die within five years if they experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, regardless of the severity of their disease, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Surviving a life-threatening heart condition, such as heart attack or cardiac arrest, causes significant distress, according to background information in the article. Resulting symptoms—including intense fear, painful intrusive memories and hyperarousal (a state of physical and psychological tension resulting from the flight-or-fight response)—may qualify an individual for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Between 8 percent and 20 percent of patients with acute coronary syndromes and 27 percent to 38 percent of those who survive a cardiac arrest develop PTSD.
Karl-Heinz Ladwig, Ph.D., M.D., of Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Munich, and Helmholtz Zentrum National Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany, and colleagues studied 211 patients who had received implantable cardiac defibrillators (devices that administer shocks to help restore normal heartbeat) following a heart event in 1998. Participants were surveyed an average of 27 months after implantation and 38 reported severe PTSD symptoms. All patients were then tracked through medical records, telephone interviews, reports from family members and death certificates through March 2005.
Response rates to antidepressants differ among English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanics
In the first-ever study of its kind, a team led by researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) report in November’s Psychiatric Services journal that Spanish-speaking Hispanics took longer to respond to medication for depression and were less likely to go into remission than English-speaking Hispanics.
Using data from the nation’s largest real-world clinical study of depression, the researchers found the Spanish-speaking participants in the study were older and were more likely to be women than the English speakers. The Spanish speakers also had less education and lower income, more medical issues and were more likely than English speakers to be seen in primary care than psychiatric clinics.
“Once we adjusted for these differences in their socioeconomic status, both groups responded about the same to medication for depression,” said Ira Lesser, M.D., a LA BioMed investigator who authored the report. “These results are important for clinicians and patients to be aware that Spanish-speaking Hispanics with depression who come from lower social economic groups may need more than medication for depression.”
US smokers increasingly hooked on nicotine
Smokers who are seeking medical treatment to give up cigarettes are more highly addicted to nicotine than smokers who sought help two decades ago, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The researchers examined nicotine dependence levels of about 600 smokers who entered treatment programs in northern California to quit smoking during three periods starting in 1989 and ending in 2006.
Seventy-three percent of those seeking medical help to quit smoking in 2005 to 2006 were deemed highly nicotine dependent using scores from a questionnaire given to assess the severity of nicotine addiction, the researchers said.
The woman in red drives the men crazy, study finds
If a woman wants to drive the men wild, she might want to dress in red.
Men rated a woman shown in photographs as more sexually attractive if she was wearing red clothing or if she was shown in an image framed by a red border rather than some other color, U.S. researchers said Tuesday.
The study led by psychology professor Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, seemed to confirm red as the color of romance—as so many Valentine’s Day card makers and lipstick sellers have believed for years.
Although this “red alert” may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots, Elliot said.
Spanking may make kids aggressive
In a study, children who were spanked frequently at age 3 years were 50 percent more likely to be aggressive 2 years later than their counterparts who were not spanked.
Dr. Catherine A. Taylor, of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans reported her team’s findings Wednesday at the American Public Health Association’s annual convention in San Diego.
“When parents use discipline, they are usually trying to teach their children a lesson and to help their children learn to behave well in both the short and the long term,” Taylor told Reuters Health. “Although spanking may bring about immediate compliance, it may do more harm than good in the long run,” she warned.
Psychological Study Reveals That Red Enhances Men
A groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color—literally and figuratively—to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.
Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.
The research provides the first empirical support for society’s enduring love affair with red. From the red ochre used in ancient rituals to today’s red-light districts and red hearts on Valentine’s Day, the rosy hue has been tied to carnal passions and romantic love across cultures and millennia. But this study, said Elliot, is the only work to scientifically document the effects of color on behavior in the context of relationships.
