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Depression treatment - Manic depression

Bipolar disorder does not increase risk of violent crime
A new study from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet suggests that bipolar disorder - or manic-depressive disorder - does not increase the risk of committing violent crime. Instead, the over-representation of individuals with bipolar disorder in violent crime statistics is almost entirely attributable to concurrent substance abuse. The public debate on violent crime usually assumes that violence in the mentally ill is a direct result of the perpetrator?s illness. Previous research has also suggested that patients with bipolar disorder - also known as manic-depressive disorder - are more likely to behave violently. However, it has been unclear if the violence is due to the bipolar disorder per se, or caused by other aspects of the individual?s personality or lifestyle. The new study, carried out by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Oxford University, is presented in the scientific journal Archives of General Psychiatry. Researchers compared the rate of violent crime in over 3,700 patients with bipolar disorder cared for in Swedish hospitals between 1973 and 2004 with that of 37,000 control individuals from the general public.
Combining medication and psychosocial treatments may benefit patients with ea...
Patients with early-stage schizophrenia who receive a combination of medication and a psychosocial intervention appear less likely to discontinue treatment or relapse?and may have improved insight, quality of life and social functioning?than those taking medication alone, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Antipsychotic drugs are the mainstay of therapy for patients with schizophrenia, but long-term therapy is associated with adverse effects and poor adherence, according to background information in the article. ?Most patients, even those with a good response to medication, continue to experience disabling residual symptoms, impaired social and occupational functioning and a high rate of relapse,? the authors write. ?Adding psychosocial treatment may produce greater improvements in functional outcome than does medication treatment alone.? Xiaofeng Guo, M.D., and Jinguo Zhai, M.D., of Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Hunan, China, and colleagues evaluated this combination of therapies in 1,268 patients with early-stage schizophrenia treated from Jan. 1, 2005, through Oct. 31, 2007. A total of 633 were randomly assigned to receive pharmacotherapy plus a psychosocial intervention involving 48 one-hour group sessions. The intervention included four evidence-based practices: psychoeducation (instruction for families and caregivers about mental illness), family intervention (teaching coping and socializing skills), skills training and cognitive behavioral therapy. The other 635 patients received medication alone. 
Visual pattern preference may be indicator of autism in toddlers
Using eye-tracking methods, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that toddlers with autism spend significantly more time visually examining dynamic geometric patterns than they do looking at social images ? a viewing pattern not found in either typical or developmentally delayed toddlers. The results of the study suggest that a preference for geometric patterns early in life may be a signature behavior in infants who are at-risk for autism. This preference was found in infants at-risk for autism as young as 14 months of age. ?In testing 110 toddlers ages 14 to 42 months, we found that all of the toddlers who spent more than 69 percent of their time fixing their gaze on geometric images could be accurately classified as having an autism spectrum disorder or ASD,? said Karen Pierce, PhD, an assistant professor in the UCSD Department of Neurosciences and assistant director of the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence. The study will be published in the September 6 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. During this study, babies ranging in age between 12 and 42 months sat on their mother?s lap as they watched a one-minute movie that contained shapes moving on one side of the screen (i.e., ?dynamic geometric patterns) and children dancing and doing yoga on the other (i.e., ?dynamic social images?).
Parents at highest risk for depression in the first year after child?s birth
More than one-third of mothers and about one-fifth of fathers in the United Kingdom appear to experience an episode of depression between their child?s birth and 12th year of age, with the highest rates in the first year after birth, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the November print issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ?Depression in parents is associated with adverse behavioral, developmental and cognitive outcomes in their children,? the authors write as background information in the article. ?While the maternal depression and child outcome literature is well established, there are fewer studies on paternal depression. There is evidence that paternal depression is not uncommon, with rates higher than those in the general adult male population; however, a wide range of prevalence rates for paternal depression have been reported.? Shreya Davé, Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc., of the Medical Research Council, London, England, and colleagues examined incidence, trends and correlates of parental depression in 86,957 families seen in U.K. primary care facilities between 1993 and 2007. Mothers and fathers with depression were identified using diagnostic codes and pharmacy records. 
Hormones won?t cut older women?s depression risk
Using hormone therapy won’t prevent women from becoming depressed after menopause, new research shows. But women who quit taking hormones may be more likely to begin having depressive symptoms, Dr. Marie-Laure Ancelin of Hopital La Colombiere in Montpellier, France, and her colleagues found. Based on the findings, ?physicians should closely monitor the psychiatric well-being and mood of women when they decide to discontinue HT,? Ancelin told Reuters Health via e-mail. In 2002, the Women?s Health Initiative study debunked long-standing claims that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) would reduce cardiovascular disease risk in women taking it after menopause. While HRT may have protective effects against colon cancer, it actually increases cardiovascular risks in postmenopausal women. 
Study Links Shorter Sleep Durations with Greater Risks of Mental Distress in ...
Young adults who get fewer than eight hours of sleep per night have greater risks of psychological distress, a combination of high levels of depressive and anxious symptoms, according to a study in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP. Using an average self-reported nightly sleep duration of eight to nine hours as a reference, the study found a linear association between sleep durations of less than eight hours and psychological distress in young adults between 17 and 24 years of age. The risk of psychological distress increased by 14 percent for each hour of nightly sleep loss, such that those sleeping less than six hours a night were twice as likely to be experiencing distress as average sleepers. A similar association was found between sleep duration and persistent psychological distress; the risk that a person with psychological distress at baseline would be distressed at the one-year follow-up increased by five percent for each hour of nightly sleep loss after adjusting for potential confounders (RR 1.05). Long sleep durations of more than nine hours showed no association with distress at any time point. ?In young adults already experiencing distress, the fewer hours they sleep the worse the outcome across the range of sleep hours,? said lead author Nick Glozier, MBBS, MRCPsych, PhD, associate professor of psychological medicine at the Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Centre for Integrated Research and Understanding of Sleep (CIRUS) at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Antidepressant Helps Depression in Menopause
An antidepressant can alleviate symptoms of major depression in women experiencing or about to experience menopause, according to a study released today led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher. The research compared the effectiveness and safety of the antidepressant desvenlafaxine, known as Pristiq, to a placebo in a double-blind trial led by Susan G. Kornstein, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and obstetrics/gynecology in the VCU School of Medicine. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. In the United States, depression is approximately twice as common in women as in men. More than 20 percent of women will experience depression in the course of their lifetime, and depression seems to be influenced by reproductive events, such as the menstrual cycle, the postpartum period and menopause. 
Depression in the Elderly
Maureen Duffy’s memories of her grandmother are cloudy. Not because of time, but by a condition that cast a shadow over the woman Duffy had visited as a child. ?She was blue. Even as a child I could see it. She was very negative and just could never really find any joy in life?not even from her children or grandchildren,? Duffy recalls. ?A physician diagnosed her with depression, but she was only given tranquilizers. She was not a happy person. By the time she went to a nursing home, no one wanted to visit her. It hurt my heart.? Duffy?s story is not uncommon. According to the National Institutes of Health, of the 35 million Americans age 65 and over, about 2 million suffer from full-blown (major depressive disorder) depression and another 5 million suffer from less severe forms. In 2004, adults 65 and older accounted for 16 percent of suicides in the United States; non-Hispanic white men 85 and older have the highest suicide rate in the country.
Eliminating diabetes and depression, and boosting education, most likely to w...
Eliminating diabetes and depression, as well as increasing education and fruit and vegetable consumption, are likely to have the biggest impact on reducing levels of dementia in the coming years, should no effective treatment be found, concludes a study published on bmj.com today. These findings suggest priorities for future public health interventions. While the exact cause of dementia is still unknown, several modifiable risk factors have already been identified. These include vascular risk factors (heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol), a history of depression, diet, alcohol consumption, and education level.
A blood test for depression?
Blood tests have been extremely important tools aiding doctors in making medical diagnoses and in guiding the treatment of many diseases. However, psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests. New scientific fields may someday generate blood tests that can be used for these purposes. Some of the areas under increasingly intensive study are genetics, the study of variations in the genes (DNA) that can be extracted from blood cells, and genomics like proteomics, the measurement of the levels of specific proteins in the blood, and gene expression profiling, which measures the levels of RNA produced from DNA as an indication of the level of the ?activity? of particular genes. Using the latter approach, Dutch researchers evaluated blood gene expression profiles in healthy individuals and patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that was able to distinguish un-medicated MDD patients from healthy controls.
New links between cholesterol and depression in the elderly
Most people know that high cholesterol levels place them at increased risk for heart disease and stroke. Prior research has shown that particular types of strokes contribute to one?s risk for depression, and that abnormal blood lipid levels can increase the risk of depression in the elderly. However, new findings by French researchers, published in Biological Psychiatry, suggest the link between increased cholesterol and depression may be complicated. They evaluated a large population of elderly men and women (aged 65 and over) over a seven year follow-up period, assessing them for symptoms of depression and measuring their lipid levels. They found that, in women, depression was associated with low levels of the ?good? form of cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL). This disturbance in their cholesterol levels put them at higher risk for vascular disease, including stroke, by increasing their risk for developing lesions in their blood vessels called atherosclerotic plaques. 
Why does everything look gray when you feel blue?
Regardless of culture, language, era, or individual artist, the arts consistently depict depression using darkness. Scientific findings now lend empirical support to this representation of depression that everything looks gray when you feel blue. Researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany showed previously that people with depression have difficulty detecting black-and-white contrast differences. Publishing a new report in Biological Psychiatry, these scientists combined neuropsychiatric and ophthalmologic investigations to focus on the response of the retina to varying black-and-white contrasts. Specifically, they measured the pattern electroretinogram, which is like an electrocardiogram (ECG) of the retina of the eye, in patients with depression and healthy individuals. 
Researchers Find Dementia in Diabetics Differs from Dementia in Nondiabetics
Researchers from Mayo Clinic?s Florida campus say that dementia in some diabetics appears to be caused often by vascular disease in the brain, and the dementia that develops in people without diabetes is more likely associated with deposition of the plaque seen in people with Alzheimer?s disease. The findings will be presented at the Alzheimer?s Association International Conference on Alzheimer?s Disease 2010 meeting in Honolulu. They resulted from a study conducted among persons with Mexican ancestry but may have relevance to other populations, say the researchers. Also involved in the study were investigators from the University of California, San Francisco. ?This helps in understanding diabetes and dementia,” says Mayo neurologist Neill Graff-Radford, M.D., who is presenting the findings. ?It suggests that the vascular dementia seen in diabetics, which appears to be related to small blood vessel disease and strokes, can potentially be averted if development of diabetes is prevented.?
Depressed men with ED at risk for cardiovascular problems
A new study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that the presence of depressive symptoms in men with erectile dysfunction constitutes a risk factor for a major cardiovascular event. Erectile dysfunction and depressive mood are often associated, and both are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and death. To investigate clinical correlates further, researchers led by Elisa Bandini of the University of Florence studied approximately 2,000 male patients in a clinic for sexual dysfunction using a structured interview while also scoring for depressive symptoms. Results show that in these subjects with erectile dysfunction, depression increases cardiovascular problems independently from other known risk factors. 
Apathy and Depression Predict Progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment to D...
A new Mayo Clinic study found that apathy and depression significantly predict an individual?s progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a disorder of the brain that affects nerve cells involved in thinking abilities, to dementia, including Alzheimer?s disease and Lewy body dementia. The study was presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer?s Disease in Honolulu on July 11, 2010. ?An important area of study is the identification of biomarkers and clinical predictors for the progression from normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment and mild cognitive impairment to dementia,? says Yonas E. Geda, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neuropsychiatrist and the study?s lead investigator. ?We knew from previous smaller studies that neuropsychiatric symptoms like depression, apathy and agitation seem to predict progression from mild cognitive impairment to dementia, so we set out to look at this hypothesis in a population-based setting with a larger sample size.? Depression and apathy are neuropsychiatric symptoms that are often difficult to distinguish, according to Dr. Geda. Depression causes changes in mood, thinking, physical well-being and behavior, while apathy is loss of motivation without associated feelings of being depressed or blue.

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