Depression. The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why? by Marcia Angell. The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Basic Books, 226 pp., $15.99 (paper) Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker Crown, 404 pp., $26.00. Abused children's brains work like soldiers' do - health - 06 December 2011. Does Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Require Trauma?
STRESS is an inevitable part of our life.
Yet whether our daily hassles include the incessant gripes of a nasty boss or another hectoring letter from the Internal Revenue Service, we usually find some way of contending with them. In rare instances, though, terrifying events can overwhelm our coping capacities, leaving us psychologically paralyzed. In such cases, we may be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder marked by flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms that impair everyday functioning. The disorder is widespread. Gene Study Links Stronger Memories, PTSD. Shelf-Preservation: Researchers Tap Century-Old Brain Tissue for Clues to Mental Illness. Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains.
Until the late 1960s the museum was the pathology department of the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane. The bits of brain in the jars were collected during patient autopsies performed between 1896 and 1938. Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder is Often Flawed. THIS PAST JUNE renowned clinical psychologist Marsha M.
Linehan of the University of Washington made a striking admission. Known for her pioneering work on borderline personality disorder (BPD), a severe and intractable psychiatric condition, 68-year-old Linehan announced that as an adolescent, she had been hospitalized for BPD. Suicidal and self-destructive, the teenage Linehan had slashed her limbs repeatedly with knives and other sharp objects and banged her head violently against the hospital walls. Very Good Description of Schizophrenia stock photos images. Study: Schizophrenia's Hallucinated Voices Drown Out Real Ones. A new finding in brain science reveals that the voices in a schizophrenia patient's head can drown out voices in the real world — and provides hope that people with the disorder can learn to ignore hallucinatory talk.
The new research pulls together two threads in earlier schizophrenia studies. Many scientists have noticed that when patients hallucinate voices, neurons in brain regions associated with processing sounds spontaneously fire despite there being no sound waves to trigger this activity. That's an indication of brain overload. Epigenetic clue to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - health - 30 September 2011. TWIN studies have shown that people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have changes in gene activity caused by their environment.
The finding provides the strongest evidence yet that such gene changes might cause the conditions. Jonathan Mill at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and colleagues scanned the genome of 22 pairs of identical twins - chosen because one twin in each pair was diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. As expected, the twins had identical DNA. However, they showed significant differences in chemical "epigenetic" markings - changes that do not alter the sequence of DNA but leave chemical marks on genes that dictate how active they are. These changes were on genes that have been linked with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia’s Core Genetic Features Proposed.
Disrupted body clock may prime you for schizophrenia - health - 19 January 2012. Schizophrenia could be a profound form of jetlag in which the brain's central clock runs out of kilter with peripheral clocks around the rest of the body.
People with the illness often complain of sleeping difficulties, and last month a study of 20 people with schizophrenia confirmed that sleep disruption is common and not down to their medication or lifestyle (British Journal of Psychiatry), DOI: 10.1192/bjp.bp.111.096321). Now we may be closer to understanding why: a genetic mutation that triggers schizophrenia-like symptoms in mice also appears to disrupt their circadian rhythm or body clock. Russell Foster at the University of Oxford and his colleagues had been puzzling over the link between sleep disturbances and mental illness. Epigenetics Offers New Clues to Mental Illness. Treating schizophrenia: Game on. Michael Merzenich has courted controversy with his brain-training software.
Now he is trying to get it approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The intersection of Mission and Sixth streets in San Francisco's South of Market neighbourhood is considered one of the most crime-riddled in the city. Liquor shops, adult bookshops and single-resident-occupancy hotels inhabit most of the buildings. Homeless people sit on the pavements or shuffle by, many of them showing symptoms of mental illness or drug abuse. Yet behind the walls of an unassuming outpatient psychiatric clinic, researchers are conducting experiments that they believe could fundamentally change the landscape of psychiatric care. Inside the San Francisco Citywide and Community Focus Center, in a room about the size of a large walk-in wardrobe, two people wearing headphones sit staring at computer screens. How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD - Media.
It was my research editor who told me it was completely nuts to willingly get fucked at gunpoint.
That's what she called me when I told her the story. We were drunk and in a karaoke bar, so at the time I came up with only a wounded face and a whiny, "I'm not completely nuuuuts! " Upon further consideration, a more explanative response probably would have been something like: Well. The Science Behind Dreaming. For centuries people have pondered the meaning of dreams.
Early civilizations thought of dreams as a medium between our earthly world and that of the gods. In fact, the Greeks and Romans were convinced that dreams had certain prophetic powers. Sleeplessness Agitates The Brain. Study: Nicotine Is Good for You. Been There, Done That—or Did I?: Déjà Vu Found to Originate in Similar Scenes. Déjà vu—that uncanny feeling of having experienced a situation before—has eluded explanation for centuries.
Now the first study to use virtual reality to model the phenomenon in the laboratory is helping demystify the spooky illusion, revealing that the layout of a scene can trigger it. Previous studies of déjà vu suggested the bizarre feeling most commonly concerns places. As such, cognitive psychologist Anne Cleary at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and her colleagues wanted to see if spaces modeled in virtual reality could experimentally replicate the striking experience.
Brain Injury Rate 7 Times Greater among U.S. Prisoners. A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Jolt To Brain Aids Language Recovery. 9-Year-Old Boy's Shrinking Brain Disorder Baffles Doctors.
Jason Egan does not walk, talk or eat like most nine-year-olds. He gets around in a wheelchair and depends on a feeding tube threaded into his stomach. He makes signs with his hands to communicate and has mustered the word "mom" on occasion. Although he cannot always articulate his feelings, he clearly feels a great deal. He is often seen smiling and laughing, especially when his father pushes him around the block near their home in Victoria, Australia.
So far, no one has figured out exactly what is wrong with Egan. Explosions cause brain damage through head movement - health - 16 May 2012. Soldiers experience high-pressure shock waves and immense forces during explosions in the field, but research suggests brain trauma is caused merely by the sudden head movements. It has been unclear whether trauma from explosions is caused through high-pressure shock waves penetrating the skull, or through another mechanism. Now a team of researchers from Boston University have performed post mortems on soldiers to establish how traumatic brain injury occurs during explosions. Self-Worth Shattering: A Single Bomb Blast Can Saddle Soldiers with Debilitating Brain Trauma. Cracks in the Plaques: Mysteries of Alzheimer's Slowly Yielding to New Research. This has been a big week in Alzheimer's news as scientists put together a clearer picture than ever before of how the disease affects the brain. Three recently published studies have detected the disease with new technologies, hinted at its prevalence, and described at last how it makes its lethal progress through the brain.
Cancer Drug May Have Alzheimer's Benefits. Alzheimer's Disease Advance. Protein Tweak May Trigger Alzheimer’s. An Alzheimer’s Gene - One Family’s Saga. Like A Prion, Alzheimer's Protein Seeds Itself In The Brain. The Alzheimer’s-related protein amyloid-beta is an infectious instigator in the brain, gradually contorting its harmless brethren into dangerous versions, new evidence suggests. The Upside of Dyslexia. Is Pornography Driving Men Crazy? - Naomi Wolf. Exit from comment view mode. Cocaine Habit Ages Brain Prematurely. Elliot Krane: The mystery of chronic pain.
The Brain: A Tiny Key to a Terrible Lock. Experiments like Tracey’s show that pain is much more than a direct response to a stimulus. That makes sense when you think about the biological function of pain. Quantum dots control brain cells for the first time - health - 14 February 2012. In an unlikely marriage of quantum physics and neuroscience, tiny particles called quantum dots have been used to control brain cells for the first time. Going Under: What we don’t know about anesthetics. The majority of people reading this sentence will, at some point in their lives, undergo a medical treatment that requires general anesthesia.
ADHD: Backlash to the Backlash. In Blur of A.D.H.D., Sleep Troubles May Be a Culprit. Getty Images Diagnoses of attention hyperactivity disorder among children have increased dramatically in recent years, rising 22 percent from 2003 to 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not-So-Quick Fix: ADHD Behavioral Therapy May Be More Effective Than Drugs in Long Run. Before stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall began their rise to popularity in the 1970s, treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focused on behavioral therapy. Listening to Xanax. Why Migraines Strike. For the more than 300 million people who suffer migraines, the excruciating, pulsating pain that characterizes these debilitating headaches needs no description.
For those who do not, the closest analogous experience might be severe altitude sickness: nausea, acute sensitivity to light, and searing, bed-confining headache. Extreme Eaters Show Abnormal Brain Activity. Erasing Painful Memories: Drug and Behavioral Therapies Will Help Us Forget Toxic Thoughts. Gene Hunt Is On for Mental Disabilities in Children.