Recovery Michigan

Depressed females have over-active glutamate receptor gene

"Our data indicate that females with major depression who are at high risk of suicide may have the greatest antidepressant benefit from drugs that act on the glutamate system, such as ketamine," Sodhi said. The study also suggests new glutamate receptor targets for development of treatments for depression and identifies biochemical markers that could be used to assess suicide risk, she said.

More than 41,000 people die by suicide each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is the second-leading cause of death in people aged 15 to 34 years. Suicide claims a life every 14 minutes in the U.S., and the frequency is escalating. Over 90 percent of the people who take their lives suffer from mental illness, predominantly depression.

Only one-third of patients receiving conventional treatments achieve substantial remission of their depression, which may take several weeks or longer, Sodhi said. This time lag in response to treatment is a problem, she said, due to the high risk of suicide.

Generalized anxiety disorders twice as likely in those with inflammatory bowel disease

http://goo.gl/D3onvq

People who have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, have twice the odds of having a generalized anxiety disorder at some point in their lives when compared to peers without IBD, according to a new study published by University of Toronto researchers.

"Patients with IBD face substantial chronic physical problems associated with the disease," said lead-author Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. "The additional burden of anxiety disorders makes life much more challenging so this 'double jeopardy' must be addressed."

Investigators reported that female IBD sufferers were particularly vulnerable to anxiety disorders. Women with IBD had four times the odds of anxiety when compared to men with IBD, said Fuller-Thomson.

Illuminating mechanisms of repetitive thinking

I've always had this problem...

http://goo.gl/wyHJrV

The ability to engage in mental time travel -- to delve back into past events or imagine future outcomes -- is a unique and central part of the human experience. And yet this very ability can have detrimental consequences for both physical and mental well-being when it becomes repetitive and uncontrolled.

A special series of articles in the July 2015 issue of Clinical Psychological Science (CPS) investigates this kind of repetitive thinking, exploring the core psychological processes that underlie maladaptive thought processes like worry and rumination. The series highlights cutting-edge research and methodology with the aim of advancing our understanding of the processes that contribute to mental health and illness.

"Our interest (as a journal) in repetitive thinking is in the role it may play in clinical dysfunction but also in mental health and physical health more generally. Apart from the role of repetitive thinking in clinical dysfunction, such thinking plays a pervasive role in everyday life and more broadly is central to the human condition," writes CPS Editor Alan Kazdin in his introduction. "This series is rich in the facets of repetitive thinking that are discussed and illustrated, including the role of rumination in dysfunction and therapeutic change."

McMaster scientists show a link between intestinal bacteria and depression

http://goo.gl/6RJ9np

"We have shown for the first time in an established mouse model of anxiety and depression that bacteria play a crucial role in inducing this abnormal behaviour," said Premysl Bercik, senior author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine with McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. "But it's not only bacteria, it's the altered bi-directional communication between the stressed host -- mice subjected to early life stress -- and its microbiota, that leads to anxiety and depression."

It has been known for some time that intestinal bacteria can affect behaviour, but much of the previous research has used healthy, normal mice, said Bercik.

Stress hormone reduces heroin cravings

http://goo.gl/NA3PDJ

In past studies, the researchers in Basel discovered that cortisol diminishes the ability to retrieve memories; intake of the hormone reduced the brain's ability to remember. This can be used, for example, to relieve symptoms in patients suffering from anxiety disorders by inhibiting the patients' ability to recall anxious episodes. The researchers hypothesized that cortisol also has an inhibitory effect on addiction-related memory and thus on the craving for the addictive substance.

Addiction-related memory diminished

In this study, 29 patients currently undergoing heroin-assisted treatment were given a cortisol tablet or placebo before receiving a dose of heroin. Administering cortisol to the addicts resulted in a decrease in cravings by an average of 25% when compared to placebo. Along with other tests, the subjects were asked to rate their cravings on a visual analogue scale (VAS), which is a scale for gauging subjective experiences. This decrease was seen in patients who were dependent on a relatively low dose of heroin but not in highly-dependent patients.

Whether the inhibitory effect of cortisol on the craving for heroin will also affect addiction-related behaviors of patients in their day-to-day lives is still unclear. "For this reason, we want to examine whether cortisol can help patients reduce their heroin dosage or remain abstinent from heroin for longer," says Marc Walter, chief physician at the Psychiatric University Clinics (UPK) Basel.

Patients with depression, personality disorders most likely to make euthanasia requests

http://goo.gl/uf8Ax3

The researchers analyzed the euthanasia requests made by 100 individuals - 77 women and 23 men - on the grounds of unbearable suffering. All patients were receiving treatment for psychiatric disorders at outpatient clinics in Belgium between 2007 and 2011 and were followed-up until the end of 2012.

Ninety-one of the patients had been referred for counseling, while 73 were classed as medically unfit to work and 59 lived alone, according to the study.

More than one psychiatric illness was identified among 90% of patients, according to the team, with depression being the most frequent diagnosis, affecting 58 patients. Personality disorders were the second most common mental illness and affected 50 patients.

Thanks and a hat tip to Norma B...

http://goo.gl/fVq0wL

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious mental health watchdog. Its mission is to eradicate abuses committed under the guise of mental health and enact patient and consumer protections. CCHR has helped to enact more than 150 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive mental health practices. CCHR functions solely as a mental health watchdog, working alongside many medical professionals including doctors, scientists, nurses and those few psychiatrists who have taken a stance against the biological/drug model of “disease” that is continually promoted by the psychiatric/ pharmaceutical industry as a way to sell drugs.

Attention-control video game curbs combat vets' PTSD symptoms

Interesting bit of info. Seems like you could do the same thin in daily life...

http://goo.gl/U2WFfR

While attention bias modification trains attention either away from or toward threat, attention-control training implicitly teaches participants that threatening stimuli are irrelevant to performing their task. It requires them to attend equally to threatening and neutral stimuli. The study determined that this reduced symptoms by reducing attention bias variability. Attention control training balances such moment-to-moment fluctuations in attention bias from threat vigilance to threat avoidance, which correlated with the severity of PTSD symptoms and distinguished PTSD patients from healthy controls and patients with social anxiety or acute stress disorders.

PTSD affecting 'a quarter-million' Vietnam war veterans

http://goo.gl/TIfbMB

The authors conclude there is an estimated 271,000 Vietnam veterans presently living with full PTSD, a third of whom have current major depressive disorder.

The authors' National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study builds on the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS), which ran from 1984 through 1988.

Of the 1,839 veterans from the original study, 1,450 (78.8%) participated in at least one phase of the new study, which ran from July 2012 to May 2013.

The prevalence among male war-zone veterans for a current PTSD diagnosis varied by definition:

4.5% for a current PTSD diagnosis, based on the clinician-administered PTSD scale for the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" ("DSM-5")
10.8% against that assessment plus subthreshold PTSD (meeting some diagnostic criteria).
11.2% based on the PTSD checklist for "DSM-5" items for current war-zone PTSD.

Among female veterans, these estimates were, respectively: 6.1%, 8.7% and 6.6%.

Of the veterans with current war-zone PTSD, some 36.7 also had major depression.

Other estimates were that about 16% of war-zone Vietnam veterans reported a rise of more than 20 points on a PTSD symptom scale; 7.6% reported a fall of the same size on the scale.

Of this latter finding, the study authors say:

"An important minority of Vietnam veterans are symptomatic after 4 decades, with more than twice as many deteriorating as improving."

Acupuncture has 'similar mode of action to psychiatric drugs'

http://goo.gl/zVUzmM

Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) in Washington, DC, say the animal study "provides the strongest evidence to date on the mechanism of this ancient Chinese therapy in chronic stress."

Lead investigator Ladan Eshkevari, PhD, associate professor in the departments of nursing, and pharmacology and physiology at GUMC, says:

"The benefits of acupuncture are well known by those who use it, but such proof is anecdotal.

"This research, the culmination of a number of studies, demonstrates how acupuncture might work in the human body to reduce stress and pain, and, potentially, depression."

Dr. Eshkevari, a nurse anesthetist and licensed acupuncturist, adds:

"We have now found a potential mechanism, and at this point in our research, we need to test human participants in a blinded, placebo-controlled clinical study - the same technique we used to study the behavioral effects of acupuncture in rats."

Dr. Eshkevari and her team applied electro-acupuncture to a powerful acupuncture point called stomach meridian point 36 (St36).

The researchers found that this blunted activity in the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis - the chronic stress pathway associated with chronic pain, the immune system, mood and emotions.