Recovery Michigan

Drugs are widely used to treat depression, but often take weeks to work effectively. Sleep deprivation, however, has been shown to be effective immediately in approximately 60% of patients with major depressive disorders. Although widely-recognized as helpful, it is not always ideal because it can be uncomfortable for patients, and the effects are not long-lasting.

During the 1970s, research verified the effectiveness of acute sleep deprivation for treating depression, particularly deprivation of rapid eye movement sleep, but the underlying brain mechanisms were not known.

Researchers have evidence that the intensity of insomnia correlates with the intensity of suicidal thoughts as well as a pilot study linking proactive hypnotic treatment to reduced suicidal thoughts. In fact, 31 studies have linked insomnia to suicidal thoughts, behavior or death. Still suicide risk factors and prevention often overlook insomnia, McCall said.  

Acknowledging the very vulnerable population they study, there are numerous safeguards built into the research protocol such as participants only getting one week's supply of sleeping pills for the first two weeks, then getting a two-week supply if their suicidal thoughts stabilize. Additionally, they will be asked to take the drug shortly before going to bed and to allow eight hours for sleep.  

Sleeping pills such as zolpidem accentuate the body's normal mechanism for sleep by targeting GABA, a neurotransmitter that essentially turns the brain's metabolism down, McCall said. Existing antidepressants don't affect GABA.  Many over-the-counter sleep aids are essentially anti-histamines; histamine is another neurotransmitter that helps keep you awake. In insomniacs, GABA tends to be underactive while histamine works overtime.

The study followed over six million individuals from 2003 to 2009, of whom 8 277 had schizophrenia, by analysing the Swedish population and health registers.

The results show that people with schizophrenia had contact with the health service over twice as often as people without the condition, but they were no more likely to be diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or cancer.

"Yet we saw an opposing pattern of death from these diseases. It is clear that the health service is failing to diagnose cardiovascular disease and cancer in these patients", says Jan Sundquist, general practitioner and professor at the Centre for Primary Health Care Research at Lund University.

Women with schizophrenia were 3.3 times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease and men 2.2 times more likely. Women with schizophrenia were 1.7 times more likely to die of cancer while men were 1.4 times more likely, compared with those without schizophrenia. Only 26.3% of the men with schizophrenia who died of cardiovascular disease had been diagnosed before their deaths, compared with 43.7% of the men who did not have schizophrenia.

To that end, the Vermont Department of Mental Health has awarded a $15,000 grant to Burlington’s HowardCenter for a pilot project — the first of its kind in Vermont — that will train staff in a form of therapy called Open Dialogue. The method replaces antipsychotic medication with a form of talk therapy that involves not just patients but their family members as well.

Ruocco commented, "We found compelling evidence pointing to two interconnected neural systems which may subserve symptoms of emotion dysregulation in this disorder: the first, centered on specific limbic structures, which may reflect a heightened subjective perception of the intensity of negative emotions, and the second, comprised primarily of frontal brain regions, which may be inadequately recruited to appropriately regulate emotions."

Importantly, reduced activity in a frontal area of the brain, called the subgenual anterior cingulate, may be unique to borderline personality disorder and could serve to differentiate it from other related conditions, such as recurrent major depression.

The study found that drug overdose was the number one cause of death among homeless adults from 2003 to 2008 in Boston, and was responsible for one-third of deaths of those adults between the ages of 25 and 44. The authors note these findings can be applied to homeless populations across the United States.

The study of nearly 6,000 people in five provinces in China reveals that people exposed to passive smoking have a significantly increased risk of severe dementia syndromes.

Passive smoking, also known as 'second-hand' smoke or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is known to cause serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. However, until now it has been uncertain whether ETS increases the risk of dementia, mainly due to lack of research. Previous studies have shown an association between ETS and cognitive impairment, but this is the first to find a significant link with dementia syndromes.

FIRST SHOW OF 2013! Join MARY ELLEN COPELAND, MAGDALINE VOLAITIS, and guest host SOPHIE FAUGHT to discuss how we we can replace harsh and invasive psychiatric interventions with personal empowerment, self-help, and recovery for people in mental/emotional distress! LIVE on Saturday, 12 January 2013, at 2 pm ET, 11 am PT; we'll be taking your calls at (646) 595-2125.

Strikingly, the researchers say, psychiatric patients were 40 percent less likely to be readmitted to the hospital within the first month after discharge in institutions that provided full access to those medical records.

"The big elephant in the room is the stigma," says Adam I. Kaplin, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and leader of the study published online in the International Journal of Medical Informatics. "But there are unintended consequences of trying to protect the medical records of psychiatric patients. When you protect psychiatric patients in this way, you're protecting them from getting better care. We're not helping anyone by not treating these diseases as we would other types of maladies. In fact, we're hurting our patients by not giving their medical doctors the full picture of their health."

The authors reported a considerable difference in anxiety levels among those who had successfully given up smoking compared those who had not.

The successful quitters showed a drop in anxiety. The decrease in anxiety was particularly noticeable among the ex-smokers who used to smoke "to cope", compared to those who used to smoke "for pleasure".

Among those who started smoking again, those who smoked "for pleasure" experienced no change in anxiety levels after relapsing. However, the ones who smoked "to cope", as well as the participants with a diagnosed mental health problem showed an increase in anxiety.