By Rachael Rettner
Both having depression and taking antidepressants during pregnancy may affect an infant’s language development, new research suggests.
Study results reveal that a crucial language development period, during which infants learn to tune in to the sounds of their native language, is sped up when women take antidepressants, and prolonged when a woman has depression.
However, the researchers are not sure whether such speeding up or slowing down is beneficial or harmful in the long run, and it may not have any effect on a baby’s ultimate ability to acquire language, said Janet Werker, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.
Werker discussed her findings here at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting.
Babies are born with the ability to learn any language, and can distinguish between sounds of a variety of different tongues. However, by the age of 6 to 10 months, they begin to take more notice of the sounds of their native language, and are less able to discriminate between sounds of other languages.
Full story of mental health affects at Fox News
By Ben Spencer
EATING disorders are usually associated with impressionable teenage girls.
But the quest for physical perfection is now taking its toll on a growing population of teenage boys, who obsessively exercise to emulate muscle-bound men they see on TV.
Riverdale Specialist Eating Disorders Hospital in Sheffield has seen a third of the beds in its teenage unit taken up by adolescent males since it opened the department 18 months ago.
The hospital’s development manager Claire Lockwood, speaking to mark Eating Disorders Awareness Week, told The Star the problems of male eating disorders have always been underestimated.
“It used to be thought that one in 10 people with an eating disorder were male,” she said.
“Now it is thought that it is closer to one in four. In my experience it is a growing problem with young men.
Full story about eating disorders in males at The Star
By Dori F. Zaleznik, MD
Varenicline (Chantix), a drug that helps some smokers kick the habit could also reduce problem drinking by diminishing the pleasurable effects of alcohol, researchers suggested.
In a randomized, cross-over trial, dysphoric sensations after drinking an alcoholic beverage were greater when preceded by a dose of varenicline (Chantix) than placebo, reported Emma Childs, PhD, of the University of Chicago, and colleagues online inAlcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Alcohol-induced impairments in a measure of cognitive function also were less severe when participants took varenicline, the researchers indicated.
“This study, combined with previous evidence, suggests that varenicline may reduce alcohol drinking behaviors among light smokers by increasing the negative subjective effects of a low dose of alcohol, thus reducing the likelihood of a drinking episode becoming a binge,” Childs and colleagues concluded.
Full story at Med Page Today
By Maia Szalavitz
Child maltreatment has been called the tobacco industry of mental health. Much the way smoking directly causes or triggers predispositions for physical disease, early abuse may contribute to virtually all types of mental illness.
Now, in the largest study yet to use brain scans to show the effects of child abuse, researchers have found specific changes in key regions in and around the hippocampus in the brains of young adults who were maltreated or neglected in childhood. These changes may leave victims more vulnerable to depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the study suggests.
Harvard researchers led by Dr. Martin Teicher studied nearly 200 people aged 18 to 25, who were mainly middle class and well-educated. They were recruited through newspaper and transit ads for a study on “memories of childhood.” Because the authors wanted to look specifically at the results of abuse and neglect, people who had suffered other types of trauma like car accidents or gang violence were excluded.
Full story at Time
By Sally Mathiesen
According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, the majority of older Americans are able to cope effectively with the changes commonly associated with later life. People are reaching age 65 “in better physical and mental health than in the past,” says the report.
What is mental health for older adults? Important aspects include stable intellectual functioning, the ability to change and remaining engaged with life. As we age, we tend to learn at a slower pace and may need more repetition of new information. Most older adults complain about memory problems, yet these complaints do not match actual memory performance, according to several studies.
One large study of healthy older adults found that cognitive performance was most dependent upon the person’s number of years of education, suggesting that education not only provides benefits in earlier life but may sustain productive behavior as we age.
Full story at UT San Diego
Both having depression and taking antidepressants during pregnancy may affect an infant’s language development, new research suggests. 
