To ease the heartache of her first child’s stillbirth, Kelli Montgomery chose rigorous exercise, yoga and meditation over the antidepressants and sleeping pills that her physicians immediately suggested.
"’You need to be on this medication or that medication.’ It was shocking to me that that was the first line of defense," said Montgomery, 42, director of the MISS Foundation for Grieving Families in Austin, Texas. "From the time I was in the hospital to when I was seeing my general practitioner, that’s what they were insisting on."
Her choice stemmed partly from a longtime aversion to taking prescription drugs. It was also the result of listening to a growing group of psychiatrists, psychologists and clinical social workers from around the world who argue that depression and other normal responses to life’s toughest challenges are too often labeled as disorders — and as such, demand medicine with sometimes dangerous side effects.
Full story of over diagnosing at CNN Health
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Teens who were depressed as children are far more likely than their peers to be obese, smoke cigarettes and lead sedentary lives, even if they no longer suffer from depression.
The research, by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that depression, even in children, can increase the risk of heart problems later in life.
The researchers report their findings March 15 at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Miami, Fla.
"Part of the reason this is so worrisome is that a number of recent studies have shown that when adolescents have these cardiac risk factors, they’re much more likely to develop heart disease as adults and even to have a shorter lifespan," says first author Robert M. Carney, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University. "Active smokers as adolescents are twice as likely to die by the age of 55 than nonsmokers, and we see similar risks with obesity, so finding this link between childhood depression and these risk factors suggests that we need to very closely monitor young people who have been depressed."
Full story of depression in kids at Science Daily
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Study says binge drinking, smoking, and illegal drug use may be used to cope with depression and anxiety.
Poor mental health leads to unhealthy behaviors in low-income adults – not the other way around, according to a new study¹ by Dr. Jennifer Walsh and colleagues from the Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital in the US. In this study, stress and anxiety predicted subsequent health-compromising behaviors, such as smoking, binge drinking, illegal drug use, unprotected sex and unhealthy diets. One possible explanation for these findings is that health compromising behaviors may be used as coping mechanisms to manage the effects of stress and anxiety. The study is published online in the Springer journal, Translational Behavioral Medicine², and is part of an issue focusing on multiple health behavior change.
Dr. Walsh and her team explored the relationship between health-compromising behaviors and mental health in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage to determine whether mental health problems lead to subsequent unhealthy behaviors, or whether these behaviors lead to mental health problems.
Full story of mental health among low income adults at Science Daily
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
Users of Facebook and other social networks should beware of allowing their self-esteem — boosted by "likes" or positive comments from close friends — to influence their behavior: It could reduce their self-control both on and offline, according to an academic paper by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia Business School that has recently been published online in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Titled "Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control," the research paper demonstrates that users who are focused on close friends tend to experience an increase in self-esteem while browsing their social networks; afterwards, these users display less self-control. Greater social network use among this category of users with strong ties to their friends is also associated with individuals having higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt, according to the paper.
"To our knowledge, this is the first research to show that using online social networks can affect self-control," said coauthor Andrew T. Stephen, assistant professor of business administration and Katz Fellow in Marketing in the University of Pittsburgh Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration. "We have demonstrated that using today’s most popular social network, Facebook, may have a detrimental affect on people’s self-control."
Full story of social networking and self-esteem at Science Daily
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
A first-of-its-kind antidepressant drug discovered by a Northwestern University professor and now tested on adults who have failed other antidepressant therapies has been shown to alleviate symptoms within hours, have good safety and produce positive effects that last for about seven days from a single dose.
The novel therapeutic targets brain receptors responsible for learning and memory — a very different approach from existing antidepressants. The new drug and others like it also could be helpful in treating other neurological conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety and Alzheimer’s disease.
The results of the phase IIa clinical trial were presented today (Dec. 6) at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Hollywood, Fla.
Also this week a paper reporting some of the background scientific research that provided the foundation for the clinical development of GLYX-13 was published by the journa lNeuropsychopharmacology.
Full story of antidepressants effects at Science Daily
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Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education
To ease the heartache of her first child’s stillbirth, Kelli Montgomery chose rigorous exercise, yoga and meditation over the antidepressants and sleeping pills that her physicians immediately suggested.
