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 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
By Maia Szalavitz
Pop legend Whitney Houston was apparently found unresponsive in her bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, with bottles of prescription sedatives in her room. The cause of the singer’s death at age 48 has not been confirmed as an overdose — and the results of a toxicology report may not be available for weeks — but it bears many of the hallmarks of such a death.
Like most overdose victims, Houston had a long history of addiction. Her ongoing and distressingly intense battle with cocaine had received extensive media coverage. She had tried rehab at least three times; her latest stay was in May. Like her, the majority of overdose victims have typically attempted rehab previously.
Victims of unintentional overdose also or show clear signs of drug misuse before or at the time of their death. In a 2008 study in West Virginia — a state with a high rate of overdoses — researchers found signs of drug misuse, including shooting drugs intended to be taken orally or drinking alcohol while taking depressant drugs like Xanax, in 95% of the deaths.
Full story at Time
By Noh Hyun-gi
In many suspense movies or TV shows, we often see a child character offering critical information (usually ugly truths) for a case through art. Be it an absent father in a drawing of a family or a rough sketch of crime scene, the simple images disclose troubled young minds.
Psychoanalysis of drawings and paintings such as these are only a part of art therapy. “People usually think of identifying children’s problems through artwork when they talk about art therapy,” said Yeo Im-gyeong, an art therapist at Cham-Bit Center for Children with Special Needs at Kwangwoon University, on Wednesday. “But that is only the beginning; art therapy gets children to communicate, gain self-confidence and even overcome their disabilities.”
Yeo may prescribe the widely used Draw-A-Person test developed by American psychologist Florence Laura Goodenough in the 1920s, which can hint at a child’s condition. A small figure may represent low self-esteem. Failure to include basic anatomical features such as hands or odd images showing the intestines may imply schizophrenic tendencies.
Full story at Korea Times
Both having depression and taking antidepressants during pregnancy may affect an infant’s language development, new research suggests. 
