By Robert Lavine
The boom of the plane hitting the towers, the gray pieces floating in the air, and the people jumping out were parts of the scene replayed in physician Margaret Dessau’s mind for years after the 9/11 disaster. She remembers looking out her apartment window to see a “guy with this white towel, and he’s waving it.” After he jumps, she hears children scream from a nearby school.
Nearly 10 years later, she described these memories as part of her post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to writer Anemona Hartacollis for the New York Times. Many PTSD sufferers replay disastrous events as memories that intrude on everyday life — intrusive memories — or in nightmares. They complain of not sleeping or concentrating. They may overreact to loud noises, become excessively alert and hypervigilant, and avoid reminders of the disaster. Dessau, who witnessed the attacks from her window, avoids looking at the skyline.
Intrusive memories are only part of a larger picture that often includes a sense of isolation, hopelessness, anger, and emotional numbness.
Full story at The Atlantic
By Shawn Hess
According to recent research, some people are becoming depressed after using Facebook. If you can’t understand this, maybe you don’t have Facebook. I have always found it depressing. Where else can you have 500 friends and still feel like nobody really knows who you are.
And where else but Facebook can you go to see constant updates on what everyone is doing all the time. Status update: i’m taking out the trash. Status update: going to grandma’s house. Status update: Stacy’s coming over for soup…so excited! Seems depressing to me.
Utah Valley University conducted research last year which indicated that people are becoming depressed after viewing Facebook, and not because they find stays updates monotonous like I do. A sample of 425 undergraduate students was surveyed and for those who spent the most amount of time on Facebook, depression was more likely. Why?
Full story at Web Pro News
By Lisa Larson
When Brandi Braegger, of Cedar City, was 13 years old she had a major depressive episode that served as the beginning of a rollercoaster ride that would eventually include self medication, binge drinking, nine hospitalizations, post-partum hallucinations and four suicide attempts.
“When I’d wake up it would be a huge despair (thinking) ‘I’m still here,’” Braegger says of the attempts that involved taking excessive amounts of pills.
It’s a situation to which Josh Barker, of St. George, can relate. For years this 34-year-old experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, combined with certain obsessions and compulsions that often dictated his actions, yet he never really knew that his behavior wasn’t normal.
“For a while I thought this was how everybody operated,” Barker says.
It’s taken therapy and proper medication to help him realize that isn’t the case.
Full story at The Spectrum
By Lisa Esposito
Subtle problems with memory and thinking skills — known as mild cognitive impairment — often precede Alzheimer’s disease, and a new study finds that men are at higher risk for these troubles than women.
Lead researcher Rosebud Roberts and her colleagues looked at 1,450 people from Olmsted County, Minn., who were between 70 and 89 years old and free of dementia in October 2004. Some three and a half years later, 296 had become mildly impaired.
New cases of mild cognitive impairment were consistently higher among men, except in the 85 to 89 age group. Overall, the risk was 40 percent higher for men.
Having a high school or less education was also linked to greater risk, and the study found that the combination of being male without college education brought an “unexpectedly high risk” of impairment that did not involve memory loss.
Full story at USA Today
By Benedict Carey
When does a broken heart become a diagnosis?
In a bitter skirmish over the definition of depression, a new report contends that a proposed change to the diagnosis would characterize grieving as a disorder and greatly increase the number of people treated for it.
The criteria for depression are being reviewed by the American Psychiatric Association, which is finishing work on the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., the first since 1994. The manual is the standard reference for the field, shaping treatment and insurance decisions, and its revisions will affect the lives of millions of people for years to come.
In coming months, as the manual is finalized, outside experts will intensify scrutiny of its finer points, many of which are deeply contentious in the field. A controversy erupted last week over the proposed tightening of the definition of autism, possibly sharply reducing the number of people who receive the diagnosis. Psychiatrists say current efforts to revise the manual are shaping up as the most contentious ever.
Full story at The New York Times
The boom of the plane hitting the towers, the gray pieces floating in the air, and the people jumping out were parts of the scene replayed in physician Margaret Dessau’s mind for years after the 9/11 disaster. She remembers looking out her apartment window to see a “guy with this white towel, and he’s waving it.” After he jumps, she hears children scream from a nearby school. 
