Archives for November 2007

The new study included 584 depressed people aged 60 and older in New York,Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.Roughly one in five participants reported ever being diagnosed with diabetes or high blood glucose (blood sugar).The researchers organized and monitored free depression care, including antidepressants or psychotherapy, for some patients.For comparison, other patients didn't get coordinated depression care. But the researchers told those patients' doctors about their depression and gave them tips on treating geriatric depression.During the next five years, 110 patients died of any cause.Depressed patients with diabetes were about half as likely to die during the study if they received coordinated depression care, compared with other depressed diabetes patients.Exactly how depression treatment improved survival remains to be seen. But the researchers - who included the University of Pennsylvania's Hillary Bogner, MD, MSCE - have some ideas.They note that treating depression may ease inflammation and also help patients stick with diabetes treatments and lifestyle changes.The patients in the depression treatment group may also have seen their doctors more often, giving them a chance to nip other illnesses in the bud, Bogner's team notes.

  Have you ever thought that why your mouth sores is extremely slow in healing up? Well the answer to your question is the depression that everyone goes through in some time of their life. The healing of wounds in the mouth and on other mucous membranes appears to be slowed in people with a depressed mood, according to a report in Psychosomatic Medicine. Mounting evidence suggests that psychosocial stress can delay wound healing, but the studies have literature almost exclusively pertained to skin wound healing, Dr. Phillip T. Marucha, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues point out. To see if psychological factors affect the healing of mucosal tissues, which is a process markedly different from skin healing, the researchers recruited 193 undergraduate students with high or low scores on standard tests for depression. The participants (who were compensated $360) received a small circular wound on the roof of the mouth, under local anesthesia. Daily videographs of the wound were used to monitor healing. Ultimately, 183 subjects were included in the study. Healing of the mouth wound typically took around 7 days. However, depressed subjects were nearly four times more likely than their non-depressed peers to take longer than 7 days to health the wound. Feelings of loneliness, by contrast, did not seem to affect wound healing, the report indicates. Based on past research, the researchers explain that a depressed mood most likely increases the body's inflammatory activity, which, in turn, leads to impaired wound healing.

Depressed, diabetic elders may live longer with depression treatment.That's according to a new study on geriatric depression and diabetes.It's not the first study to examine the ties between depression, diabetes, and death. A 2005 study showed a higher death rate among people with type 2 diabetes who are also depressed, even if their depression is mild.But the new study, published in Diabetes Care, shows that depression treatment may actually prolong life for older adults with diabetes.Depression and Diabetes StudyThe new study included 584 depressed people aged 60 and older in New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.Roughly one in five participants reported ever being diagnosed with diabetes or high blood glucose (blood sugar).The researchers organized and monitored free depression care, including antidepressants or psychotherapy, for some patients.For comparison, other patients didn't get coordinated depression care. But the researchers told those patients' doctors about their depression and gave them tips on treating geriatric depression.During the next five years, 110 patients died of any cause.Depressed patients with diabetes were about half as likely to die during the study if they received coordinated depression care, compared with other depressed diabetes patients.Exactly how depression treatment improved survival remains to be seen. But the researchers - who included the University of Pennsylvania's Hillary Bogner, MD, MSCE - have some ideas.They note that treating depression may ease inflammation and also help patients stick with diabetes treatments and lifestyle changes.The patients in the depression treatment group may also have seen their doctors more often, giving them a chance to nip other illnesses in the bud, Bogner's team notes.

Depression eats away at a young woman's bones at least as much as does low calcium, putting women at risk of life-threatening fractures as they get older, new research shows.Reporting in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, U.S. researchers found women aged 21 to 45 who are mildly depressed have thinner bones at vulnerable spots in their hips and backs than healthy women.The amount of bone loss is equivalent to one year of rapid bone loss after menopause and is similar in magnitude to what people lose from smoking, failing to exercise or not eating enough calcium."Depression generally isn't on clinicians' radar screens as a major risk factor for osteoporosis, particularly for pre-menopausal women. It should be," principal investigator Dr. Giovanni Cizza, of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, said in a statement released with today's study.An estimated 16 per cent of women between 21 and 45 suffer chronic, mild depression. The researchers estimate that nearly four million depressed women in the U.S. alone are losing bone but don't know it.Earlier studies linked depression and frail, brittle bones in hundreds of women with major depression. But it was thought to hold true only in cases of severe depression.The new study shows even mildly depressed women have "clinically significant" bone loss, Cizza says. What's more, blood and urine tests showed depressed women produce high amounts of interleukin-6, an immune system protein that destroys bone mass.Interleukin-6 is sensitive to estrogen. When estrogen levels go down, the protein goes up. This explains why women lose bone after menopause."But, we saw it in pre-menopausal women, too," Cizza says.

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   Who would ever think that poor vision is linked with depression but yes, it sure is which has been medically proven. Correcting nursing home residents' poor vision not only boosts quality of life, it may lower risks for depression, U.S. researchers report. A team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham studied 78 nursing home residents, 55 and older, who received eyeglasses one week after having an eye exam and 64 residents who received eyeglasses two months after an eye check-up. The residents' vision-related quality-of-life and depressive symptoms were assessed at the start of the study and again two months later. At the start of the study, both groups had similar medical/demographic characteristics and similar visual acuity and refractive error. After two months, those who received eyeglasses at the start of the study showed improvement in distance and near visual acuity, while those who didn't receive eyeglasses showed no change in visual acuity. Also at two months, residents who received eyeglasses had higher scores for general vision, reading, activities, hobbies, social interaction, and fewer depressive symptoms, said the study, which was published in the November issue of the journal Archives of Ophthalmology. "This study implies that there are significant, short-term quality-of-life and psychological benefits to providing the most basic of eye care services -- namely, spectacle correction -- to older adults residing in nursing homes," the researchers concluded. "These findings underscore the need for a systematic evaluation of the factors underlying the pervasive unavailability of eye care to nursing home residents in the United States so that steps can be taken to improve delivery and eye care utilization."

women, depression is as potent a risk factor for osteoporosis as are low calcium intake, smoking, and lack of exercise, researchers have found. Imbalances in the immune system appear to be involved. Depression generally isn't on clinicians' radar screens as a risk factor for bone-thinning -- but it should be.Premenopausal women with even mild depression have less bone mass than do their nondepressed peers, a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), shows. The level of bone loss is at least as high as that associated with recognized risk factors for osteoporosis, including smoking, low calcium intake, and lack of physical activity.Hip bones, the site of frequent fractures among older people, were among those showing the most thinning in depressed premenopausal women. The reduced bone mass puts them at higher risk of these costly, sometimes fatal fractures and others as they age, the researchers note."Osteoporosis is a silent disease. Too often, the first symptom a clinician sees is when a patient shows up with a broken bone. Now we know that depression can serve as a red flag -- that depressed women are more likely than other women to approach menopause already at higher risk of fractures," said NIMH Deputy Director Richard Nakamura, PhD.

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 Depression can children, teens, adults and even older people and sadly so this disease is spreading like a bush fire among people left right and centre which proves when you see crises on the campuses. Years ago, college counseling centers were pleasant little side channels of the mental health system, helping students cope with roommate conflict and adjustment to college. No more. Today they are the newest front line in the war against mental illness, struggling to manage swarms of students with serious depression and anxiety disorders. And generally facing a growing demand for their services in a world of shrinking resources. The middle of the night may find a SWAT team of counselors calming down a dorm wing after having crisis-managed an acute manic episode or yet another incident of self-mutilation. Morning will certainly find the staff administering psychotherapy to students struggling to overcome histories of trauma such as childhood sexual abuse, relationship problems including date violence, and that dormitory staple, eating disorders. Did we mention substance abuse? Attention deficit disorders and learning disabilities? At one elite institution, 10% of students report problems with binge drinking. Rare is the college that has not experienced a student suicide. A 10,000-student campus can expect one student suicide a year. That doesn't count all the highly disturbing attempts. Hospitalization, a court of last resort, is commonplace. Eighty-nine percent of counseling centers hospitalized at least one student in 2001; one hospitalized 80. On one 5,000-student campus where most students are commuters, three to six students are typically hospitalized a semester, primarily for suicidal gestures and first psychotic breaks. In 2001, 85% of North America's student counseling centers reported an increase in "students with severe psychological problems" over the past five years. Thirty percent of them had a student suicide; 60% of them dealt with obsessive pursuit cases (50 persons injured, five killed). "Every director of every college counseling center is reporting more hospitalizations, more serious problems, and taking care of sicker students," says Richard Kadison, M.D., a psychiatrist who heads Harvard University Health Services and its counseling center. The severity of students' mental health problems has been rising since 1988, reports psychologist Robert Gallagher, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, who each year surveys directors of college counseling centers. "The world isn't getting crazier," observes Pamela L. Graesser, M.Ed., director of counseling at Rivier College, a small Catholic college in New Hampshire whose students are primarily from blue-collar families. "College is just getting more like the real world around it." College is simply available to more people than it used to be. The problems Graesser saw 12 years ago when she worked in a psychiatric hospital "are the same ones I now see on campus." "We are probably seeing the true prevalence of mental disorders," observes psychiatrist Morton Silverman, M.D., head of counseling services at the University of Chicago. "There is not as much surveillance in the outside world." Then too, he says, "we are the beneficiaries of our own successes." Call it the Prozac payoff. Colleges are reeling from the number of students arriving already on antidepressant and other medication and requiring psychiatric monitoring. A decade of improved drugs has encouraged earlier diagnosis. Early treatment of depression--along with institutional accommodation of disability-- has enabled students to stay in the academic system who in other eras might not have made it to college, or would have dropped out after a semester or drifted into community colleges. Today they are attending the nation's elite institutions, where academic, living and developmental demands sometimes overwhelm the coping skills they have yet to acquire. "Many who wouldn't have gotten to an elite college before are getting here because they were treated when younger," observes Harvard's Dr. Kadison. "They need ongoing, intensive care," which not every school has the resources to supply. Many students fall apart given the looser environment, erratic sleeping patterns and added stresses of college. Many others experience their first onset of disorder. There is the indisputable fact that age 18 to 25 is prime time for eruption of mental illness, making college, with its concentration of 18- to 25-year-olds, the prime place. Increasingly, mental health professionals recognize that depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar illness, personality disorders and schizophrenia are conditions that first arise in young adulthood. Catching them quickly is critical, as early management strongly influences how they play out over adulthood. And so it is that increasingly, colleges are the first best hope for rescuing the minds of America's future. But what no one ever imagined is that colleges would also find themselves the last best hope of mental health care in America. April is the cruelest month. College counseling centers really feel the crunch. Students who put off counseling suddenly realize they're going home soon. "They're going back to the situation that made them crazy in the first place, or back to the abuser," reports Rivier's Graesser. Seniors flock in with anxieties about confronting the real world. And there's a whole new rite of spring. It starts just after college acceptance letters go out. Parents call the counseling centers at the schools where their offspring have been accepted. "They say 'my son or daughter has a serious eating disorder' or 'has been hospitalized for depression; what can you do to support them?'" reports Mark H. Reed, M.D., counseling director at Dartmouth. They're footing the bill; access to mental health care is now one of the factors they weigh before writing a check. In addition to handling more cases of depression diagnosed pre-college, counselors find that they are picking up many more new cases of depression in college. "There are increases in both undergraduate and graduate students carrying a diagnosis," reports Chicago's Dr. Silverman. "More students are coming to college predisposed to developing depression," he observes. There are more students with a family history of the disorder. And there are many more students with prior sexual and physical abuse, both of which increase the risk for depression. "The incidence of sexual and physical abuse was on the rise 10 years ago," he says, "and that generation is now coming to college." Some students come in knowing that their concentration is off and that they are withdrawn. "Still, they don't put the cluster together and recognize that they have depression," says Harvard's Dr. Kadison. And half of those students presenting with depression have moderate to severe illness, reports psychologist Joseph M. Behan, Ph.D., head of counseling services at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. However, students are increasingly willing to talk about depression once they get on campus. And the general destigmatization of mental illness encourages them to seek help. Many have looked forward to college as a place where they could be free to get the help their families discouraged--or made necessary in the first place. Remnants of stigmatization drive problems, too. Although many students come to college openly declaring experience with depression or bipolar disorder, large numbers do not make it known--until a crisis erupts. Dartmouth's Dr. Reed worries "most about the students we don't see." Cases of moderate to severe depression are rising also because depression often co-occurs with other problems--alcohol and drug abuse; personality, eating and anxiety disorders. "We're seeing more depression because more other disorders are arriving and present as depression," explains Dr. Silverman. Most college counseling directors confess to being surprised by the number of students turning out to have bipolar disorder. It typically presents dramatically, with an acute manic episode.. "We are seeing more first episodes of mania every year," Dr. Silverman reports. "It's very disruptive. It generally means hospitalization for the student. The number of hospitalizations is going up each year, and the percentage attributable to bipolar disorder has risen." The boom in bipolar disorder may in part be the outgrowth of wanton diagnosis of attention deficit disorder in schoolchildren. "It's difficult to tell the difference between ADD and BPD in kids," says Dr. Reed. "Lots of ADD turns out to be bipolar disorder." The trouble is, the kinds of stimulants that work for ADD, not to mention caffeine, are precisely wrong for bipolar illness and can trigger a manic episode. "The first manic episode is related to a stressor, such as sleep deprivation," Dr. Reed explains. "Almost always some substance is also on board." He believes it is often an attempt by a student at self-medication. Since depression is the single biggest risk factor for suicide, and since the severity of mental problems on campus is increasing, it might be expected that the number of campus suicides would be skyrocketing. But that is not the case, although a few highly publicized incidents at Harvard and MIT have fostered a general perception that ivory towers are for jumping. It is more likely that the social structure of college protects people in some way and that colleges are doing a good job of keeping suicide attempts from being successful. The suicide rate is actually lower on campus than among same-age people outside. "Suicide is not a good marker for the rise in mental disorders in colleges," insists Dr. Silverman. "Every suicide is a personal tragedy. But it's not a reflection on university policies or procedures." Every suicide is also enormously disruptive to an entire campus. So counseling centers make a big effort to prevent problems by reaching out to students with programs of information. "We're no longer just mental health professionals," says Dr. Kadison. "We're marketing directors, trying to figure out how to connect with students who might need our services." The only problem is, outreach programs, such as after 9/11, work too well. Where Harvard's mental health service was seeing 240 new cases a week in January 2001, it was up to 280 a week in January 2002. MIT is still reeling from a suicide when a young woman a month from her baccalaureate and entering a graduate program leapt to her death from a campus dorm. Her family is suing the university, on the grounds that parents should be notified if a student is suicidal. "We can't do that," says Dr. Kadison. The trust that help-seeking will be kept confidential, often particularly from their families, is what encourages students to come in in the first place. "The students are adults at age 18. We are all seeing suicidal students. We'd just be a switchboard calling families all the time."

 “While smoking and depression adversely affect a mother’s health, the combination may also affect the health of her child,” Whitaker said.For children, the potential consequences of maternal smoking include sudden infant death, asthma, ear infections and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, while the potential consequences of maternal depression include behavior problems, language delay and childhood depression.“Giving a mother who smokes the telephone number to a ‘quit line’ is probably not going to be enough if smoking is helping the mother cope with her symptoms of untreated depression,” said Whitaker, a pediatrician and professor of public health at Temple University. “Depression and addiction to tobacco should not be diagnosed or treated in isolation from each other.”The issue is particularly troublesome for low-income families.

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  There is new hope for all the depressed people because there is a drug that boosts levels of the brain “own bliss” because it has helped and worked in rats where it has reserved symptoms of depression.  A drug that boosts levels of the brain's own "bliss" chemical can help reverse symptoms of depression in rats, U.S. and Italian researchers reported. The drug helps maintain high levels of a compound called anandamide, named after the Sanskrit word for "bliss," which is chemically similar to the active ingredient in marijuana."These findings raise the hope that the mood-elevating properties of marijuana can be harnessed to treat depression," said Daniele Piomelli, director of the Center for Drug Discovery at the University of California, Irvine, who led the study."Marijuana itself has shown no clinical use for depression. However, specific drugs that amplify the actions of natural marijuana-like transmitters in the brain are showing great promise," he added in a statement. Piomelli's team used a drug patented this year, called URB597. It interferes with another compound called fatty acid amide hydrolase or FAAH, which in turn breaks down anandamide. Dialing back FAAH makes more anandamide available in the brain, Piomelli said. Writing in the journal Biological Psychiatry, Piomelli and colleagues said they gave URB597 to chronically stressed rats, which act in a way similar to depressed people. After five weeks of treatment, treated rats acted more like unstressed rats, Piomelli's team said. Piomelli, who patented URB597 with colleagues at the Universities of Urbino and Parma in Italy, licensed the drug to European drugmaker Organon BioSciences. He said Organon will begin clinical studies on the drug in 2008. Organon is a unit of Dutch chemical group Akzo Nobel, which is in the process of selling it to Schering-Plough Corp.

 In China, about 16.8 percent to 23 percent of homicides are committed by people with depression with many of them being avoidable if good psychiatric care was available, according to a newly released research report.  More than 6,000 homicide cases committed by depressed people were reported during the year 2002 to 2006, said the report made public at the 10th national judicial psychiatric academic symposium held in Guangzhou, capital city of south China's Guangdong Province.
"People suffering from depression often think their lives are hard," said Zhao Zhenhuan, the head of a cerebral surgery hospital in Guangzhou."If they choose to die, they want to die with their most loved ones to end their painful life." Zhao added.He said that patients suffering from depression would not go to that extreme if they received timely and proper treatment.Men and women acted differently in choosing their victims, the Beijing Evening News reported the research report as saying.In all the 6,000-strong cases, 94.4 percent of the female criminals killed their children while 63.2 percent of the male criminals killed their wives or lovers, and altogether half of the murderers committed suicide after killing, according to the report.Statistics from the China Association for Mental Health show, China has more than 26 million people suffering from depression, with 62.9 percent of them never seeing a psychological doctor. A total of 50 percent to 70 percent of suicides or attempted suicide cases were committed by these people.

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