Archives for September 2007

                    The "new generation" of antidepressants, of which Prozac is one, have helped return millions of people worldwide suffering from depression (as well as other serious conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders) to mental health. One of the chief selling points of these drugs has been their negligible side-effects compared with earlier antidepressants. However, there is one common side-effect that is often a serious cause of concern: sexual dysfunction. 
  At least 30%-60% of the men and women who take one of the popular newer antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft, experience some degree of sexual dysfunction. Drug-related sex problems may include erection and ejaculation impairment in men, loss of lubrication in women, and, in both sexes, decreased or lost libido and delayed or blocked orgasm. Some do get it up when they are down
For many people, the benefits of having their depression lifted far outweigh any possible sexual problems. There is also the argument that depression itself usually severely dampens libido. However, there is no question that healthy sexual function is an important component of quality of life for many people. Often, as people experience their depression starting to ease, they feel eager to return to normal life - and that includes normal sexual behaviour. Most people don't need to take antidepressants for their entire lives: once they stop taking the drugs, their sexual functioning returns to normal. Thus sexual dysfunction may not be a serious issue for people receiving short-term antidepressant treatment. But many chronically depressed people require treatment for many months or years. For some, sexual side-effects can be a serious problem that leads them to stop taking the drugs, often without telling their doctors. This may result in relapse of the depression, which can be very serious. What can you do?
There are numerous treatment options if your medication is causing sexual dysfunction. These options have not been successful in treating antidepressant-induced sexual problems in everybody, but usually a helpful alternative can be found. One option is to try switching to a different antidepressant. Antidepressants found to have fewer sexual effects include Wellbutrin, Serzone (nefazodone), Remeron (mirtazapine) or Zyban (bupropion). However, a different medication may not alleviate the depression in your particular case. Your doctor may also suggest reducing the dosage, but this may mean losing the therapeutic benefit. The answer may lie in switching to one of the older antidepressant tricyclic drugs such as Elavil or Imipramine, or one of the MAO Inhibitors like Parnate or Nardil, although these drugs may also produce sexual dysfunction in some people and usually have additional unwanted side-effects. Take a drug holiday
Another recent approach is that of "drug holidays": taking weekends off from drugs such as Zoloft and Paxil can significantly improve sexual function in the drug-free period. (This is less successful for Prozac, which takes longer to clear from the blood.) These brief "holidays" do not seem to cause a worsening of depressive symptoms, but don't try this method without your doctor's supervision. A further option is to add a drug, like amantadine, to counter orgasmic failure induced by the antidepressant, or to try sexual stimulants such as Viagra. Some women can be successfully treated for sexual dysfunction with small doses of testosterone, which increases libido and arousal. Other people on antidepressants report having rid themselves of unwanted sexual side-effects by taking the herbal remedy ginkgo biloba.

One in seven women suffers from depression before, during or after pregnancy, a new study finds.The consequences of depression can be devastating to the mother, her baby and her entire family, according to the report in the October issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry."The prevalence of women diagnosed with depression before, during and after pregnancy was pretty similar," said lead author Patricia Dietz, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health."There are a lot of women who are becoming pregnant with depression, and that's really important for people providing prenatal care to be aware of," she said.Screening for depression needs to occur during pregnancy and right afterward, Dietz saidThe consequences of postpartum depression, which affects 400,000 women in the United States, can be significant. It can inhibit a woman's ability to bond with her baby, relate to the child's father, and perform daily activities, according to background information for the study.For the study, sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, Dietz's team collected data on 4,398 women who gave birth between 1998 and 2001. They found that 8.7 percent of the women experienced depression in the nine months before pregnancy, 6.9 percent during pregnancy, and 10.4 percent in the nine months following childbirth.

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Hormones form the biochemical basis of major depression. Estrogen, a female hormone produced in the ovaries, plays a pivotal role in your brain in that it increases the amount of mood-regulating neurotransmiiters, whose malfunction often triggers depression in an individual. Neurotransmission is the process by which brain chemical impulses are transmitted from one brain cell (neuron) to another. Scientists have identified norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine as some of the essential brain chemicals requisite for brain health. Mood disorder, including depression and manic depression (also known as bipolar depression), result from an imbalance or deficiency of transmitters to make the right connection between the brain cells. Estrogen increases the ability of neurons for optimum connection or communication within the brain.In addition, estrogen plays a critical role in the proper flow of blood to different parts of the brain, thereby instrumental in optimizing emotion, memory, and cognitive functions.Research scientists have conducted various studies, which have indicated the impact of estrogen on the brain with respect to memory function and postmenopausal women.Prior to the actual onset of menopause, estrogen level in women significantly decreases as much as 50 to 75 percent.This may explain why women not only experience depression twice as much as men do but also are two times more likely to be hospitalized in their lifetimes. This discrepancy has little to do with the fact that women seek psychiatric help more frequently than men do, or the fact that women are more stressed out than men are.

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                             Look At The Bright Side:
“Looking at the bright side” of things may actually improve your health. Two new studies examine the effects of stress and explore the idea that how women view their lives can either help or hinder their well-being. The results of the studies are reported in the November issue of the journal of health psychology. The first study explores how optimism can reduce the chance of delivering low birth weight or pre-term babies for high-risk pregnant women. Researchers examined 129 women between the ages of 20 and 43 years old who were considered to have high risk pregnancies due to various medical conditions. The women were asked to agree or disagree with statements such as “I always look on the bright side,” or “I hardly ever expect things to go my way.” The women who were the least optimistic during pregnancy delivered lower birth weight infants. A woman’s outlook on her and the health behavior she practiced during pregnancy were the factors that influenced her birth outcomes. More optimistic women had better birth outcomes in part because they exercised more frequently, which influenced a baby’s greater gestational age at birth. It is now thought that this factors maybe as important as other medical risk factors that have traditionally received more attention. Women with more positive states of mind also coped with stress better during their pregnancies. The second study focused on what women thought of themselves and their place in life. Approximately 160 women ages 30-46 were questioned about their standing in society and how much control they perceived they had over their lives. Researchers found that women who placed themselves higher on the social ladder reported better physical health and less abdominal fat, a key indicator for stress adaptation. Fat deposit, in turn is linked to various medical conditions known to be detrimental to a women’s health. These studies illustrate that expecting the best out of life may have more benefits then just a piece of good advice.

Employers may want to add the telephone to their list of healthcare options. A new study, led by Dr. Philip Wang of the National Institute of Mental Health, found that depression intervention programs help reduce the costs of lost productivity from workers.The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Researchers looked at the work habits of 604 employees from 16 large companies who had been identified as being medically depressed and who had access to treatment, such as therapy and medication, through employer offered insurance. Three hundred were used as the control group and the other 304 were given a telephone “care manager.” Not only were employees contacted with information about treatment options, but their care was monitored and if it wasn’t effective the care manager suggested alternatives. The final piece of the program was the option of receiving therapy over the phone.

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Employers who screen and guide depressed workers through treatment options reap an average of three extra weeks of productivity from each of those employees per year, according to the first national study designed to measure whether such interventions pay off for businesses.The study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, involved 604 workers identified through voluntary surveys as having significant depression.The workers came from 16 large companies from diverse industries.Half of the subjects were randomly assigned to case managers who oversaw their treatments — and sometimes delivered psychotherapy — over the phone. The rest were told that their responses indicated possible depression but were not offered additional support.Researchers concluded that proactive depression care delivers a "return on investment" because employees who received telephone outreach quit or missed work less frequently and performed better when they did show up.The study, however, did not attempt to calculate the exact return. Researchers did not tally, for instance, how much co-workers pick up the slack for absent employees or whether telephone outreach in low-wage, high-turnover jobs would be worth the extra expense.But the large trial showed that structured telephone support not only lessens depression symptoms but improves productivity as well, said Dr. Philip Wang, director of the Services and Intervention Research Division of the National Institute of Mental Health in Rockville, Md."Employers should change their view that providing an enhanced depression-care benefit is just a cost," said Wang, the study's chief author. "The better view is to see depression care as an investment opportunity."

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As any doctor or mental health specialist will tell you there are different types of depression. Each of these depression types will manifest themselves in the person in completely different forms. Currently there are some well documented types of depression that various people in the world are afflicted with. Also each of the depression disorders can have similar and different symptoms.Since each of the depression types vary the severity of their symptoms and the level of persistence can be different for each sufferer. The main types of depression are Major or Unipolar Depression, Chronic or Dysthymia depression, and Manic or Bipolar Depression. Besides the main depression types there are subdivisions of these disorders. As the different types of depression have a completely different effect on each person, the method of treatment must also be individualized.

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                         Mental Illness: Would Your HR Manager Understand:
If you develop a mental condition, could you tell the company you work for? Would they look after you and support you? A new study reveals they might not. Nearly a third of will experience a mental condition during their working lives so no one can say with confidence that this is something that only happens to other people. How company manages mental illness is largely determined by its human resources (HR) practitioners. Researchers Chairmaine Hugo, Dr Henry Vos and Professor Dan Stein of the University of Stellenbosch administered questionnaire’s to 368 HR practitioners in South Africa the questionnaires which included case studies portraying mental disorders, measured knowledge about mental illness (so- called mental health literacy) and attitudes towards the mentally ill. They found that HR practitioners had poor knowledge about mental illness. The majority could not recognize mental illness and also did not have correct information about the cause and treatment of mental conditions.
Subtle Negative Attitudes Revealed:
Although the practitioners generally held positive attitudes towards the mentally ill, many had subtle negative attitudes. For example a quarter of the respondent’s expressed fear towards people with mental illness and many believed that the mentally ill are a burden to society. “The challenge to the business world is to acknowledge that mental illness exists within the work place and affects the company bottom line,” say researchers. Mental illness affects many aspects of work performance and can therefore be costly. Direct costs to the business world include those of treatment and rehabilitation as covered by mental aid and other managed health care schemes. But there are also indirect costs such as loss in productivity, decreased motivation, increased absenteeism, and staffs turn over, early retirement, safety risks, interpersonal conflict, suicide and cost of inadequate or inappropriate treatment. “As the “people specialists”, within business HR practitioners should be enabled to manage mental illness –effectively in the work place just as they are required to be knowledgeable about other employee health matters that affect individual and company performance” the researchers say.

 A tropical depression in the Gulf came ashore along the Florida panhandle Friday night, but it did not strengthen into a tropical storm.A storm system dumps heavy rain along the Gulf Coast in a NOAA satellite image.Forecasters said the storm should gradually weaken Friday night as the center moves farther inland.A tropical storm warning posted earlier across the coasts of four states was canceled Friday evening.As of 10 p.m. (11 p.m. ET), the center of the depression was about 10 miles northeast of Pensacola, Florida, the National Hurricane Center said. It was moving northwest at near 9 mph.The depression's maximum sustained winds werabout 30 mph, with higher gusts, short of the 39 mph tropical storm threshold.Rainfall of up to 6 inches was possible in some areas, with a storm surge up to 2 feet above normal tide levels, according to the hurricane center. Forecasters said isolated tornadoes were also possible Friday night over southwestern Georgia, southeastern Alabama and the Florida panhandle.Earlier Friday, a tropical storm warning was issued for the area between the Mississippi and Apalachicola rivers, including New Orleans, Louisiana.The latest forecast trajectory showed the storm moving west along the Alabama and Mississippi coasts and into Louisiana. See where the system is expected to go »Meanwhile, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico, Tropical Storm Ivo was downgraded from a hurricane Friday, when its winds weakened to 70 mph.Ivo, still more than 300 miles southwest of the Baja peninsula, is not expected to reach land until Monday and is forecast to weaken further over the weekend. No watches or warnings have been issued, although forecasters urge people in southern Baja to pay attention to the storm.

Depression is a mood disorder that can degrade the quality of our lives. While there are many treatments, medications and methods of dealing with depression, there needs to be a way of detecting if someone is going to be at risk from depression. This is where a depression self test can be of great help in finding the early symptoms of depression.While these self tests are of great help they do not promise to cure or even prevent depression from progressing further into our lives. Nor can they replace the medical evaluation and diagnosis of a doctor. What these depression self tests do provide is an indication that our depression may be a passing phase or that it could be part of a mood disorder.A search on the internet will provide you with a large choice of depression self tests. When you look at a depression self test you will notice that it is fairly easy to do. There will be a number of questions for you to answer. These questions will be based upon your mental and emotional outlook. The self test may have questions like “I get tired for no reason”.

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