Eideard

 
THE FACTS

The emotional pain of losing a loved one can take a toll on the heart, at least metaphorically. But can it trigger an actual heart attack?

In a large new study, scientists have confirmed what the medical world has long suspected: The so-called broken-heart syndrome is real. The study…found that a person’s heart attack risk is 21 times higher than normal the day after a loved one dies.

Over time the risk of an attack declines, but it remains elevated within that first month. In the first week after a loved one’s death, for example, the risk was six times higher than normal, said Elizabeth Mostofsky, the lead author of the paper…

“If a bereaved person is having symptoms like chest pain, they shouldn’t simply say, ‘Oh, I’m dealing with the stress right now’ and ignore it,” she said.

Other studies have uncovered greater heart and mortality risks in the weeks and months after the loss of a spouse, a child or another loved one, but the new study is the first systematic look at the immediate effect. The researchers interviewed nearly 2,000 people hospitalized for heart attacks over a five-year period and controlled for variables like health and history of disease.

Those with previous heart risk factors were more vulnerable, but the odds increased even for those with no coronary history. Dr. Mostofsky pointed out that bereavement could provoke depression, anger and anxiety, all of which can elevate the heart rate and blood pressure and increase blood clotting.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Losing a loved one heightens the risk of a heart attack.

Sounds like me – to me.

“He’s very clean”

In an effort to pinpoint potential triggers leading to inflammatory responses that eventually contribute to depression, researchers are taking a close look at the immune systems of people living in today’s cleaner, modern society.

Rates of depression have steadily grown, and researchers think it may be because of the loss of healthy bacteria.

In a review article published in the December issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, Emory neuroscientist Charles Raison, MD, and colleagues identified data that suggests there is mounting evidence that disruptions in ancient relationships with microorganisms in soil, food and the gut may contribute to the increasing rates of depression.

According to the authors, the modern world has become so clean, we are deprived of the bacteria our immune systems came to rely on over long ages to keep inflammation at bay…

“Since ancient times benign microorganisms, sometimes referred to as ‘old friends,’ have taught the immune system how to tolerate other harmless microorganisms, and in the process, reduce inflammatory responses that have been linked to the development of most modern illnesses, from cancer to depression.”

Experiments are currently being conducted to test the efficacy of treatments that use properties of these “old friends” to improve emotional tolerance. “If the exposure to administration of the ‘old friends’ improves depression,” the authors conclude, “the important question of whether we should encourage measured re-exposure to benign environmental microorganisms will not be far behind.”

Eat really good traditional yogurt. Maintain evolutionary status as an omnivore. And watch this space.

Officials in Toyama, a city 186 miles northwest of Tokyo, have launched the nation’s first scheme in which hairdressers are used as mediators between suicidal customers and professional counsellors.

The move taps into the renowned universal skill of hairdressers to lend a sympathetic ear to customers who often feel comfortable confiding in them about their problems.

More than 650 hairdressers in the city are involved in the new project, which involves taking part in training lectures with clinical psychologists to help them identify those in need of specialist help.

The hairdressers are also being given guidebooks to hand out to customers who they believe may be suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts and are able to put them in touch with professional psychological counselors…

As part of the new scheme, hairdressers will be taking part in training sessions organised by city officials with professional psychologists focusing on problems relating to suicide.

Japan is home to one of the highest suicide rates among industrialised nations, with more than 30,000 people killing themselves every year.

Hairdressers across the city appeared to welcome the initiative, with a growing number of premises displaying government-provided stickers in their window to show they are taking part in the project.

Hey – marketing is marketing. Increased traffic into a retail business is always welcome.

A new study has determined that teenagers who have abortions are no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem than their peers whose pregnancies do not end in abortion.

The study conducted by researchers from Oregon State University and University of California, San Francisco, is the first to use both depression and low self-esteem as outcomes with a nationally representative sample of adolescents.

The researchers found that young women in the study who had an abortion were no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem within the first year of pregnancy – or five years later – than their peers who were pregnant, but did not have an abortion…

Jocelyn Warren said previous research has shown that adolescent girls who get pregnant report more depression and lower self-esteem compared to those who don’t. “What we didn’t know was whether psychological outcomes are worse for girls who choose abortion. This study says, ‘No.’”

“In the interest of women’s health, it’s critical that we conduct the most rigorous studies possible and use evidence-based information to inform public policy,” Marie Harvey, co-author, said. “This is our goal in public health research but it may be even more important in areas such as abortion that are highly politicized.”

As a proper science-based study, the authors make the point that decisions about medical procedures should be evidence-based. Almost an impossible standard to reach given the farce that passes for lawmaking in the United States.

Nutballs trot out their pet ideology, favorite superstition, and ask the whole nation to adhere to whatever spooky crap they believe should be so. Scientific study, measured programmatic analysis over time, has minimal influence on hacks inclined to base political and social decisions upon myth – and possible votes.

Treating clinical depression on the telephone is nearly as effective as face-to-face consultations, a new Brigham Young University study finds.

The trial run included 30 people newly diagnosed with major depression. Instead of eight scheduled visits to the clinic, the participants covered the same material during a series of phone calls with the therapist. Calls varied in length, ranging from 21 to 52 minutes. The patients did not receive antidepressant medication.

At a six month follow-up, 42 percent of participants had recovered from depression. For comparison, similar therapy conducted in person has a 50 percent recovery rate.

“Offering a phone or webcam option for psychotherapy does appear warranted from an efficacy point of view,” said Diane Spangler, a BYU psychology professor and a coauthor on the study. “It’s more user- friendly — no commutes, more flexibility of place and time — and has no side effects…”

Though a sample of 30 people is not large, the BYU researchers cite a previous antidepressant drug trial that happened to include a telephone counseling component. In that trial, the added benefit from phone counseling matched the results attained by the new BYU study.

Shows you how important that face-to-face couchside manner just may be. Or not.

A new study of brain activity in depressed and anxious people indicates that some of the ill effects of depression are modified – for better or for worse – by anxiety.

The study, in the journal Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, looked at depression and two types of anxiety: anxious arousal, the fearful vigilance that sometimes turns into panic; and anxious apprehension, better known as worry.

The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) at the Beckman Institute’s Biomedical Imaging Center to look at brain activity in subjects who were depressed and not anxious, anxious but not depressed, or who exhibited varying degrees of depression and one or both types of anxiety.

“Although we think of depression and anxiety as separate things, they often co-occur,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Gregory A. Miller, who led the research with Illinois psychology professor Wendy Heller. “In a national study of the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, three-quarters of those diagnosed with major depression had at least one other diagnosis. In many cases, those with depression also had anxiety, and vice versa…”

In the new study, brain scans were done while participants performed a task that involved naming the colors of words that had negative, positive, or neutral meanings. This allowed the researchers to observe which brain regions were activated in response to emotional words.

The researchers found that the fMRI signature of the brain of a worried and depressed person doing the emotional word task was very different from that of a vigilant or panicky depressed person…

Despite their depression, the worriers also did better on the emotional word task than those depressives who were fearful or vigilant. The worriers were better able to ignore the meaning of negative words and focus on the task, which was to identify the color – not the emotional content – of the words.

These results suggest that fearful vigilance sometimes heightens the brain activity associated with depression, whereas worry may actually counter it, thus reducing some of the negative effects of depression and fear, Miller said.

“Sometimes worry is a good thing to do. Maybe it will get you to plan better. Maybe it will help you to focus better. There could be an up-side to these things.”

Or you could pour yourself a dram of Jamieson’s and forget the whole thing, eh?

Click on photo for NSFW version

People who spend a lot of time browsing the Internet are more likely to show depressive symptoms, according to the first large-scale study of its kind in the West by University of Leeds psychologists.

Researchers found striking evidence that some users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health…

“While many of us use the internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities.”

These ‘internet addicts‘ spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and online communities. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than non-addicted users.

“Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don’t know is which comes first — are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?

Having Spurs kick your butt – with Jermaine Defoe scoring a hat-trick – doesn’t help, either.

Which shows how much concern I feel over chicken v. egg studies like this.

Research has shown that antidepressants help about three quarters of people with depression who take them, a consistent finding that serves as the basis for the oft-repeated mantra “There is no question that the safety and efficacy of antidepressants rest on solid scientific evidence,” as psychiatry professor Richard Friedman of Weill Cornell Medical College recently wrote in The New York Times. But ever since a seminal study in 1998, whose findings were reinforced by landmark research in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month, that evidence has come with a big asterisk. Yes, the drugs are effective, in that they lift depression in most patients. But that benefit is hardly more than what patients get when they, unknowingly and as part of a study, take a dummy pill—a placebo. As more and more scientists who study depression and the drugs that treat it are concluding, that suggests that antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.

Hence the moral dilemma. The placebo effect—that is, a medical benefit you get from an inert pill or other sham treatment—rests on the holy trinity of belief, expectation, and hope. But telling someone with depression who is being helped by antidepressants, or who…hopes to be helped, threatens to topple the whole house of cards. Explain that it’s all in their heads, that the reason they’re benefiting is the same reason why Disney’s Dumbo could initially fly only with a feather clutched in his trunk—believing makes it so—and the magic dissipates like fairy dust in a windstorm…

The study’s impact? The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled in a decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005.

To be sure, the drugs have helped tens of millions of people, and Kirsch certainly does not advocate that patients suffering from depression stop taking the drugs. On the contrary. But they are not necessarily the best first choice. Psychotherapy, for instance, works for moderate, severe, and even very severe depression. And although for some patients, psychotherapy in combination with an initial course of prescription antidepressants works even better, the question is, how do the drugs work? Kirsch’s study and, now, others conclude that the lion’s share of the drugs’ effect comes from the fact that patients expect to be helped by them, and not from any direct chemical action on the brain, especially for anything short of very severe depression.

RTFA. It’s long, detailed – a thoroughgoing record of physicians continuing to run a marathon in an ethical cul-de-sac. And the pharma manufacturers? They just love it. As the article says, “A triumph of marketing over science!”

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Those who worship a higher power often do so in different ways. Whether they are active in their religious community, or prefer to simply pray or meditate, new research out of Temple University suggests that a person’s religiousness – also called religiosity – can offer insight into their risk for depression.

Lead researcher Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., characterized the religiosity of 918 study participants in terms of three domains of religiosity: religious service attendance, which refers to being involved with a church; religious well-being, which refers to the quality of a person’s relationship with a higher power; and existential well-being, which refers to a person’s sense of meaning and their purpose in life.

In a study published on-line this month in Psychological Medicine, Maselko and fellow researchers compared each domain of religiosity to their risk of depression, and were surprised to find that the group with higher levels of religious well-being were 1.5 times more likely to have had depression than those with lower levels of religious well-being.

Maselko theorizes this is because people with depression tend to use religion as a coping mechanism. As a result, they’re more closely relating to God and praying more.

Maselko admits that researchers have yet to determine which comes first: depression or being religious, but is currently investigating the time sequence of this over people’s lives to figure out the answer.

This ain’t just chicken or egg, folks. Take it back to genes which helped you get through the night, worrying whether the fire at the mouth of the cave was enough to protect you?

Instead of just popping ‘happy pills’ such as Prozac to beat the blues, Jane Plant and her co-author, Janet Stephenson, advise sufferers to take steps such as avoiding dairy products, sending fewer text messages, eating porridge at night and playing card games. They say all their tips are based on hard scientific evidence gathered from studies around the world…

In Beating Stress, Anxiety and Depression, Plant and Stephenson urge a radical overhaul of the way the NHS treats the soaring number of people with some form of mood disorder. They advise sufferers to increase their intake of mood-boosting chemicals by eating kippers or poached haddock for breakfast because they contain omega-3 fatty acids, and to be less materialistic, as those who achieve success may do so at the expense of personal relationships, which are a better guarantee of happiness.

‘We do not agree with the usual advice to “keep taking your medication and eventually all will be well, because doctor knows best”,’ they write. ‘We challenge many of the conventions in the treatment of mental illness.’ The authors say their aim is to empower people suffering with a mental disorder…

The National Institute of Clinical Excellence already says that psychological ‘talking therapies’, involving one-on-one sessions, can be just as effective as giving someone drugs. Antidepressants alone cost the health service £300m a year and most family doctors admit that they prescribe too many.

Folks have slated “mother’s little helper” as a symptomatic non-solution for decades. No one is surprised when it takes the medical community part of a century to perceive they’re wasting time and money in a quest for easy solutions. And good nutrition and healthful living isn’t recommended by politicians lobbied and funded by sugar-loaded snack factories.

I’d probably argue a bit with the authors over some of the details – and I’m not certain enough focus is attending to the range of activities from exercise to simple acts long part of our evolution – like music. Overall, Plant and Stephenson are lightyears ahead of pharmacopeia overlords.