Copyright 2009 Medical News Today Latest Mental Health News From Medical News Today. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/sections/mental_health/ admin@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Admin) editors@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Editors) en-us Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156258.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156258.php The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it is requiring manufacturers to put a Boxed Warning on the prescribing information for the smoking cessation drugs Chantix (varenicline) and Zyban (bupropion). The warning will highlight the risk of serious mental health events including changes in behavior, depressed mood, hostility, and suicidal thoughts when taking these drugs. Mental Health Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156309.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156309.php Patients will continue to be unprotected if statutory independent regulation is not extended to counsellors and psychotherapists, according to leading national charities Mind and WITNESS. On the day that psychologists are to be regulated by the Health Professions Council (HPC), the charities welcome the advancement and urge counsellors and psychotherapists to follow suit. Psychology / Psychiatry Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156333.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156333.php The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reminds Americans that July is Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, a time for public education about serious mental illness in diverse communities. In 2008, the U.S. Mental Health Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156433.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156433.php Psychotherapy consists of a series of techniques for treating mental health, emotional and some psychiatric disorders. Psychotherapy helps the patient understand what helps them feel positive or anxious, as well as accepting their strong and weak points. If people can identify their feelings and ways of thinking they become better at coping with difficult situations. According to Medilexicon's Psychology / Psychiatry Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156327.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156327.php "The Food and Drug Administration announced (Wednesday) that it is requiring the smoking-cessation drugs Chantix and Zyban to carry the strongest type of safety warning possible to alert patients that the medications can cause serious mental health problems, including depression and suicide," the Washington Post reports (Stein, 7/1). Smoking / Quit Smoking Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156285.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156285.php PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) is triggered by a traumatic event - it is a kind of anxiety. The sufferer of PTSD may have experienced or seen an event that caused extreme fear, shock and/or a feeling of helplessness. Most of us experience a brief period of difficulty adjusting and coping with traumatic events. However, we gradually get better with time and healthy coping methods. Psychology / Psychiatry Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156181.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156181.php Mental Health America announced the establishment of a Regional Policy Council made up of 10 affiliate policy leaders from around the country to strengthen its state advocacy work. Mental Health Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156184.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/156184.php Selected highlights from a new study on immigration, health and gender roles: Mexican wives who stay home when their husbands immigrate to the United States for work have poorer mental health than a comparison group. Shifting gender roles seem to be equally as stressful as the husbands' absence. "Popular American psychology would suggest that their newfound independence might ease the stress of single-handedly managing the household. Psychology / Psychiatry Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155819.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155819.php Mental health services could be improved by planting trained consumers pretending to be patients, or "mystery patients," to identify problems, according to a commentary in the July 2009 issue of Psychiatric Services, a journal of the American Psychiatric Association. The concept is similar to the long-standing practice of using "mystery shoppers" in retail stores for market research. Psychology / Psychiatry Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155820.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155820.php A powerful new research facility at the heart of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre has been launched by Professor Dame Sally C Davies, Director General of Research and Development and Chief Scientific Adviser, Department of Health. The Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Nucleus is funded by a £3M infrastructure grant from South London and Maudsley Charitable Funds (£1.8M) and Guy's and St Thomas' Charity (£1. Mental Health Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155764.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155764.php The challenge to the Prime Minister by Mark Harper MP, Shadow Minister for Disabled People, to remove Section 141 of the Mental Health Act which strips an MP of their seat in Parliament if detained under the Act for more than six months, and his tabling of an amendment to the Equality Bill on this issue, are both very welcome and long overdue. Mental Health Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155632.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155632.php This summer, the University of Rochester's Mt. Hope Family Center will begin a large-scale, comprehensive study of the effects of child abuse. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the five-year, $2.25 million research project aims to understand how a complex host of factors - from genetics and family environment to hormonal regulation, personality traits, and brain activity - influence the well-being and mental health of children who have experienced child maltreatment. Pediatrics / Children's Health Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155560.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155560.php Every 16 hours, give or take, the brain's hippocampus makes six to nine thousand new neurons in the dentate gyrus, the portion of the brain which is believed to play a significant role in the preservation of episodic, or autobiographical, memory. But how do those neurons store information? And, more importantly, how do they decide which information to store and which to discard? University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) researcher Brian Derrick hopes to soon find out. Mental Health Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155515.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155515.php People in very early stages of Alzheimer's disease already have trouble focusing on what is important to remember, a UCLA psychologist and colleagues report. "One of the first telltale signs of Alzheimer's disease may be not memory problems, but failure to control attention," said Alan Castel, UCLA assistant professor of psychology and lead author of the study. Alzheimer's / Dementia Fri, 26 Jun 2009 07:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155528.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155528.php A quarter of us will experience at least one mental health problem in any one year, and yet stigma and prejudice are still widespread. In recognition of this hidden health crisis, The Royal Society for Public Health has accredited the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training programme in England, developed to establish a network of people with the skills and knowledge to take this essential first aid training into the community. Mental Health Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155450.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155450.php A group of doctors in Pittsburgh have developed the Computer Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment (CAMCI) to identify cognitive difficulties easily and reliably. In an article in the March issue of Postgraduate Medicine entitled "Computer Assessment of Mild Cognitive Impairment," the program creators detail the procedures and the benefits of the new test, which they claim is sensitive enough to notice the smallest amount of forgetfulness. Psychology / Psychiatry Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155383.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155383.php Researchers from the University of California, Davis have developed a specific and quantitative means of measuring levels of the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) protein (FMRP), which is mutated in fragile X syndrome. The related report by Iwahashi et al, "A quantitative ELISA assay for the fragile X mental retardation 1 protein," appears in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. Mental Health Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155369.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155369.php Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School, the University of Cambridge and the University of Michigan have carried out the first international comparison of cognitive function in nationally representative samples of older adults in the US and England and discovered that US seniors performed significantly better that their English counterparts. Seniors / Aging Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155355.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155355.php Psychopaths are more likely to use violence in a cold blooded, calculated way than non-psychopathic violent offenders. This is the finding of a study being presented today, Thursday 25th June 2009, at the British Psychological Society Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. Psychology / Psychiatry Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155293.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155293.php Experts have long suspected that part of the process of turning fleeting short-term memories into lasting long-term memories occurs during sleep. Now, researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have shown that mice prevented from "replaying" their waking experiences while asleep do not remember them as well as mice who are able to perform this function. Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155233.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155233.php People with a learning disability will be helped into paid jobs to close the employment gap, Jonathan Shaw, Minister for Disabled People and Phil Hope, Minister for Care Services pledged today. The goal is set out in the new cross-government Learning Disability Employment Strategy, published today. The strategy sets out a vision to increase the number of real jobs for people with learning disabilities with appropriate support being provided. Mental Health Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155212.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155212.php Research presented by Bernard Casey of the University of Warwick's Institute for Employment Research shows that work-related stress today damages national output even more than the loss to national output due to strikes at the peak of industrial unrest in the 1970s. At a presentation forming part of the University of Warwick's Social Science Festival Bernard Casey pointed out that at the peak of industrial unrest in the 1970s the UK lost around 12.9 million person days of output. Anxiety / Stress Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155184.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155184.php Weak eye-witnesses pick the most criminal looking faces in identity parades. This is one of the findings of Heather Flowe and colleagues from the University of Leicester who will present their research at the British Psychological Society Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference today, Wednesday 24th June 2009. The conference is being held the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. Psychology / Psychiatry Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155185.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155185.php Male and female perpetrators of domestic violence exhibit similar levels of controlling behaviour. This is one of the findings of a study presented at the British Psychological Society Division of Forensic Psychology annual conference yesterday, 23 June 2009 at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. Psychology / Psychiatry Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155187.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/155187.php This is one of the findings of Sophia Shaw and colleagues from the University of Leicester who will present their research at the British Psychological Society Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference today, Tuesday 23rd June, at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. First, 101 men aged between 18 and 70 completed questionnaires regarding their sexual history, personality and aggression. Sexual Health / STDs