Mental & Emotional Health

It’s been a while since I did a news day and that’s because it’s been rather slow. I had to actively search for mental or emotional health news today, nothing much going on. Kinda strange!

Depression Pushes Middle-Aged Workers to Retire - In many cases, depression is a deciding factor for men and women considering retirement, according to new research. Middle-aged men who suffer with symptoms of depression are more likely to retire early, while retirement-age women often take the leap even if their depressive symptoms are mild.

Mental Health Bill OK’d in Senate - The Senate passed legislation last night that would require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses when policies cover both. The bill, passed by unanimous consent, moves advocates one step closer in their quest for mental health parity. “This new legislation will bring dramatic new help to millions of Americans who today are denied needed mental health care and treatment,” said Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. (AP) (That is the entire “article”.)

Soldiers Getting Brain Tests Before Deployment - Before they leave for Iraq, thousands of troops with the 101st Airborne Division line up at laptop computers to take a test: basic math, matching numbers and symbols, and identifying patterns. They press a button quickly to measure response time. It’s all part of a fledgling Army program that records how soldiers’ brains work when healthy, giving doctors baseline data to help diagnose and treat the soldiers if they suffer a traumatic brain injury — the signature injury of the Iraq war.

Little-Known Purging Disorder Is Often Missed - An Iowa researcher is studying a little-known eating disorder that some doctors may miss: purging disorder. Though similar to women with bulimia, patients who fit this description don’t binge-eat. Yet they feel compelled to purge, usually by vomiting, even after eating only a small or normal amount of food, said Pamela Keel, the University of Iowa researcher who led a study on the subject.

Elderly Are At Highest Risk for Suicide - Not long after 72-year-old Anne Beale Golsan had retired on disability from her job as a librarian, she put a stack of paid bills out for the mail, hung up a freshly pressed outfit and taped a note to the front of the house. “Don’t come in by yourself. Get somebody to come with you. Sorry, Love Beale.”

Sick? Lonely? Genes Tell the Tale - Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and researchers said on Thursday they may have found out why — their immune systems are haywire. They used a “gene chip” to look at the DNA of isolated people and found that people who described themselves as chronically lonely have distinct patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it involving the immune system.

mental & emotional health, mental health news, retirement, middle-age depression, Senate, soldiers, brain tests, Iraq War, purging disorder, eating disorders, elderly suicide, suicide risk, lonely

mental and emotional health, alcohol, alcoholism, alcohol abuse, American Academy of Neurology 2007 Annual Meeting, genetics, calorie restriction, Salk Institute, PHA-4, Foxa, Louisiana State University, mental health, Margaret Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau, CBC Newsworld, medical checkups, persuasion, arguing, Thank You For Arguing, Jay Heinrichs, Three Rivers Press, book reviews, how to fight, conflict, education, interpersonal dealings, negotiating strategies, negotiation skills, phantom pregnancy, pseudocyesis, pregnancy, news

Health Day News writes that, according to a team of researchers, genes from a “specific region of chromosome 15″ may lead to depression!

“We should be able to hone more finely into the gene,” said Myrna Weissman, co-author of one of the papers and a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University and head of clinical and genetic epidemiology at New York State Psychiatric Institute, both in New York City. “Then, we can see mutations and develop treatments,” she said.

Look for the full article in the February issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry written by lead scientists at Stanford University. Researchers write that about 10 to 15 percent of people suffer from depression at some point in life and between three & five percent have depression chronically. Scarily enough (because I am a woman), women are twice as likely as men to live with depression.

Although no single gene (scientists guess that there are several genes instead) has been decided upon as the responsible one, studies of families, and especially twins, have revealed that depression is partly genetic. While things may be genetic, one must take the environmental factors (including psychological trauma) may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Once the actual genes are found is very important and it may teach researchers exactly how genes are involved in depression, and maybe one day, what genes actually do.