Monday, March 22, 2004

The Newer Antipsychotics: Underlying Mechanisms and the New Clinical Realities
Article in Current Opinion in Psychiatry at Medscape - "The present review focuses on recent preclinical and clinical developments among newer antipsychotics, with an eye to reviewing putative underlying mechanisms." [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Cell damage could explain why some schizophrenics fail to respond to treatment
NewsRx.com story reprinted at PsycPORT - "Damage to brain cells caused by an excess of free radicals, naturally occurring bodily chemicals that have been linked to a variety of health problems, could help explain why some schizophrenics either fail to improve or deteriorate as they age, according to a new study. Naoya Nishioka, MD, PhD, and Steven Arnold, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania conducted postmortem tests on the brains of both elderly "poor-outcome" schizophrenics and elderly subjects without psychiatric disorders. Their findings appeared in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry."  
  

Lack of parental support during childhood is associated with poorer adult mental & physical health
APA press release at EurekAlert - "People with abundant parental support during childhood are likely to have relatively good health throughout adulthood, whereas people with inadequate parental support while growing up are likely to have poorer health as adults, suggests a new study involving a nationally representative sample of nearly 3,000 adults. The findings are reported on in the March issue of Psychology and Aging, a journal published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Research has long showed that children who receive abundant support from their parents report fewer psychological and physical problems during childhood than children who receive less parental support. Studies have also found that adult psychological and physical health is influenced by the amount of social support adults receive. Now, Benjamin A. Shaw, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, University at Albany and colleagues from the University of Michigan investigated for the first time whether the health effects of parental support received during childhood persist throughout adulthood into old age..."  
  

Assessing the stigma of mental illness (New Zealand)
Massey Univeristy press release - "The effort to raise the public awareness of mental health in New Zealand, including a series of prime-time television commercials, has caught the attention of researchers in the USA. New Zealand will participate in an international mental health study, with a focus on the stigma of mental health, funded by the Fogarty International Centre of the US National Institutes of Health and led by researchers at Indiana University. ... The project will examine public perceptions of the causes of mental illness and its effects on people, the degree of stigmatisation associated with mental illness, tolerance of people with mental illness, the government's responsibilities to these people and the degree of coercion appropriate to make them seek treatment."