Monday, March 22, 2004
Cell damage could explain why some schizophrenics fail to respond to treatmentNewsRx.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 healthAPA 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..."
Report recommends one-stop social care shops (UK)Brief story in
Health and Care - "The Institute for Public Policy Research has called on local authorities and health service providers, in particular Primary Care Trusts, to set up ‘connected care centres’. In its report,
Meeting Complex Needs: The Future of Social Care, it said that funding the one-stop social care shops (offering mental health, drug misuse and unemployment/housing services) could be found by pooling existing money used to provide social care services." See also the related
IPPR press release. The full report is
available for a fee at their web site.
More children diagnosed with clinical depression (Pennsylvania)Lancaster Eagle-Gazette story - "Today's teens are experiencing more pressures and are placed in adult situations more often than their parents and grandparents. As a result, more youth are sidelined from normal activities due to feelings of sadness and depression. There are also many youths who have considered or attempted suicide. According to the National Mental Health Association, more than 1 million American children take prescription drugs for major depression, anxiety or attention-deficit disorders. The Food and Drug Administration estimates that in 2002, doctors wrote about 11 million antidepressant prescriptions for children. Close to 2.7 million of those prescriptions were for children age 11 and younger. Clinicians in Fairfield County said, while youth depression and suicide is an issue, they place a higher focus on prevention." See also, at the same source,
Antidepressant use growing, even among young children.
Mental health reform brings worries (North Carolina)Citizen Times story - "After years of wrangling, North Carolina this month stopped being the primary provider of public health services for people with mental health, developmental disability and substance abuse issues. People can no longer go to places such as Blue Ridge Mental Health Center or Trend to get treatment. Those places either spun off into nonprofit health providers or morphed into one local agency, the Western Highlands Local Management Entity. The new agency manages a network of private mental health care providers, much like an HMO. This move reflects a national shift away from putting people in state institutions and toward serving them in their own communities. It also addresses concerns about a disparity of services, which differed from county to county..."
