Depression, also known as depressive disorders or unipolar depression, is a mental illness characterized by a profound and persistent feeling of sadness or despair and/or a loss of interest in things that once were pleasurable. Disturbance in sleep, appetite, and mental processes are a common accompaniment.
The emotional brain in youth – How to diagnose and treat bipolar symptoms and mood disorders in children and adolescents – Recognition of bipolar symptoms and bipolar disorder in adolescents is now clearly established. However, whether bipolarity exists in children remains controversial despite numerous studies that have been conducted on this topic in the last fifteen years.
Depression linked to increased risk of stroke in women – Depressed women may face an increased risk of stroke, according to new research reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. A variety of mechanisms may lead depression to cause stroke.
Prescriptions for Antidepressants Increasing among Individuals with no Psychiatric Diagnosis – In Americans, there is a marked increase in antidepressant use among individuals with no psychiatric diagnosis, revealed by researchers. Americans are no strangers to antidepressants.
No pain, big gain — Treatment of chronic low back pain can reverse abnormal brain activity and function – It likely comes as no surprise that low back pain is the most common form of chronic pain among adults. Lesser known is the fact that those with chronic pain also experience cognitive impairments and reduced gray matter in parts of the brain associated with pain processing and the emotional components of pain, like depression and anxiety.
Anti-inflammatory drugs reduce effectiveness of SSRI antidepressants – Anti-inflammatory drugs, which include ibuprofen, aspirin and naproxen, reduce the effectiveness of the most widely used class of antidepressant medications, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, taken for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders.
Infants with persistent crying problems more likely to have behavior problems in childhood – Infants who have problems with persistent crying, sleeping and/or feeding – known as regulatory problems – are far more likely to become children with significant behavioural problems, reveals research published ahead of print in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Severe obesity not seen to increase risk of depression in teens — Study does find possibly greater vulnerability among white adolescents – According to a new study, severely obese adolescents are no more likely to be depressed than normal weight peers. The study, which has been released in the Journal of Adolescent Health, did find that white adolescents may be somewhat more vulnerable to psychological effects of obesity.
Antidepressants may not improve all symptoms of depression, UT Southwestern researchers find – Even people who show a clear treatment response with antidepressant medications continue to experience symptoms like insomnia, sadness and decreased concentration, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found after analyzing data from the largest study on the treatment of depression.
Depression may increase the risk of kidney failure – Depression is associated with an increased risk of developing kidney failure in the future, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN).
Using EEGs to diagnose autism spectrum disorders in infants — Machine-learning system finds differences in brain connectivity – A computational physicist and a cognitive neuroscientist at Children’s Hospital Boston have come up with the beginnings of a noninvasive test to evaluate an infant’s autism risk.
Use of Antidepressant Associated With Reduction in Menopausal Hot Flashes – Women who were either in the transition to menopause or postmenopausal experienced a reduction in the frequency and severity of menopausal hot flashes with the use of the antidepressant medication escitalopram, compared to women who received placebo.
Reducing diet early in pregnancy stunts fetal brain development — Study shows that the fetal brain is vulnerable to moderate decreases in maternal nutrition – Eating less during early pregnancy impaired fetal brain development in a nonhuman primate model, revealed by researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio.
