The risk of suicide attempts and suicides among individuals with autism spectrum disorders is significantly higher than among the population in general. An especially high risk of suicidal behaviour is noted among women who in addition to autism also have ADHD. These are the findings of a population-based study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal Psychological Medicine.…
Professor Marco Catani suggests the best explanation for Leonardo da Vinci's inability to finish his works is that the great artist may have had Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. Leonardo da Vinci produced some of the world’s most iconic art, but historical accounts of his work practices and behaviour show that he struggled to complete projects. Drawing on these accounts, Professor…
Behavioural problems in young people with severe antisocial behaviour – known as conduct disorder – could be caused by differences in the brain’s wiring that link the brain’s emotional centres together, according to new research led by the University of Birmingham. Conduct disorder affects around 1 in 20 children and teenagers and is one of the most common reasons for referral to child…
Research in the past several years has shown that children can outgrow a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), once considered a lifelong condition. In a new study, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System have found that the vast majority of such children still have difficulties that require therapeutic and educational support.
The pill could be blurring your social judgement ‒ but perhaps not enough so you'd notice. By challenging women to identify complex emotional expressions like pride or contempt, rather than basic ones like happiness or fear, scientists have revealed subtle changes in emotion recognition associated with oral contraceptive pill (OCP) use. Published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, their study found…
Were Anders Breivik’s actions the work of a madman? Is Theo van Gogh’s killer Mohammed Bouyeri a psychopath? Much is still unclear about the role of psychological disorders (psychopathology) in terrorism. While some research supports the idea that terrorists are mentally ill, other studies contradict this view. In a study commissioned by the Research and Documentation Centre/Dutch Ministry of…
Half of those who develop a severe mental disorder such as depression prior to the age 20, will also develop an anxiety disorder within the next 15 years. This is just one of the many results on the relationship between various mental disorders mapped out.
Longer hours, more demanding working practices, complex cases and increased administration are taking their toll on physicians as growing numbers, across a range of specialties, report signs of burnout. All this despite technological advances such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to aid diagnosis, read and interpret images, improve workflow and enhance decision-making.
A new study by a team of Texas State University researchers shows that negative social media behaviors are linked to major depressive disorder (MDD) in Millennials. The findings are published in the Journal of Applied Biobehavioral Research. In the study of 504 Millennials who actively use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and/or Snapchat, individuals who met the criteria for MDD scored higher on the…
As European health services are pressured to provide the best possible care for best possible value, some medical fields are now very much the poor relation; this is particularly true for mental health. Mental illnesses represent a great health burden and cause huge financial and societal pressure in terms of direct and indirect costs from repeated hospitalisation and treatment failures, while…
Traumatic experiences can become deeply entrenched in a person's memory. How can fears following a traumatic event be reduced in the long term and prevented from becoming a permanent stress-related disorder? Researchers at the Mainz University Medical Center have recently shed new light on these questions. The key to their approach lies in firmly anchoring new, positive experiences in the…
Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 44,000 people in the country every year, similar to the number of deaths caused by the opioid epidemic. Previous studies show that suicide tracks in families independent of the effects from a shared environment. Researchers at the University of Utah Health are using resources unique to the state to identify…
Chronic stress is a well-known risk factor for the development of psychiatric illnesses including depression disorders. The brain requires a great deal of glucose, and stress is known to alter glucose metabolism. However, if stress-associated mental impairments are linked to affected glucose metabolism remains to be seen. Researchers at the Department for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Mainz…
New research from the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and the University of Sydney has found that neurons deep inside the brain could hold the key to accurately diagnosing bipolar disorder and depression.
Burn-out, depression, heavy drinking: Surgeon's seem to be in deep trouble, according to an editorial published in the Journal of ISAKOS (JISAKOS). It is high time for the profession to fix this problem itself before the government steps in, urges leading surgeon Professor Niek van Dijk of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, citing various published studies - and offers solutions on how to…
An anxious person will avoid risks whenever possible. This in itself is not exactly a surprise. However, researchers have found a way to visualize this process in the brain - with interesting implications for behaviour prediction. A team of psychologists from the German Friedrich Schiller University Jena, together with partners from Würzburg, Germany and Victoria, Canada they conducted an…
Being left-handed apparently means a lot more than gripping things differently than most, researchers find. This sheds a new light on mental health treatment, because current therapies for the most common mental health problems could be ineffective or even detrimental to about 50 percent of the population. For more than 40 years, hundreds of studies suggest that each hemisphere of the brain is…
Social media often features celebrities drinking cocktails, boozy how-to posts, and party pictures. This is the environment American teens are immersed in every day, with 71 percent of teens using more than one social media site, spending an average of nine hours a day using media. Despite the popularity of social media and alcohol-filled posts, little is known about the influence social media…
What a difference a year or two can make: If you started smoking marijuana at the start of your teens, your risk of having a drug abuse problem by age 28 is 68 per cent, but if you started smoking between 15 and 17 your risk drops to 44 per cent, according to a new study by Université de Montréal researchers. All the more reason, they say, to educate kids early, in primary school, about the…
Children raised in a rural environment, surrounded by animals and bacteria-laden dust, grow up to have more stress-resilient immune systems and might be at lower risk of mental illness than pet-free city dwellers, according to new research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study, co-authored by researchers from the University of Ulm in Germany…
Does life really begin at 40? Is 50 the new 30? For people in these age groups, the answer appears to be yes. But for young adults in their teens and early 20s, turning 50 equates to hitting old age. A new study of more than a half-million Americans led by a Michigan State University scholar shows just how skewed views of aging can be – particularly among the young. The findings come as people…
Parents who allow their young children to occasionally sip and taste alcohol may be contributing to an increased risk for alcohol use and related problems when those kids reach late adolescence, according to a new study by a University at Buffalo psychologist. The findings contradict the common belief that letting kids sip and taste alcoholic drinks is harmless, and might even help to promote…
People who believe Princess Diana was murdered or that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was an elaborate plot are more likely to think that vaccines are unsafe, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “Vaccinations are one of society’s greatest achievements and one of the main reasons that people live about 30…
The emerging field of psychoradiology is taking a major step ahead. A new study highlights MRI’s role in identifying people with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and classifies subtypes of the condition, a leading Chinese researcher explained at the ESMRMB annual meeting.
Computer-based analyses of speech transcripts obtained from interviews with at-risk youths were able to predict which youths would later develop psychosis within two years, with an accuracy of up to 83 percent. In two independent cohorts of young people at risk for psychosis, a disturbance in the flow of meaning when speaking, otherwise known as being tangential or going off track, predicted who…
