A survey of women who had recently been diagnosed with depression found that at least half of them had opted for an alternative form of treatment, such as massage or yoga, in addition to conventional forms of treatment such as medication and therapy.
People with borderline personality disorder may benefit from a new form of therapy that helps patients learn how to properly mentalize, or make emotional sense of their thoughts and feelings in relation to others.
People with Parkinson’s disease may get worse at a slower pace if they have high levels of a substance called urate in their blood. That’s the conclusion of a study of 800 people with mild Parkinson’s. People with high urate levels were only half as likely as others to get much worse in a two-year period. They lost fewer brain cells that produce a substance called dopamine. Therefore, they did not need medicine to replace it. Researchers are planning another study that will give patients a supplement called inosine. The body converts inosine to urate. USA Today wrote about the study April 16. It was in the journal Archives of Neurology.
People who have been depressed may be more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease later, a study suggests. The study included 486 people, ages 60 to 90. They did not have any form of dementia when the study began. In the next 6 years, 33 developed Alzheimer’s disease. In the study group, 134 people had consulted a doctor because they felt depressed. They were 2.5 times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s as others in the study. Researchers said the cause is not clear. More research is needed. The study was published April 8 in the journal Neurology.
ADHD has become the most common mental health issue in preschool children. Some study has been done on giving medication to preschoolers with ADHD, but training parents to change their responses to their child’s behavior is believed to be more effective.
An analysis of the lyrics of popular songs found that approximately 40% had some sort of reference to drug or alcohol use. Whether or not this has any effect on the behavior of teenagers is unclear.
Psychotherapy by phone is not as effective as face-to-face therapy, but people participating in phone therapy are less likely to end the treatment than those receiving in-person therapy.
Researchers continue to explore the question of whether there is a connection between gastrointestinal problems in children and incidence of autism spectrum disorders.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder may take years to diagnose, partly because its symptoms are similar to those of other disorders. Many patients who receive treatment (typically behavioral therapy, medications, or a combination) experience improvement.
Women who follow the healthy “DASH diet” have fewer heart attacks and strokes, a study has found. The research used 25 years of data on 88,000 women. All were part of the Nurses’ Health Study. The DASH diet is a plan designed to reduce blood pressure. It includes twice as many fruits, vegetables and grains as the average American diet. About 15,000 women in the study ate in a way similar to the DASH diet. Their heart attack rate was 24% lower than the rate for women in the study who ate typical American diets. Their stroke rate was 18% lower. The Associated Press wrote about the study April 15. It was published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.