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Archive for January, 2011

 

By Nichole Force, M.A.

A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that we have much more control over our minds, personalities and personal illnesses than was ever believed to exist before, and it is all occurring at the same time that a flood of other research is exposing the benefits of humor on brain functioning. The ability to change the structure and functioning of the brain through experiences and the conscious use of directed thoughts is referred to as neuroplasticity.

The latest research indicates that the adult brain not only has the ability to repair damaged regions, but to grow new neurons; that willful activity has the power to shape the brain in new directions far into adulthood.

We hear a lot about the effects of illness and old age on the mind, but in the not-too-distant future, we will begin hearing more about the effects of the mind on the mind, and the power of the mind to direct and master its own fate.

The latest discoveries into how the brain responds to positive stimuli such as humor could open doors to new therapies for depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses. Perhaps by somehow stimulating and enhancing the humor processing regions in the brains of the depressed or anxious we can reverse the chemistry of their conditions. Why not use the positive powers of the brain to counter its negative powers?

It is a question that the fields of positive psychology and Gelotology are currently exploring. Gelotologists study the physiological and psychological effects of laughter, and practitioners of positive psychology seek to utilize personal strengths and positive emotions to build resiliency and psychological wellbeing in their clients. Both fields are the source of much research in the use of humor as a coping mechanism.

Unfortunately, researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that negative information has a greater impact on the brain than positive information. As a quick self-test of this concept, imagine that you won a $500 gift certificate to your favorite store. How would that feel?

Now imagine that, instead of winning the gift certificate, you lost $500. Research indicates that the intensity of your response to each of these situations will differ significantly, with the distress of losing $500 far outweighing the pleasure of gaining $500.

This outcome is so common that researchers have given it a name: the “negativity bias.” The negativity bias is a result of the of the fight-or-flight response that is activated only during negative experiences. The adrenaline rush and increased heart rate that occur with the fight-or-flight response cause negative events to be experienced more intensely and imprinted on the brain more firmly. The challenge for humor-based therapies will be determining how to apply the humorous stimuli in such a way that it has greater influence in shaping the brain than co-occurring, and usually overpowering, negative experiences.

The brain gives more attention to negative experiences overthan positive ones because negative events pose a chance of danger. By default, the brain alerts itself to potential threats in the environment, so awareness of positive aspects takes deliberate effort. The most effective therapies would use methods of making our brains more responsive to the positive than the negative.

Of course, we all differ in the degree to which we respond to the negativity bias. Some people are perpetually cheerful and upbeat while others suffer from a complete inability to experience pleasure or see the so-called bright side.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/10/20/humor-neuroplasticity-and-the-power-to-change-your-mind/



 

I often get asked what ‘nervous breakdown’ means, as if it was a technical term defined by psychology.

In fact, it’s really just an everyday term used to describe when someone can’t carry on because of psychological problems, although it turns out to have quite technological origin, as this brief article from the American Journal of Psychiatry describes.

The Cambridge academic German Berrios (personal communication) informed me that “breakdown” is a 19th century construction, initially used to refer to breakages and fractures in machinery and leading to the need for “breakdown gangs” (i.e., teams of navvies whose job involved addressing the mechanical disruptions to the functioning of railways). Metaphorical uses of the term followed, particularly in reference to failure in personal intentions and plans.

Read in Full:  http://mindhacks.com/2010/10/20/the-origin-of-the-nervous-breakdown/



 Homeless, Charing Cross, London

Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. Updated: Oct 15th 2010

There are many existing stereotypes about people who are homeless. Like most stereotypes, there is a mixture of truth, exaggeration, over-generalization and pure fiction, in connection with the homeless, who they are and why they live the way they do in the year 2010.

Among the stereotypes about the homeless are such beliefs as:

1. These are lazy people who make no effort to work.
2. They choose to be alcoholics and drug abusers.
3. In order to support their addictions, they commit violent crimes to get money to buy drugs and alcohol.
4. Most of these people are mentally ill and should be locked away in mental institutions.
5. They beg in the streets rather than work.
6. They are leeches who suck off of society and serve no useful purpose.
7. All of them are at fault for their life situation.
8. They are the uneducated poor.

In point of fact, there has been a large increase in this population due to the downturn in the economy. In the United States alone, there has been a sharp decrease in jobs available, especially the poor. For example, manufacturing jobs that paid at least a minimum way, have disappeared. While there is some employment in the service industry, the work is often part time, below minimum wage and without medical benefits.

Housing has become more expensive, whether its ownership or rental, while incomes have decreased along with unemployment. It was once thought that housing costs should not exceed thirty percent of a person’s wages. Today, these costs exceed fifty percent of earnings. That is why many families find themselves living on the edge of homelessness. Many times, one family member becoming seriously ill can send the entire family onto the streets.

Read in Full:  http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=40678&cn=207



 

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2010) — Chronic depression is an adaptive, reparative neurobiological process gone wrong, say two University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers, positing in a new theory that the debilitating mental state originates from more ancient mechanisms used by the body to deal with physical injury, such as pain, tissue repair and convalescent behavior.

In a paper published in the September online edition of Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Athina Markou, PhD, professor of psychiatry, and Karen Wager-Smith, a post-doctoral researcher, integrate evidence from diverse clinical, biological and behavioral studies to create a novel theory they hope will lead to a shift in thinking about depression.

“In contrast to other biological theories of depression, we started with a slightly different question,” said Wager-Smith. “Other theories address the question: ‘What is malfunctioning in depression?’ We took a step back and asked the question: ‘What is the biology of the proper function of the depressive response?’ Once we had a theoretical model for the biology of a well-functioning depressive response, it helped make sense of all the myriad differences between depressed and non-depressed subjects that the biomedical approach has painstakingly amassed.”

According to the new theory, severe stress and adverse life events, such as losing a job or family member, prompt neurobiological processes that physically alter the brain. Neurons change shape and connections. Some die, but others sprout as the brain rewires itself. This neural remodeling employs basic wound-healing mechanisms, which means it can be painful and occasionally incapacitating, even when it’s going well.

Read in Full:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101020091857.htm



 

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 20, 2010

A new study finds that negative personality traits are not necessarily a bad thing.

In particular, traits such as arrogance, hesitance, being overly dramatic, inflexible, or being a “yes-man” may be helpful when it comes to leading.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers studied the development of leaders over a three-year period.

Prior research had established that clearly positive personality qualities — such as extraversion, emotional stability and conscientiousness — had helpful effects on both the performance and the development of leaders.

Little attention has been paid, though, to negative, or “dark side,” personality traits and whether they are really so bad.

“Mae West told us that when she’s good, she’s good. But when she’s bad, she’s even better. We chose to investigate so-called subclinical or ‘dark side’ traits because we really didn’t know much about how and to what degree they affected performance or development,” said Peter Harms, the study’s lead author.

“Was it possible that they might be beneficial in some contexts? For some of them, it turns out that the answer was yes.”

The study found, for example, that being overly skeptical was uniformly bad for performance and development. But having a very cautious or hesitant nature was associated with both increased performance and developing leadership skills over time.

The study tracked more than 900 officer cadets in their second, third and fourth years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. It used the Hogan Development Survey, a comprehensive measure of subclinical traits, to predict changes in a variety of leadership areas that were regularly assessed in developmental reviews at the Academy.

Several of the 12 “dark side” traits – such as those associated with narcissism, being overly dramatic, being critical of others and being extremely focused on complying with rules – actually had a positive effect on a number of facets of the cadets’ leadership development over time.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/10/20/dark-side-traits-helpful-at-times/19844.html



 "Storm Child"

Psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents III: Increases in psychiatric disorders during adolescence.

Today is the third of a series of brief posts about the recent results of the latest National Comorbidity Survey (NCS).

The NCS is a large nationally representative study of over 10,000 adolescents aged 13 to 18. The study aims to examine the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in youth across the United States by conducting a comprehensive face-to-face structured diagnostic assessment of every participant. Such diagnostic interview is currently the gold standard in diagnostic assessment, which arguably provides us with the most accurate picture of the true prevalence of these disorders in the population. The study included 4,945 boys and 5,170 girls. The racial/ethnicity breakdown was 65% non-Hispanic whites, 15.1% non-Hispanic black, 14.4% Hispanic, and 5% other.

Monday I discussed the overall prevalence rates of the most common psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. Yesterday I also discussed the overall proportion of affected kids that actually experience severe functional impairment. Today, I want to comment on the age differences in life time prevalence of psychiatric disorders in early and late adolescence.

Below you can see age differences in prevalence rates for mood and anxiety disorders among kids aged 13-14, 15-16, and 17-18. The Y (vertical) axis shows the life time prevalence at each age and the X (horizontal) axis shows the age groups.

Age differences in mood and anxiety disorders

As you can see above, there is an increase in life time prevalence in most mood and anxiety disorders. The greatest increase is in depression. At age 13-14, about 8% of kids have a life time history of depression. However, this doubles to over  15% by age 17-18, which suggests that 1/2 of all cases of depression by age 18 occur between the ages of 14 to 18.

Read in Full:  http://www.child-psych.org/2010/10/storm-and-stress-many-psychiatric-disorders-increase-during-adolescence.html



 Protein Crystal Structure: aMACPF-g, Key Part of Human Immune System

By Traci Pedersen
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 20, 2010

Exposing newborn neurons to higher than normal levels of a common immune protein results in abnormal brain development in mice studies, according to scientists from the University of California. 

The discovery provides fresh insight into factors leading to human neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

The research team observed a protein called major histocompatibility complex, or MHC. This protein plays a double role in the body. It alerts the immune system to infected cells, and it helps neurons make the right connections with one another in the brain.

“When neurons sense infection or damage to the brain, they produce more MHC,” said Daniel Kaufman, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

“We wanted to explore whether higher levels of MHC affect how the brain develops.”

Kaufman and his team studied the development of mice whose neurons were genetically engineered to produce higher-than-average levels of MHC.

Honing in on two key areas of the brain, the scientists focused on neurons that process vision as well as neurons associated with learning and memory. Then the researchers compared these cells with their counterparts in normal mice.

The results confirmed their initial ideas.

“The mice whose neurons produced extra MHC showed subtle changes in the connections between those neurons and other neurons in both brain regions,” Kaufman said.

He noted that these findings could be of relevance in unraveling the origins of schizophrenia and autism.

Read in Full:  http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/10/20/immune-response-offers-possible-insight-to-schizophrenia-autism/19690.html



 

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2010) — Yale University researchers have found a gene that seems to be a key contributor to the onset of depression and is a promising target for a new class of antidepressants, they report Oct. 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

“This could be a primary cause, or at least a major contributing factor, to the signaling abnormalities that lead to depression,” said Ronald S. Duman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale and senior author of the study.

Scientists have had a difficult time pinning down the cause of depression, which afflicts almost 16 percent of Americans in any given year and carries an annual economic burden of $100 billion.

Symptoms of depression vary widely among individuals. Most now believe that multiple physiological processes are involved in major depressive disorder. That explains why people respond differently to most commonly prescribed antidepressants, which work by manipulating the uptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin. However, as many as 40 percent of depressed patients do not respond to currently available medications, which take weeks to months to produce a therapeutic response.

Read in Full:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101017133639.htm



 

Terry McLeod Updated: Oct 19th 2010

Average wait time from calling a mental health treatment organization for help and actually engaging in treatment with a professional can take a month. A lot of consumers cancel their appointment or just don’t show up.

From what I’ve seen, physical health has that beat.

David Lloyd of MTM Consulting shared this statistic recently in a talk on the web focused on improving quality; I found that an amazing amount of time to wait for help…Who would wait that long? According to Lloyd’s research, not many folks, and I agree, it’s a long time to wait for health, and I know a lot goes on in my mind in a month.

Regardless of whether the consumers who end up not consuming mental health services are classified as No-Shows or cancellations, or somehow justified as exempt from statistics, the fact is that a bundle of folks aren’t getting help. A key to getting the folks who are now not showing up for appointments is simple business logic. If we serve them quicker, with high quality service, for a reasonable price, they’re more likely to make their appointments. Plus, under these conditions, people improve and tell their friends how great the results of treatment at this particular facility were.

Read in Full:  http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=40329&cn=145



 

Article Date: 19 Oct 2010 – 0:00 PDT

Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused substances, and men are up to twice as likely to develop alcoholism as women. Until now, the underlying biology contributing to this difference in vulnerability has remained unclear.

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry reveals that dopamine may be an important factor.

Researchers from Columbia and Yale studied male and female college-age social drinkers in a laboratory test of alcohol consumption. After consuming an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink, each participant underwent a specialized positron emission tomography (PET) scan, an imaging technique that can measure the amount of alcohol-induced dopamine release.

Dopamine has multiple functions in the brain, but is important in this context because of its pleasurable effects when it is released by rewarding experiences, such as sex or drugs.

Despite similar consumptions of alcohol, the men had greater dopamine release than women. This increase was found in the ventral striatum, an area in the brain strongly associated with pleasure, reinforcement and addiction formation.

“In men, increased dopamine release also had a stronger association with subjective positive effects of alcohol intoxication,” explained Dr. Nina Urban, corresponding author for this study. “This may contribute to the initial reinforcing properties of alcohol and the risk for habit formation.”

Read in Full:  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/204955.php