ADHD, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Nature, NYU / 22.10.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael M. Halassa, MD, PhD, Assistant professor Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Physiology The Neuroscience Institute Depts. of Psychitatry Langone Medical Center New York, NY 10016 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Halassa:  Attention is a vital aspect of our daily life and our minds are not merely a reflection of the outside world, but rather a result of careful selection of inputs that are relevant. In fact, if we indiscriminately open up our senses to what’s out there, we would be totally overwhelmed. Selecting relevant inputs and suppressing distractors is what we call attention, and as humans we are able to attend in a highly intentional manner. Meaning, we choose what to pay attention to, and we do so based on context. If you’re driving and getting directions from your GPS, you’ll be intentionally splitting your attention between your vision and hearing. Now, in one context, you might have just updated the GPS software, so you know it’s reliable; this would allow you to intentionally pay attention more to the voice coming from the GPS. In another context, the GPS software may be outdated making voice instructions unreliable. This context would prompt you to direct your attention more towards using visual navigation cues and less to the GPS voice. How the brain intentionally and dynamically directs attention based context is unknown. The main strength of our study is that we were able to study context-dependent attention in mice. Mice are unique models because they provide genetic tools to study brain circuits. Meaning, we can turn circuits on and off very precisely in the mouse, and in a way we cannot do in other experimental animals. The inability to do these types of manipulations has been the major roadblock for progress in understanding what brain circuits mediate attention and its intentional allocation. Because we couldn’t train mice to drive and listen to the GPS, we decided to do something much simpler. Based on context (the type of background noise in the experimental enclosure), a mouse had to select between conflicting visual and auditory stimuli in order to retrieve a milk reward. Mice love milk; it turns out, and will work tirelessly to do well on getting it. Each trial, the mouse is told ‘you need to pick the light flash’ or ‘you need to pick the auditory sweep’; these stimuli appeared on either side of the mouse randomly so the animal really had to pay attention in order to get its reward. It also had to take the context into account. We found that mice did this task, and as humans would do, they were reliant on the prefrontal cortex for determining the appropriate context. The major finding was that the prefrontal cortex changed the sensitivity of the brain to incoming stimuli (meaning, made the visual stimulus brighter when the mouse cared about vision and made the auditory stimulus louder when the mouse cared about hearing), by influencing activity in the thalamus. The thalamus is the major early relay station in the brain. The prefrontal cortex does that by instructing the brain’s switchboard, known as the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) to control how much visual or auditory information the thalamus was letting through. So in a sense, we discovered that executive function, represented by the prefrontal cortex, can talk to ‘attentional filters’ in the thalamus to determine what ultimately is selected from the outside environment to build our internal world. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 15.10.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christine Walrath, PhD Public Health Division ICF International New York, New York Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Walrath: The study is part of a legislatively mandated evaluation of programs funded by the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, signed into law in 2004 in recognition of the major public health problem of suicide and suicidal behavior in the US. The legislation set aside funding for campuses, states, tribes and US territories to develop, evaluate, and improve early intervention and suicide prevention programs. This is the most widely implemented group of suicide prevention programs in the United States, and allowed a unique opportunity, as reflected in the findings of this study and the study in the American Journal of Public Health in the spring (Walrath, C., Godoy Garraza, L., Reid, H., Goldston, D. B., & McKeon, R. (2015) to demonstrate that comprehensive community based suicide prevention programs appear to be effective in reducing suicide and suicide attempts. As mentioned, this is the second article on the impact of GLS suicide prevention program on youth suicide behavior. The previous one, published in APHA earlier this year, focused on suicide deaths, while this one focuses on suicide attempts. They use different sources for the outcome measures: vital records in one case and a large national survey in the other. In both cases, the county is the unit of analysis. They both take advantage of the availability of a large amount of information for relatively small areas to select counties that are essentially comparable. Making sure that the counties being compared are similar except for the GLS implementation is very important when randomized trials to assess impact of the prevention program are not feasible. The study found a reduction in the rate of suicide attempts among youth 16 to 23 following the implementation of the GLS program in counties exposed to these prevention activities when compared with similar counties that were not exposed to such intervention. The difference is significant and substantial: 4.9 less attempts per thousand youths. There is no evidence of a simultaneous change in the suicide attempt rate among adults, a group that was not targeted by GLS. The findings are consistent with those from the previous study, which found a substantial reduction in suicide mortality among youths 10-24 following GLS implementation: 1.3 fewer deaths per one hundred thousand youths. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Surgical Research / 08.10.2015

Dr. Junaid A. Bhatti MBBS PhD Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, ONMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Junaid A. Bhatti MBBS PhD Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Toronto, ON Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Bhatti:  Bariatric surgery remains an important option for morbidly obese patients where other obesity management options fail. It is a safe procedure with mortality risk not higher than any other major procedure of this type. Some studies report that some patients may experience psychological stress following surgery. Studies on the long-term outcomes noted that there was a higher suicide risk in bariatric patients as compared to the general population. It was not clear whether these risks increased following surgery. In this study, we used the data of bariatric patients from Ontario who underwent surgery between 2006 and 2011. We assessed their emergency room visits three years before and three years following surgery. We looked into whether these patients had significantly more visits related to suicide attempts before compared to post surgery period. Overall, about 111 patients (1%) of the cohort had suicide attempts during follow-up. What we saw is that suicide risk increased by 50% following surgery than before surgery period. The risks were higher, but not significantly higher than others, if they were 35 years or older or from low-income or rural settings. The emergency services utilization of suicide attempts following surgery was more intense for the visits before surgery. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 04.10.2015

Adam Hanley, Doctoral candidate College of Education's Counseling/School Psychology program Florida State UniversityMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Adam Hanley Doctoral candidate College of Education's Counseling/School Psychology program Florida State University Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: This study emerged from the intersection of my personal dislike of dishwashing, my grandmother’s unquestioned enjoyment of the task, and the inevitability of finding myself neck deep in her sink after holiday meals.  Contrasting my suffering with her cheer while pursuing my interest in informal meditation practices challenged me to revisit my dishwashing technique.  Approaching the dishes mindfully, attending to the full sensory experience and connecting with the task as an act of kindness, shifted my dishwashing experience.  The current study was developed to explore whether my new relationship with dishwashing was an isolated phenomenon or might be more generalizable.  To test this generalizability, 51 undergraduate college students were recruited and randomly assigned to wash a standardized set of dishes after reading instructions on either mindful or “correct” dishwashing procedures. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 30.09.2015

Brick Johnstone, Ph.D., ABPP Professor MU Department of Health Psychology DC116.88 Columbia, MO 65212 MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Brick Johnstone, Ph.D., ABPP Professor MU Department of Health Psychology DC116.88 Columbia, MO 65212  Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Johnstone:  We are interested in identifying the specific religious/spiritual factors associated with health.  In general it is known that positive spirituality is associated with better health, and for a small population, negative spiritual beliefs are associated with worse health.  We wanted to see about such relationships for individuals who had any degree of negative spirituality (i.e., belief they were being punished, abandoned). The main finding is that even a minor degree of negative spiritual beliefs is associated with worse health. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 24.09.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Sanda Dolcos PhD Post-doc Fellow University of Illinois Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Dolcos : With its high prevalence rate, anxiety is a pressing concern in our society. Identifying psychological and neural markers indexing resilience against anxiety will help the development of prevention and intervention programs. It has been recognized that trait optimism fosters resilience against anxiety, and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is sensitive to anxiety symptoms, but the relationship among the factors at these different levels --personality, brain, and symptoms-- has not been clear. Medical Research:  What are the main findings? 1) trait optimism was associated with lower level of anxiety 2) trait optimism is positively associated with the left OFC volume 3) the left OFC volume was negatively linked to anxiety, a relation partially accounted for by their mutual association with trait optimism. (more…)
Author Interviews, Lancet, Mental Health Research / 24.09.2015

Professor Jane Pirkis PhD Centre for Mental Health Melbourne School of Population and Global Health University of Melbourne, AustraliaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Jane Pirkis PhD Centre for Mental Health Melbourne School of Population and Global Health University of Melbourne, Australia Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Professor Pirkis:  Public sites that gain a reputation as places where people might go to seek to end their lives are a particular problem in suicide prevention.  Any suicide is tragic, but suicides at these sites have an extra level of complexity because they can lead to copycat acts and can have a major impact on people who work at or live near these sites, or visit them for other reasons.  Our meta-analysis, which pooled data from 18 individual studies from around the world,  found that three interventions work really well in reducing suicides at these sites.
  • Restricting access to means (e.g., installing barriers) can reduce suicides at these sites by 90% or more, and
  • encouraging help-seeking (e.g., installing phones that link directly to crisis services) and
  • increasing the likelihood of someone intervening (e.g., installing CCTV cameras, training staff who work at these sites) can each reduce them by around 50%, or more in some cases.  The interventions seem to work well together and complement each other too.  
(more…)
AHA Journals, Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, Cognitive Issues, Mental Health Research / 16.09.2015

Daniela Carnevale, PhD, Researcher Laboratory of Giuseppe Lembo, MD, PhD Dept. of Molecular Medicine "Sapienza" University of Rome & Dept. of Angiocardioneurology and Translational Medicine IRCCS Neuromed - Technology Park Località CamerelleMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniela Carnevale, PhD, Researcher Laboratory of Giuseppe Lembo, MD, PhD Dept. of Molecular Medicine "Sapienza" University of Rome & Dept. of Angiocardioneurology and Translational Medicine IRCCS Neuromed - Technology Park Località Camerelle Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Carnevale: Nowadays, one of the most demanding challenge in medicine is preserving cognitive functions during aging. It is well known that cardiovascular risk factors have a profound impact on the possibility of developing dementia with aging. However, we have no means to investigate this aspect in patients with cardiovascular diseases. Indeed, although we have clear clinical paradigms to explore target organ damage of vascular diseases like hypertension, we are less prepared to afford the brain damage that may result from chronic vascular diseases and impact on cognitive functions. Thus, we aimed at finding a diagnostic paradigm to assess brain damage that could predict for future development of dementia. Since it is becoming increasingly clear that hypertension may determine cognitive decline, even before manifest neurodegeneration, we elaborated a paradigm of analysis that are essentially focused on brain imaging and cognitive assessment. In particular, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) on magnetic resonance that allows to reconstruct white matter connections that correlate with selective cognitive functions, and specifics tests for the evaluation of subtle alterations of cognitive functions. (more…)
Aging, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Neurology / 15.09.2015

R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD Director of the Memory Disorders Program Georgetown University Medical CenterMedicalResearch.com Interview with: R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD Director of the Memory Disorders Program Georgetown University Medical Center Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Turner: The resveratrol trial originated from the extensive scientific literature demonstrating that caloric restriction (consuming only 2/3 usual calories) prevents or delays diseases of aging - including Alzheimer's disease (AD) in laboratory animals. The molecular mechanism is thought to involve sirtuins - a group of genes/proteins that sense energy balance to regulate gene expression. Sirtuins are activated by caloric restriction (a mild stressor) to express genes that promote resilience of the organism. Resveratrol is a potent activator of sirtuins - thus bypassing the requirement for caloric restriction. On the opposite side of the coin - caloric excess, midlife obesity, and diabetes are strong risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. And we have long-known that resveratrol is found in red grapes, red wine, and other foods that promote general health. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Sexual Health / 10.09.2015

Emmanuele A. Jannini, MD Chair of Endocrinology and Medical Sexology Department of Systems Medicine Tor Vergata University of Rome Roma, Italy.MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Emmanuele A. Jannini, MD Chair of Endocrinology and Medical Sexology Department of Systems Medicine Tor Vergata University of Rome Roma, Italy Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Prof. Jannini: The background is due to the large experience of the researcher of my team, Dr. Giacomo Ciocca, on homophobia, a largely diffuse phenomenon in various forms. Although many social and cultural factors predispose to homophobic attitude, we have hypothesized that some psychological aspects of personality were in association with homophobia. Therefore, we found that psychoticism, a dysfunctional trait of thought, immature defense mechanisms, i.e., primitive responses to anxiety states, and a fearful model of relationship with other due to an insecure attachment style, could be considered risk factors for homophobic attitude. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, CMAJ, Mental Health Research / 09.09.2015

Dr. Evan Wood MD, PhD, ABIM, FRCPC, ABAM Diplomat Professor of Medicine, UBC Canada Research Chair in Inner City Medicine Co-Director, Urban Health Research Initiative Medical Director for Addiction Services, Vancouver Coastal Health Physician Program Director for Addiction, Providence Health CareMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Evan Wood MD, PhD, ABIM, FRCPC, ABAM Diplomat Professor of Medicine, UBC Canada Research Chair in Inner City Medicine Co-Director, Urban Health Research Initiative Medical Director for Addiction Services, Vancouver Coastal Health Physician Program Director for Addiction Providence Health Care  Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Wood: Drugs with the potential to produce altered states of consciousness were once the focus of intensive study in the 1950s and 1960s. While promising, this field of research has been dormant for decades but is now re-emerging as an area of intensive investigation and showing real potential as a new therapeutic paradigm in addiction medicine and mental health. While in its infancy, this is expected to be an area of much study in the coming years. Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report? Dr. Wood: Psychedelic medicine is in its infancy and not ready for implementation in clinical practice. Clinicians and the community of individuals suffering from addiction and other concerns will hopefully support this area of research so that critical information on impacts and safety can be gathered. (more…)
Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Mental Health Research / 07.09.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eric A.F. Herbst MSc Ph.D. student Human Health and Nutritional Sciences University of Guelph Guelph, ONEric A.F. Herbst MSc Ph.D. student Human Health and Nutritional Sciences University of Guelph Guelph, ON Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Many neurological diseases result in declines in mitochondrial content and function in the brain. Therefore, the purpose for this study was to determine if mitochondrial content could be enhanced in the brain through exercise, as previously demonstrated in skeletal muscle, and also to determine if similar exercise-signaling pathways are activated between the two tissues in the process. This study found that despite reproducing similar findings in skeletal muscle, acute and chronic exercise did not activate traditional signaling mechanisms (AMPK, ERK1/2, CAMKII, P38) in either the cortex or striatum of the brain, nor did it result in sustained increases in mitochondrial respiration, DNA copy number, or protein content. (more…)
Author Interviews, McGill, Mental Health Research / 01.09.2015

Fabrice Jollant, MD, PhD McGill University, Department of Psychiatry & Douglas Mental Health University Institute McGill Group for Suicide Studies Montréal (Québec), CanadaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Fabrice Jollant, MD, PhD McGill University, Department of Psychiatry & Douglas Mental Health University Institute McGill Group for Suicide Studies Montréal (Québec), Canada Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Jollant: Suicide takes almost 1 million lives each year worldwide. Improving suicide prevention necessitates improving our understanding of the mechanisms leading to these complex acts. We know that while many people who died from suicide had experienced negative life events (divorce, job loss, grief), most people who experience these events will not commit suicide, not even think about suicide. Similarly, while more than 90% of suicide completers had suffered a major mental disorders (mainly depression and substance abuse) and treating these mental disorders can reduce suicide rates, 90% of patients will never die from suicide. Thus, research focuses now on the specific factors that make some individuals more vulnerable. We previously found that individuals who attempted suicide are more likely to make risky choices at a gambling task than patients who went through depression but never attempted suicide. They tend to choose the options that yield more gains immediately but are long-term disadvantageous. People who choose this way are also more likely to have problems in their interpersonal relationships, a classic trigger of suicidal crisis. Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Jollant: This study continues our previous series of investigations. Here, we assessed decision-making in close biological relatives of suicide completers. We know that suicide is heritable and can run within some families. So, we were interested in knowing if risky decision-making could be one factor transmitted within families of suicide completers. We recruited healthy individuals who had lost a close biological relative from suicide, but never attempted suicide themselves. We found that these persons also tend to choose the riskiest options. However, we could not find some other cognitive deficits previously found in suicide attempters, e.g. deficient cognitive control. These normal cognitions may therefore counterbalance their deficits in decision-making and maybe protect them against suicide. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Psychological Science / 30.08.2015

Brian W. Haas, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology University of Georgia MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Brian W. Haas, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Psychology University of Georgia Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Haas: We used a new way to study Borderline Personality Disorder.  We studied the traits associated with this condition in healthy people not diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.  We found that people that possess more Borderline Personality traits exhibit reduced brain activity in parts of the brain important for empathy. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Microbiome / 26.08.2015

Keith A. Crandall, PhD Director - Computational Biology Institute George Washington University Innovation Hall Suite 305 Ashburn, VA 20147-2766MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Keith A. Crandall, PhD Director - Computational Biology Institute George Washington University Innovation Hall Suite 305 Ashburn, VA 20147-2766 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Crandall: We wanted to investigate whether or not there were significant differences in the microbiome (microbial composition) of patients with schizophrenia versus controls.  The other researchers have demonstrated a connection between microbiome diversity and brain development and behavior modulation associated with a variety of disorders.  Our initial study focuses on the oropharyngeal as a target for the microbiome characterization, but we have additional work relating to other microbiomes (e.g., gut) for which we are still in the process of analyzing the data.     Collected microbiome data from 16 individuals with schizophrenia and 16 controls (matched as best we could and corrected statistically for differences between the populations), we showed differences in the microbiome taxonomic diversity and functional diversity.  Specifically, we identified a significant increase in the number of metabolic pathways related to metabolite transport systems; whereas, carbohydrate and lipid pathways and energy metabolism were abundant in controls. (more…)
Addiction, Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Psychological Science / 18.08.2015

Professor Jackie Andrade PhD School of Psychology Cognition Institute Plymouth University Plymouth Australia MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Professor Jackie Andrade PhD School of Psychology Cognition Institute Plymouth University Plymouth Australia   Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Andrade: We want to understand the mental processes that are going on during episodes of craving for drugs or food. We know that cravings are largely mental events because people rarely experience them when in the middle of a mentally-engaging task - giving a presentation or finishing an exciting novel, for example. By understanding the mental processes underpinning cravings, we can improve treatments for addiction and eating problems, and also find ways of strengthening desires for healthy activities. Visual mental imagery is a key component of craving, with people picturing themselves indulging their desires. Laboratory research has shown that blocking this craving imagery can reduce the strength of cravings for food and cigarettes. Tetris is a good task for doing this because it involves a lot of visual processing to keep track of the different coloured shapes and mentally rotate them to fit the spaces. For our latest study, we wanted to find out if Tetris helped block cravings in ‘real life’ rather than in the laboratory, and whether it worked for a range of common cravings. We asked 31 participants to carry iPods with them for a week. They received text messages 7 times a day prompting them to use the iPod to report whether they were craving something and, if so, what it was and how strong the craving was. A random 15 participants assigned to the Tetris condition were also asked to play Tetris for 3 minutes and answer the craving questions again. For this group, we compared the before-Tetris and after-Tetris craving scores on each occasion and found that cravings were 20% weaker after playing Tetris. People played Tetris 40 times on average, but the craving-reducing effect did not wear off as they got used to the game. The control group who reported cravings without playing Tetris allowed us to see how cravings varied naturally across the week. Tetris reduced craving strength across the range of cravings reported, which included cravings for drugs (alcohol, nicotine, caffeine), food, and ‘other activities’ including sleep, videogaming, sex and social interaction. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, Mental Health Research / 30.07.2015

Alexander C. Tsai, MD, PhD Center for Global Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, MassachusettsMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alexander C. Tsai, MD, PhD Center for Global Health Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies Cambridge, Massachusetts Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Tsai: Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among middle aged women, and the rates have been climbing over the past decade. At the same time, we know that Americans are becoming more and more isolated. As one example, over the past two decades, there has been a tripling in the number of people who say they don't have anyone to confide in about important matters. In our study, we tracked more than 70,000 American women over two decades and found that the most socially isolated women had a threefold increased risk of suicide. (more…)
Author Interviews, Depression, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 10.07.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Katie Burkhouse, Graduate Student and Dr. Brandon Gibb Ph.D Professor of Psychology Director of the Mood Disorders Institute and Center for Affective Science Binghamton University Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Gibb:  One of the strongest risk factors for depression is a family history of the disorder.  However, even among this at-risk group, the majority of children of depressed parents do not develop depression themselves.  For those who do become depressed, the depression can severely and negatively affect their social and academic functioning, become chronic or recurrent over the lifespan, and increase risk for suicide.  What is needed therefore, is a good indicator of which children may be at greatest risk for depression so that interventions can be targeted to these individuals.  We believe that pupil dilation may represent one such marker.  Changes in pupil dilation are associated with activity in the brain’s emotional circuits and have been linked in previous research to the presence of depression.  What my graduate student Katie Burkhouse found is that, even among children who are not currently experiencing symptoms of depression, the degree to which their pupil dilates when they look at pictures of sad faces predicts their risk for developing clinically significant episodes of depression over the next two years.  The findings were specific to pupil responses to sad faces and were not observed when children looked at happy or angry faces suggesting that there is something specific to how the children were processing sad images. (more…)
Author Interviews, Insomnia, JAMA, Mental Health Research / 07.07.2015

Jason Ong, Ph.D., CBSM Associate Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences Director, Behavioral Sleep Medicine Training Program Rush University Medical CenterMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jason Ong, Ph.D., CBSM Associate Professor, Department of Behavioral Sciences Director, Behavioral Sleep Medicine Training Program Rush University Medical Center Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Insomnia is a very common sleep problem that was previously thought to be related to another medical or psychiatric condition.  Evidence now supports the notion that insomnia can emerge as a disorder distinct from the comorbid condition.  In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), the most widely used nonpharmacologic treatment for insomnia, in the context of medical and psychiatric comorbidities. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 37 studies and found that 36% of patients who received cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia were in remission at post-treatment compared to 17% who received a control or comparison condition.  CBT-I had medium to large effects for improving sleep quality and reducing the amount of time awake in bed.  Positive findings were also found on the comorbid condition, with greater improvements in psychiatric conditions compared to medical conditions. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research / 25.06.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Ezequiel Morsella, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Neuroscience Department of Psychology San Francisco State University Assistant Adjunct Professor Department of Neurology University of California, San Francisco Boardmember, Scientific Advisory Board Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), Buenos Aires Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Morsella: The theoretical framework, Passive Frame Theory, builds on an action-based, theoretical project that first appeared in Psychological Review, in 2015. The framework is a synthesis of hypotheses from disparate fields. It reveals that consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior.  From this unique, action-based perspective, consciousness is in the service of the somatic nervous system. How consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, ‘low level,’ and passive than the kinds of functions that theorists have attributed to consciousness. (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, Mental Health Research, Occupational Health / 21.05.2015

Dr. Hope M. Tiesman MSPH, PhD CDC, AtlantaMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Hope M. Tiesman MSPH, PhD CDC, Atlanta Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Tiesman: The authors regularly monitor non-occupational injury trends, including the recent and significant increase in suicide rates. This finding led the authors to consider how these non-occupational trends impacted the workplace. We used data for two large national surveillance systems.  We obtained data on workplace suicides from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Census of Fatal Occupational Injury (CFOI) which compiles data on all fatal work-related injuries in the US.  We obtained data on non-workplace suicides from the CDC's Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System or WISQARS. WISQARS data are compiled using national death certificate data.  From here we calculated suicide rates and compared trends across workplace and non-workplace suicides as well as examined the socio-demographics and occupational characteristics of those who chose suicide in the workplace. Several important findings to highlight.  Across the 8-yr timeframe, we found that workplace suicide rates remained relatively stable, even somewhat decreasing that it is until 2007 when a large and significant jump in rates was found.  This was in contrast with non-workplace suicide rates which increased over the entire study period.  Men had signifıcantly higher workplace suicide rates compared to women and generally, as age increased, so did workplace suicide rates.  Those aged between 65 and 74 years had the highest suicide rate of all workers which was also a bit different from non-workplace suicide rates.  Finally, we found that those in protective service occupations, such as police and firefighters, had the highest workplace suicide rates, followed closely by those in farming/fishing/and forestry occupations.  These occupations have been associated with higher overall suicide rates in prior studies.  A somewhat novel finding was that those in automotive maintenance and repair occupations also had significantly higher workplace suicide rates. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics, Race/Ethnic Diversity / 20.05.2015

Jeff Bridge, Ph.D Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice Principal Investigator The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's HospitalMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeff Bridge, Ph.D Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice Principal Investigator The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital Medical Research: What is the background for this study? Dr. Bridge: Suicide is a leading cause of death among children younger than 12 years. Suicide rates in this age group have remained steady overall for the past 20 years, but this is the first national study to observe higher suicide rates among black children compared to white children. Little is known about the epidemiology of suicide in this age group, as prior research has typically excluded children younger than 10 years old and investigated trends only within specific older age groups. Medical Research: What are the main findings? Dr. Bridge: We found that suicide ranked 14th as a cause of death among 5- to 11-year old black children in 1993-97 but rose to 9th in 2008-12. For white children, suicide ranked 12th in 1993-97 and 11th in 2008-12. Rates have remained stable in Hispanic and non-Hispanic children. The findings in this study highlight an emerging racial disparity in the epidemiology of childhood suicide. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Mental Health Research, Stroke, Toxin Research / 22.04.2015

Elissa Hope Wilker, Sc.D. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Harvard Medical SchoolMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Elissa Hope Wilker, Sc.D. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Harvard Medical School Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Wilke: Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with cerebrovascular disease and cognitive impairment, but the impact on structural changes in the brain is not well understood. We studied older adults living in the greater Boston area and throughout New England and New York and we looked at the air pollution levels and how far they lived from major roads. We then linked this information to findings from MRI studies of structural brain images. Although air pollution levels in this area are fairly low compared to levels observed in other parts of the world, we found that people who lived in areas with higher levels of air pollution had smaller brain volumes, and higher risk of silent strokes. The magnitude of association that we observed for a 2 µg/m3 increase in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) (a range commonly observed across urban areas) was approximately equivalent to one year of brain aging. The association with silent strokes is of concern, because these are associated with increased risk of overt strokes, walking problems, and depression. (more…)
Author Interviews, Mental Health Research, Probiotics / 14.04.2015

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Laura Steenbergen Leiden University, Institute for Psychological Research, Cognitive Psychology Leiden, The Netherlands Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Food supplements, among which probiotics, are becoming more and more popular. A lot is known about the effect of probiotics on the physical functioning, but even though there are some rat studies on the effects of probiotics on mental well-being, not much is known about the effect in humans. The few studies on humans that are available show beneficial effects on mood when people experience a bad mood, or psychological distress. Worldwide, millions of people are suffering from mood disorders like for instance depression, but not everyone receives treatment for this. Research on probiotics has shown that they are safe and easily available, and we therefore wanted to investigate if probiotics could perhaps be promising in serving as a preventive or adjuvant therapy for mood disorders of anxiety or depression. We therefore focused on cognitive reactivity to sad mood, which measures the degree to which people activate dysfunctional thought patterns when experiencing a sad mood. This measure is known to be predictive of the onset and development of depression. Compared to subjects who received a 4-week placebo intervention, participants who received a 4-week multispecies probiotics intervention showed significantly reduced aggressive and ruminative thoughts. Even if preliminary, these results provide the first evidence that the intake of probiotics may help reduce negative thoughts associated with sad mood. As such, our findings shed an interesting new light on the potential of probiotics to serve as adjuvant or preventive therapy for depression. So if you are interested in taking probiotics then you could check out something like these probiotics in india. (more…)
Author Interviews, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 01.04.2015

Dr. Julie Magno Zito, PhD University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Julie Magno Zito, PhD University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201 MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? Dr. Zito: Atypical antipsychotic (AAP) use in children and adolescents has grown substantially in the past decade, largely for behavioral (non-psychotic) conditions. Poor and foster care children with Medicaid-insurance are particularly affected. This ‘off-label’ usage has insufficient evidence of benefits regarding improved functioning (i.e. appropriate behavior and performance, socially and academically) while the little evidence that accrues tends to emphasize ‘symptoms’, i.e. less acting out. Recent evidence shows that youth treated with atypical antipsychotics are at risk of serious cardiometabolic adverse events including diabetes emerging after atypical antipsychotics are ‘on board’. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Johns Hopkins, Mental Health Research / 26.03.2015

Melinda C Power, ScD Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Epidemiology Department, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Neurology Department, Johns Hopkins School of MedicineMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Melinda C Power, ScD Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Epidemiology Department, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Neurology Department, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Power: Air pollution may be related to mental health, particularly anxiety, through effects on oxidative stress and systemic inflammation or through promotion or aggravation of chronic diseases.  However, there has been very little research on the relation between air pollution exposures and anxiety in people.   Our study found that those with higher exposures to fine particulate matter, a type of air pollution, were more likely to experience elevated anxiety symptom levels.  Our study also suggests that recent exposures to find particulate matter air pollution are potentially more relevant to anxiety symptom levels than long-term past exposures. (more…)
Author Interviews, Hospital Readmissions, Mental Health Research / 26.03.2015

Brian K. Ahmedani, PhD, LMSW Research Scientist Henry Ford Health System Center for Health Policy & Health Services Research Detroit, MI 48202MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Brian K. Ahmedani, PhD, LMSW Research Scientist Henry Ford Health System Center for Health Policy & Health Services Research Detroit, MI 48202 Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Ahmedani: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have begun penalizing hospitals for excessive all-cause hospital readmissions within 30 days after discharge for pneumonia, heart failure, and myocardial infarction.  We wanted to determine the influence of comorbid mental health and substance use conditions on the rate of 30-day hospital readmissions for individuals with these conditions.  Overall, individuals with a comorbid mental health condition were readmitted to the hospital within 30-days approximately 5% more often than those without one (21.7% versus 16.5%).  Comorbid depression and anxiety were associated with a 30-day readmission rate of more than 23% each, overall. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Depression, Mental Health Research / 23.03.2015

Michael H. Antoni, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Director, Center for Psycho-oncology Research Program co-Leader, Cancer Prevention Control and Survivorship Sylvester Cancer Center Sylvester Professor Director Miami CTSI Pilot and Translational Studies Component University of MiamiMedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michael H. Antoni, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Director, Center for Psycho-oncology Research Program co-Leader, Cancer Prevention Control and Survivorship Sylvester Cancer Center Sylvester Professor, Director Miami CTSI Pilot and Translational Studies Component University of Miami Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Antoni: We have been conducting stress management intervention trials with breast cancer patients for the past two decades. We have shown that the form of stress management we developed, a 10-week cognitive behavioral stress management (CBSM) intervention, combining relaxation techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and coping and interpersonal skills training (assertiveness and anger management) delivered in a supportive group, can improve how women adapt during breast cancer treatment and up to one year later. These improvements in psychological status (less depressive symptoms, less negative mood and more positive mood) are associated with reductions in circulating serum cortisol levels, improved immune function and decreased inflammatory signaling over the first year of treatment. Since depressive symptoms are prevalent during cancer treatment our prior work showing that cognitive behavioral stress management reduces depressive symptoms over the 1st yr of treatment is significant . Since persisting depressive symptoms into survivorship are also common these new findings that women receiving cognitive behavioral stress management during primary treatment show beneficial effects out to 15 yrs suggests a real impact on their quality of life well into survivorship. Further, since data just released this week at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Savannah, GA shows that depressive symptoms during breast cancer treatment predict greater odds of mortality over the next 8-15 yrs it is plausible that these cognitive behavioral stress management effects on reduced long-term depressive symptoms may have implications for survival. Finally since depressive symptoms relate to greater signs of inflammation in breast cancer patients and because inflammation promotes cancer disease progression via effects on angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis, then managing depressive symptoms during and after active treatment for breast cancer could have effects on health outcomes via lower inflammation. (more…)