Mental Health: January 2008 Archives
There has been a threefold increase in new cases of self reported post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among combat-exposed military personnel since 2001, according to a study published on the British Medical Journal website.
Concerns have been raised about the health impact of military deployment. Studies have estimated as many as 30% of Vietnam War veterans developed post-traumatic stress disorder at some point following the war and, among 1991 Gulf War veterans, as many as 10% were reported to have post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms years after returning from deployment.
Ever wonder if that quiet girl who hid in the back corner of the classroom ever burst out of her shell? Perhaps she became a whiz at computers. And what about the class clown? Did all his attention-grabbing antics develop into a charm that would later earn him big bucks selling timeshares in Bermuda?
New research shows that in most cases the personalities displayed very early in life — as young as preschool — will stay with us into adulthood. The wallflowers will stay shy and reticent, though they will learn in time to be a little more sociable and assertive. And the average kids, the more resilient ones, will remain so.
"These findings are inconsistent with the idea that exposure to thimerosal is a major cause of autism," study coauthor Robert Schechter, MD, from the California Department of Public Health, in Richmond, told Medscape Psychiatry.
Diagnosed cases of autism have continued to increase in the past decade, and it has been suggested that this may be linked to increased exposure to thimerosal in vaccines. Thimerosal has been used since the 1930s to prevent microbial contamination in vaccines. Infants and toddlers in the United States were exposed to more thimerosal after recommendations in 1991 that influenza and hepatitis B vaccines be added to childhood immunization. They have been exposed to less thimerosal since its removal from childhood vaccines was recommended in 1999. From 1999 to 2004, the average exposure to thimerosal among healthy infants and 2-year-olds dropped to minimal amounts.
But other doctors — including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind — say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
Scientists have found a variation in a gene that may raise the risk of developing autism, especially when the variant is inherited from mothers rather than fathers. The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. Inheriting the gene variant does not mean that a child will inevitably develop autism. It means that a child may be more vulnerable to developing the disease than are children without the variation.
According to the surgeon general, more than 60 percent of American adults don’t exercise regularly and 25 percent aren’t active at all. The Center for Disease Control says that 34 percent of Americans are overweight and more than 72 million people were obese from 2005 to 2006. Inertia has become a national emergency.
For decades, psychologists around the world have studied why people exercise — and why they don’t — and there’s a growing body of work dedicated to helping you get up off the couch.
Going to church might help you breathe easier. A new study by Temple University’s Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., found that religious activity may protect and maintain pulmonary health in the elderly.
“Pulmonary function is an important indicator of respiratory and overall health, yet little is known about the psychosocial factors that might predict pulmonary function,” Maselko said. “At the same time, religious activity is emerging as a potential health-promoting factor, especially among the elderly. We wanted to determine whether there was a connection between the two.”
