Category: Depression

The drug takes effect within hours.

Ketamine — a type of anaesthetic — has anti-suicidal effects within hours of administration, new research finds.

The drug performed better than a commonly used sedative called midazolam.

The drug could be useful for those experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Dr Michael Grunebaum, the study’s first author, said:

“There is a critical window in which depressed patients who are suicidal need rapid relief to prevent self-harm.

Currently available antidepressants can be effective in reducing suicidal thoughts in patients with depression, but they can take weeks to have an effect.

Suicidal, depressed patients need treatments that are rapidly effective in reducing suicidal thoughts when they are at highest risk.

Currently, there is no such treatment for rapid relief of suicidal thoughts in depressed patients.”

The study compared ketamine with midazolam in a group of 80 people experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Those given ketamine showed a greater reduction in suicidal thoughts.

Researchers found that the beneficial effects of ketamine persisted six weeks later.

Dr Grunebaum said:

“This study shows that ketamine offers promise as a rapidly acting treatment for reducing suicidal thoughts in patients with depression.

Additional research to evaluate ketamine’s antidepressant and anti-suicidal effects may pave the way for the development of new antidepressant medications that are faster acting and have the potential to help individuals who do not respond to currently available treatments.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Grunebaum et al., 2017).

Many colouring in books advertise themselves as ‘art therapy’, but do they make people feel better?

Colouring in books do help to improve people’s mood, new research finds.

However, ‘real’ art therapy has other advantages on top, the authors argue.

Dr Girija Kaimal, who led the study, said:

“The main takeaway is that coloring has some limited benefits like reducing stress and negative mental states.

But it does not shift anything else of substance, develop relationships, nor result in any personal development.”

Art therapists argue that therapy is about more than just feeling better, it is about growing oneself.

The study compared simple colouring in with a 40-minute art therapy session.

This involved people creating art while being facilitated by an art therapist.

Both groups showed similar improvements in wellbeing after the sessions.

However, Dr Kaimal explained that the art therapy had some additional effects:

“The art therapists’ open studio sessions resulted in more empowerment, creativity and improved mood, which are significant for individuals striving to improve their quality of life and make lasting change.

Many of the outcomes were enabled through the relational support from the art therapist

The art therapist-facilitated session involves more interpersonal interaction, problem solving around creative choices and expression, empowerment and perhaps more learning about the self and others.

That all contributes to the outcomes we saw.”

Colouring in, then, can be effective to make you feel better in the short-term.

Dr Kaimal said:

“Coloring might allow for some reduction in distress or negativity, but since it is a structured task, it might not allow for further creative expression, discovery and exploration which we think is associated with the positive mood improvements we saw in the open studio condition.”

The study was published in the journal Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal (Kaimal et al., 2017).

Research on 2 million people around the world reveals the most depressed time of life.

People are most depressed in middle age, research on two million people from 80 nations finds.

In the US, the risk of depression peaks at around 40-years-old for men and around 50-years-old for women.

In the UK, the highest probability of being depressed is at age 44.

The causes of mid-life depression are hard to explain, as they happen to all kinds of people.

For example, it doesn’t seem to be related to marriage, divorce or having (or not having) children.

Professor Andrew Oswald, study co-author, explained:

“Some people suffer more than others but in our data the average effect is large.

It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without children.

Nobody knows why we see this consistency.”

The researchers found a U-shaped curve between happiness and age.

In other words, people were happiest when they were young and old, but their happiness dropped in between.

Professor Oswald said:

“What causes this apparently U-shaped curve, and its similar shape in different parts of the developed and even often developing world, is unknown.

However, one possibility is that individuals learn to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses, and in mid-life quell their infeasible aspirations.

Another possibility is that cheerful people live systematically longer.

A third possibility is that a kind of comparison process is at work in which people have seen similar-aged peers die and value more their own remaining years.

Perhaps people somehow learn to count their blessings.”

Professor Oswald said that those living to 70-years-old and beyond could look forward to feeling as happy as a 20-year-old, on average:

“It looks from the data like something happens deep inside humans.

For the average person in the modern world, the dip in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year.

Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period.

But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20 year old.

Perhaps realizing that such feelings are completely normal in midlife might even help individuals survive this phase better.”

The study was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2008).

Surveys of over half a million teens in the US hint at worrying trend.

More time in front of screens may be to blame for the increase in depression and suicidal behaviours among young people, study finds.

Girls may be particularly prone to the possible negative effects of too much time spent on smartphones tablets and computers.

The conclusions come from surveys of over half a million teens in the US.

These have found that suicide rates for girls aged 13-18 have increased 65% between 2010 and 2015.

The number of teenage girls reporting severe depression also increased 58% in this period.

Professor Jean Twenge, the study’s first author, said:

“These increases in mental health issues among teens are very alarming.

Teens are telling us they are struggling, and we need to take that very seriously.

When I first saw these sudden increases in mental health issues, I wasn’t sure what was causing them.

But these same surveys ask teens how they spend their leisure time, and between 2010 and 2015, teens increasingly spent more time with screens and less time on other activities.

That was by far the largest change in their lives during this five-year period, and it’s not a good formula for mental health.”

The study showed that those who spent more than 5 hours per day on electronic devices had almost twice the suicidal tendencies of those spent an hour or less per day.

Professor Twenge recommends limiting screen-time to around one or two hours per day to decrease the risk.

Professor Twenge said:

“Although we can’t say for sure that the growing use of smartphones caused the increase in mental health issues, that was by far the biggest change in teens’ lives between 2010 and 2015.”

On a more positive note, the study found reduced depression and suicide was linked to:

• sports and exercise,
• doing homework,
• talking to real people in real life!

Because of its design, this study cannot tell us that increased screen time is causing depression and suicide.

It could be that depressed teens tend to use screens more.

The study was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science (Twenge et al., 2017).

Depression symptoms are affected by how you listen to music.

Listening to sad music in a group and talking about sad things makes people feel more depressed, research finds.

Talking in this way in a group about sad things is more common among younger people.

However, listening to inspiring music in a group and talking about life and music makes people feel less depressed.

Dr Sandra Garrido, the study’s first author, said:

“Behaviors relating to music use fall into distinct patterns, reflecting either healthy or unhealthy thought processes.

These results reveal important information about how people with depression use music.”

So music can be used positively to feel better and it can also be used negatively to feel worse.

Unfortunately, some people are particularly poor at coping with with obstacles and negative emotions, as the study’s authors explain:

“People with generally maladaptive coping styles tend to report negative outcomes from both listening to music alone and from group interactions around music.

It appears that this occurs because such people are more likely to engage in ruminating with music – using music both to intensify negative affect and to focus on negative thoughts and memories.

Rumination involves going over and over negative events and emotions in the mind, trying to work out the causes and effects.

Some people seem to have an automatic preference for engaging in rumination.

This kind of preference is usually linked to more depression symptoms.

Dr Garrido said:

“While young people with tendencies to depression who are a part of social groups may be perceived as receiving valuable social support, our results here suggest that the positive impacts of such group interactions depend on the types of processes that are taking place in the group.

Susceptible individuals with a predilection for rumination may be most likely to suffer negative outcomes from group rumination, with social feedback deepening and exacerbating negative thoughts and feelings.

However, group interactions that provide social support or opportunities for processing of emotions in a constructive way have a much higher likelihood of being positive.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Garrido et al., 2017).

Depression frequently recurs but therapy and drugs are not the only answers.

Seeking out social relationships may help people to recover from depression.

Building a social support system helps people stay depression-free.

In addition, people who find activities they enjoy recover better from depression.

• Try Dr Jeremy Dean’s ebook: Activate: How To Find Joy Again By Changing What You Do

By contrast, people who are aggressive loners are at a heightened risk of depression recurrence, research finds. Those who do not seek out social relationships find it harder to recover from depression.

Aggression can also make it difficult to for these type of people to heal.

Dr Jackie Gollan, the study’s first author, said:

“Depression is a recurrent disease for a lot of people just like cancer.

People who receive cognitive behavioral psychotherapy for depression tend to feel less depressed when they complete it.

However, other factors in their lives beyond their mood need to be identified if we are to help them stay well.

We need to consider who people are and how they interact with others to understand how patients remain nondepressed.”

Somewhere between 50% and 80% of people successfully treated with therapy experience a relapse within two years.

Dr Gollan explained how moderate dependency on others may help people recover:

“Low dependency increases risk for relapse while moderate dependency encourages recovered patients to seek out social relationships that may function, over time, to reduce relapse risk.”

The research followed 78 people whose depression was successfully treated with therapy and followed them over two years.

44% of people relapsed, but people with no social support system were most at risk.

Dr Gollan explained that more aggressive people were also more likely to relapse…

“…perhaps because they don’t make good friends and turn off people.

In their professional careers they have channeled aggression in productive, socially acceptable ways to their advantage and use people to their advantage.

They also are pathologically independent and independence may be a risk factor if you have depression.”

Dr Gollan said finding enjoyment was the key to recovery:

“We need to focus on how the activities feel.

We don’t know why, but it is becoming clear that people are less at risk for relapse when they do things they enjoy rather than working on overcoming their negative thinking patterns.

The treatment should be tailor-made to the depressed patient.”

The study was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy in Toronto in 1999 (Gollan & Jacobson, 1999).

The surprising effect of these drugs on your heart, kidneys, lungs and liver.

Taking antidepressants is linked to a 33% higher risk of death, new research finds.

The risk of a cardiovascular ‘event’ (strokes and heart attacks) was also 14% higher for those taking antidepressants.

This research used data from hundreds of thousands of people collected from many different studies.

Dr Paul Andrews, who led the study, said:

“We are very concerned by these results.

They suggest that we shouldn’t be taking antidepressant drugs without understanding precisely how they interact with the body.”

It is well-known that antidepressants change mood by affecting levels of the neurotransmitter, serotonin.

What is less well-known is that serotonin is also used in the heart, kidney, lungs and liver — indeed all the major organs.

Potentially, the drug could stop the major organs working properly.

Family doctors often prescribe antidepressants on the assumption that they are safe.

However, Ms Marta Maslej, the study’s first author, said:

“Our findings are important because they undermine this assumption.

I think people would be much less willing to take these drugs if they were aware how little is known about their impact outside of the brain, and that what we do know points to an increased risk of death.”

Dr Benoit Mulsant, study co-author and practicing psychiatrist, said we need to know more about how the drugs work:

“I prescribe antidepressants even though I do not know if they are more harmful than helpful in the long-term.

I am worried that in some patients they could be, and psychiatrists in 50 years will wonder why we did not do more to find out.”

For people with pre-existing cardiovascular disease, though, the antidepressants were not harmful, probably because they have a blood-thinning effect.

However, for those otherwise in good cardiovascular health, the antidepressants were harmful, the research suggests.

The study was published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (Maslej et al., 2017).

Depression and anxiety risk much higher in some people using social media.

Using over seven different social media platforms is linked to a tripling in depression risk, psychological research finds.

The study asked about the 11 most popular social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn.

Those who used between 7 and 11 of these, had 3.1 times the depression risk.

They also had 3.3 times the risk of having high levels of anxiety symptoms.

Professor Brian A. Primack, who led the study, said:

“This association is strong enough that clinicians could consider asking their patients with depression and anxiety about multiple platform use and counseling them that this use may be related to their symptoms.

While we can’t tell from this study whether depressed and anxious people seek out multiple platforms or whether something about using multiple platforms can lead to depression and anxiety, in either case the results are potentially valuable.”

There are a number of ways in which using multiple platforms might lead to depression and anxiety, the authors argue:

• Multitasking is known to lead to poor mental health and weakened thinking skills.
• Using more platforms might lead to more opportunities for embarrassing mistakes.

Professor Primack said:

“It may be that people who suffer from symptoms of depression or anxiety, or both, tend to subsequently use a broader range of social media outlets.

For example, they may be searching out multiple avenues for a setting that feels comfortable and accepting.

However, it could also be that trying to maintain a presence on multiple platforms may actually lead to depression and anxiety.

More research will be needed to tease that apart.”

The results come from a 2014 survey of 1,787 US adults aged between 19 and 32.

The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior (Primack et al., 2017).