Category: Mental Health

Our environment may change the brain’s structure and function in a positive way.

Living near a forest keeps the brain healthier, new research finds.

Even city dwellers who lived closer to a forest had a healthier amygdala, an area of the brain where emotion and stress are processed.

This suggests a link between living near trees and being able to cope with stress.

Ms Simone Kühn, the study’s first author, said:

“Research on brain plasticity supports the assumption that the environment can shape brain structure and function.

That is why we are interested in the environmental conditions that may have positive effects on brain development.

Studies of people in the countryside have already shown that living close to nature is good for their mental health and well-being.

We therefore decided to examine city dwellers.”

The study of healthy aging included data from 341 seniors between the ages of 61 and 82.

They were given memory and reasoning tests as well as brain scans.

Professor Ulman Lindenberger, study co-author, said:

“Our study investigates the connection between urban planning features and brain health for the first time

By 2050, almost 70 percent of the world population is expected to be living in cities.

These results could therefore be very important for urban planning.

In the near future, however, the observed association between the brain and closeness to forests would need to be confirmed in further studies and other cities.”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Kühn et al., 2017).

Show popular with teenagers linked to increased internet searches for how to commit suicide.

A Netflix drama called ’13 Reasons Why’ has been linked to internet searches for suicide, new research finds.

The series, which is popular with teenagers, is about the suffering and eventual suicide of a teenage girl.

The girl’s journey is experienced by her friend listening to a series of audio-cassette journals she has left behind.

(If this sounds like just the sort of thing you don’t need on a Monday night after a long day at work, then I for one sympathise.)

In any case, some have criticised the show for presenting an idealised version of suicide that viewers might copy.

Now researchers have analysed internet search data in the US in the days after the show aired.

They found a significant spike in searches for ‘how to commit suicide’ (up by 26%) and ‘how to kill yourself’ (up 9%).

Professor Mark Dredze, a study author, said:

“In relative terms, it’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of ’13 Reasons Why’s release.

In fact there were between 900,000 and 1,500,000 more suicide related searches than expected during the 19 days following the series’ release.”

Previous research suggests that online searches for suicide are linked to actual suicidal behaviour.

Dr John W. Ayers, study co-author, said:

“While it’s heartening that the series’ release concurred with increased awareness of suicide and suicide prevention, like those searching for “suicide prevention,” our results back up the worst fears of the show’s critics: The show may have inspired many to act on their suicidal thoughts by seeking out information on how to commit suicide.”

Jon-Patrick Allem, study co-author, said:

“The World Health Organization has developed guidelines for media makers to prevent this very problem.

It is critical that media makers follow these guidelines.

For instance, these guidelines discourage content that dwells on the suicide or suicide act.

“13 Reasons Why” dedicated 13 hours to a suicide victim, even showing the suicide in gruesome detail.”

Dr Ayers concluded:

“We are calling on Netflix to remove the show and edit its content to align with World Health Organization standards before reposting.

Moreover, the planned second season, and all suicide related media, might undergo testing before wide release to prevent well intended content from producing unintended results.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine (Ayers et al., 2017).

Schizophrenia can cause delusions, hallucinations, confused thinking and dramatic changes in behaviour.

High doses of B vitamins can help reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia, new research finds.

B vitamins, including B6, B8 and B12 were added to the normal treatment of people with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is one of the most serious types of mental illness.

It can cause delusions, hallucinations, confused thinking and dramatic changes in behaviour.

Dr Joseph Firth, the study’s lead author, said:

“Looking at all of the data from clinical trials of vitamin and mineral supplements for schizophrenia to date, we can see that B vitamins effectively improve outcomes for some patients.

This could be an important advance, given that new treatments for this condition are so desperately needed.”

Schizophrenia — which affects around 1% of people — is normally treated with antipsychotic drugs.

These can be effective, but unfortunately around 80% of people relapse within five years.

The study reviewed 18 different clinical trials including 832 patients.

They found that high doses of B vitamins helped reduce the symptoms of schizophrenia.

The vitamins were particularly effective if used early on in treatment.

Dr Firth said:

“High-dose B-vitamins may be useful for reducing residual symptoms in people with schizophrenia, although there were significant differences among the findings of the studies we looked at.

There is also some indication that these overall effects may be driven by larger benefits among subgroups of patients who have relevant genetic or dietary nutritional deficiencies.”

Professor Jerome Sarris, study co-author, said:

“This builds on existing evidence of other food-derived supplements, such as certain amino-acids, been beneficial for people with schizophrenia.

These new findings also fit with our latest research examining how multi-nutrient treatments can reduce depression and other disorders.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine (Firth et al., 2017).

The simple instruction that reduces stress and increases energy and optimism.

The easiest way to kill stress and tension is: Don’t be so hard on yourself!

People who are more compassionate towards themselves experience less stress, new research finds.

Self-compassion is also linked to more:

• optimism,
• feeling alive,
• and energy.

The conclusions come from a study of students coping with their first year at college.

Dr Katie Gunnell, the study’s first author, said:

“Our study suggests the psychological stress students may experience during the transition between high school and university can be mitigated with self-compassion because it enhances the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which in turn, enriches well-being.”

Self-compassion has three components, the study’s authors explain:

(1) self-kindness, which represents the ability to be caring and kind to ourselves rather than excessively critical,

(2) common humanity, which represents an understanding that everyone makes mistakes and fails and our experience is part of a larger common experience,

and (3) mindfulness, which represents being present and aware while keeping thoughts in balance rather than overidentifying.”

Professor Peter Crocker, a study co-author, said:

“Research shows first-year university is stressful.

Students who are used to getting high grades may be shocked to not do as well in university, feel challenged living away from home, and are often missing important social support they had in high school.

Self-compassion appears to be an effective strategy or resource to cope with these types of issues.”

Develop self-compassion

One way to increase this sense of self-compassion is to carry out a writing exercise.

Think about a recent negative experience and write about it.

Crucially, though, you need to write about it while being compassionate towards yourself.

In other words: don’t be too critical and recognise that everyone makes mistakes.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Gunnell et al., 2017).

The common drug could treat schizophrenia, ADHD, bipolar disorder, addiction and other mental health problems.

Nicotine can normalise brain connections that are disrupted in schizophrenia, new research finds.

It could help to explain why those with schizophrenia frequently smoke so heavily.

Around 90% of those suffering from schizophrenia are smokers.

This compares to a rate of around 20% of the general population and around 50% for those with mental health problems.

Many speculated that they could be self-medicating.

The research could eventually lead to a new treatment for schizophrenia that is non-addictive.

Dr Jerry Stitzel, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Our study provides compelling biological evidence that a specific genetic variant contributes to risk for schizophrenia, defines the mechanism responsible for the effect and validates that nicotine improves that deficit.”

The study was carried out on mice genetically engineered to have schizophrenic characteristics.

Giving them nicotine increased their brain activity to normal levels over the period of a week.

Dr Stitzel said:

“Basically the nicotine is compensating for a genetically determined impairment.

No one has ever shown that before.”

Hypofrontality

At the heart schizophrenia is believed to be a phenomenon known as hypofrontality.

This is the abnormally low firing rate of neurons in the prefrontal cortex.

This likely leads to the main psychological problems for those with schizophrenia, including:

• problems making decisions,
• difficulty paying attention,
• and memory problems.

Nicotine bring this firing rate back to normal — in mice at least.

Studies on people with schizophrenia, though, have suggested that nicotine works in a similar way on the human brain.

Uta Waterhouse, a PhD student, has studied the effects of smoking on those with schizophrenia.

She says:

“In pre-clinical studies, I found that nicotine improved the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia.

[…] [they] clearly showed that nicotine has a positive effect on the problematic changes to brain function that come with schizophrenia.

This explains why so many patients with schizophrenia are smokers: It’s a way of self-medicating,”

ADHD and other disorders

Not only is hypofrontality linked to schizophrenia, it is also important in ADHD, bipolar disorder, addiction and other mental health problems.

The development of nicotine-based treatments could help these other conditions as well.

The new study was published in the journal Nature Medicine (Koukouli et al., 2017).

image from Shutterstock

Acting like a playboy (being a sexist man) and enjoying having power over women are both strongly linked to this mental cost.

Men who think they are playboys have more mental health problems, new research finds.

Dr Y. Joel Wong, the study’s lead author, said:

“In general, individuals who conformed strongly to masculine norms tended to have poorer mental health and less favorable attitudes toward seeking psychological help, although the results differed depending on specific types of masculine norms.”

The results come from studies on almost 20,000 people on traditional views of masculinity.

The view tested attitudes linked (by some) to masculinity, including:

• Sexual promiscuity,
• risk-taking,
• desire to win,
• dislike of homosexuality and many more.

People who espoused masculine norms were more likely to be depressed and have low life satisfaction.

Three norms of masculine behaviour were particularly strongly associated with poor mental health:

• Playboy behaviour
• Self-reliance
• Power over women

Dr Wong said:

“The masculine norms of playboy and power over women are the norms most closely associated with sexist attitudes.

The robust association between conformity to these two norms and negative mental health-related outcomes underscores the idea that sexism is not merely a social injustice, but may also have a detrimental effect on the mental health of those who embrace such attitudes.”

Sexist man

Men who conformed to masculine stereotypes were also less likely to seek treatment for mental health problems, the researchers found.

Giving a high priority to work, though, was not linked to mental health, Dr Wong explained, despite it being part of the masculine ethos:

“Primacy of work was not significantly associated with any of the mental health-related outcomes.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the complexity of work and its implications for well-being.

An excessive focus on work can be harmful to one’s health and interpersonal relationships, but work is also a source of meaning for many individuals.”

The study was published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (Wong et al., 2016).

Masculine image from Shutterstock

The findings could be used to help develop new methods of brain training for treating depression and anxiety.

Doing simple maths in your head has been linked to better emotional health by a new study.

The reason is that the same areas of the brain are involved in both emotional processing and mental maths.

The research could be the first step towards creating brain training exercises to help anxiety and depression.

Mr Matthew Scult, the study’s first author, said:

“Our work provides the first direct evidence that the ability to regulate emotions like fear and anger reflects the brain’s ability to make numerical calculations in real time.”

The study involved brain scans of 186 people who were doing mental math problems from memory.

Researchers were interested in an area of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

This area has been linked to depression and anxiety.

When people learn cognitive-behavioural therapy, more activity is seen in this area of the brain, suggesting it is critical in dealing with emotional problems.

The researchers found that more activity in this region was linked to more emotional adaptability.

Mr Scult said:

“We don’t know for sure why that is, but it fit into our hypothesis that the ability to do these more complex math problems might allow you to more readily learn how to think about complex emotional situations in different ways.

It is easy to get stuck in one way of thinking.”

The more activity was seen in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the lower people’s levels of depression and anxiety.

It’s not yet clear if mental maths really causes better emotional control.

However, Mr Scult said:

“We hope, with these and future studies, that we can inform new strategies to help people regulate their emotions, and to prevent symptoms of anxiety and depression from developing in the first place.”

The study was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science (Scult et al., 2016).

Is it the amount of wind, rain or sun that affects your  mental health?

The one weather variable that really matters to mental health is the amount of sunlight hours, new research finds.

Rain, air pollution, wind and high or low temperature have relatively little effect.

It is the amount of time between sunrise and sunset that is linked to people’s mental health.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“Seasonal changes in sun time were found to best account for relationships between weather variables and variability in mental health distress.

Increased mental health distress was found during periods of reduced sun time hours.”

Professor Mark Beecher, the study’s first author, elaborated:

“That’s one of the surprising pieces of our research.

On a rainy day, or a more polluted day, people assume that they’d have more distress.

But we didn’t see that.

We looked at solar irradiance, or the amount of sunlight that actually hits the ground.

We tried to take into account cloudy days, rainy days, pollution . . . but they washed out.

The one thing that was really significant was the amount of time between sunrise and sunset.”

The researchers drew on data from 16,452 people’s emotional health, along with advanced weather information.

They looked at rainfall, solar irradiance, wind speed, wind chill and so on.

But in the end it all came down to daylight hours.

It also didn’t matter if people had seasonal affective disorder or SAD, the results were the same.

Professor Lawrence Rees, a study co-author, explained the genesis of the research:

“Mark and I have been friends and neighbors for years, and we often take the bus together.

And of course you often talk about mundane things, like how are classes going?

How has the semester been?

How ’bout this weather?

So one day it was kind of stormy, and I asked Mark if he sees more clients on these days.

He said he’s not sure, it’s kind of an open question.

It’s hard to get accurate data.”

The study was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders (Beecher et al., 2016).

For the research, people played a game during which they were sometimes given mild electric shocks.

Electric shocks are more painful when they are uncertain than when they are definitely coming, a new study finds.

It confirms just how stressful uncertainty can be compared with knowing what is coming.

Dr Robb Rutledge, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“When applying for a job, you’ll probably feel more relaxed if you think it’s a long shot or if you’re confident that it’s in the bag.

The most stressful scenario is when you really don’t know.

It’s the uncertainty that makes us anxious.

The same is likely to apply in many familiar situations, whether it’s waiting for medical results or information on train delays.”

For the research, people played a game during which they were sometimes given mild electric shocks.

Sometimes people could predict when they were going to get a shock, other times they could not.

It was the unpredictable nature of the shocks which made them more stressful, the results showed.

Mr Archy de Berker, the study’s first author, said:

“It turns out that it’s much worse not knowing you are going to get a shock than knowing you definitely will or won’t.

We saw exactly the same effects in our physiological measures – people sweat more and their pupils get bigger when they are more uncertain.”

Dr Sven Bestmann, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“From an evolutionary perspective, our finding that stress responses are tuned to environmental uncertainty suggests that it may have offered some survival benefit.

Appropriate stress responses might be useful for learning about uncertain, dangerous things in the environment.

Modern life comes with many potential sources of uncertainty and stress, but it has also introduced ways of addressing them.

For example, taxi apps that show where a car is can offer peace of mind by reducing the uncertainty about when it will arrive.

Real-time information boards at bus stops and train platforms perform a similar role, although this can be undermined by unspecified delays which cause stress for passengers and staff alike.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (de Berker et al., 2016).

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Around 30% of people are thought to carry the parasite often caught from a common domestic pet.

People with impulsive anger problems could have a parasite in their brain, a new study suggests.

Those who continually display behaviours like road-rage could be infected with a common parasite rather than having a psychological disorder.

Around 30% of people are thought to carry the toxoplasma gondii parasite — it is often present in, and caught from, cat faeces.

Professor Emil Coccaro, who led the research said:

“Our work suggests that latent infection with the toxoplasma gondii parasite may change brain chemistry in a fashion that increases the risk of aggressive behavior.

However, we do not know if this relationship is causal, and not everyone that tests positive for toxoplasmosis will have aggression issues.”

The conclusions come from a study of 358 adults.

The results showed that people with ‘intermittent explosive disorder’ (that’s rage issues to you and me!) were twice as likely to test positive for the toxoplasma gondii parasite in comparison to a healthy control group (22% versus 9%).

Across all the people in the study, those who tested positive for the toxoplasma gondii parasite had significantly higher levels of aggression and anger.

Dr Royce Lee, a study co-author, said:

“Correlation is not causation, and this is definitely not a sign that people should get rid of their cats.

We don’t yet understand the mechanisms involved–it could be an increased inflammatory response, direct brain modulation by the parasite, or even reverse causation where aggressive individuals tend to have more cats or eat more undercooked meat.

Our study signals the need for more research and more evidence in humans.

Professor Coccaro said:

“It will take experimental studies to see if treating a latent toxoplasmosis infection with medication reduces aggressiveness.

If we can learn more, it could provide rational to treat IED in toxoplasmosis-positive patients by first treating the latent infection.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Coccaro et al., 2016).

Image credit: Alvaro Tapia