all Harrison Pope stories

Rituals enhance health

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:32:06 -0400

American Indians who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems, report researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital.

In fact, members of the Navajo tribe who regularly use peyote actually scored significantly better on several measures of overall mental health than did subjects from the same tribe who were not members of the religious group and did not use the hallucinogen, according to a paper published in the Nov. 4 issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Study: No psychological or cognitive deficits from peyote

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:22:45 -0400

Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital report that Native Americans who use the hallucinogen peyote regularly in connection with religious ceremonies show no evidence of brain damage or psychological problems.

"We found no evidence that these Native Americans had residual neurocognitive problems. Despite lifelong participation in the peyote church, they performed just as well on mental tests as those who had never used peyote,'' said the study's first author John Halpern, MD, of McLean Hospital's Biological Psychiatry Laboratory. The study was funded, in part, by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Beyond that, the peyote users scored better on several measures of the Rand Mental Health Inventory (RMHI), a test used to diagnose psychological problems and determine overall mental health, he said. Among the RMHI scales are measures of anxiety, depression, loss of behavioral or emotional control, and psychological distress. Halpern emphasized that the better scores among peyote users were not necessarily attributable to the use of peyote itself, but more likely due to the social and psychological benefits of being members of the Native American Church community.

Male body image

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:32:19 -0400

Asian men show less dissatisfaction with their bodies than males in the United States and Europe, according to a Harvard study. This may explain why anabolic steroid abuse is much less prevalent in places like Taiwan than in the United States, Europe, and Australia, the researchers found.
"Disorders of body image, including a pathological preoccupation with muscularity, are growing increasingly common among Western males, notes Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, a Harvard senior. "By contrast, such male body-image problems appear to be rare in Asian societies."

Testosterone drives away the blues

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:26:43 -0400

In the 1940s, experiments showed that major depression can be relieved by injecting testosterone into men with low levels of that hormone. The treatment never caught on because the shots are painful, and effective antidepressant drugs started coming to market. More recently, however, testosterone patches and gels became available. In June 2000, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a new form of gel for treating muscle loss, decreased sex drive, lack of energy, and other symptoms of so-called hypogonadism, or underactivity of the testes. Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, wondered if the gel might also help males with the combination of low testosterone and depression not treated successfully with drugs.

Cognition unaffected by marijuana use

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:15:54 -0400

Harrison Pope, a Harvard professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues at McLean Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric facility in Belmont, Mass., investigated the long-term cognitive effects of smoking marijuana. They recruited 180 people, who ranged from light to heavy users. Heavy use was defined as smoking pot at least 5,000 times. All the research subjects took batteries of intelligence, attention, learning, and memory tests on days zero, one, seven, and 28 after quitting the drug. On days zero, one and seven, current heavy smokers scored significantly lower than the other groups on memory tests.

Researchers identify symptoms of marijuana withdrawal

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:13:59 -0400

Irritability, anxiety and physical tension, plus decreases in appetite and mood, were experienced by regular marijuana users who quit the drug for four weeks during a study conducted at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Sixty percent of those in the study experienced "significant symptoms" of withdrawal, said the researchers, Elena M. Kouri and Harrison Pope. Kouri and Pope are Harvard researchers. “Most people think marijuana is a benign drug, and there is disagreement in the scientific community about whether withdrawal causes significant symptoms. This study shows that using marijuana for a long time has consequences,” said Kouri.

Men have distorted image of what women find attractive

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:07:43 -0400

Asked by researchers to choose the bodies they would most like to have, male college students in a study picked computer images with 30 pounds more muscle than they actually had. Asked to select their most-wanted body from the same computer images, female college students chose men with 15 to 30 pounds less muscle than most males consider ideal. "In other words, the bodies that men already had were closer to what women actually want than what men think they want," says Harrison Pope, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry who headed the study. "The Leonardo DiCaprio-look out-muscles the Jean-Claude Van Damme-look." Pope worries that men's distorted view of muscularity may be a factor in a disturbing situation that has recently been observed — some males who use anabolic steroids to "bulk up" go on to abuse heroin, morphine, and other opiate drugs.