all depression stories

Researchers look at antidepressants and risk of suicide among kids

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:38:16 -0400

Which is more likely to push a depressed child to suicide: not taking antidepressant drugs or taking antidepressant drugs?

Medical experts have struggled with this question at least since 1990 when Harvard researchers reported that six people developed suicidal feelings soon after taking Prozac (fluoxetine). This was the first of the now widely prescribed serotonin drugs to ease depression. Called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, such medications ease the problems of depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive behavior by decreasing the activity of a brain chemical known to affect moods.

Panel offers valuable advice on coping with stress and depression

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:14:29 -0400

A full house was on hand for Wednesday’s (May 2) panel discussion on coping with stress, a “Caring for the Harvard Community” event. Facilitated by Families for Depression Awareness — a nonprofit organization founded by speaker Julie Totten after her brother committed suicide in 1999 — the talk focused on stress and its relationship to depression.

Paul Barreira, a psychiatrist and the director of Harvard’s Department of Behavioral Health and Academic Counseling, started the meeting by presenting some disturbing statistics, including that 60 percent of students consistently report feeling “overwhelmed” and up to 14 percent are diagnosed with depression — though nearly double that number believe their depression has reached clinical levels.

Verbal beatings hurt as much as sexual abuse

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:37:29 -0400

Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But names will never hurt me. …

That often repeated children’s rhyme is wrong, according to Harvard University psychiatrists. Scolding, swearing, yelling, blaming, insulting, threatening, ridiculing, demeaning, and criticizing can be as harmful as physical abuse, sexual abuse outside the home, or witnessing physical abuse at home, notes a report in the April issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter.

Depression is bad for the heart

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:25:04 -0400

Depression is more likely to break your heart than smoking or eating fatty food.

"Recurrence of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrest, severe chest pain and other problems is more closely linked to depression than to high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes," according to a Harvard Medical School publication.

An article printed in the February 2006 issue of Harvard Mental Health Letter points out that patients who are depressed at the time of hospitalization for heart conditions "are two to four times more likely than average to die or to suffer further cardiovascular events during the following year."

And, just as sad, "about 50 percent of patients hospitalized with coronary heart disease have some depressive symptoms, and up to 20 percent develop major depression."

Depressed people who also are anxious add to their problems. According to one recent study, whereas depression doubles the risk of heart problems recurring, anxiety triples that risk.

It's not unusual for depressed people to suffer from anxiety. The two go together like pretzels and beer, so well that scientists have given it a new name - the Type D (for distressed) personality. Such people are chronically gloomy, worried, pessimistic, and lack self-assurance. The Harvard article mentions research in Belgium that found that "over a 10-year- period, patients in a cardiac rehabilitation program were three times as likely to die or have a second heart attack if they had this kind of personality."

Why does this happen? The Harvard publication notes that your mind and mood can push you into a chronic state of emergency readiness. Such people are ready to fight or run even when there's nothing to fight about or run from. In real emergencies, stress hormones rise, blood vessels constrict, your heart speeds up, appetite slackens, and it's harder to fall asleep. Inflammatory chemicals increase in the blood, which becomes stickier in anticipation of wounds that will need healing. When the scare ends, this red alert shuts down - unless you are seriously depressed or anxious.

Then, stress hormones stay jacked up. Inflammation may damage the lining of your arteries. Blood vessels become less flexible. The heart responds more sluggishly to internal signals telling it to slow down as the body's demands change.

It's hard to figure out exactly what happens. As the article notes, "cause and effect are difficult to disentangle in the relationship between depression and heart disease." Vicious cycles arise. Depression damages the heart and blood vessels, and that causes further depression.

Depression linked to previously unknown dopamine regulator

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:21:43 -0400

Li-Huei Tsai, Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor of pathology, HMS research fellow Sang Ki Park, and colleagues worked with mice and found a novel function for the molecule Par-4 (prostate apoptosis response 4) as a binding partner for dopamine receptor D2. When mice deficient in Par-4 were subjected to stress, they showed depression-like behaviors, proposing Par-4-as a molecular link between dopamine signaling and depression. Par-4 was previously implicated as a proapoptotic factor in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. These new findings reveal an unexpected role for Par-4 in the dopamine system and present a rare glimpse of molecular mechanisms behind clinical depression.

Although the cause of depression is multifaceted, a hypothesis based on deficiency or imbalance of serotonin and/or noradrenaline as the root of depression has been a central topic of research. Drugs that currently treat depression have significant delays before becoming effective, and many people are resistant to the current therapies.

The brain's mood, reward, and motivation circuits are mainly governed by dopamine and have been regarded as potential targets for treating depression. Many of these functions are integrated by the medium spiny neurons of the striatum, which respond to dopamine. Dopamine exerts its function in target cells through five known subtypes of dopamine receptors. Impairment in the function of dopamine D2 receptor is implicated in various neuropsychiatric disorders.

Food ingredients may be as effective as antidepressants

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:18:55 -0400

Researchers report that omega-3 fatty acids and uridine, two substances in foods such as fish, walnuts, molasses, and sugar beets, prevented depression in rats as effectively as antidepressant drugs.

"Giving rats a combination of uridine and omega-3 fatty acids produced immediate effects that were indistinguishable from those caused by giving the rats standard antidepressant medications," explains lead author of the study William Carlezon, PhD, director of McLean's Behavioral Genetics Laboratory.

Researchers examined how omega-3 fatty acids and uridine affected rats exposed to stress and found that rats given injections of or fed diets containing the nutrients showed less despair than untreated rats.

While uridine worked immediately, the effects of omega-3 fatty acids took longer to develop, and shorter treatments of omega -3 fatty acids alone did not relieve depression in the rats. Benefits emerged more quickly when the rats were given the nutrients together.

"Omega-3 fatty acids may make the mitochondrial membranes more flexible and uridine may provide raw material to make chemical reactions occur more readily," adds co-author Perry Renshaw, MD, PhD, director of McLean's Brain Imaging Center.

"This work provides more evidence that our behavior can have a tremendous influence on how we feel and act," says Carlezon.

Ritalin use in childhood may increase depression

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:34:33 -0400

A study, led by McLean Hospital's William Carlezon and Susan Andersen, found that adult rats given Ritalin as juveniles behaved differently than their placebo-treated counterparts in a host of tests that reflect mood and attention. Published in the Dec. 15, 2003 issue of Biological Psychiatry, the study follows up previous work by the researchers showing that young rats given Ritalin were less likely to find cocaine pleasurable as adults.

Millions of Americans suffer from major depression

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:18:59 -0400

A Harvard Medical School study found high rates of depression throughout the U.S. population. The researchers analyzed the depression of over 9,000 Americans and evaluated depression's effect on daily activities and treatment received, if any.

Critics have theorized that depression has been reported as more widespread than it really is, said survey leader Ronald Kessler, HMS professor of health care policy. "But we found that the majority of people with depression are severe cases, and only a small minority are mild cases."

The inadequate treatment received by 80 percent of those who were treated sprang from inappropriate dosing of antidepressants by physicians, patient discontinuation of treatment, and the use of unproven treatments. "Emphasis on screening and expansion of treatment needs to be accompanied by a parallel emphasis on treatment quality improvement," Kessler's team writes.

The study found that women and people previously married were most at risk for major depression over a lifetime; in a 12- month period, depression was more common among homemakers, people never married, and those who had not completed high school or who were living in poverty.

The researchers found depression affects roughly 6.6 percent of American adults in a given year, and 16.2 percent of American adults in a lifetime.

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.

Patching up depression

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:25:47 -0400

In a study, almost half of the people who wore an antidepressant skin patch recovered after only six weeks, and many of them "showed remarkable improvement much sooner," according to researcher Alexander Bodkin. "The patch worked, and worked rapidly without toxic side effects. The potential is very exciting." Bodkin and his colleagues, working at six medical centers, completed the first tests of the patch in 1998. The centers included Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, where Bodkin did his research. These tests involved 177 people; 89 of them wore patches with an antidepression drug and 87 wore placebo patches with no drug. Six weeks later, 42 percent of those who wore the active patch (37 people), no longer felt the pangs of depression.

Researchers identify genes that trigger depression

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:16:21 -0400

A substance known as CREB controls gene expression in the brain. It also appears to be active in mood disorders. A group of Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have developed methods that allowed them to selectively activate or deactivate CREB in the brains of rats. They found that activation of CREB in frontal portions of the brain caused signs of depression that normally occur only in response to stressful situations. The findings were published in the September 2001 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. "Stress causes many changes in the brain," said William Carlezon, director of McLean's Behavioral Genetics Laboratory and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "We have identified CREB as a critical element in a chemical pathway that, when activated, can cause certain symptoms of depression." Carlezon's group also found that blocking CREB lessened the effects of stress, and made rats behave as if they were being treated with antidepressant drugs.

High levels of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder remain in Bosnian refugees

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:14:41 -0400

In 1996, Harvard Medical School researchers began following the mental health impact of the Bosnian war on individuals in a refugee camp in Croatia. Most of the refugees have now returned to Bosnia, though some have resettled elsewhere. A recently released report presents the findings of the first longitudinal study to focus on refugees who remain in the conflict region. Researchers found that the refugees continue to exhibit high levels of mental illnesses such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. "We found that people who face mass violence or torture cannot be expected to snap back to good mental health on their own," says Richard Mollica, Harvard Medical School associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. "This study reveals the importance of incorporating long-term mental health initiatives into recovery efforts, especially for the elderly and disabled who appear at greater risk of mortality." The study was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health.

Eighty-five percent of immigrant children separated from families during migration

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:12:58 -0400

An ongoing study of more than 400 children who have immigrated to the United States shows that 85 percent of them experience separation from one or both parents during the process of moving to this country. About 35 percent of these children are separated from their fathers for more than five years. Nearly half (49 percent) of these children have been separated from both parents at some time during the moving process. Carola Suárez-Orozco, Irina Todorova, and Josephine Louie, researchers from the Harvard Immigration Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said the findings are significant for two reasons: immigrant children who are separated from their parents show more symptoms of depression than those who remain with their families, and 20 percent of children in the United States are now growing up in immigrant homes.

Children from working-class families twice as likely to be depressed adults

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:13:02 -0400

Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds have an elevated risk of depression throughout their lifetimes, even if they become more professionally successful than their parents. That's the conclusion of a study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health researcher Stephen Gilman and colleagues. The study also suggests that girls raised in working-class households are more likely to develop depression as adults than boys in similar households. Gilman points out that the majority of participants in the study did not develop depression, indicating that childhood factors are only part of the story of major depression.

Electromagnets used in treating depression

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:14:14 -0400

Recent studies by Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have enlarged the body of knowledge about a promising, though still experimental, treatment for a variety of psychiatric disorders. The treatment is called "transcranial magnetic stimulation," and essentially involves placing a powerful electromagnet on a person's scalp. The electromagnet alters brain activity by inducing an electromagnetic current in the underlying cortical neurons. Researchers aren't sure why that would have a therapeutic effect.