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For much of her life Anne Dalton battled depression. She seldom spoke with people. She stayed home a lot. The days dragged on with a sense of “why bother?” for the 61-year-old from New Jersey who used to work at a Wall Street investment firm. After trying more than a dozen combinations of antidepressant drugs [...]
Depression is associated with widespread changes in brain structure and function. Here are a few examples: 1. A strong body of research shows that people with depression often have a smaller hippocampus [1]. The hippocampus is well known to be important in memory as it processes memories for long term storage. The hippocampus, however, also connects [...]
Pixabay Images Australian scientists believe they have found evidence for a potential suicide marker they hope will lead to new tests and treatments for depression. “We have known for a long time that people who attempt suicide have markers of chronic inflammation in their blood and spinal fluid,” Professor Guillemin said. “Commonly used [...]
Credit: Somsak Suwanput/ShutterStock Scientists have developed a new blood test that could finally lead to personalised depression treatments for patients, giving doctors a tool that can identify which antidepressants are likely to work for patients the first time around, instead of relying on trial and error. This could make a huge difference, because [...]
tumblr.com The benefits of talk therapy for depression have been overstated in the scientific literature, according to a study in the journal PLOS ONE. The finding comes several years after a similar study reached the same conclusion about antidepressant drugs. Both talk therapy and antidepressant drugs "are efficacious," says Steven Hollon, a professor [...]
More Americans are on psychiatric medications than ever before, and in my experience they are staying on them far longer than was ever intended. Sales of antidepressants and antianxiety meds have been booming in the past two decades, and they’ve recently been outpaced by an antipsychotic, Abilify, that is the No. 1 seller among all [...]
While antidepressants are the most commonly used treatment for social anxiety disorder, new research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is more effective and, unlike medication, can have lasting effects long after treatment has stopped. Social anxiety disorder is a psychiatric condition characterized by intense fear and avoidance of social situations and affects up to [...]
The risk posed by some popular antidepressants in early pregnancy is not worth taking for women with mild to moderate depression, an expert has warned. Professor Stephen Pilling says evidence suggests SSRIs can double the risk of a child being born with a heart defect. The drugs have been used by up to one in [...]
Staying awake for more than 24 hours may be the fastest treatment for moderate to major depression. Early research has shown six out of ten patients can get symptom relief within a day of this treatment, compared with the six to eight weeks it can take antidepressants to work. Sleep deprivation is thought to work [...]
Dr Helen Mayberg at Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the U.S., studied brain scans to look for clues about what happens in the brain when someone is depressed and how different treatments affect brain activity. She used PET scans to measure brain glucose metabolism, an important index of brain function, and found that scan [...]
