May 03

Keeping Your Brain In Shape

Mental Health No Comments »

After a mostly sedentary winter, most of us are flexing our muscles and getting in some much-needed exercise in the spring. Others, however, are working on a different muscle group, if you can call it that: they’re into brain fitness.

Lumosity.com, launched four years ago by San Francisco startup Lumos Labs, works as a “mental gym” by offering daily games and exercises designed to sharpen users’ mental skills. The site now welcomes 2 million visitors per month and has some 12 million members—the number doubled over the past year—and is all set to put brain training on the mainstream market.

The idea first came to Michael Scanlan in 2005, who was then a neuroscience graduate student focusing on the brain’s adaptability to different demands. At the time, mental health was largely concentrated on older generations wanting to fight memory loss. Wondering whether a broader market existed for science-based brain training, he took a leave from grad school and teamed up with Kunal Sarkar and David Drescher on a Web-based training program.

 

It took the trio two years to come up with the right design, exercises, and user experience. But almost instantly after its 2007 launch, Lumosity attracted several venture capitalists and raised over $3 million in funding. Today, it’s one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web, ranking in the top 1,000, according to research group Quantcast.

Lumosity was modeled after fitness clubs, where users pay a monthly fee to access equipment and have their performance tracked. This came …

written by madamejune

Apr 07

Music Linked To Adolescent Depression

Mental Health, Psychology No Comments »

Depression among teens may be partly caused by listening to music, a recent study suggests.

In a study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, adolescents who listen to a considerable amount of music were shown to be at higher risk of developing major depressive disorder. Those who prefer to read, on the other hand, have a much lower risk.

The researchers surveyed 106 adolescents, of whom 46 were suffering from major depressive disorder. In a method dubbed “real life,” they called the subjects regularly over a five-weekend period to ask what types of media they were tuning in to, whether TV, music, books, or the Internet. Some subjects were called as much as 60 times.

 

Teenagers who listened to the most music were 8.3 times more prone to depression than those who consumed it the least, and 10 times more at risk than those who read books more than any other media.

It’s not clear whether the music itself contributes to the depression, or if depression makes youngsters seek refuge in music. Lead researcher Dr. Brian Primack says that parents shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that music is bad, as kids could simply be finding comfort in it. Music often carries emotional themes that give depressed teens a form of catharsis, he says. Indeed, the next step of the study will be to look into these themes and see if specific types of music have an effect on depression levels.

It could also be that depressed …

written by madamejune

Feb 28

The Importance of Pursuing Mental Health Integration

Mental Health No Comments »
Why Pursue Mental Health Integration?

It is the right thing to do: The NCCBH vision statement provides the foundation for our work: We are committed to creating and sustaining healthy and secure communities, achieved through a system that holds the needs of consumers paramount, regardless of their ability to pay.

Vital to this commitment is a network of organizations and advocates promoting services of unparalleled value.

NCCBH members primarily serve public sector consumers, those with severe and persistent mental illness or serious emotional disturbance-the needs of this population are often overlooked in primary care and integration planning. We must assure that their needs as well as the needs of the broader community are appropriately addressed.

Many people in the broader community now receive their behavioral healthcare in a primary care setting, and the gap between the medical and behavioral healthcare systems must be bridged: As noted by Robin Dea and many other commentators, there is:

“evidence that many, if not most, people coming into primary care are being treated for psychosocial problems, not organically based medical disease . . . evidence of medical cost offsets from treating behavioral health problems presenting as physical health problems in the primary care setting . . . the assumption that if adequate detection of early stage psychiatric illness took place in primary care, there would be some prevention of patients going to more severe episodes of major psychiatric illnesses . . . and primary care is where most people who have behavioral health problems

…

written by The Scientist

Sep 24

Latest Bipolar Disorder Facts Revealed By Medical Science

Mental Health No Comments »
Bipolar affective disorder is also referred to as manic-depression disorder, which is a form of a mental illness wherein the patient displays sudden and intense mood swings that are uncontrollable and can be dangerous for the individual as well as those around him/her. It can begin with the patient feeling happy, cause the person to feel utterly depressed the next moment and swing back to a cheerful mood within minutes; it can also stay for months in a mood cycling motion of manic-depressive or mixed episodes.Timely diagnosis and clinical therapy is very important to educate patient and family besides any bigger support group around the individual about the condition, the ways in which it can manifest itself, the danger to the person and how best to control and treat it.Best treatment options for bipolar affective disorder include regular therapy, combined with medication and teaching the patient more about the disorder and tools that are effective in controlling it, including reading a handbook on the subject and learning how to use a workbook on bipolar disorder.Among the latest in the line of many new medications to treat bipolar affective disorder are Aripiprazole or Abilify, atypical anti-psychotic that has been approved for treatment of manic and mixed bipolar disorder episodes since 2004, which benefits the patient by shutting down the brain’s dopamine receptors so they behave more normally and thus, result in mood stabilization and the popular, Celexa. The latter is mainly an antidepressant that has been used by medical experts for …

written by The Scientist

Sep 04

Bipolar Disorder Research – Recent Revelations Of Medical Science

Mental Health No Comments »
Bipolar Disorder is better known by its former name, Manic Depression; a mental illness where a person manifest mood swings which presents itself in cycles where one switches between depressed, manic and a normal mood. In the U.S.A. over two percent of people are known to suffer from this illess, where thirty percent of all hospitilisations are for psychiatric patients in a single year.Psychiatrists and psychologists have not come up with the actual cause of Bipolar Disorder as of yet. Researches have, however, made steady progress in understanding the brain and how it functions, the actual causes of many mental illness including Bipolar Disorder. This illness is currently understood to be caused by many factors which include biological, emotional, environmental and physical reasons.It has been discovered that some bipolar patients have additional brain cells which is one theory for a biological cause. Research shows that those with Bipolar had thirty percent more brain cells which send signals to others than is normal. There is still speculation as to whether it is the brain cells which are responsible for regulating our moods, our responses to pleasure and also our responses to stress.The disorder tends to run in families, although some that are diagnosed have no family history of the illness. This points to the nature of hereditary as being one of the causes of this mentall illness, so genetics could actually be a cause.What has received lots of attention is the neurotransmitter system as being one of the causes of Bipolar …

written by The Scientist

Aug 07

Medical Science Falling Back on Music for Depression Cure!

Mental Health 2 Comments »
Music is often dubbed as the universal language. And rightly so. It’s a language that doesn’t need interpreters. Irrespective of the lingual, social, and cultural background of a person music never fails to strike the chord within. Words fall short in the description of this divine gift of God that the human race has been blessed with. A person who is averse to the effects of music is sometimes not even considered to be a human! Such is the power of music. It’s the uniting bond for the people. Be it happiness, sadness, anger, exasperation, love, friendship, madness music is for every occasion. It can be a man’s best friend when the whole world proves to be inadequate for him. Music can be the best companion at times when one seeks some peace of mind in tranquility.Music can also be healing. Many a times music lightens up a dampened mind. It’s almost therapeutic. Even plants and animals are sensitive to music. It has been proved that plants grow well when music is played in the vicinity. Even animals develop fondness for music. Music pacifies hyperactive minds. Music instills calmness in a person and the list can go on. The facets and the benefits of music are actually endless. It is really surprising that in certain beliefs music is thought to be a sin!Music is now discovered to have wonderful effects on a depressed mind. Here I do not mean minds that are temporarily disturbed or depressed over an issue but …

written by The Scientist