Too Many Are Depressed Depression is one version of hell on earth, and Americans have a lot of it. A recent international study run by Evelyn Bromet of 18 countries found America near the top, with 19.2 percent of the population having experienced depression — only France, at 21 percent, ranked higher. With our tottering health […]
Is Depression Making Me Sleepless, Or Is Insomnia Making Me Depressed?
Common and Connected Depression and insomnia are common and possess common symptoms. Some estimate that 30% of Americans will eventually experience clinical depression, and perhaps 40% of adults complain that many or most nights they don’t get enough sleep, wake too often, or feel unrested on awakening. So which is chicken and which egg? Or are […]
What Brain Genetics Says About Mental Health
Brainstorms Heard of the Brainstorm Consortium? A worldwide group of dozens of researchers is trying to understand diagnosis from the bottom up, starting with your genes. In a recent paper in Science, the group looked at 25 “brain associated” disorder, ten of them psychiatric, fifteen neurologic. They sorted them through GWASS – genome wide association […]
Mental Health’s Double Standard
New Barriers to Care Depression is a scourge, widely considered the second greatest cause of health disability worldwide. It has always been tough to treat. New studies show it having a worse course the older we get. Yet new governmental regulations are making the possibility of adequately treating depression in older folk so onerous less […]
Antidepressants Work. Especially the Old Ones.
Do antidepressants really work to treat depression? A new, six year meta-analysis amalgamating hundreds of the best performed clinical trials has demonstrated that antidepressants are better than placebo. The study, published in the Lancet, showed modest effects, positively affecting about 60% of people treated. Drugs varied in efficacy, ranging between about one third to twice as effective as placebo. What […]