Category: Psychiatry

Maternal stress before and during pregnancy could affect a baby’s brain development, research from King’s College London has found. MRC Doctoral Researcher in Perinatal Imaging and Health, Alexandra Lautarescu and Head of Advanced Neuroimaging, Professor Serena Counsell, for the first time looked at the relationship between maternal stress and brain development in 251 premature babies.…

Brain circuitry differences that might be associated with suicidal behavior in individuals with mood disorders have been identified by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Utah Health. The finding provides a promising lead toward tools that can predict which individuals are at the highest risk for suicide. “At present,…

The proportion of individuals aged over 65 on antidepressants has more than doubled in the past two decades, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia. Despite a rise in antidepressant use, there was little change in the number of older people diagnosed with depression. The findings are based on the Cognitive…

Have you ever seen or heard something that turned out not to exist? Or have you ever thought something was happening that no one else noticed – perhaps thinking you were being followed, or that something was trying to communicate with you? If so, you may have had a psychotic experience. The good news is,…

To investigate the biological origins of hearing “voices” in patients with schizophrenia, a team led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai used ultra-high field imaging to compare the auditory cortex of schizophrenic patients with healthy individuals. They found that schizophrenic patients who experienced auditory hallucinations had abnormal tonotopic organization of…

At 32, Raquel Bennett was looking for a reason to live. She’d struggled with severe depression for more than a decade, trying multiple antidepressants and years of talk therapy. The treatment helped, but not enough to make it seem worth living with a debilitating mental illness, she says. “I was desperate.” In 2002, following a…

Children who have experienced child abuse or neglect are four times more likely to develop serious mental illness, according to a study[1] from the University of Birmingham. Researchers studied GP records dating between 1995 and 2018 of 217,758 patients aged under 18 who had experienced, or were suspected to have experienced, childhood maltreatment or related concerns,…

Teens got 43 more minutes of sleep a night after a four-week intervention that reset their body clocks and helped them go to bed earlier, Stanford researchers report[1]. The treatment had two components: brief, early morning flashes of bright, broad-spectrum white light to reset the teens’ circadian clocks, and cognitive behavioural therapy that motivated them…

About half the people referred to the clinic with a schizophrenia diagnosis didn’t actually have schizophrenia, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report in a small study. Therapies can vary widely for people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression or other serious types of mental illness, and a misdiagnosis can lead to inappropriate or delayed treatment. The…