A new manual for mental disorders is slated to be released in May and video-game addiction experts are hoping for a new addition. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn’t currently list video-game addiction in its list of disorders, but tech-addiction expert Hilarie Cash said that needs to change. Cash runs Restart in Seattle, Wash., one of the few known internet and video game addiction rehabilitation centres in North and South America. “People’s lives completely fall apart, and there are people who die from it,” said Cash. “It’s rewarding, right? You get this pump and then it fades and you miss it and you want it back,” said Valesquez. “It’s like a cycle.” He began gaming when he got his first Nintendo. When he shifted to gaming online, he saw major success. He was even sponsored by a gaming company at age 12. “If I couldn’t play, it was like profound boredom,” he said. That’s when it turned from a hobby into a habit for Valesquez. “I was generally playing, at the very peak, six to ten hours a day,” he said. As a result, his grades slid and he began to replace his real life friends with ones that were online. “Even if you don’t want to play, you feel a responsibility to go online. It’s like a community,” said Valesquez. Cash said those are classic signs of video-game addiction. “Most people understand that gambling can become, can develop into a serious addiction, so it’s like that,” said Cash. She said the most addictive games have a social component and are competitive. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17980 - Posted: 04.02.2013

By ALAN SCHWARZ and SARAH COHEN Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children. The figures showed that an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 through 17 had received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis at some point in their lives, a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 53 percent rise in the past decade. About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis. “Those are astronomical numbers. I’m floored,” said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, “Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy.” And even more teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychiatric Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Aggression
Link ID: 17970 - Posted: 04.01.2013

Arran Frood Two studies have decoded the structure of two of the brain's serotonin receptors. Here shown is a receptor known as 1B with the migraine drug ergotamine (pink) locked into one of its binding pockets. Researchers have deciphered the molecular structures of two of the brain's crucial lock-and-key mechanisms. The two molecules are receptors for the natural neurotransmitter serotonin — which regulates activities such as sleep, appetite and mood — and could provide targets for future drugs to combat depression, migraines or obesity. “This is huge,” says Bryan Roth, a neuropharmacologist at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Medical School, and a co-author of the two studies published in Science today1, 2. “Before this there was no crystal structure for any serotonin receptor. A lot of what was theoretical is now known with a great degree of certainty,” he says. Scientists have been trying to decipher serotonin receptors for years. Armed with information on the atomic level, they might now be able to make breakthroughs in drug discovery and in understanding how the physical structures of the brain produce consciousness, says Roth. Christoph Anacker, a neuropharmacologist at King's College London, agrees that the findings are important for drug discovery. “These receptors are involved in so many conditions, especially depression, and knowing the molecular structures will help to develop more specific drugs and avoid the expression of undesired side effects.” © 2013 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 17937 - Posted: 03.23.2013

Nursing home residents who take a class of sleep medications that includes Lunesta and Ambien may be at higher risk for hip fractures compared with those who do not take these nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic drugs, according to a Harvard Medical School study. The study involved more than 15,000 nursing home residents who were on average 81 years old and were documented by Medicare to have had a hip fracture between July 2007 and December 2008. Nearly 11 percent of the residents with hip fractures took these drugs. Residents who took the prescription sleep medications were 66 percent more likely to sustain a hip fracture than those who did not. The risk was greater among new users of the medications and those suffering mild to moderate mental and physical decline. Those who took the medication for less than two months were more than twice as likely to fracture their hip, the study found. Nonbenzodiazepenes have been known to alter memory, attention, and balance, which may be why there is a greater risk of physical injury when taking the medication, the researchers wrote. Based on the findings, nursing home staff should try to treat sleep problems using nondrug strategies first, such as increased daytime activity and discouraging daytime napping, according to the researchers. © 2012 NY Times Co

Keyword: Sleep; Aggression
Link ID: 17926 - Posted: 03.20.2013

By BARRY MEIER A group of 18 doctors, researchers and public health experts jointly urged the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to take action on energy drinks to protect adolescents and children from the possible risks of consuming high amounts of caffeine. “There is evidence in the published scientific literature that the caffeine levels in energy drinks pose serious potential health risks,” the doctors and researchers wrote.In their letter to Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, the group argued that energy drink makers had failed to meet the regulatory burden placed on them to show that the ingredients used in their beverages were safe, specifically where children, adolescents and young adults are concerned. As a result, the group urged the F.D.A. to restrict caffeine content in the products and to require manufacturers to include caffeine content on product labels. A similar letter was sent to the agency by the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis J. Herrera, who is one of several public officials conducting investigations of the energy-drink industry. Energy drink makers have insisted their products are safe and that their levels of caffeine, a stimulant, are on a par with other widely consumed drinks, like coffee. The F.D.A. has said that it is safe for adults to consume about 400 milligrams of caffeine daily, though many experts say that most adults can consume 600 milligrams or more of caffeine without ill effect. A 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee has about 330 milligrams of caffeine, an amount about twice that of some similarly sized energy drinks. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17924 - Posted: 03.20.2013

By Scicurious We humans love us some caffeine. The mild stimulant have saved many a student, parent, and hard working adult from nodding over their desks. And it’s a natural product of plants like the coffee plant and the tea bush. But the question is, why do these plants have it in the first place? It turns out that there are two answers to that question. First, caffeine is a natural pesticide, which can paralyze and kill insects that want to chomp on the leaves, berries, or other parts of the plant. It’s good for keeping a bug off your back. But these plants also produce flowers, and these flowers need bees. So it’s somewhat surprising to realize that the coffee plant, as well as plants from the Citrus genus (yup, that means oranges), have caffeine in their nectar. After all, if caffeine is a poison to some bugs, you don’t want to be poisoning your pollinators! But it turns out that bees aren’t like other bugs, and may enjoy themselves a jolt like humans do! Whether they enjoy it or not, they certainly remember it! The authors started out by examining exactly HOW much caffeine was in the nectar of various coffee and citrus plants. And the concentrations of caffeine in the nectar could get up to that of one cup of coffee (though, obviously, in a much smaller volume total). I’m starting to wonder if there’s a “honeyed nectar” energy drink in the future. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17888 - Posted: 03.11.2013

By Meghan Rosen Alcohol may give heavy drinkers more than just a buzz. It can also fuel their brains, a new study suggests. Long-term booze use boosts brain levels of acetate, an energy-rich by-product of alcohol metabolism, researchers report online March 8 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. In the study, people who downed at least eight drinks per week also sucked more energy from acetate than their light-drinking counterparts. The extra energy may give heavy drinkers more incentive to imbibe, says study coauthor Graeme Mason of Yale University. And the caloric perk might help explain why alcohol withdrawal is so hard. “I think it's a very good hypothesis,” says biochemical geneticist Ting-Kai Li of Duke University. Scientists had suspected that heavy drinkers absorb and burn more acetate, but, he adds, “Graeme Mason showed that this is actually happening.” Acetate is best known as a chemical in vinegar. But when people drink a glass of wine or drain a can of beer, their liver breaks down the alcohol and pumps out acetate as leftovers. The bloodstream then delivers acetate throughout the body, including to the brain. Human brains typically run on sugar. But with enough acetate in the blood, Mason thought, brains might crank up their ability to burn it too. To find out if his suspicion was correct, Mason and his colleagues peered into the brains of seven heavy drinkers and seven light drinkers, who quaffed fewer than two drinks per week. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17887 - Posted: 03.11.2013

By JAMES GORMAN Nothing kicks the brain into gear like a jolt of caffeine. For bees, that is. And they don’t need to stand in line for a triple soy latte. A new study shows that the naturally caffeine-laced nectar of some plants enhances the learning process for bees, so that they are more likely to return to those flowers. “The plant is using this as a drug to change a pollinator’s behavior for its own benefit,” said Geraldine Wright, a honeybee brain specialist at Newcastle University in England, who, with her colleagues, reported those findings in Science on Thursday. The research, other scientists said, not only casts a new light on the ancient evolutionary interaction between plants and pollinators, but is an intriguing confirmation of deep similarities in brain chemistry across the animal kingdom. Plants are known to go to great lengths to attract pollinators. They produce all sorts of chemicals that affect animal behavior: sugar in nectar, memorable fragrances, even substances in fruit that can act like laxatives in the service of quick seed dispersal. Lars Chittka, who studies bee behavior at Queen Mary, University of London, and wrote a commentary on the research in the same issue of Science, said that in the marketplace of plants seeking pollinators, the plants “want their customers to remain faithful,” thus the sugary nectar and distinctive scents. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17878 - Posted: 03.09.2013

Steve Connor Physical exhaustion can occur when the brain – as well as the muscles – grows tired according to a study that sheds fresh light on the role played by the mind in determining endurance levels. Scientists have found that a key neurotransmitter in the brain, which controls signalling between nerve cells, can determine whether someone feels exhausted following physical exercise or after taking anti-depressant drugs such as Prozac. Although levels of serotonin rise during exercise, which provides a psychological boost and “feel-good” factor, it can also result in a widespread central fatigue that ultimately leads to someone feeling exhausted and unable to carry on, scientists found. Researchers led by Professor Jean-Francois Perrier of the University of Copenhagen found that while serotonin helps to keep people going during the early stage of vigorous exercise, a build-up of the neurotransmitter in the brain can have the opposite effect by causing “central fatigue” of the nervous system even when the muscles are still able to carry on. “We can now see it is actually a surplus of serotonin that triggers a braking mechanism in the brain. In other words, serotonin functions as an accelerator but also as a brake when the strain becomes excessive,” said Professor Perrier, whose study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 17868 - Posted: 03.05.2013

By Daisy Yuhas It's news chocolate lovers have been craving: raw cocoa may be packed with brain-boosting compounds. Researchers at the University of L'Aquila in Italy, with scientists from Mars, Inc., and their colleagues published findings last September that suggest cognitive function in the elderly is improved by ingesting high levels of natural compounds found in cocoa called flavanols. The study included 90 individuals with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer's disease. Subjects who drank a cocoa beverage containing either moderate or high levels of flavanols daily for eight weeks demonstrated greater cognitive function than those who consumed low levels of flavanols on three separate tests that measured factors that included verbal fluency, visual searching and attention. Exactly how cocoa causes these changes is still unknown, but emerging research points to one flavanol in particular: (-)-epicatechin, pronounced “minus epicatechin.” Its name signifies its structure, differentiating it from other catechins, organic compounds highly abundant in cocoa and present in apples, wine and tea. The graph below shows how (-)-epicatechin fits into the world of brain-altering food molecules. Other studies suggest that the compound supports increased circulation and the growth of blood vessels, which could explain improvements in cognition, because better blood flow would bring the brain more oxygen and improve its function. Animal research has already demonstrated how pure (-)-epicatechin enhances memory. Findings published last October in the Journal of Experimental Biology note that snails can remember a trained task—such as holding their breath in deoxygenated water—for more than a day when given (-)-epicatechin but for less than three hours without the flavanol. Salk Institute neuroscientist Fred Gage and his colleagues found previously that (-)-epicatechin improves spatial memory and increases vasculature in mice. “It's amazing that a single dietary change could have such profound effects on behavior,” Gage says. If further research confirms the compound's cognitive effects, flavanol supplements—or raw cocoa beans—could be just what the doctor ordered. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Aggression
Link ID: 17863 - Posted: 03.02.2013

By MICHAEL MOSS On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition. James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.” A chemist by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke became Pillsbury’s chief technical officer in 1979 and was instrumental in creating a long line of hit products, including microwaveable popcorn. He deeply admired Pillsbury but in recent years had grown troubled by pictures of obese children suffering from diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart disease. In the months leading up to the C.E.O. meeting, he was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations — from the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17843 - Posted: 02.25.2013

By Janet Raloff Hospitals rush newborns into a neonatal intensive care unit when those babies are struggling to survive. Although NICUs offer tender and vigilant care, many of the devices they rely on can expose their tiny patients to a relatively large dose of a hormone-mimicking pollutant, bisphenol A. Newborns in intensive care excrete BPA, on average, at levels of around 17.8 micrograms per liter — well above the 0.45 µg/l typical of healthy infants, researchers report in the March Pediatrics. One of the most reliable indicators of BPA exposure was the level of care that a baby received, reflected by the number of devices used to deliver that care, notes nurse and exposure-science researcher Susan Duty of Simmons College in Boston. Breathing tubes, intravenous drug delivery lines and enclosed incubators are plastic, and several types of plastic can contain BPA. Although researchers have not figured out what doses of BPA cause toxicity in people, several studies have linked elevated prenatal exposures to later behavioral problems (SN Online: 7/16/12) and moodiness (SN: 11/7/09, p. 12) in young children. Animal studies have also linked BPA exposure during development to feminization in males and risks of later hypertension and diabetes. Duty’s team studied 55 infants, each of whom spent at least three days in a NICU in the Boston area, and most of whom had been born prematurely or were for other reasons very small. The researchers measured BPA in the breast milk and formula that these tiny babies consumed. Both nutritional sources had small, comparable amounts of BPA. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Aggression
Link ID: 17835 - Posted: 02.23.2013

By Erin Wayman BOSTON — The taste for alcohol may be an ancient craving. The ability to metabolize ethanol — the alcohol in beer, wine and spirits — might have originated in the common ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas and humans roughly 10 million years ago, perhaps when this ancestor became more terrestrial and started eating fruits fermenting on the ground. Chemist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla., reached that conclusion by “resurrecting” the alcohol-metabolizing enzymes of extinct primates. Benner and his colleagues estimated the enzymes’ genetic code, built the enzymes in the lab and then analyzed how they work to understand how they changed over time. “It’s like a courtroom re-enactment,” said biochemist Romas Kazlauskas of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Benner “can re-enact what happened in evolution.” Benner proposed the idea February 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Today, humans rely on an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase 4, or ADH4, to break down ethanol. The enzyme is common throughout the esophagus, stomach and intestines, and is the first alcohol-metabolizing enzyme that comes into contact with what a person drinks. Among primates, not all ADH4s are the same — some can’t effectively metabolize ethanol. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17819 - Posted: 02.19.2013

By JANE E. BRODY The title of a recent report on smoking and health might well have paraphrased the popular ad campaign for Virginia Slims, introduced in 1968 by Philip Morris and aimed at young professional women: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Today that slogan should include: “…toward a shorter life.” Ten years shorter, in fact. The new report is one of two rather shocking analyses of the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. The data show that “women who smoke like men die like men who smoke,” Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, a professor of health and health care at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in an accompanying editorial. That was not always the case. Half a century ago, the risk of death from lung cancer among men who smoked was five times higher than that among women smokers. But by the first decade of this century, that risk had equalized: for both men and women who smoked, the risk of death from lung cancer was 25 times greater than for nonsmokers, Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society and his colleagues reported. Today, women who smoke are even more likely than men who smoke to die of lung cancer. According to a second study in the same journal, women smokers face a 17.8 times greater risk of dying of lung cancer than women who do not smoke; men who smoke are at 14.6 times greater risk to die of lung cancer than men who don’t. Women who smoke now face a risk of death from lung cancer that is 50 percent higher than the estimates reported in the 1980s, according to Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and his colleagues. After controlling for age, body weight, education level and alcohol use, the new analysis found something else: men and women who continue to smoke die on average 10 years sooner than those who never smoked. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17817 - Posted: 02.18.2013

by Emily Underwood BOSTON—Dude, check out these European perch. After swimming in water laced with a common antianxiety medication, the red-finned fish lose their inhibitions and gobble up prey at a much faster rate, according to a new study presented here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of ScienceNOW). The animals act strangely even after being exposed to low concentrations of the medication found in rivers worldwide, suggesting that the drug and others like it could affect fish behavior and ecology even in small doses. Hundreds of different pharmaceuticals are able to slip past conventional wastewater treatment plants and into our waterways, says Jerker Fick, a toxicologist at Umeå University in Sweden and co-author of the new study. "They don't mysteriously go away after we excrete them." Scientists have known for a long time that many pharmaceuticals can persist in rivers and streams, and have behavioral effects on aquatic species in high doses, he says; however, determining whether more dilute concentrations have an effect is harder to establish. Several years ago, Fick and his colleagues discovered a common psychoactive medication called oxazepam in water samples from the River Fyris, which flows through Uppsala, the fourth largest city in Sweden. Oxazepam belongs to a class of drugs that make neurons less excitable and slower to transmit signals throughout the brain and is an "essential" treatment for panic attacks and other severe anxiety disorders, Fick says. Although the authors describe the concentration of the drug—0.58 micrograms per liter-1—as "unusually high," they also say it is comparable to levels found in rivers in other countries; however, there isn't enough research to know for sure how widespread the drug is. "This is not a particularly Swedish problem," says lead author Tomas Brodin of Umeå University. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Aggression
Link ID: 17811 - Posted: 02.16.2013

By Melinda Wenner Moyer On the night of my 32nd birthday, my husband and I enjoyed a delicious dinner while on vacation in Orvieto, Italy. To complement my pasta, I drank a single glass of red wine, my first since learning I was pregnant four months earlier. Even now my indulgence that evening inspires periodic pangs of guilt: Did I stunt my son's potential by sipping that Sangiovese? Nobody questions the notion that heavy drinking during pregnancy is harmful. It can cause facial abnormalities, central nervous system problems and stunted growth. But evidence regarding the effects of light or occasional drinking is mixed. In five epidemiological studies published in 2012, medical psychologist Erik Mortensen of the University of Copenhagen and his colleagues found that five-year-old children born to women who had one to four drinks a week during pregnancy displayed no deficits in general intelligence, attention or other types of higher-order thinking. On the other hand, in 2011 psychiatrist Nancy Day of the University of Pittsburgh and her colleagues reported that teens born to women who averaged more than one drink a week during pregnancy were twice as likely as those born to nondrinkers to have conduct disorder, a condition characterized by theft, deceit or violence. The truth is hard to discern because research on the issue is fraught with problems. The ideal type of experiment is not ethical: scientists cannot randomly assign one group of women to drink during pregnancy and compare the outcome with those instructed to abstain. As a result, they must compare what happens to women who choose to drink during pregnancy with those who do not, and these women often differ in important ways. All things considered, having an occasional drink during those nine months—say, one or two a week—probably poses little, if any, harm. Still, some experts warn, light or sporadic drinking may have effects we do not know how to measure. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17801 - Posted: 02.14.2013

By Scicurious When it comes down to it, most humans are pretty optimistic. Yeah, we know the Titanic sank, but our boat is better. We know that driving a car is really pretty dangerous, but we’re more careful, it won’t happen to us. This is not just a cultural thing, we generally tend to place more importance on positive information about something than on negative. We’re more optimistic than we should be on everything, from the future of our current relationship to the stock market. But what is it that makes us so optimistic? And what happens when it goes wrong? Because not everyone is optimistic. People with major depressive disorder, for example, are more pessimistic (sometimes they are just pessimistic enough to be realistic, but they can also be unrealistically pessimistic). What is it that determines how optimistic we are? It’s time to take another look at dopamine. I often talk about the neurotransmitter dopamine in the context of addiction. But dopamine is a much more subtle signal than just the “reward” or “pleasure” you see thrown around in the media. Dopamine is extremely important in detecting prediction errors: when you’ve made the wrong choice. Basically, dopamine can spike in the presence of reward, and can spike when a reward is expected. Conversely, you often see decreases in dopamine when something unexpected happens and you fail to get your reward, like with a Rickroll. That’s a prediction error, you predicted a reward and it didn’t happen. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Aggression
Link ID: 17791 - Posted: 02.12.2013

By JANE E. BRODY “Treatment is not a prerequisite to surviving addiction.” This bold statement opens the treatment chapter in a helpful new book, “Now What? An Insider’s Guide to Addiction and Recovery,” by William Cope Moyers, a man who nonetheless needed “four intense treatment experiences over five years” before he broke free of alcohol and drugs. As the son of Judith and Bill Moyers, successful parents who watched helplessly during a 15-year pursuit of oblivion through alcohol and drugs, William Moyers said his near-fatal battle with addiction demonstrates that this “illness of the mind, body and spirit” has no respect for status or opportunity. “My parents raised me to become anything I wanted, but when it came to this chronic incurable illness, I couldn’t get on top of it by myself,” he said in an interview. He finally emerged from his drug-induced nadir when he gave up “trying to do it my way” and instead listened to professional therapists and assumed responsibility for his behavior. For the last “18 years and four months, one day at a time,” he said, he has lived drug-free. “Treatment is not the end, it’s the beginning,” he said. “My problem was not drinking or drugs. My problem was learning how to live life without drinking or drugs.” Mr. Moyers acknowledges that treatment is not a magic bullet. Even after a monthlong stay at a highly reputable treatment center like Hazelden in Center City, Minn., where Mr. Moyers is a vice president of public affairs and community relations, the probability of remaining sober and clean a year later is only about 55 percent. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 17784 - Posted: 02.11.2013

By Laura Sanders Psychiatry seemed poised on the edge of a breakthrough. In early 2011, after decades of no radically new drugs, a fundamentally different schizophrenia treatment promised relief from the psychotic hallucinations and delusions plaguing people with the disease. The new compound, devised by chemists at Eli Lilly and Co., hit a target in the brain that older medicines had ignored. All signs pointed to success. In mice, a similar molecule could block the schizophrenia-like effects of PCP. In people the new drug, LY2140023, appeared to curb psychotic behavior with few side effects, small pilot studies showed. In March 2011, Lilly began enrolling 1,100 people in a definitive Phase III clinical trial, the final test designed to show conclusively that the new compound worked. A year and a half later, the drug was dead. After years of work and millions of dollars of investment, the failure was crushing. People with schizophrenia were no better on the new drug than similar people taking a placebo, early results indicated. “I’m disappointed in what these results mean for patients with schizophrenia who still are searching for options to treat this terrible illness,” Jan Lundberg, president of Lilly Research Laboratories, said in a press release. Although the results were devastating, many in the field weren’t surprised. For new drugs designed to treat complex brain disorders such as schizophrenia, depression and anxiety, the odds of success are exceedingly slim. Given the current state of affairs in the drug discovery world, some would argue those odds are close to zero. Not a single drug designed to treat a psychiatric illness in a novel way has reached patients in more than 30 years, argues psychiatrist Christian Fibiger of the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, who described the problem in a 2012 Schizophrenia Bulletin editorial. “For me, the data are in,” says Fibiger, who has developed drugs at several major pharmaceutical companies. “We’ve got to change. This isn’t working.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Aggression
Link ID: 17782 - Posted: 02.11.2013

By PAM BELLUCK People with mental illness are 70 percent more likely to smoke cigarettes than people without mental illness, two federal health agencies reported Tuesday. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration show that one of every three adults with mental illness smokes, compared with one in five adults without mental illness. Adults with mental illness smoke about a third of all the cigarettes in the United States, and they smoke more cigarettes per month and are significantly less likely to quit than people without mental illness, the report said. There are nearly 46 million adults with mental illness in the United States, about a fifth of the population. “Many people with mental illness are at greater risk of dying early from smoking than of dying from their mental health conditions,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control, during a press briefing. The report is based on information from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which interviewed 138,000 adults in their homes from 2009 to 2011. People were asked 14 questions to assess psychological distress and disability, and were deemed to have mental illness if their responses indicated they had a mental, behavior or emotional disorder in the past 12 months. Those with substance abuse or developmental disorders were not considered people with mental illness. The report did not include patients in psychiatric hospitals or individuals serving in the military. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Aggression
Link ID: 17769 - Posted: 02.06.2013