By Jane E. Brody Attention all you happy high school graduates about to go off to college, as well as the many others returning for another year of higher education. Grandsons Stefan and Tomas, that includes you. Whatever you may think can get in the way of a successful college experience, chances are you won’t think of one of the most important factors: how long and how well you sleep. And not just on weekends, but every day, Monday through Sunday. Studies have shown that sleep quantity and sleep quality equal or outrank such popular campus concerns as alcohol and drug use in predicting student grades and a student’s chances of graduating. Although in one survey 60 percent of students said they wanted information from their colleges on how to manage sleep problems, few institutions of higher learning do anything to counter the devastating effects of sleep deprivation on academic success and physical and emotional well-being. Some, in fact, do just the opposite, for example, providing 24-hour library hours that encourage students to pull all-nighters. (I did that only once, to study for an exam in freshman year, and fell asleep in the middle of the test. Lesson well learned!) An all-nighter may help if all you have to do is memorize a list, but if you have to do something complex with the information, you’ll do worse by staying up all night, J. Roxanne Prichard, an expert on college sleep issues, told me. After being awake 16 hours in a row, brain function starts to decline, and after 20 hours awake, you perform as if legally drunk, she said. Many college-bound kids start out with dreadful sleep habits that are likely to get worse once the rigorous demands of college courses and competing social and athletic activities kick in. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25324 - Posted: 08.13.2018

By Jessica Wright, Boosting levels of the chemical messenger serotonin makes mice that model autism more social, according to a study published in Nature. The study suggests the approach may do the same in people with autism. It also offers an explanation for why antidepressants do not ease autism traits: They may increase serotonin levels too slowly to be effective. The researchers used a technique that rapidly increases serotonin levels in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region that mediates social reward. “Somehow, the release of serotonin in the nucleus accumbens really plays an important role in enhancing sociability,” says lead researcher Robert Malenka, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University in California. “The simple hypothesis is it makes the social interaction more reinforcing.” Decades of research have suggested a connection between serotonin and autism. About 10 years ago, this led researchers to test antidepressants, which increase serotonin levels by blocking its reabsorption into neurons, as a treatment for autism. However, in several trials, antidepressants such as fluoxetine (Prozac) proved ineffective at easing the condition’s features. The new study suggests that a drug that rapidly activates serotonin receptors would be a more effective way of treating the condition. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25323 - Posted: 08.13.2018

Michaeleen Doucleff My back hurts when I sit down. It's been going on for 10 years. It really doesn't matter where I am — at work, at a restaurant, even on our couch at home. My lower back screams, "Stop sitting!" To try to reduce the pain, I bought a kneeling chair at work. Then I got a standing desk. Then I went back to a regular chair because standing became painful. I've seen physical therapists, orthopedic surgeons and pain specialists. I've mastered Pilates, increased flexibility and strengthened muscles. At one point, my abs were so strong my husband nicknamed them "the plate." All these treatments helped a bit, at first. But the pain never really went away. So a few years ago, I decided to accept reality: Sitting down is — and will always be — painful for me. Then back in November, I walked into the studio of Jenn Sherer in Palo Alto, Calif. She is part of a growing movement on the West Coast to teach people to move and sit and stand as they did in the past — and as they still do in other parts of the world. I was interviewing Sherer for a story about bending. But she could tell I was in pain. So I told her my story. Her response left me speechless: "Sitting is a place where you can find heaven in your joints and in your back," she says. "It's not sitting that's causing the pain, it's how you're sitting. "Do you want me to show you how?" © 2018 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25322 - Posted: 08.13.2018

Ann Robinson Imagine a neurological condition that affects one in 20 under-18s. It starts early, causes significant distress and pain to the child, damages families and limits the chances of leading a fulfilled life as an adult. One in 20 children are affected but only half of these will get a diagnosis and a fifth will receive treatment. If those stats related to a familiar and well-understood illness, such as asthma, there would be little debate about the need to improve intervention rates. But this is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and the outcry is muted. If anything, we hear warnings that too many children are being labelled this way, and too many given prescriptions. In the United States, ADHD is diagnosed at more than twice the incidence in Britain. The true prevalence is likely to be the same on both sides of the Atlantic. So what’s the story? Is the US too gung-ho, or is the UK dragging its heels? Are American doctors too quick to medicate children, or British doctors too slow? Emily Simonoff, co-author of a new meta-analysis in the journal the Lancet Psychiatry, says the problem in the UK is “predominantly about undermedication and underdiagnosis”. Her study examined a range of drug treatments compared to placebo, and it shows that methylphenidate (better known by under the brand name Ritalin) works best for children and amphetamines for adults. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: ADHD; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25321 - Posted: 08.13.2018

by Antonia Noori Farzan It’s been well-documented that a decreased sex drive can be one of the side effects of antidepressants like Prozac. But the amount of these drugs that end up in sewage plants may also have an impact on the mating habits of wild birds, a new study from the University of York shows. Researchers found that female starlings that had been exposed to small doses of fluoxetine, the generic name for Prozac, became less attractive to male starlings, which sung to them less often and treated them more aggressively. Kathryn Arnold, one of the study’s authors and a senior lecturer in ecology at the University of York, described it as “the first evidence that low concentrations of an antidepressant can disrupt the courtship of songbirds.” That’s problematic because birds that are slow to find a mate may not get the chance to breed, she wrote. “We’re definitely not saying that it’s bad to take antidepressants, but certainly there is a greater need for new technologies to clean out sewage,” Arnold told The Washington Post. Birds like to graze at sewage treatment plants, which are teeming with worms, flies and maggots, she explained. But because antidepressants often make their way through the human body and into sewage plants without fully breaking down, those insects are frequently laced with prescription drugs. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Depression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25320 - Posted: 08.13.2018

There is a new study on the effect treating teens for depression has on their parents. It suggests just treating teens has benefits for parents. LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: There are estimates that 13 percent of adolescents in the United States experience at least one episode of major depression. That depression can be treated in teens. And new research suggests that it helps not just them but also their parents. NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee reports. RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE: We tend to think of depression as affecting individuals, but Myrna Weissman says... MYRNA WEISSMAN: Depression is a family affair. CHATTERJEE: Weissman is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. And she's studied depression in families for years. WEISSMAN: We know that there's high rates of depression in the offspring of depressed mothers. CHATTERJEE: Weissman's previous work has shown that when mothers are treated for depression, their children feel better, as well. That led another researcher, Kelsey Howard, to wonder, could the opposite be true? KELSEY HOWARD: So if kids get better, do parents then feel better? And we found that to be true, as well. CHATTERJEE: Howard is a graduate student at the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University. To answer her question, she and her graduate adviser analyzed data from a previous study that followed more than 300 teenagers getting treatment for depression either through counseling or pills or both. Before and during the course of the study, the researchers had also surveyed one parent of each teenager for symptoms of depression. When Howard looked at that data, she found that... © 2018 npr

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25319 - Posted: 08.13.2018

Pamela Duncan and Nicola Davis More than four million people in England are long-term users of antidepressants, new figures obtained by the Guardian show. Data released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that more than 7.3 million people were prescribed antidepressants in 2017-18, 4.4 million of whom also received a prescription for such drugs in both of the two previous years. 1.6 million people prescribed antidepressants in the past year were “new” users, meaning they were not being prescribed such drugs in either 2015-16 or 2016-17. The figures also show the number of such “new” users of antidepressants is falling. Month-by-month figures show an overall decline from just over 179,000 “new” starters in April 2016 to just over 132,000 in March 2018. Experts say it is not clear what is behind the trend and that there could be a number of factors at play. Scott Weich, a professor of mental health at the University of Sheffield, said the tendency to prescribe antidepressants seems to have gone in phases over recent decades. “Professionals may be becoming slightly less certain about the benefits of antidepressants [for mild depression], and patients themselves may be declining medication,” he said. Weich noted other reasons might be that individuals are finding it increasingly difficult to access GP services to discuss mental health issues, or that the issues are not discussed due to time constraints or other pressures. On the other hand, he said, it could in part reflect the rise in so-called “talking therapies” like CBT. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25318 - Posted: 08.11.2018

Public awareness of the debilitating impact of postpartum depression on new moms has grown over the years, but many people don't realize it can affect men too, mental health experts say. In a series of presentations at the American Psychological Association annual convention this week, a group of psychologists said about 10 per cent of new fathers experience symptoms of depression and anxiety in the weeks before, during or after their babies are born. "One of the main myths is men don't experience hormonal changes, therefore they can't get postpartum depression or anxiety," said Daniel Singley, one of the presenters and a psychologist based in San Diego, Calif. "In fact, plenty of research shows that men do get hormonal changes around the birth of children, and that hormonal changes is just one of a number of bio-psychosocial factors that cause postpartum mood issues," he said. The Canadian Mental Health Association acknowledges that men and women and even parents who adopt can suffer from the condition, noting on its website that "a mother or father with postpartum depression may not enjoy the baby and have frequent thoughts that they're a bad parent." Dealing with the issue of postpartum depression in men is important for the well-being of their children, Singley said, because fathers experiencing it are "much less likely" to be involved with their newborns — which, in turn, can negatively affect the babies' development. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 25317 - Posted: 08.11.2018

Laurel Hamers A Nobel Prize–winning discovery — that small double-stranded RNA molecules can silence genes by interrupting the translation of DNA’s instructions into proteins — is finally delivering on its medical promise. The first drug that takes advantage of this natural biological process, called RNA interference, was approved August 10 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It targets a rare hereditary disease that causes misshapen proteins to build up in patients’ nerves, tissues and organs, causing loss of sensation, organ failure and even death. Heredity transthyretin amyloidosis, or ATTR, affects about 50,000 people worldwide. This drug will help the subset of those patients who have neurological impairments. Called patisiran, the drug uses specially designed pieces of RNA to silence a mutated gene that, when active in the liver, is responsible for patients’ symptoms. In a recent 18-month clinical trial, patients who received patisiran injections every three weeks showed a slight decrease in neurological symptoms, whereas patients on the placebo worsened overall. It’s not a cure — people still have the genetic mutation — but the treatment prevents the disease from progressing. This approval is “just the beginning,” says Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, who co-discovered the process of RNA interference in roundworms (SN: 10/7/06, p. 229). Many more drugs using the same approach, for diseases ranging from hemophilia to HIV, are winding through clinical trials. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25316 - Posted: 08.11.2018

Scientists say they have found how blue light from smartphones, laptops and other digital devices damages vision and can speed up blindness. Research by the University of Toledo in the US has revealed that prolonged exposure to blue light triggers poisonous molecules to be generated in the eye’s light-sensitive cells that can cause macular degeneration – an incurable condition that affects the middle part of vision. Blue light, which has a shorter wavelength and more energy compared with other colours, can gradually cause damage to the eyes. Dr Ajith Karunarathne, an assistant professor in the university’s department of chemistry and biochemistry, said: “We are being exposed to blue light continuously and the eye’s cornea and lens cannot block or reflect it. “It’s no secret that blue light harms our vision by damaging the eye’s retina. Our experiments explain how this happens, and we hope this leads to therapies that slow macular degeneration, such as a new kind of eye drop.” Macular degeneration, which affects around 2.4% of the adult population in the UK, is a common condition among those in their 50s and 60s that results in significant vision loss. It is caused by the death of photoreceptor, ie light-sensitive cells, in the retina. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the US and while it does not cause total blindness, it can make everyday activities such as reading and recognising faces difficult. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limite

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 25315 - Posted: 08.10.2018

By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News Our primate cousins have surprised and impressed scientists in recent years, with revelations about monkeys' tool-using abilities and chimps' development of complex sign language. But researchers are still probing the question: why are we humans the only apes that can talk? That puzzle has now led to an insight into how different non-human primates' brains are "wired" for vocal ability. A new study has compared different primate species' brains. It revealed that primates with wider "vocal repertoires" had more of their brain dedicated to controlling their vocal apparatus. That suggests that our own speaking skills may have evolved as our brains gradually rewired to control that apparatus, rather than purely because we're smarter than non-human apes. Humans and other primates have very similar vocal anatomy - in terms of their tongues and larynx. That's the physical machinery in the throat which allows us to turn air into sound. So, as lead researcher Dr Jacob Dunn from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge explained, it remains a mystery that only human primates can actually talk. "That's likely due to differences in the brain," Dr Dunn told BBC News, "but there haven't been comparative studies across species." So how do our primate brains differ? That comparison is exactly what Dr Dunn and his colleague Prof Jeroen Smaers set out to do. They ranked 34 different primate species based on their vocal abilities - the number of distinct calls they are known to make in the wild. They then examined the brain of each species, using information from existing, preserved brains that had been kept for research. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 25314 - Posted: 08.10.2018

By Gretchen Reynolds Don’t skip drinking during exercise in hot weather, a new study reminds us. This advice might seem obvious. But apparently some athletes, especially in team sports, have begun to eschew fluids during hot weather workouts, in hopes that the privation might somehow make them stronger. But the new study finds that it is likely only to make them more physically stressed. And very, very thirsty. Working out in the heat is inherently difficult, as any of us who exercise outside in summer knows. When ambient temperatures are high, we generate internal heat more quickly than if the weather is cool. To remove this heat and maintain a safe body temperature, our hearts pump warm blood toward the skin’s surface, where heat can dissipate, and we sweat copiously, providing evaporative heat loss. These reactions become more pronounced and effective with practice, a process known as heat acclimation (also referred to as acclimatization). During heat acclimation, which can require several weeks of sultry exercise, we begin to sweat earlier and in greater volume. This and other changes help our hearts to labor less, so that, in general, the effort of being physically active in high temperatures starts to feel less wearing. A run on a sizzling summer day in August should feel easier than a similar run on an equally hot evening in June, if we have been running outside in the meantime, because our bodies will have acclimated to the heat. But athletes being athletes, some of them and their coaches began to wonder in recent years whether, if heat acclimation taxes the body and makes it stronger, would exacerbating the physical difficulties of acclimation lead to greater adaptations, in approved Machiavellian style? © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 25313 - Posted: 08.10.2018

Leah Rosenbaum Pregnant women aren’t immune to the escalating opioid epidemic. Data on hospital deliveries in 28 U.S. states shows the rate of opioid use among pregnant women has quadrupled, from 1.5 per 1,000 women in 1999 to 6.5 per 1,000 women in 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The highest increases in opioid use among pregnant women were in Maine, New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia, according to the CDC study, published online August 9 in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “This analysis is a stark reminder that the U.S. opioid crisis is taking a tremendous toll on families,” says coauthor Jean Ko, a CDC epidemiologist in Atlanta. In this first look at opioid use during pregnancy by state, Washington, D.C. had the lowest rate in 2014, at 0.7 per 1,000 women, and Vermont had the highest, at 48.6 per 1,000. However, the data from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department represents only the 28 states that record opioid use at childbirth during the studied time frame. “We knew the incidence was increasing” as the number of babies going through opioid withdrawal has also gone up, says Matthew Grossman, a pediatrician at Yale University. Overall, the number of U.S. deaths attributed to opioids has also been steadily rising (SN: 3/31/18, p. 18). In 2014, there were 14.7 opioid deaths per 100,000 people, up from 6.2 per 100,000 in 2000, according to the CDC. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25312 - Posted: 08.10.2018

by Dr. Francis Collins Though our thoughts can wander one moment and race rapidly forward the next, the brain itself is often considered to be motionless inside the skull. But that’s actually not correct. When the heart beats, the pumping force reverberates throughout the body and gently pulsates the brain. What’s been tricky is capturing these pulsations with existing brain imaging technologies. Recently, NIH-funded researchers developed a video-based approach to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that can record these subtle movements [1]. Their method, called phase-based amplified MRI (aMRI), magnifies those tiny movements, making them more visible and quantifiable. The latest aMRI method, developed by a team including Itamar Terem at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and Mehmet Kurt at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. It builds upon an earlier method developed by Samantha Holdsworth at New Zealand’s University of Auckland and Stanford’s Mahdi Salmani Rahimi [2]. In the video, a traditional series of brain scans captured using standard MRI (left) make the brain appear mostly motionless. But a second series of scans captured using the new technique (right) shows the brain pulsating with each and every heartbeat. As described in the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, the team started by measuring the pulse of a healthy person. They synchronized the pulse with MRI images of the person’s brain, stitching the scans together to create a sequential video. Their new MRI approach then relies on a special algorithm developed by another group to magnify the subtle changes.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25311 - Posted: 08.10.2018

Tina Hesman Saey Scientists now know how long it takes for a cell to tell itself it’s time to die. Signals triggering a type of cell suicide called apoptosis move through a cell like a wave, traveling at a rate of 30 micrometers per minute, Stanford University systems biologists Xianrui Cheng and James Ferrell Jr. report in the Aug. 10 Science. These findings resolve a debate over whether these death signals spread by diffusion, with signaling molecules working their own way across a cell, or as self-regenerating trigger waves, like toppling dominoes. The apoptosis process starts with damage that causes the release of death signal chemicals. One example is cytochrome c leaking from damaged mitochondria, the cell’s power plant. Once cytochrome c concentrations get high enough, the chemicals signal proteins called caspases to go to work. Caspases trigger other proteins to poke holes in neighboring mitochondria, releasing more cytochrome c and moving the death wave across the cell. That chain reaction happens more quickly than diffusion can, Ferrell says. In an African clawed frog egg, a trigger wave takes about a half-hour to spread across the 1.2 millimeter cell, whereas diffusion would take five hours, he says. Like forest fires, trigger waves will keep going as long as there is fuel to feed them — in this case, the death signal chemicals and proteins, Ferrell says. He predicts that many other biological signals may move as trigger waves. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Apoptosis; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25310 - Posted: 08.10.2018

Alison Abbott The two major neuroscience societies in the United States and Europe have joined forces to criticize the prestigious Max Planck Society (MPS) in Germany for its treatment of a world-renowned neuroscientist targeted by animal-rights activists. Nikos Logothetis, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPI-Biocyb) in Tübingen who used to run a primate laboratory, has been charged with mistreatment of animals after allegations made by animal-rights groups. When Logothetis was indicted in February, the MPS removed many of his responsibilities relating to animal research — despite the fact that a court has not yet ruled on those charges. Logothetis, who studies how the brain makes sense of the world, denies the allegations. In a strongly worded statement posted online on 3 August, the US Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS), which together represent more than 60,000 scientists, add to an outcry that has been gathering momentum since scientists at MPI-Biocyb made their concerns public in May. “FENS and SfN are extremely dismayed by the treatment of Professor Nikos Logothetis and his colleagues,” reads the joint statement. The MPS's actions set "an alarming precedent whereby institutions neglect to support affiliated scientists facing similar unproven accusations and disregard the presumption of innocence”, adds the statement. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 25309 - Posted: 08.08.2018

Laura Sanders A career of hard hits to the head doesn’t inevitably lead to brain decline, a small study of former football and hockey pros suggests. The results counter a specter raised by other studies on pro football players’ brains after death. The new findings come from extensive brain scans and behavioral tests of 21 retired athletes — football players from New York’s Buffalo Bills and hockey players from the Buffalo Sabres. In a series of papers published August 7 in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, researchers report finding no signs among the athletes of early dementia or mental slipping. Those symptoms are early hallmarks of the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can be diagnosed by a brain examination only after death. Such studies involving living subjects “are exactly what we really need,” says cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist Carrie Esopenko of Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. “They are really going to help us understand what’s going on in these lives, rather than what’s happening when they’re dead.” Using a battery of clinical tests, researchers at the University at Buffalo measured brain function and mental health, while also investigating other aspects of the ex-players’ health, such as diet, body mass index and history of drug and alcohol use. The team then compared the results with the same measures taken for 21 noncontact athletes, including runners and cyclists. Participating football players and hockey players expected bad news. They “were pretty much their own worst critics,” believing themselves to be impaired, says coauthor and psychiatrist Barry Willer. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 25308 - Posted: 08.08.2018

Kelsey Tyssowski The first dance at my wedding lasted exactly four minutes and 52 seconds, but I’ll probably remember it for decades. Neuroscientists still don’t entirely understand this: How was my brain able to translate this less-than-five-minute experience into a lifelong memory? Part of the puzzle is that there’s a gap between experience and memory: our experiences are fleeting, but it takes hours to form a long-term memory. In recent work published in the journal Neuron, my colleagues and I figured out how the brain keeps temporary molecular records of transient experiences. Our finding not only helps to explain how the brain bridges the gap between experience and memory. It also allows us to read the brain’s short-term records, raising the possibility that we may one day be able to infer a person’s, or at least a laboratory mouse’s, past experience – what they saw, thought, felt – just by looking at the molecules in their brain. To uncover how the brain keeps track of an animal’s experience, we started by asking how the brain records its electrical activity. Every experience you have, from chatting with a friend to smelling french fries, corresponds to its own unique pattern of electrical activity in the nervous system and brain. These activity patterns are defined by which neurons are active and in what way they’re active. For example, say you’re at the gym lifting weights. Which neurons are active is fairly straightforward: If you’re lifting with your right arm, different neurons will be active than if you’re lifting with your left arm because different neurons are connected to the muscles of each arm. © 2010–2018, The Conversation US, Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25307 - Posted: 08.08.2018

Sukanya Charuchandra R. Liu et al., “Perception of social interaction compresses subjective duration in an oxytocin-dependent manner,” eLife, 7:e32100, 2018. External stimuli can affect our perception of time. Researchers in China set out to test whether a person’s social skills and perception of social interactions alters their sense of time. Subjects viewed two motion sequences depicting two humans composed of dots of light. The first video clip showed sociable behavior between the figures, such as passing an object, while the second showed no interaction—the figures moved independently of each other. The subjects had to indicate which clip appeared to last longer. Overall, volunteers found the clips with communicative behavior to be shorter, even when that wasn’t true. This “temporal compression effect” was not as pronounced in less sociable test subjects, as measured by their Autism Spectrum Quotient, a questionnaire-based assessment that determines where people fall on the neurotypical or autistic scale. “It not only highlights the idiosyncrasy of subjective time but also demonstrates that our perception of the world (something as basic as time) is ingrained with our personality traits,” writes coauthor Wen Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Psychology in an email to The Scientist. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Autism
Link ID: 25306 - Posted: 08.08.2018

Sarah Boseley Health editor Ritalin and other drugs of the same class are the most effective and safest medications to prescribe for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a major scientific review. The review of ADHD drugs shows that they work, and work well, in spite of concerns among the public and some doctors that children in the UK are being overmedicated. Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has likened the drugs to a “chemical cosh” and claimed they were being overprescribed, disguising bad behaviour among children that could be better dealt with. The authors of a major study in the Lancet Psychiatry journal say that methylphenidate, of which Ritalin is the best-known brand, is the most effective and best-tolerated treatment for children while amphetamines work best for adults. While the number of children on medication has risen as ADHD has become better understood, many do not get the treatment they need to cope in life and get through school, they said. The Guardian has revealed that getting help in the UK can take as long as two years. Emily Simonoff, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at King’s College London, one of the authors, said the perception that children were overmedicated was not accurate. “Clinicians are very cautious about using medication in this country,” she said. “The problem in the UK is predominantly about undermedication and underdiagnosis.” © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 25305 - Posted: 08.08.2018