By BENEDICT CAREY She was all there, all the time: exuberant in describing her mania, savage and tender when recalling her despair. And for decades, she gracefully wore the legacy of her legendary role as Princess Leia, worshiped by a generation of teenage girls as the lone female warrior amid the galactic male cast of the “Star Wars” trilogy. In her long, openhearted life, the actress and author Carrie Fisher brought the subject of bipolar disorder into the popular culture with such humor and hard-boiled detail that her death on Tuesday triggered a wave of affection on social media and elsewhere, from both fans and fellow bipolar travelers, whose emotional language she knew and enriched. She channeled the spirit of people like Patty Duke, who wrote about her own bipolar illness, and Kitty Dukakis, who wrote about depression and alcoholism, and turned it into performance art. Ms. Fisher’s career coincided with the growing interest in bipolar disorder itself, a mood disorder characterized by alternating highs and lows, paralyzing depressions punctuated by flights of exuberant energy. Her success fed a longstanding debate on the relationship between mental turmoil and creativity. And her writing and speaking helped usher in a confessional era in which mental disorders have entered the pop culture with a life of their own: Bipolar is now a prominent trait of another famous Carrie, Claire Danes’s character Carrie Mathison in the Showtime television series “Homeland.” “She was so important to the public because she was telling the truth about bipolar disorder, not putting on airs or pontificating, just sharing who she is in an honest-to-the-bone way,” said Judith Schlesinger, a psychologist and author of “The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 23035 - Posted: 12.29.2016

By Arlene Karidis As a young teenager, Inshirah Aleem was sure she’d be heading to Harvard Law School in a few years. But the straight-A student went down another road. Within months of her 14th birthday, the quiet girl was telling outrageous lies, running away from home and stealing. She eventually landed in front of a judge and later was sent to foster care, where she lived in a basement, her belongings stuffed into a trash bag. It would be a year before Aleem, now a 38-year-old schoolteacher living in Greenbelt, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The brain condition is characterized by high (manic) moods and low (depressed) moods as well as by fluctuating energy levels. These unstable states are coupled with impaired judgment. The diagnosis explained her racing, disjointed thoughts and almost completely sleepless nights. And it explained her terrifying hallucinations, which were followed by a catatonic state where Aleem couldn’t move or talk. About 2.6 percent of adults and about 11.2 percent of 13- to-18-year-olds have bipolar disorder, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The disorder can be hard to recognize and harder to treat. Combining medications often brings substantial improvement, but some patients experience side effects and show minimal improvement. Researchers, who have found that bipolar disorder is inherited more than 70 percent of the time, hope to identify drugs to target the 20 genetic variations known to be associated with the disorder. © 1996-2016 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22864 - Posted: 11.14.2016

Mo Costandi Stem cells obtained from patients with schizophrenia carry a genetic mutation that alters the ratio of the different type of nerve cells they produce, according to a new study by researchers in Japan. The findings, published today in the journal Translational Psychiatry, suggest that abnormal neural differentiation may contribute to the disease, such that fewer neurons and more non-neuronal cells are generated during the earliest stages of brain development. Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental illness that affects about 1 in 100 people. It is known to be highly heritable, but is genetically complex: so far, researchers have identified over 100 rare genetic variations and dozens of mutations associated with increased risk of developing the disease. One of the best characterised mutations associated with the disease is a microdeletion on chromosome 22, within a region containing dozens of genes known to be involved in the development, maturation, and function of brain circuits. This deletion is found in 1 in every 2,000 – 4,000 live births; all patients carrying it exhibit various psychiatric symptoms and conditions, with just under a third of them developing schizophrenia in adolescence or early adulthood. Manabu Toyoshima of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute and his colleagues obtained skin cells from two female schizophrenic patients diagnosed with the chromosome 22 deletion and two healthy individuals, then reprogrammed them to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), unspecialised cells which, like embryonic stem cells, retain the ability to differentiate into all the different cell types in the body. They then compared the properties of iPSCs obtained from the schizophrenic patients with those from the healthy controls. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22822 - Posted: 11.02.2016

Emily Sohn After a mother killed her four young children and then herself last month in rural China, onlookers quickly pointed to life circumstances. The family lived in extreme poverty, and bloggers speculated that her inability to escape adversity pushed her over the edge. Can poverty really cause mental illness? It's a complex question that is fairly new to science. Despite high rates of both poverty and mental disorders around the world, researchers only started probing the possible links about 25 years ago. Since then, evidence has piled up to make the case that, at the very least, there is a connection. People who live in poverty appear to be at higher risk for mental illnesses. They also report lower levels of happiness. That seems to be true all over the globe. In a 2010 review of 115 studies that spanned 33 countries across the developed and developing worlds, nearly 80 percent of the studies showed that poverty comes with higher rates of mental illness. Among people living in poverty, those studies also found, mental illnesses were more severe, lasted longer and had worse outcomes. And there's growing evidence that levels of depression are higher in poorer countries than in wealthier ones. Those kinds of findings challenge a long-held myth of the "poor but happy African sitting under a palm tree," says Johannes Haushofer, an economist and neurobiologist who studies interactions between poverty and mental health at Princeton University. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22811 - Posted: 10.31.2016

By Tori Rodriguez Uric acid is almost always mentioned in the context of gout, an inflammatory type of arthritis that results from excessive uric acid in the blood. It may be surprising, then, that it has also been linked with a vastly different type of disease: bipolar disorder. Elevated uric acid has been observed in patients with acute mania, and reducing uric acid improves symptoms. New evidence supports its potential as a treatment target. Uric acid is a by-product of the breakdown of compounds called purines, found in many foods and manufactured by the body. High levels of uric acid can indicate that these compounds, such as the neurotransmitter adenosine, are being broken down too readily in the body. “Adenosine might play a key role in neurotransmission and neuromodulation, having sedative, anticonvulsant and antiaggressive effects,” says physician Francesco Bartoli, a researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy. Bartoli's new study, published in May in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, examined uric acid levels in 176 patients with bipolar disorder or another severe mental illness and 89 healthy controls. The results show that bipolar disorder was the only diagnosis significantly linked with levels of uric acid. Excess uric acid was found to be linked to male gender, metabolic syndrome, waist size and triglyceride levels. Beyond the too rapid breakdown of adenosine, other potential explanations for increased uric acid include the metabolic abnormalities often present in people with bipolar disorder and frequent consumption of purine-rich foods and drinks, such as liver, legumes, anchovies and alcohol. Fructose consumption can also be a problem because the sugar inhibits uric acid excretion. Dietary interventions may reduce levels, but medication is typically required if dietary changes are insufficient. © 2016 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22790 - Posted: 10.26.2016

Bret Stetka Every day in the United States, millions of expectant mothers take a prenatal vitamin on the advice of their doctor. The counsel typically comes with physical health in mind: folic acid to help avoid fetal spinal cord problems; iodine to spur healthy brain development; calcium to be bound like molecular Legos into diminutive baby bones. But what about a child's future mental health? Questions about whether ADHD might arise a few years down the road or whether schizophrenia could crop up in young adulthood tend to be overshadowed by more immediate parental anxieties. As a friend with a newborn daughter recently fretted over lunch, "I'm just trying not to drop her!" Yet much as pediatricians administer childhood vaccines to guard against future infections, some psychiatrists now are thinking about how to shift their treatment-centric discipline toward one that also deals in early prevention. In 2013, University of Colorado psychiatrist Robert Freedman and colleagues recruited 100 healthy, pregnant women from greater Denver to study whether giving the B vitamin choline during pregnancy would enhance brain growth in the developing fetus. The moms-to-be were randomly given either a placebo or a form of choline called phosphatidylcholine. Choline itself is broken down by bacteria in the gut; by giving it in this related form the supplement can more effectively be absorbed into the bloodstream. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22777 - Posted: 10.22.2016

By Meredith Wadman The second century C.E. Greek physician and philosopher Galen advised patients suffering from disorders of the spirit to bathe in and drink hot spring water. Modern day brain scientists have posited that Galen’s prescription delivered more than a placebo effect. Lithium has for decades been recognized as an effective mood stabilizer in bipolar disease, and lithium salts may have been present in the springs Galen knew. Yet exactly how lithium soothes the mind has been less than clear. Now, a team led by Ben Cheyette, a neuroscientist at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), has linked its success to influence over dendritic spines, tiny projections where excitatory neurons form connections, or synapses, with other nerve cells. Lithium treatment restored healthy numbers of dendritic spines in mice engineered to carry a genetic mutation that is more common in people with autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder than in unaffected people, they report today in Molecular Psychiatry. The lithium also reversed symptoms in these mutant mice—lack of interest in social interactions, decreased motivation, and increased anxiety—that mimic those in the human diseases. “They showed there’s a correlation between the ability of lithium to reverse not only the behavioral abnormalities in the mice, but also the [dendritic] spine abnormalities,” says Scott Soderling, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who studies how dysfunctions in signaling at brain synapses and lead to psychiatric disorders. Soderling adds that the work also sheds light on the roots of these diseases. “It gives further credence to this idea that these spine abnormalities are functionally linked to the behavioral disorders.” © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22764 - Posted: 10.18.2016

By MICHAEL HEDRICK My father said on numerous occasions when I was growing up that he would see other families that had problems like divorce and drug use, and he would thank God that his family was so perfect. Things would change, though. They always do. And that perfect family would face just as much struggle as any other. Growing up in the mountains above Boulder, Colo., our life was good. My parents had left their life in Chicago behind for an ideal they saw in a piece of art they found at a flea market, a haphazardly painted picture of a cabin next to a river with the mountains towering in the background. Born in the early ‘80s, my brothers and I shared a bond as best friends in our small neighborhood, isolated from town, where we spent time outside sledding, building forts and making dams in the ditch that ran by our house. The biggest problems we seemed to face were bloody knees and the occasional broken bone from snowboarding and bike accidents. My dad, a subscriber to “Mother Earth News,” relished our family’s home in the mountains. There were backpacking trips to the national park 30 miles away, where he taught us how to build a fire and to hang our food from tree limbs to keep it out of reach of bears. Other times he would take us on long father-son road trips, where we would drive the long highways with nothing to look at but the passing fields and nothing to pay attention to but the books on tape from Focus on the Family that my father put on the car stereo. Those tapes provided a Christian look at what it meant to be a man, covering issues like lust, sex and puberty, and he’d answer our questions about girls and all manner of things relating to our growing into healthy young men. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 22686 - Posted: 09.23.2016

By Helen Thomson High levels of inflammation as a child may predict a higher risk of manic behaviour in later life, a finding that could lead to new ways of treating conditions like bipolar disorder. Hypomania involves spells of hyperactivity and is often a symptom of mood disorders, including bipolar disorder, seasonal affective disorder and some kinds of psychosis. People experiencing hypomania may take more risks, feel more confident and become impatient with others. After spells like this, they may “crash”, needing to sleep for long periods and sometimes remembering little about the previous few days. Earlier studies suggested a link between inflammation and mood disorders, prompting Joseph Hayes at University College London and his team to see if inflammation as a child might lead to mental health problems later. Analysing data from more than 1700 people, his team identified a significant link between high levels of a chemical involved in inflammation at age 9, and experiencing aspects of hypomania at age 22. The chemical, called IL-6, is normally secreted by white blood cells to stimulate an inflammatory immune response to infection or trauma. Hayes’s team says it is unclear how inflammation in childhood could induce symptoms of hypomania but IL-6 is known to affect the brain. A study that used injections to increase IL-6 in the blood of healthy volunteers found that this caused symptoms of anxiety, and reduced performance in memory tests. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22636 - Posted: 09.07.2016

By Jef Akst ANDRZEJ KRAUZEAs a psychiatrist at Western University in London, Ontario, Lena Palaniyappan regularly sees patients with schizophrenia, the chronic mental disorder that drastically affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. The disorder can be devastating, often involving hallucinations and delusions. But one thing Palaniyappan and other mental health professionals have noticed is that, unlike those with degenerative neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s, or Parkinson’s, sometimes schizophrenia patients eventually start to improve. “In the clinic we do actually see patients with schizophrenia having a very relentless progress in early years,” Palaniyappan says. “But a lot of them do get better over the years, or they don’t progress as [quickly].” So far, most research has focused on the neurological decline associated with schizophrenia—typically involving a loss of brain tissue. Palaniyappan and his colleagues wondered whether there might be “something happening in the brain [that] helps them come to a state of stability.” To get at this question, he and his colleagues performed MRI scans to assess the cortical thickness of 98 schizophrenia patients at various stages of illness. Sure enough, the researchers noted that, while patients who were less than two years removed from their diagnosis had significantly thinner tissue than healthy controls, those patients who’d had the disease for longer tended to show less deviation in some brain regions, suggesting some sort of cortical amelioration (Psychol Med, doi:10.1017/S0033291716000994, 2016). “Some brain regions are regaining or normalizing while other brain regions continue to show deficits,” Palaniyappan says. © 1986-2016 The Scientist

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22572 - Posted: 08.18.2016

By BENEDICT CAREY HOLYOKE, Mass. — Some of the voices inside Caroline White’s head have been a lifelong comfort, as protective as a favorite aunt. It was the others — “you’re nothing, they’re out to get you, to kill you” — that led her down a rabbit hole of failed treatments and over a decade of hospitalizations, therapy and medications, all aimed at silencing those internal threats. At a support group here for so-called voice-hearers, however, she tried something radically different. She allowed other members of the group to address the voice, directly: What is it you want? “After I thought about it, I realized that the voice valued my safety, wanted me to be respected and better supported by others,” said Ms. White, 34, who, since that session in late 2014, has become a leader in a growing alliance of such groups, called the Hearing Voices Network, or HVN. At a time when Congress is debating measures to extend the reach of mainstream psychiatry — particularly to the severely psychotic, who often end up in prison or homeless — an alternative kind of mental health care is taking root that is very much anti-mainstream. It is largely nonmedical, focused on holistic recovery rather than symptom treatment, and increasingly accessible through an assortment of in-home services, residential centers and groups like the voices network Ms. White turned to, in which members help one another understand each voice, as a metaphor, rather than try to extinguish it. For the first time in this country, experts say, psychiatry’s critics are mounting a sustained, broadly based effort to provide people with practical options, rather than solely alleging abuses like overmedication and involuntary restraint. “The reason these programs are proliferating now is society’s shameful neglect of the severely ill, which creates a vacuum of great need,” said Dr. Allen Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22534 - Posted: 08.09.2016

By DENISE GRADY Could pernicious anemia, a disease caused by a vitamin B12 deficiency, have explained the many strange behaviors of Mary Todd Lincoln? She was not exactly a model first lady. Historians have had a field day describing her violent temper, wild shopping sprees (she owned 300 pairs of kid gloves), depressed moods and all-consuming fears of burglars, storms and poverty. Late in life, at her son’s urging, she was committed to a mental hospital for several months. Plenty of theories, none proven, have been floated. She was bipolar. She had syphilis or that well known cause of feminine madness, menstrual trouble. She was spoiled and narcissistic. She never recovered from a road accident in which her head hit a rock. She lost her mind grieving the deaths of three of her four sons and her husband’s assassination. The latest addition to the list of possible diagnoses comes from Dr. John G. Sotos, a cardiologist, technology executive at Intel and one of the medical consultants who helped dream up the mystery diseases that afflicted patients on the television show “House.” Dr. Sotos has long been interested in difficult diagnoses, and has written a self-published book suggesting that Abraham Lincoln had a genetic syndrome that caused cancers of the thyroid and adrenal glands. In an interview, Dr. Sotos said that while he was studying President Lincoln, he came across something that intrigued him about Mrs. Lincoln: an 1852 letter mentioning that she had a sore mouth. He knew that vitamin B deficiencies could cause a sore tongue, and he began looking into her health. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22418 - Posted: 07.09.2016

By ERICA GOODE Irving Gottesman, a pioneer in the field of behavioral genetics whose work on the role of heredity in schizophrenia helped transform the way people thought about the origins of serious mental illness, died on June 29 at his home in Edina, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis. He was 85. His wife, Carol, said he died while taking an afternoon nap. Although Dr. Gottesman had some health problems, she said, his death was unexpected, and several of his colleagues said they received emails from him earlier that day. Dr. Gottesman was perhaps best known for a study of schizophrenia in British twins he conducted with another researcher, James Shields, at the Maudsley Hospital in London in the 1960s. The study, which found that identical twins were more likely than fraternal twins to share a diagnosis of schizophrenia, provided strong evidence for a genetic component to the illness and challenged the notion that it was caused by bad mothering, the prevailing view at the time. But the findings also underscored the contribution of a patient’s environment: If genes alone were responsible for schizophrenia, the disorder should afflict both members of every identical pair; instead, it appeared in both twins in only about half of the identical pairs in the study. This interaction between nature and nurture, Dr. Gottesman believed, was critical to understanding human behavior, and he warned against tilting too far in one direction or the other in explaining mental illness or in accounting for differences in personality or I.Q. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22405 - Posted: 07.07.2016

Jackie Goldstein Mental illness has been part of human society throughout recorded history, but how we care for people with mental disorders has changed radically, and not always for the better. In Colonial days, settlers lived in sparsely populated rural communities where sanctuary and community support enabled the tradition of family care brought from England. "Distracted persons" were acknowledged, but erratic behavior wasn't associated with disease. Records indicate unusual tolerance of bizarre behavior. When 18th century Pastor Joseph Moody of York, Maine, unable to face crowds, delivered sermons with a handkerchief covering his face, his behavior was tolerated for three years before he was relieved of his duties. As urban areas grew in size and number, a transient poor population with no access to family support led to almshouses, the first form of institutionalization, inspired by 18th century reforms in Europe. A Philadelphia Quaker who had visited an English retreat brought the idea to this country and in 1817 founded the Friends Asylum, a self-sufficient farm that offered a stress-free environment known as "moral treatment." Other private asylums followed, but they soon became overcrowded. By the late 19th century, this was addressed with larger state hospitals, which soon became overcrowded as well. People with mental disorders are more likely to be stigmatized owing to fear and misunderstanding when they aren't part of the community. And stigmatization can discourage those with a mental disorder from seeking or complying with treatment. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22393 - Posted: 07.04.2016

Angus Chen At the center of Geel, a charming Belgian town less than an hour's drive from of Antwerp, is a church dedicated to Dymphna, a saint believed to have the power to cure mental disorders. It's a medieval church with stone arches, spires and a half-built bell tower, and it has inspired an unusual centuries-old practice: For over 700 years, residents of Geel have been accepting people with mental disorders, often very severe mental disorders, into their homes and caring for them. It isn't meant to be a treatment or therapy. The people are not called patients, but guests or boarders. They go to Geel and join households to share a life with people who can watch over them. Today, there are about 250 boarders in Geel. One of them is a Flemish man named Luc Ennekans. He's slim and has green eyes, and he's 51 years old. NPR's Lulu Miller went to Geel and met him and his host family there and reported this story for Invisibilia. Like all of the guests in the town today, Ennekans first went to a public psychiatric hospital in Geel that manages the boarder program. Ennekans saw medical professionals and received treatment and an evaluation. Then he was paired with a household. His hosts, Toni Smit and Arthur Shouten, say that living with Ennekans was rough at the start. Ennekans became deeply attached to Smit. "If it were up to Luc, he would be hugging and kissing me all day," Smit says. He showered her with such affection, bringing her flowers, little kisses, linking arms with her on walks, that it began to interfere with Smit and Shouten's marriage. "You couldn't even give each other a hug or Luc is standing behind us," Shouten says. Wrinkles like this are common, according to the couple. They've had six boarders over the years, each with a unique set of challenges. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22385 - Posted: 07.01.2016

Angus Chen Rachel Star Withers runs a YouTube channel where she performs goofy stunts on camera and talks about her schizophrenia. Since 2008, when the then 22-year-old revealed her diagnosis online, tens of thousands of people have seen her videos. Some of them have a psychotic disorder or mood disorders themselves, or know people who do. They say her explanation about what a symptom like hallucinations feels like can be really helpful. So can Rachel's advice on ways to cope with them, like getting a dog or a cat. If the animal doesn't react to the hallucination, then it's probably not real, she says. We talked with people about how Withers' videos have helped them understand these diseases. What follows is a Q&A with two of these people. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Julia Billingsley is 22 years old and from Peoria, Ill. She learned she has schizophrenia last year, but she says her earliest encounter with the disease was back when she was very young. Her mother has schizophrenia, too, Billingsley says, and often had a delusion that their home was bugged. Julia, you started developing symptoms last year. Do you remember the first thing that happened to you? I'd just started dating my current boyfriend. And I'd be over at his house and I'd go to the bathroom. And this thought, this intrusive thought that wasn't my own at all would pop into my head like with force. And it would be like, hey. This room is bugged. And I was like, what? It made me stop. I stopped what I was doing and I didn't understand why my brain was thinking that. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22312 - Posted: 06.13.2016

By Diana Kwon A number of factors, including elements of the social environment (such as inequality and isolation) and physical stressors (such as pollution and noise) could explain how the city erodes well-being Credit: Thomas Koehler/Getty Images Life in the city can be taxing. City dwellers often face higher rates of crime, pollution, social isolation and other environmental stressors than those living in rural areas. For years studies have consistently linked the risk of developing schizophrenia to urban environments—but researchers are only beginning to understand why this association exists. Addressing the link is increasingly urgent: According to a recent U.N. report, the proportion of people living in cities will rise from 54 percent of the world’s population in 2014 to 66 percent by 2050. Researchers first suggested in the 1930s that urban living might increase schizophrenia risk. Since then many large epidemiological studies have reported an association between the two, primarily in European countries such as Sweden and Denmark. Converging evidence has revealed that growing up in the city doubles the risk of developing psychosis later in life. Studies have also begun to find that urban environments may heighten the risk of other mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. A number of factors, including elements of the social environment (such as inequality and isolation) and physical stressors (such as pollution and noise) could explain how the city erodes well-being. Conversely, people predisposed to mental illness may simply be more likely to move into urban environments. Two studies published this month shed new light on these effects and suggest both scenarios could be involved. © 2016 Scientific American, a Division

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 22234 - Posted: 05.21.2016

By ERICA GOODE PORTLAND, Ore. — The 911 caller had reported a man with a samurai sword, lunging at people on the waterfront. It was evening, and when the police arrived, they saw the man pacing the beach and called to him. He responded by throwing a rock at the embankment where they stood. They shouted to him from a sheriff’s boat; he threw another rock. They told him to drop the sword; he said he would kill them. He started to leave the beach, and after warning him, they shot him in the leg with a beanbag gun. He turned back, still carrying the four-foot blade. In another city — or in Portland itself not that long ago — the next step would almost certainly have been a direct confrontation and, had the man not put down the weapon, the use of lethal force. But the Portland Police Bureau, prodded in part by the 2012 findings of a Justice Department investigation, has spent years putting in place an intensive training program and protocols for how officers deal with people with mental illness. At a time when police behavior is under intense scrutiny — a series of fatal shootings by police officers have focused national attention on issues of race and mental illness — Portland’s approach has served as a model for other law enforcement agencies around the country. And on that Sunday last summer, the police here chose a different course. At 2:30 a.m., after spending hours trying to engage the man, the officers decided to “disengage,” and they withdrew, leaving the man on the beach. A search at daylight found no signs of him. People with mental illnesses are overrepresented among civilians involved in police shootings: Twenty-five percent or more of people fatally shot by the police have had a mental disorder, according to various analyses. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 22150 - Posted: 04.27.2016

Richard A. Friedman DRUG companies are eager to tell you about their newest medicines. Turn on your TV or go online and there’s a new drug — with a hefty price tag — for whatever ails you, from antidepressants to painkillers to remedies for erectile dysfunction. The pharmaceutical industry spends lavishly to get your attention: In 2014, drug makers poured $4.5 billion into so-called direct-to-consumer advertising, a 30 percent increase over two years. Drug makers claim they are educating the public with their ads, providing information that will help you make better choices about your medical care. So in the spirit of education, let’s consider a recent online ad for Latuda, a new antipsychotic medication. A young woman rides a bike off into the sun as we are told that Latuda has been shown to be effective for many people with bipolar depression, followed by that staccato recitation of potential side effects that most viewers tune out. Here’s what a helpful prescription drug label could look like, with facts that are now out of reach. These are question marks because, although many clinical trial results are published, they are difficult to find and compare. Rules should mandate that all studies are accessible. Note the same high cost for a four-fold range of Latuda doses. Often the lowest dose is just as effective; some low-dose consumers realize they can save money by ordering the higher-dose units and splitting them into pieces. The ideal label would have statistics on how many people have serious side effects. Data are not included for these drugs because they may take years to emerge, if ever. Other drugs have well-known side effects. Fair enough. But the ad omits something that most consumers would like to know: There are many older and cheaper treatments that are just as effective. In fact, Latuda is one of 10 “second generation” antipsychotic medications, many available in generic forms, that essentially work the same way. Of course, the goal of drug companies is not to educate, but to sell products. We could ban the ads, as almost every other country does, and which I’d strongly support. But such a campaign in the United States would face fierce legislative and legal challenges. Instead, let’s help the drug companies make their ads truly educational. © 2016 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 22140 - Posted: 04.25.2016

It was December 2012 when the country learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, that left 20 children dead at the hands of 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza. After the shock and the initial grief came questions about how it could have happened and why. Reports that Adam Lanza may have had some form of undiagnosed mental illness surfaced. The tragedy drove Liza Long to write a blog post on that same day, titled "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother." She wasn't Lanza's mom, but she was raising a child with a mental disorder. Her 13-year-old son had violent rages on a regular basis. He was in and out of juvenile detention. He had threatened to kill her. She detailed all this in her essay that took off online. Now, four years later, her son is speaking out too. This week on For The Record: a mother, a son and life on the edge of bipolar disorder. Eric Walton, Liza Long's son, is now a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Boise, Idaho. After a series of misdiagnoses, he's been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But four years ago, he didn't know much about his condition. "I knew that there were times when I would have rages, didn't like them. I knew that I wanted them to stop," Walton says. Except he felt a loss of control in those moments. He describes the onset of these rages as a "blackout" of sorts. "I would start getting angry," he says. "Then it's like being trapped inside a box inside your own head. It was like a television on the wall that shows you what you're seeing. You can feel everything, but you no longer have the video game controller to control your own body." Walton's mom says when Eric would get into those states, "he would express a lot of suicidal thoughts, and hearing him just say, 'I want to die, I just want to end it.'" Then, two days before the Newtown shooting, Eric Walton had another episode. © 2016 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22139 - Posted: 04.25.2016