World of Psychology
Best of Our Blogs: July 2, 2013
No matter how good you get at say managing your anger or recognizing your triggers, life will always stump you with something more challenging. I was reminded of that recently when an unexpected comment threw me for a loop.
Has a person’s critical comment, voice or action ever rattled you?
If so, you can understand what happens when a thought, a criticism or a negative belief can harp on your good mood. Maybe it was a seemingly benign statement about your performance at work, a passive aggressive statement from a relative, or a moment of self-pity that overtook you. Whatever got you in a tail spin can easily take you from anxious to anger in a millisecond.
How do you cope?
Finding ways to distract yourself from what’s temporarily ailing you could help. These posts should do that and give you insight into more permanent healing.
This week, one of our top posters shares seven helpful ways to combat a common complaint-the Sunday Blues. You’ll also learn how food can help improve your mood, how your early relationship with dad can positively or negatively impact your current romantic relationships, and why self-pity has a place in your ability to cope. Perhaps, you will never have all the answers or respond to every challenge perfectly. But that’s not the goal. As these posts show, the most important thing we can do is to keep learning, growing and stumbling through to the next lesson in life.
{Flickr photo by Aga Slodownik}
7 Ways to Stop Sunday Night Anxiety/Depression
(The Psychology of Success in Business) – Suffering from the Sunday Blues? Fortunately, there are things you can do to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression so you can start your week off right. Read what one expert recommends.
How a Dad Shapes His Daughter’s Romantic Relationships
(Inside Out) – We often overlook the importance of a father’s role in their daughter’s future relationships. This post points out some of the ways early male figures can shape your expectations and preferences in romantic partners.
The Benefits of Anxiety: What’s Wrong With It, What’s Right With It.
(Tales of Manic Depression) – Can there be a bright side to anxiety? Surprisingly, yes. Find out what elements of anxiety can actually improve your productivity.
A Gut Feeling: Probiotics and Changes in Brain Activity
(Cultivating Contentment & Happiness) – Yogurt as an emotional regulator? Your gut as a second brain? It’s not science fiction folks. Research studies actually show the positive impact probiotics (what’s found in yogurt products these days) can have on anxiety and tension.
Anger and Chronic Pain
(Living with Chronic Pain) – Ever ask yourself, “Why me?” One chronic pain sufferer shares why it’s important to feel and express your feelings even if what you’re experiencing are anger and self-pity.
Psych Central News
Does Heartburn Drug, Pepcid, Hold Promise for Schizophrenia?
Professor Jesper Ekelund, M.D., and his team showed that a very large dose of famotidine (200 mg daily) can penetrate the so-called blood-brain barrier and affect the histamine system in the brain.
Under the brand name Pepcid, famotidine has been used for the treatment of heartburn since the 1980s, but at regular dosing, famotidine almost does not enter the brain at all, since the brain is protected by the blood-brain barrier.
But the researchers reported that by increasing the dosage five-fold, the drug was able to enter the brain and affect the histamine system.
Researchers said that within one week the symptoms of persons suffering from schizophrenia started to ease, and after four weeks of treatment, symptoms had decreased significantly.
For the study, researchers randomly divided 30 persons suffering from schizophrenia into two groups, one which received famotidine and the other, placebo. All of the patients who took famotidine responded positively to the treatment while the symptoms of those who were on a placebo did not change.
Schizophrenia is the most common and severe psychotic disorder, and is the cause of at least half of all psychiatric hospital treatment days.
Researchers say this is the first randomized, controlled trials in humans to test the effect of histamine (H2) blockade in schizophrenia.
The rationale for the treatment traces to 1963, when the later Nobel prize winner Arvid Carlsson showed that dopamine has a central role in psychosis.
Thereafter, the so called dopamine hypothesis has been central in psychosis.
All presently available medications for psychosis are based around this principle. Since treatment response is all too often incomplete and side effects common, there is still a great, unmet medical need for medications with other mechanisms of action.
Many other signaling substances have been the focus of attention, but so far, the brain’s histamine system has mainly been implicated in the side effects of many psychosis medications.
Famotidine works by blocking the histamine H2 receptor. There are important neurons in the brain that use histamine as their primary signaling substance. These neurons have an important role as regulators of other signaling substances.
Despite the success in the study, researchers said famotidine shouldn’t be used directly as treatment for schizophrenia until long-term use of a dose of this size has been proved safe.
Ekelund said he believes the study shows that the histamine system in the brain offers a novel approach to treating psychosis. The study results, he hopes, will lead to increased efforts by the pharmaceutical industry to develop medications targeting the histamine system.
Source: University of Helsinki
Medication under a magnifying glass pills photo by shutterstock.
Pre-K Depression Linked to Changes in Brain Activity
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis discovered a key brain structure that regulates emotions works differently in preschoolers with depression compared with their healthy peers.
Investigators say the findings could lead to ways to identify and treat depressed children earlier in the course of the illness, potentially preventing problems later in life.
“The findings really hammer home that these kids are suffering from a very real disorder that requires treatment,” said lead author Michael S. Gaffrey, Ph.D.
“We believe this study demonstrates that there are differences in the brains of these very young children and that they may mark the beginnings of a lifelong problem.”
The study is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Researchers discovered depressed preschoolers had elevated activity in the brain’s amygdala, an almond-shaped set of neurons important in processing emotions.
Earlier imaging studies identified similar changes in the amygdala region in adults, adolescents and older children with depression, but none had looked at preschoolers with depression.
For the new study, scientists from Washington University’s Early Emotional Development Program studied 54 children ages 4 to 6.
Before the study began, 23 of those kids had been diagnosed with depression. The other 31 had not. None of the children in the study had taken antidepressant medication.
Although studies using fMRI to measure brain activity by monitoring blood flow have been used for years, this is the first time that such scans have been attempted in children this young with depression.
Movements as small as a few millimeters can ruin fMRI data, so Gaffrey and his colleagues had the children participate in mock scans first. After practicing, the children in this study moved less than a millimeter on average during their actual scans.
While they were in the fMRI scanner during the study, the children looked at pictures of people whose facial expressions conveyed particular emotions. There were faces with happy, sad, fearful and neutral expressions.
“The amygdala region showed elevated activity when the depressed children viewed pictures of people’s faces,” said Gaffrey, an assistant professor of psychiatry.
“We saw the same elevated activity, regardless of the type of faces the children were shown. So it wasn’t that they reacted only to sad faces or to happy faces, but every face they saw aroused activity in the amygdala.”
Looking at pictures of faces often is used in studies of adults and older children with depression to measure activity in the amygdala.
But the observations in the depressed preschoolers were somewhat different than those previously seen in adults, where typically the amygdala responds more to negative expressions of emotion, such as sad or fearful faces, than to faces expressing happiness or no emotion.
In the preschoolers with depression, all facial expressions were associated with greater amygdala activity when compared with their healthy peers.
Gaffrey said it’s possible depression affects the amygdala mainly by exaggerating what, in other children, is a normal amygdala response to both positive and negative facial expressions of emotion.
But more research will be needed to prove that. He does believe, however, that the amygdala’s reaction to people’s faces can be seen in a larger context.
“Not only did we find elevated amygdala activity during face viewing in children with depression, but that greater activity in the amygdala also was associated with parents reporting more sadness and emotion regulation difficulties in their children,” Gaffrey said.
“Taken together, that suggests we may be seeing an exaggeration of a normal developmental response in the brain and that, hopefully, with proper prevention or treatment, we may be able to get these kids back on track.”
Source: Washington University School of Medicine
Amygdale in the brain photo by shutterstock.
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