Posts archived in Abnormality


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Why does lithium therapy work for bipolar disorder?

June 21, 2010 by .

Whilst it’s been known for years that lithium drugs help many bipolar patients to manage their disorder, it hasn’t been known how lithium acts.  But now there is a clue! Laboratory studies show a link between lithium and an enzyme known as PO*. This enzyme controls a group of genes which affect brain cells’ sensitivity to lithium. And one of those genes, ImpA2, is also associated with bipolar disorder in some sufferers. So possibly there is a functional connection between ImpA2 and bipolar disorder, which can be mediated by lithium. Understanding this link could lead the way to better treatments for bipolar depression.

*PO=prolyl oligopeptidase

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Depression and being female

June 19, 2010 by .

We’ve known for ages that far more females than males suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, but it is frequently hypothesised that this is not the true state of things. This is because, in Western industrialised cultures, it is more acceptable to admit vulnerability especially psychological vulnerability if one is female, not male. The macho nature of these cultures is, if you like, a confounding variable. However, there could be more to this than social and cultural relativism.

A recent interesting finding in rats shows that females are definitely more sensitive to stress. Their brain cells respond far more strongly to the precursor to corticosteroid stress hormones, a neurochemical called corticotropin-releasing factor, CRF. Female rat neurons are activated by CRF, male rat neurons adapt to it and less stress hormones are produced.

But does this rat behaviour also happen in humans? Well, we don’t know; but we do know that CRF regulation gets disrupted in human stress-related psychological disorders, so there could be a similarity, although one needs always to be very careful in generalising between species.

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Something to Bragg about……

May 19, 2010 by .

Dreams, drugs, intelligence, memory, infant brains, psychoanalysis, human evolution and many more – Loads of online broadcasts from Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ Radio 4 series to be found here – all free – it makes one proud to be a licence payer….

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Exercise as part of therapy?

May 17, 2010 by .

Three recent small studies (see here or here) looked at the effects of various 12-16 week exercise programmes  on sufferers from schizophrenia. The types of exercise varied from more physically strenuous ones, such as strength training and jogging, to less energetic yoga.

There were small improvements in physical health but greater improvements were found in mental states. Improvements in anxiety and depression from exercise were greater than similar improvements in standard care without an exercise component.

These studies support the findings of two earlier studies, which suggests the importance of further research into the effects of exercise programmes in the treatment of schizophrenia plus initiatives looking into how to implement such programmes and engage sufferers in taking part.

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Psychiatric Tales by Daryl Cunningham

April 2, 2010 by .

The excellent online comic strips about mental health that we first mentioned here, have now been collected into a fantastic book

Further details and links to many excerpts via Mindhacks here

Very moving last chapter can now be viewed here

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Why antidepressants don’t work

January 16, 2010 by .

Long-time depression researcher Eva Redei recently reported some of her latest findings. She has spent decades breeding rats who are severely depressed (mating depressed rats with depressed rats so you get ‘who are believed to be the most depressed rats in the world’ (!!)). This meant she could identify genes linked to depression. Next she exposed a different group of rats to stressful situations for two weeks which enabled her to identify the genes that consistently were associated with a poor response to stress.

The big news is that there was no overlap between the depression genes and the stress genes. This suggests that the idea that stress causes depression may be wrong. And, furthermore, she claims the reason antidepressants are often ineffective is because they treat stress and not depression and she has now shown that the two are not linked, though they may co-occur. So that’s one reason why antidepressants only work for some people (those suffering from stress and depression). Before you say ‘ah well, this is just an effect in rats’, Redei claims that rat brains are very similar to human brains, so it is reasonably to draw analogies. It also may explain why we like cheese. (No, that last bit was a joke).

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Birth

January 3, 2010 by .

Daniel Askill – WE HAVE DECIDED NOT TO DIE from Cgunit on Vimeo. Most psychodynamically-oriented approaches emphasise the central role of some kind of childhood trauma, and in some cases this trauma is believed to be the act of birth itself.

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Genes, free will, responsibility, murder?

November 17, 2009 by .

If you  smash your fist into someone’s body are you being aggressive and anti-social, or are you just doing what your genes programme you to do? The idea of genes affecting behaviour isn’t new and isn’t disputed, but the use of certain genes as a mitigating factor in criminal behaviour is a contentious issue. Genes have been used as part of the defence in cases of murder, and moral and ethical arguments around this use have focused on the low validity of the research evidence plus the generally accepted concepts of free will and personal responsibility. The argument has been taken a stage further now as a convicted murderer in Italy has had his sentence reduced partly because of his history of psychiatric illness and also partly because his genome includes five genes known to be associated with violent behaviour. One of these genes is a variant of MAOA, which codes for an enzyme which breaks down amines in the brain, and this low-activity variant correlates in research findings with violence and aggression, giving it its nickname the “warrior” gene. However, as we all know, correlations are not necessarily causal; and then there is the responsibility debate. So, what would you decide if you were on the jury, the defendant was clearly guilty of murder, but also had a gene profile predisposing him or her to violence and aggression?

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The Placebo Effect… the A02 point that just keeps getting bigger….

October 17, 2009 by .

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“Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late 90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, regulators might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 80s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time. It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.”

Read whole article here

Picture link here

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Mind Changers

September 3, 2009 by .

Many of you will be familiar with the excellent BBC radio series called Mind Changers which has included programmes on Milgram, Piaget, Ainsworth, Bartlett, Kohlberg, Zimbardo, Harlow, Asch. Some of these are currently available as podcasts here or you can go to PsychBLOG where Jamie has downloaded some and there are also some available on Spokenword (free subscription for teachers).

If anyone finds copies elsehwere, let us know!

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