LinkBlog
Cannabis, the mind and society: the hash realities (PDF - free reg. req'd)
The Role of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies in the Treatment of Insomnia
Have you outsourced your brain?
recommended links
Depression Is Real Coalition
-
ABIL: Agoraphobics Building
Independant Lives -
Agoraphobia and Panic
Disorder Foundation -
Anxiety Disorders Association
of America - Anxiety Network Australia
- Anxiety-Panic.Com
- AnxietyZone
- Army Behavioral Health
- BrainPhysics - OCD
-
Canadian Network for Mood
and Anxiety Treatments - Children of Hoarders
- Choices in Mental Health (UK)
-
Dart Foundation: Gateway to PTSD
information -
David Baldwin's
Trauma Information Pages - EMDR Institute, Inc.
- EMDR Network Japan
- Fear of Flying course (free)
- Healthy Minds
- Information for People with Anxiety Disorders
- Internet Guide to REBT, CBT
- Living with a Brain Disorder
- Morita Therapy
- Mayo Clinic : Depression
- Mayo Clinic : GAD
- Mayo Clinic : OCD
- Mayo Clinic : Panic Attacks
- Mayo Clinic : PTSD
- Mayo Clinic : Social Anxiety
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Medicines.org.uk - Anxiety &
Depression guides - Mind-Your-Mind Canada
- National Center for PTSD
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National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) - No Such Thing As Crazy
- OCD Action, UK
- OCD Ireland
- Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
- Open Minds, Open Doors
- Out of the silence - site for young people with mental illness
- Paniccure.com
- Partners With PTSD
- Prescription Drug Information
- Psychiatric Service Dog Society
- PsychNews
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Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) - Sane Australia
-
Shyness & Social Anxiety
Service of Australia -
Social Phobia/Social Anxiety
Association - Social Anxiety Support board
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South African Depression &
Anxiety Group - Suicide Prevention Help
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tAPir - the Anxiety Panic
internet resource -
The Panic Center (Free
CBT based programs) - The School of OCD
- UN-WHO Drug Trials Database
- U.S. Army Behavioral Health - PTSD
we support
"just don't smoke"
Yul Brynner
- Menthol cigarettes harder to quit
- Secondhand smoke in cars serious threat to kid's health
- Starting smoking young increases addiction risk
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Smoking doesn't slim girls;
stunts boys' growth - 40 reasons why you should quit smoking
- Pregnant smokers 'prime' their kids to smoke
- Smoking related coronary artery disease quickly reversed if young smokers quit
- Not ready to quit? Try cutting back
- Half smoking again within year of lung cancer surgery
- Cutting back 'compensation' increases toxin load per cigarette
- Tobacco companies upped nicotine level 11% since 1998
- Workplace passive smoke increases lung cancer risk
- Hooked by genes: The DNA sequences cigarette companies love
- Smoking causes long lasting changes to brain's bio chemistry
- Nicotine receptor stimulant trebles the odds of stopping smoking
- Bupropion, nortriptyline double chances of quitting
- Nicotine's powerful role in reinforcing smoking
- Pregnant smokers raise child's risk of stroke, heart attack
- Smoking linked to pancreatic cancer
- Neurobiology of Smokers' Cravings
- 'Low cancer risk' cigarettes as deadly as regular kind
- Quitting reduces lung cancer death risk by 70%
- Fetal nicotine exposure linked to teen attention problems
- Outdoor second-hand smoke exposure can harm
- Response to day's first cigarette predicts ease of quitting
- 'Healthy' children of smoking parents aren't really so healthy
- Children of smokers have up to five times higher levels of a nicotine toxin
- Smoking increases risk of dementia
- Smoking kills even after quitting
- Antenatal second hand smoke exposure increases child's psychological problems
- Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO
- Just 1 cigarette can lead to nicotine addiction
- Smokers less likely to survive early stage lung cancer
- Smokeless tobacco delivers carcinogens more efficiently than cigarettes!
- Smoking permanently turns on genes that increase lung cancer susceptibility
- Secondhand smoke a health hazard for pets too
- Hypnosis for smoking cessation sees strong results
- Smoking doesn't burn fat
- Smoking linked to sagging breasts
anti torture campaign
- Torture experts write APA policy
- [APA] still rocked by torture debate
- Petition for psychologists
- AMA president says APA "did not accurately represent our ethical guidelines"
- Psychologists Aiding Torturers
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Annual conference endorses
APA's torture policy :( - Physicians for Human Rights call on Congress to vote No on Military Commissions Bill
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Torture is a Form of Trauma;
Trauma Causes PTSD - Psychoanalysts' association condemns torture use
- Humiliating, inhumane or degrading treatment IS torture
- Two American psychologists accused of war crimes. U.S. DoD investigating.
- DoD report proves psychologists central to POW/detainee abuse (pdf)
- 40 psychologists demand APA change policy on torture (pdf)
- Did the American Psychological Association turn a blind eye to torture for medicine precribing rights?
- Will psychologists still abet torture?
- Psychologist, Author Mary Pipher Returns APA Award Over Interrogation Policy
- Guantanamo Medical Role Likened to South Africa Under Apartheid
Deputy Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Lt. General John (Jeff) Kimmons, has stated that no actionable intelligence had been obtained through abusive interrogation methods in the last 5 years.
monument, Monmouth County
New Jersey.
Brain's endocannabinoid system a potential target for new antidepressants
American and Italian researchers have found that boosting the amounts of a marijuana-like brain transmitter called anandamide produces antidepressant effects in test rats.
Led by Daniele Piomelli, the Louise Turner Arnold Chair in Neurosciences and director of the Center for Drug Discovery at the University of California, Irvine, the researchers used a drug they created, codenamed URB597, which blocks anandamide degradation in the brain, thereby increasing the levels of this cannabinoid neurotransmitter.
"These findings raise the hope that the mood-elevating properties of marijuana can be harnessed to treat depression," Piomelli said. "Marijuana itself has shown no clinical use for depression. However, specific drugs that amplify the actions of natural marijuana-like transmitters in the brain are showing great promise."
The researchers administered URB597 to chronically stressed rats which showed behaviors similar to those seen in depressed human patients. After five weeks of treatment, the stressed rats treated with the drug were behaving similarly to a comparison group of unstressed animals. The study appears in the Nov. 15 issue of Biological Psychiatry.
URB597 works by inhibiting FAAH, an enzyme in the body that breaks down anandamide. Dubbed "the bliss molecule" for its similarities to the active ingredient in marijuana, anandamide is a neurotransmitter that is part of the brain's endocannabinoid system and it has been shown in studies by Piomelli and others to play analgesic, anti-anxiety and antidepressant roles. It also is involved in regulating feeding and obesity. Blocking FAAH activity boosts the effects of anandamide without producing the "high" seen with marijuana.
Piomelli and colleagues at the Universities of Urbino and Parma in Italy created and patented URB597 in 2007. The European pharmaceutical company Organon holds the license to the patent and will begin clinical studies on the drug in 2008, according to Piomelli.
The study was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, the University of California Discovery Program and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Bortolato M, Mangieri RA, Fu J, et al. Antidepressant-like Activity of the Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolase Inhibitor URB597 in a Rat Model of Chronic Mild Stress Biol Psychiatry 2007 Nov 15;62(10):1103-1110 [Abstract]