LinkBlog
[USA] Think Social Networks, Blogs Can’t Hurt You? Health insurers can use your on-line posts to avoid paying for treatment
Debunking the 'Chemical Imbalance' myth (pdf)
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Antidepressants (Note: requires registration of a valid email address)
Not Depressed, Just British!
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 - e-couch free personal self-help guide
- 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
-
Medicines.org.uk - Anxiety &
Depression guides - Mind-Your-Mind Canada
- National Center for PTSD
-
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
-
Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT) - Sane Australia
-
Shyness & Social Anxiety
Service of Australia -
Social Phobia/Social Anxiety
Association - Social Anxiety Support board
-
South African Depression &
Anxiety Group - Suicide Prevention Help
-
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
- No evidence waterpipes decrease smoking harm
- Tobacco smoke + alcohol damage hearts more than either alone
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
- The ethics of interrogation and the American Psychological Association
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.
Genes linked to depression
A handful of genes may be responsible for causing major depressive disorder, according to a first-of-its-kind study by psychiatrists at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, promise to help lift the stigma associated with clinical depression and open the door to finding targeted ways to treat it.
"This is a totally new area of research, this is a very novel finding," said Ma-Li Wong, M.D., professor and vice chair for translational research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. "This gene and this family of genes have not been looked at as a source for depression."
Dr. Wong and Julio Licinio, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UM, and their colleagues, studied 284 patients diagnosed with depression. The researchers then genotyped the patients and examined a family of enzymes called cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterases (PDEs), which are already therapeutic targets for a variety of illnesses. PDE inhibitors are medications known to be useful for treating several conditions such as heart disease, asthma, inflammation, and erectile dysfunction.
When the researchers compared PDE genes between the patient population and 331 people without depression, they identified several genes with key differences. There was an especially strong correlation between PDE9A and PDE11A and patients with depression. "Primarily, the strongest findings are on one gene, PDE11A, which is important for both susceptibility and also drug response," said Wong. "The PDE9A is also important, although not as significant, and there are other genes that offered preliminary data that needs to be confirmed. So there is a whole family of genes there that potentially are important for susceptibility and also treatment response."
The clinical work for this study was done at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, with the genotyping handled by the Sanger Institute in England. Licinio and Wong left UCLA to join the faculty of the UM Miller School of Medicine May 1. They are considered national leaders in the treatment of depression, and Licinio says the UM Miller School is now the only center currently involved in the study of these genes in depression.
This finding is particularly exciting for the researchers and for patients because it opens a whole new arena of study - and possibly a new way to treat depression. "The patients much prefer this idea of a genetic link, because for them the worst thing is to think it's their fault that they are depressed," said Licinio.
This work also holds the promise of much better diagnosis and treatment of major depressive disorder in the future. "We're trying to identify who is more likely to have depression and to respond to antidepressants, and the other thing is that this family of genes could become a new therapeutic target," he said.
Targeting these new genes could both improve and accelerate how patients respond to antidepressants. "Right now it's a guessing game, so there is no test or no marker that tells you which person is more likely to respond to a specific drug," said Licinio. And because of that, a physician may keep a patient on a single medication for a month or more waiting to see if they'll respond before trying another medication. But if psychiatrists can identify antidepressants that can effectively inhibit the effect of PDE11A or PDE9A, patients with those genes can expect both a better and faster response to medications.
Wong M, Whelan F, Deloukas P, Whittaker P, Delgado M, Cantor RM, McCann SM, Julio Licinio J.
Phosphodiesterase genes are associated with susceptibility to major depression and antidepressant treatment response
PNAS 2006, Sep 28; 0.1073/pnas.0602795103
[Abstract | Full text (7 pages : 1.6MB)]