LinkBlog
Gateway to PTSD information
Smoking, giving up and mental health - doses of some psych drugs may need to be adjusted
How can I stop smoking? What works, what doesn't? (PDF)
Blue Star Mothers of America's Guide to PTSD (pdf)
blog roll
- Agoraphobia
- Anxiety 2 Calm
-
Anxious Living : An Exploration
into Social Anxiety - Dare to Dream
- Dear Tobacco
-
Dr. Deborah Serani's:
Psychological Perspectives - Fast Weight Loss?
- Finding the Confidence
- GNIF Brain Blogger
- Legacy of War
- Mental Health Minutes
- Neurophilosophy
- PTSD Combat
- The Happiness Guy
- The Last Psychiatrist
- The Trouble With Spikol
-
WebMD: Anxiety and
Stress Management - We Worry: A Blog for the Anxious
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
-
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
- Paniccure.com
- Partners With PTSD
- Prescription Drug Information
- Psychiatric Service Dog Society
-
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
"just don't smoke"
"Don't smoke, whatever you do, just don't smoke."
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner
- Menthol cigarettes harder to quit
- Secondhand smoke in cars serious threat to kid's health
- Starting smoking young increases addiction risk
-
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
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
-
Annual conference endorses
APA's torture policy :( - Physicians for Human Rights call on Congress to vote No on Military Commissions Bill
-
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.
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.
NIH researchers identify OCD risk gene
posted Thursday, 30 March 2006
NIH Researchers Identify OCD Risk Gene
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have identified a previously unknown gene variant that doubles an individual's risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The new functional variant, or allele, is a component of the serotonin transporter gene (SERT), site of action for the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that are today's mainstay medications for OCD, other anxiety disorders, and depression."Improved knowledge of SERT's role in OCD raises the possibility of improved screening, treatment, and medications development for that disorder," said Ting-Kai Li, M.D., Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "It also provides an important clue to the neurobiologic basis of OCD and the compulsive behaviors often seen in other psychiatric diseases, including alcohol dependence."
Approximately 2 percent of U.S. adults (3.3 million people) have OCD, the fourth most prevalent mental health disorder in the United States. Individuals with OCD have intrusive, disturbing thoughts or images (obsessions) and perform rituals (compulsions) to prevent or banish those thoughts. Many other individuals demonstrate obsessive-compulsive behaviors that do not meet OCD diagnostic criteria but alter the individuals' lives.
Drs. David Goldman, Chief, and Xianzhang Hu, Research Scientist, in NIAAA's Laboratory of Neurogenetics discovered the linkage aided by new functional analyses of the SERT genetic variant. The researchers first compared the genotypes of 169 OCD patients to those of 253 controls in a large U.S. patient population1 and found that the OCD patients were twice as likely to have the variant. Then they studied transmission and non-transmission of the variant in a Canadian population2 of 175 OCD parent-child trios (two healthy parents and a child with OCD) and found that the risk variant was twice as likely to be transmitted from a parent to a child with OCD. Specifically, of 86 informative trios, 48 children carried the new risk variant and 26 did not.
"Whereas most genetic diseases are caused by variations that lead to reduced gene function, we found that a common SERT variant that increases SERT activity also increases risk for OCD," said Dr. Goldman. The same research team previously identified a rare gain-of-function variant at a different location in SERT. It, too, is linked to OCD but has been studied only in two families with a severe, treatment-resistant form of the disease. "That earlier study suggested that we should test the common gain-of-function variant for OCD linkage," Goldman said.
"Improved knowledge of SERT's role in OCD raises the possibility of improved screening, treatment, and medications development for that disorder,"
The new variant is located at a well-recognized site in the SERT gene. Also known as HTTLPR, the site is the most heavily studied polymorphic site (those that may display differing DNA sequences) in psychiatric genetics. For years, HTTLPR has been known to have two variants - S and L - that alter expression of the SERT gene and are common across all human populations. The loss-of-function S variant exerts a small effect on a person's risk for anxiety, depression, and suicidality, especially in response to environmental stressors. The S allele exerts a larger effect on the intermediate neurobiology of anxiety and depression, specifically, by disrupting the structure and functional coupling of key brain regions. The gain-of-function L allele, on the other hand, enhances SERT activity and functional coupling. The current study differentiates the L variant into two - LA and LG - and shows that LA exerts a greater influence on SERT expression."The gain-of-function L alleles appear to inhibit connections between emotion and repetitive behaviors and such executive brain functions as task-switching," Goldman said. "These neurobiology relationships should be further tested in combined genetic-neuroimaging studies."
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, is the primary U.S. agency for conducting and supporting research on the causes, consequences, prevention, and treatment of alcohol abuse, alcoholism, and alcohol problems and disseminates research findings to general, professional, and academic audiences. Additional alcohol research information and publications are available at www.niaaa.nih.gov.
- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Case Control Study, conducted by Dennis Murphy, M.D., Laboratory of Clinical Science, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health
- The Toronto OCD Parent/Child Trio Study, conducted by James L. Kennedy, M.D. , Department of Psychiatry, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto
Hu XZ, Lipsky RH, Guanshan Zhu, Akhtar LA, Taubman J, Greenberg BD, et al
Serotonin Transporter Promoter Gain-of-Function Genotypes Are Linked to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Am. J. Hum. Genet., 78:000, 2006 [Abstract]
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