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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?
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
- My Brain: My Friend, My Enemy
- My Wife Has Agoraphobia!
- Neurophilosophy
- Out of the silence - site for young people with mental illness
- 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
- 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
"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
-
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.
Study finds potential PTSD biomarker
New research identifies a characteristic physiological response in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that could be used as a biomarker to diagnose the disease.
"PTSD can be a debilitating disorder that creates cognitive disability as well as internal stress for the victim and produces stress for family and friends. And it is an increasing public health concern," says Bruce McEwen, PhD, of Rockefeller University in New York City. "Understanding what goes on in the brain is critical to finding successful treatments, including pharmaceutical therapies and cognitive behavioral therapies that enhance extinction of the fear-related memories."
PTSD is the most common mental health disorder among veterans of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. As the profile of PTSD rises, new findings are increasing researchers' understanding of the way memory malfunctions in PTSD, creating characteristic symptoms such as flashbacks and fear reactions to trigger sounds, even in safe situations.
Research with veterans from the Serbo-Croatian War of the early 1990s confirms previous research showing that veterans with PTSD react in fear even when shown signals they have come to associate with safety. It also has led to the identification of the first biomarker for PTSD, which may become useful in testing the value of treatments for the disorder.
"One of the central features of the disorder is the inability of the brain to distinguish between dangerous and safe situations," says Michael Davis, PhD, of Emory University School of Medicine. "For example, a woman who was raped by a stranger may later not even feel safe with her husband. That is, she has lost the ability to distinguish between dangerous and safe situations."
Working with 33 veterans, Davis measured the degree to which subjects were startled, as well as their ability to overcome this fear response, as he evoked certain conditioned responses.
The study used yellow, green, and blue lights, which, in pairs, signaled caution or safety. Davis first trained the subjects to associate the yellow and green lights with a blast of air to the throat. How hard the veterans blinked was recorded as a measure of their startle response to this combination of colored lights. The study then created an association between a blue-green pairing of lights and no air blast, establishing a signal for relative safety.
To measure how safe the blue light made the subjects feel, Davis then recorded responses to a blue-yellow signal. What he found was that although healthy subjects startled less when they saw the blue and yellow lights than when they saw the green-yellow combination, those with PTSD could not suppress their fear response. This indicated an inability to respond to indicators of safety.
"This test can provide a more objective way of measuring fear control mechanisms that work in healthy people and do not work in patients with PTSD," says Davis. "In fact, this finding may provide one of the first biomarkers for PTSD, namely an objective physiological measure of abnormal fear regulation. It may also become a valuable clinical tool to assess and compare the effectiveness of different treatments in different populations of PTSD patients, such as civilians and combat veterans."
Jovanovic T, Norrholm SD, Jambrosic-Sakoman A, et al. Conditioned and external fear inhibition in combat- related PTSD in Croatian war veterans. Session 639.6/FFF22, 2007 Neuroscience - San Diego CA, 2007 Nov 6. [Abstract]