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"
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.
High anxiety nearly doubles heart disease mortality
New research shows that highly anxious heart disease patients face nearly double the risk of heart attack or death when compared to those with a more serene outlook on life.
Patients whose anxiety intensified over time were in greatest peril, while those who started out highly anxious but later found inner calm markedly reduced their risk. The research appears in the May 22, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).
"Most patients come in very anxious about their coronary condition," said Charles M. Blatt, M.D., F.A.C.C., director of research at the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation and a clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. "I'm convinced that spending time with the patient and the family and interacting with them as a caring human being is critically important to clinical outcomes."
Previous studies have shown that mental stress and depression have harmful effects on the heart and blood vessels, but until now there has been little information on the corrosive effects of anxiety or the benefits of relieving anxiety over time.
For the study, Dr. Blatt and his colleagues recruited 516 patients with proven coronary artery disease. At the beginning of the study and again each year patients completed a standardized questionnaire about their feelings during the previous week, for example, whether they felt peaceful, felt something bad would happen, took a long time to fall asleep at night, or had upset bowels or stomach.
Patients were followed-up for an average of more than 3 years. During that time, 19 patients died and 44 had a nonfatal heart attack. Cumulative anxiety scores were averaged and adjusted for age, and the patients divided into 3 groups. Those with anxiety scores in the highest third had nearly double the risk of heart attack or death when compared to those with anxiety scores in the lowest third (hazard ratio, 1.97; p=0.04). Looked at from another angle, the data showed a 6 percent increase in the risk of death or heart attack each time the average cumulative anxiety scored notched up by 1 unit (p=0.02).
The initial anxiety score alone offered little clue to the patient's future health. However, an increase in anxiety over time hiked the risk of heart attack or death by 10 percent (p<0.001). Every one-point increase in the anxiety score was associated with a 6 percent increase in the risk of death or heart attack. Conversely, patients whose anxiety level was in the highest third at baseline, but in the lowest third when cumulative average anxiety levels were tallied, were among the least likely to have a heart attack or to die.
This finding shows not only the need for repeated measurements to accurately gauge the impact of anxiety but also suggests an important role for physicians in reassuring anxious patients, Dr. Blatt said. Spending extra time with patients and families gives the cardiologist an opportunity to talk about heart disease, adjust medications, encourage exercise, and come up with effective strategies to improve cardiac risk factors, such as smoking, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Equally important, it helps to establish a caring relationship that allays the fears that could shorten a patient's life.
"I tell patients well-managed coronary disease is consistent with a long happy life. If you give people this type of reassurance, it turns a frightening disease into something they can grow old with," Dr. Blatt said.
James L. Januzzi, M.D., F.A.C.C., agreed. "This study provides further insight into the complex connections between the brain and heart," said Dr. Januzzi, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the cardiac intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. "Appropriately, cardiologists have traditionally focused their therapeutic efforts on factors known to influence long-term outcome in coronary disease, such as making sure to aggressively lower LDL cholesterol. The results of this study demonstrate that we may need to consider more thoroughly evaluating patients with mood disorders such as anxiety, as treatment may very well reduce the risk of heart disease."
Now that research has documented the detrimental effects of anxiety, the next step is to determine the most effective ways of both relieving anxiety and improving cardiac health. Anti-anxiety medications and psychotherapy will be evaluated in the next phase of the study, but Dr. Blatt and his colleagues will also be taking a close look at the doctor-patient relationship. "My hunch is that for the majority of patients, the greatest anxiety-reducing effect comes from having a good relationship with a doctor," Dr Blatt said.
Woldecherkos A. Shibeshi WA, Young-Xu Y, Blatt CM.
Anxiety Worsens Prognosis in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease
J Am Coll Cardiol, doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2007.03.007 [Abstract]