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Discrimination is never pleasant and it can result in stress, but can it actually harm your mental health? According to a new research study from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the Department of Epidemiology at UCLA the answer could be yes. Dr. Vickie Mays, a professor at the School of Health, explained “We now have decades of research showing that when people are chronically treated differently, unfairly or badly, it can have effects ranging from low self-esteem to a higher risk for developing stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression.” Mays continued by stating “We know that when people have a psychiatric disorder, it’s not good for any of us. For example, it can affect parenting — a depressed mom might not be able to interact with her child in a way that best promotes that child’s development, leaving the child more vulnerable to certain behavioral disorders. In that sense, we all suffer from the effects of discrimination.”
Department of Community Health Sciences professor Dr. Gilbert Gee performed an earlier study on mental health, discrimination, and stress which also demonstrated similar findings and showed the mental health impact that discrimination can have. According to Dr. Gee “Much of the research has focused on symptoms of sadness and anxiety resulting from the mistreatment, and that’s very important, but we wanted to look at clinical outcomes. If you don’t get a job and you’re left to wonder whether it had to do with your race or gender, that can have an impact on your mental health.”
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With legal recreational marijuana laws being passed by a number of states in the USA many medical and scientific professionals see an opportunity to research how this drug and these laws impact alcohol use. University of Washington researchers did not find clear answers to this question when they performed a study to determine whether legal recreational marijuana increased or decreased alcohol use in certain groups. Researchers say that it is very difficult to gauge impact because the drug was previously illegal and illicit but it is now moving into mainstream use. In the United States alone 23 states have passed legal medical marijuana laws, and 4 states have passed laws to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. According to the lead author of the study, Katarína Guttmannová, “We chose to focus on alcohol because even relatively small changes in alcohol consumption could have profound implications for public health, safety, and related costs.”
The study on legal recreational marijuana and alcohol use did not provide the clear answers that researchers were seeking. Since marijuana and alcohol both work on the reward center of the brain, and one drug may complement the other when both are used together, the goal was to see whether people were using pot instead of alcohol or using both substances together. Guttmannová explained “This is a complicated issue and requires a nuanced approach. We were hoping to have more clear-cut answers at the end of our research. But you know what? This is the science of human behavior, and it’s messy, and that’s OK.”
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A recent medical study has linked antidepressants during pregnancy, especially SSRI antidepressants, and autistic children. When the drug is taken in later pregnancy the risks are the greatest. This can leave many physicians and mental health professionals in a bind though, and the findings may cause some pregnant women to stop taking medication that helps control their depression. According to the study report by University of Montreal researchers, and authored by lead researcher Anick Beard, “Use of antidepressants, specifically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, during the second and/or third trimester increases the risk of autism spectrum disease in children, even after considering maternal depression.” The study involved over 145,000 children, and 4,700 of the study participants were exposed to antidepressant medication in the womb. Out of the 4,700 children identified only around 1%, or 31 children, were eventually diagnosed as having autism. A careful analysis identified only SSRI drugs. Beard explained “Other classes of antidepressants were not statistically significantly associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder.”
University of Rochester in New York Obstetrics and Gynecology department chair Dr. Eva Pressman, who was not involved in the study on antidepressants during pregnancy and autistic children, has more question than she does answers after going over the study. Pressman told reporters that “If there is an effect that SSRIs have on autism, I think it is not a very large effect. If the patient can be safely managed without medication, that’s always in their interest. In some patients, the depression is clearly more dangerous than the medication.” In the end physicians and mental health professionals will have to weigh the risks versus the benefits in each patient to determine whether antidepressants, and especially SSRI drugs, are the right treatment choice on a case by case basis.
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Bariatric surgery is used to treat severe obesity, and a new study shows that patients who require this type of surgery usually suffer from mental health issues as well. These mental health problems typically include binge eating, depression, and even social anxiety. In addition to determining the prevalence of mental health disorders in people who were considering bariatric surgery the researchers also wanted to see whether these disorders had an impact on the weight loss and results that patients had after they underwent the bariatric procedure. The study conclusions and statistics were published in the journal JAMA. University of California-Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine researcher Dr. Aaron J. Dawes was part of the team who undertook the study, and a total of 59 publications on bariatric surgery and mental health disorders were analyzed using the meta data. These publications covered more than 65,000 patients who fit the study criteria.
The study on bariatric surgery and mental health problems in obese patients showed that almost 1 in 4 patients in this group had a mood disorder. These mood disorders included depression, which affected 19% of the patients, and binge eating disorder, which was present in around 17% of the patients. Approximately 12% of the individuals who were analyzed as part of the study had anxiety. Bariatric patients seem to suffer from mental health issues in greater numbers than the general population and the higher rates are cause for concern. According to the research team “Previous reviews have suggested that self-esteem, mental image, cognitive function, temperament, support networks and socioeconomic stability play major roles in determining outcomes after bariatric surgery.”
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A new study on anxiety and social threats has provided some important information on anxiety in general, and on how the brains of anxious people detect threats in social situations. According to the researchers the human brain is wired to spend more power processing social situations that involve real or perceived threats, and this is especially true in people that are anxious or that suffer from anxiety. Some researchers believe that the differences noted may explain what many people call a sixth sense or intuition, that inner feeling that many people get which signals danger even though there is no obvious threat at this moment. The study showed that individuals who were typically calmer and more laid back showed different brain activity and active brain areas used for threat detection that were different than what was seen in the brain of individuals with anxiety.
In the past it was believed that anxiety caused individuals to become over sensitive to signals that could mean impending threats, but the new study on anxiety and social threats shows that this is not the case. People without anxiety tend to process threats in areas of the brain that are responsible for recognizing facial expressions. People who have anxiety tend to process perceived threats in different brain areas which are responsible for actions instead of facial recognition. These important brain function and active area differences show that anxiety is perceived and processed very differently by the two groups. According to Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and French Institute of Health and Medical Research investigator Marwa El Zein, Ph.D., who was also the lead author on the study, “In a crowd, you will be most sensitive to an angry face looking towards you, and will be less alert to an angry person looking somewhere else.”
