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Researchers at Iowa State University have found that self stigma is an obstacle to help for mental illness , even when the help was offered online in an anonymous setting. The study shows that people who have a greater sense of self stigma are significantly less likely to reach out to obtain information about treatment for mental disorders and mental illness. According to lead study author Daniel Lannin “Self stigma is a powerful obstacle to overcome.” The study looked at how participants responded when they had a chance to learn more about counseling services at the university and get further information about mental health help and treatment. According to Lannin “It’s not just the fear of seeing a counselor or therapist. It’s actually when people are sitting at home or on their phone. That stigma prevents them from even learning more information about depression or about counseling.”
370 participants took part in the study on self stigma and mental illness, and less than 10% of the participants either clicked a link to get more information or wanted to learn more about counseling. All of the study participants were college students. The study results were recently published and can be found in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. Lannin explained that “A lot of people with higher levels of stigma won’t even entertain the possibility of a stigma intervention because they see the intervention as going to therapy to be more open to therapy. It’s like telling someone who doesn’t like vegetables to eat some broccoli to get over it.” One possible solution is self affirmation interventions.
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A recent study on veterans has applications that could easily transfer to civilians with mental disorders like depression and PTSD as well. The study showed that enhanced primary care which included telephone therapy options, care managers with specialized training, and other primary care interventions could improve the outcome for veterans who were suffering from PTSD or depression. Researchers involved with the study were associated with RAND Corporation, the Department of Defense Deployment Health Clinical Center, and RTI International. The researchers determined that those who went to a primary care clinic with PTSD and depression experienced fewer symptoms over the next year and had better mental health. The study results were recently published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal in the online edition.
Dr. Charles Engel was the lead author of the study on mental disorders and enhanced primary care. According to Dr. Engel “Although the improvements were modest, the reach of the program can be large and has the potential to bring more people under a high-quality treatment umbrella sooner. These findings suggest that the military health system might use this strategy to extend the reach of mental health care and reduce time to first treatment for PTSD and depression.” Dr. Engel went on to explain “Our findings are consistent with what has been observed in nonmilitary health care settings. This approach results in better outcomes and improves access to high-quality care. This is particularly important for a population that has a demonstrated need for mental health services. The results support the idea that high-quality mental health care can be provided in primary care settings. While many military members are reluctant to seek out mental health specialists, they are more willing to receive primary medical care. So this is a good way to encourage more people to receive mental health care, while also improving the quality of mental health services for military members.”
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A recent Umeå University research study has concluded that there is a link between concentrations of air pollution and both decreased mental health and psychiatric medications in children under the age of 18. The researchers looked at air pollution exposure and psychiatric health in children and adolescents by studying register based medication data in a database which contains this information for all Swedes. The study also included air pollution concentration data from the Swedish National Register. The study looked at entire populations for a variety of Swedish countries with varying demographics, migration and socioeconomic characteristics, and other factors. The researchers determined that higher levels of air pollution also raised the risk that medication would be dispensed to address at least one psychiatric diagnosis for individuals under the age of 18.
The study on air pollution and mental health in children and adolescents should be a cause for concern. Researchers found that an increase of nitrogen dioxide concentration in the air by just 10 micrograms per cubic meter caused the risk of medication being dispensed to this age group for one or more psychiatric disorders by as much as 9%. This increase was calculated after the researchers took all possible factors including demographic and socioeconomic factors into account. Unit for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine at Umeå University researcher Anna Oudin, Ph.D., the lead researcher for the study, explained that “The results can mean that a decreased concentration of air pollution, first and foremost traffic-related air pollution, may reduce psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents.”
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University of California Davis MIND Institute researchers have determined that there is a link between a subtype of autism which is combined with intellectual disability and a high level of inflammation during the second trimester of pregnancy. In the recent study the expectant mothers were determined to have two different inflammatory proteins responsible for controlling the communication between immune system cells in higher levels. The presence of higher levels of these inflammatory proteins, cytokines and chemokines, indicates an increased risk for this autism subtype.
According to UC Davis Center for Children’s Environmental Health director, Internal Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Clinical Immunology professor, UC Davis MIND Institute researcher, and senior study author Dr. Judy Van de Water “Inflammation during the second trimester in the mothers of children with autism who also have intellectual disability was significantly greater than in mothers of children autism without intellectual disability in our study. However, equally significant was that profiles of mothers whose children go on to be diagnosed with autism and intellectual disability differed markedly from those whose children have intellectual disability without autism, as well as from the typically developing general population. Their profiles are distinct from all of the other groups that we studied, based on their cytokine and chemokine profiles. This finding suggests an avenue that we will explore to potentially identify possible markers to separate sub-phenotypes in the autism population.”
The goal of the study on biomarkers, autism, and inflammation was to evaluate various biomarkers. MIND Institute director Dr. Leonard Abbeduto explained “This study is incredibly valuable because it helps us understand more about the sources of variability within autism spectrum disorder, providing important insights into the different neurobiological mechanisms underlying important subtypes of the disorder. At the same time, the study reinforces the importance of the maternal immune system in to a host of child outcomes. Most importantly, this study brings us closer to knowing how to prevent adverse developmental outcomes.”
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A recent study has discovered a link between abnormal circadian rhythms and neurotransmitter changes for those who have bipolar disorder. The study covered a three year period. McLean Hospital researchers determined that those with bipolar disorder exhibited changes in the neurons in the brain that help regulate stress and anxiety, and these changes appeared to result from abnormal circadian rhythms. According to Harvard Medical School psychiatry instructor and McLean’s Translational Neuroscience Laboratory assistant neuroscientist Harry Pantazopoulos, Ph.D, one of the study researchers and the lead author, “For more than 50 years, there’s been evidence that there’s something wrong with circadian rhythms in people with bipolar disorder, but there has been a huge gap in terms of what we understand about their brains and how altered circadian rhythms are contributing to their symptoms.”
It has long been suspected that abnormal circadian rhythms and bipolar disorder have some association or connection, this latest study just confirms this. Pantazopoulos explained “Growing evidence points to a key role for somatostatin, a neurotransmitter in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in anxiety and stress, somatostatin plays an important role in the regulation of anxiety and depression, often co-occurring in these disorders. We eventually saw that people with bipolar disorder have a very strong decrease of this protein in the beginning of the day while people without a psychiatric disorder normally have an increase in this protein. The decrease of the protein correlates very strongly with the established severity of depression and anxiety symptoms in people with mood disorders, in the morning. Therefore, our findings point to potential neural correlates of circadian rhythm abnormalities associated with specific symptoms in bipolar disorder.”
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Antipsychotic medications often carry a high risk for the development of new onset diabetes, but a recent study has shown that taking vitamin D could lower this risk for those who take these drugs. Zyprexa, Seroquel, and other atypical antipsychotics are generally prescribed for disorders which are severe, including bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and even autism. Kyoto University researchers have determined that vitamin D could help people with these disorders who must take these drugs minimize their risk of new onset diabetes. According to Takuya Nagashima, the lead author of the study, “Interestingly, vitamin D on its own doesn’t lower diabetes risk, but it certainly defends against the insulin-lowering effects of quetiapine. We clarified the molecular mechanisms of how quetiapine causes hyperglycaemia using datasets in a genomics data repository. Through this we found that quetiapine reduces the amount of a key enzyme called PI3K that gets produced. Vitamin D stops quetiapine from lowering PI3K production.”
Shuji Kaneko was the lead researcher on the study about antipsychotic medications, diabetes, and vitamin E. According to Kaneko “We found that patients who had coincidentally been prescribed vitamin D with quetiapine were less likely to have hyperglycaemia. It’s unusual for vitamin D to be prescribed with quetiapine because it is typically prescribed to treat osteoporosis; in fact, there were only 1232 cases in the world where vitamin D was prescribed with quetiapine. Data mining proved helpful in locating these cases. Databases like FAERS aren’t just for making drug regulations; they have so much potential for side-effect relief using pre-existing drugs. There’s a lot we can hope for from reverse translational research like this.”
