Instead of being negatively impacted when looking in the mirror, it may in fact help positively alter behaviour in individuals with obesity, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
The analysis examined the results of five studies that included 16 to 941 participants each. The results indicated that the mirror can be used to decrease anxiety and body dissatisfaction. Furthermore, investigators noted that when individuals spend a few minutes gazing at themselves in a therapeutic environment, they may attain self‐awareness that will elicit a positive change in their behaviour.
“Self-assessment and reflection are key to overall wellbeing. Our review hopes to introduce the mirror as a healthcare tool to combat obesity,” said lead author Harriet Omondi, MSN, FNP-C, of Texas Woman’s University.
New research finds no evidence that violence increases after the release of a new video game.
Violent video games like Call of Duty are often linked by the media and public to real-life violence, although there is limited evidence to support the link. Debate on the topic generally intensifies after mass public shootings, with some commentators linking these violent acts to the perpetrators’ interests in violent video games. But different factors have been pointed out as more likely explanations, such as mental health issues and/or easy access to guns.
Before governments introduce any policies restricting access to violent video games, it is important to establish whether violent video games do indeed increase players’ violence in the real world.
Taking data from the US, Dr Agne Suziedelyte at University of London, provides evidence of the effects of violent video game releases on the violent behaviour of children. Dr Suziedelyte examined the effects of violent video games on two types of violence: aggression against other people, and destruction of objects or property.
By using econometric methods which identify plausibly causal effects of violent video games on violence, rather than only associations, Dr Suziedelyte found no evidence that violence against other people increases after the release of a new violent video game. Parents reported, however, that children were more likely to destroy things after playing violent video games.
Dr Suziedelyte said: “Taken together, these results suggest that violent video games may agitate children, but this agitation does not translate into violence against other people — which is the type of violence which we care about most.
“A likely explanation for my results is that video game playing usually takes place at home, where opportunities to engage in violence are lower. This ‘incapacitation’ effect is especially important for violence-prone boys who may be especially attracted to violent video games.
“Therefore, policies that place restrictions on video game sales to minors are unlikely to reduce violence.
People who are easily distracted are more susceptible to psychological distress and mental health issues from high levels of social media use, according to a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The study tracked the phone data of 69 participants ranging from 18 to 58 year-olds to see their usage of popular apps including Instagram and Reddit over a week period.
Using an eye gaze test, the researchers tracked participants’ levels of distraction and inattention. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, a well-known psychological scale, was used to measure and quantify measures of distress.
Lead researcher Tamsin Mahalingham, Master’s student at Curtin University, said that the results showed a strong connection with low levels of attention control and high social media use negatively impacting mental health.
“Past research has flagged concerns about the negative mental health effects from high levels of social media use, but there isn’t clear evidence about why this is, or who might be most at risk,” Miss Mahalingham said.
“Our findings suggest that if you are a very distractable person, high levels of social media use may be particularly bad for your mental health. Study results revealed that those who showed lower levels of attention control were particularly at risk of negative mental health effects of heavy social media use.”
“This inability to stay focussed may lead to exposure to more irrelevant and distracting information and potentially longer durations of social media use. On the other hand, those with higher levels of attention control may be able to more easily ignore irrelevant and potentially damaging information in news feeds such as advertising.”
Supervising researcher, Dr Patrick Clarke, said that the increased follow-on effects of greater social media use that could negatively impact emotional wellbeing.
“Social media apps are designed to draw us in and keep us engaged and the longer we spend on social media, the more we can be exposed to including negative content, or content leading to self-comparison to unattainable ideals, like those often illustrated by influencers,” Dr. Clarke said.
“More time on social media also means less time doing other, possibly more important or more productive tasks, which can also increase feelings of depression and anxiety.
“Our research helps to understand who is most at risk from the adverse mental health effects of social media use and suggests that improving attention may minimize those risks.”
New research has found that post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in women may vary over the course of the menstrual cycle, with more symptoms during the cycle’s first few days when the hormone oestradiol is low and fewer symptoms close to ovulation, when oestradiol is high.
The results could have implications for PTSD diagnosis and treatment, said lead author Jenna Rieder, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “When in the cycle you assess women might actually affect whether they meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD, especially for people who are right on the border. And that can have real practical implications, say, for someone who is a veteran and entitled to benefits or for health insurance purposes.”
Oestradiol is a form of oestrogen that regulates the menstrual cycle. During the follicular phase, rising oestradiol levels trigger a cascade of events that result in ovulation. Studies have linked low-oestradiol portions of the cycle to greater activation in the limbic areas of the brain, which are related to emotion, and to lower activation in the prefrontal cortex when viewing emotional content. Low oestradiol has also been linked to greater stress and anxiety as well as increased fear responses.
To find out whether those links were related to traua response, researchers studied 40 women, aged 18 to 33, all of whom had experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, such as a serious injury or sexual violence. In the lab, researchers measured the participants’ level of oestradiol in their saliva, then asked them to describe the trauma that had happened to them and the PTSD symptoms they’d experienced in the past month. They found that lower oestradiol was associated with greater self-reported symptom severity in the participants.
The researchers also measured two stress biomarkers in participants’ saliva, the hormone cortisol and the enzyme salivary alpha-amylase, before and after the participants described their trauma. Salivary alpha-amylase is related to the “fight-or-flight” stress response, and cortisol is related to the body’s slower, more sustained stress response.
“In a healthy system we want a moderate, coordinated response of both of these biomarkers,” Prof Rieder said. In the women in the low-oestradiol portions of their menstrual cycles, the researchers instead found low cortisol and high salivary alpha-amylase levels resulting from recounting their trauma stories – a pattern that’s been linked in previous studies with maladaptive stress responses.
The researchers then asked the participants to answer five daily questionnaires for 10 days spanning the high- and low-oestradiol portions of their menstrual cycles. The questionnaires measured how participants were feeling at each time (from “extremely unpleasant” to “extremely pleasant” and “extremely nonstimulated or activated” to “extremely stimulated or activated”). Participants also completed a PTSD symptom checklist each evening.
Participants were found to have greater variability in their daily moods during the low-oestradiol days of their cycle and reported more severe PTSD symptoms on those days.
This could have implications for diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in women, who have long been underrepresented in PTSD research. “PTSD for a long time was mostly studied in men, in part because it was mainly studied in veterans, who were mostly men,” Prof Rieder said.
As well as its relevance to diagnosis, knowing how the menstrual cycle affects PTSD symptoms could be useful for both clinicians and patients, according to Prof Rieder. “I think this is something that clinicians would want to know, so they can impart this knowledge as part of psychoeducation,” she said. “For women who are naturally cycling, it may be useful to understand how the menstrual cycle affects their symptoms. When you can explain what’s happening biologically, it often becomes less threatening.”
A case study details three teenagers with mild or asymptomatic COVID presented with suicidal thoughts, “paranoia-like fears,” delusions and “foggy brain”, which could be explained by anti-neural antibodies – ‘turncoat’ antibodies that may attack brain tissue.
Mounting evidence points to neurological and psychiatric effects of COVID, with a UK study finding a 13% risk of a first-time diagnosis after COVID. The study, published in JAMA Neurology, is the first to look at anti-neural antibodies in paediatric patients previously infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Over five months in 2020, 18 children and teens were hospitalised with confirmed COVID at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, three of whom were the patients in the study who underwent neurological evaluations.
The researchers examined the patients’ cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and found that two of the patients, both of whom had histories of unspecified depression and/or anxiety, had antibodies indicating that SARS-CoV-2 may have invaded the central nervous system. They also had anti-neural antibodies in their CSF, suggesting a rampant immune system accidentally targeting the brain.
The research follows a previous UCSF study that also found a high level of autoantibodies in the cerebrospinal fluid of adult patients with acute COVID, who experienced neurological symptoms, including intractable headaches, seizures and loss of smell.
“It is way too soon to know whether COVID is a common trigger for neuropsychiatric illnesses, but it does seem to be a potent trigger for the development of autoantibodies,” said co-corresponding author Samuel Pleasure, MD, PhD. “It is currently totally unknown whether patients predisposed to neuropsychiatric illnesses are more likely to develop worsened symptoms after COVID, or whether COVID infection can act as an independent trigger.”
Unlike most psychiatric presentations, the three patients in the UCSF study had symptoms with sudden onset and rapid progression, representing a marked change from their baselines, said co-first author Claire Johns, MD. “The patients had significant neuropsychiatric manifestations despite mild respiratory symptoms, suggesting potential short and long-term effects of COVID.”
After hospitalisations lasting weeks and ongoing psychiatric medications, the two UCSF patients, whose cerebrospinal fluid tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and anti-neural antibodies, were treated with intravenous immunoglobulin, an immunomodulatory therapy that curbs inflammation in autoimmune disorders. After five days, the first patient had “more organised thoughts, decreased paranoia and improved insight.”
Autoantibodies targeting the protein TCF4 were also found, which has genetic links in some schizophrenia cases. However, “we don’t know that the antibodies are actually interfering with the protein’s function,” said co-corresponding author, Michael R. Wilson, MD, noting that the diagnosis of schizophrenia is based on a constellation of symptoms, not a biomarker. The second patient partially responded to immunotherapy with improved cognition and working memory, but continued to have “impaired mood and cognitive symptoms” six months later. The third patient, with no psychiatric history and without SARS-CoV-2 antibodies or anti-neural antibodies in their cerebrospinal fluid, recovered with psychiatric medications. Their symptoms were attributed to recreational drug use.
In another case study, a 30-year-old patient with mildly symptomatic COVID who presented at a hospital emergency department with delusions, violent outbursts, hyper-anxiety and paranoia was unresponsive to antipsychotic medication but after being diagnosed with possible “autoimmune-mediated psychosis”, responded to intravenous immunoglobulin.
Nonetheless, the researchers agree it’s unlikely that there were pre-existing autoantibodies, and they point to other disorders with psychiatric symptoms, like anti-NMDAR encephalitis syndrome, that are caused by anti-neural antibodies and respond to treatment directed at these rogue antibodies.
The researchers agree that more study is warranted, although Dr Pleasure noted that the rarity of cerebrospinal fluid samples from paediatric patients is a challenge, as they rarely have severe enough COVID to warrant a lumbar puncture.
Using mouse models, scientists have discovered a link between gut inflammation and mental comorbidities. In response to gut inflammation like that caused by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), they observed that the vascular barrier in the brain choroid plexus closes, clamping down access to the brain. The findings were published in Science.
Though this gut-brain vascular axis deregulation is likely a protective mechanism for the brain against inflammation, the findings suggest it may also result in the various cognitive and psychiatric symptoms that are occasionally associated with IBD.
Usually associated with intestinal inflammation, IBD can also cause a wide variety of symptoms in other organs. There is a robust link between anxiety and IBD; up to 40% of patients with IBD also present with psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety or depression. While the gut-brain axis is thought to be involved in driving these symptoms, no other related mechanisms are currently known.
Using a mouse model of intestinal inflammation, Sara Carloni and colleagues identified a potential pathogenic link between IBD and its associated mental comorbidities. According to the findings, the gut vascular barrier becomes more permeable due to the inflammatory process, which allows inflammation to spread beyond the intestines.
In response to this spread, the vascular barrier in the choroid plexus of the brain shuts down, which helps to protect the brain from inflammation. However, in doing so, the process also potentially impairs communications between organs and may hinder brain function.
In a mouse model of genetically driven closure of choroid plexus endothelial cells, Carloni and colleagues observed a deficit in short-term memory and anxiety-like behaviour. Thus, the mental deficits observed alongside IBD may result from deregulation of the gut-brain vascular axis, the authors said. This finding could be used for the development of therapeutic targets in treating some behavioural disorders.
People who have a higher genetic risk of clinical depression are more likely to experience physical symptoms such as chronic pain, fatigue and migraine, researchers have found.
Depression is a serious disorder with lifetime risks of poor health, according to Dr Enda Byrne from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience.
“A large proportion of people with clinically-diagnosed depression present initially to doctors with physical symptoms that cause distress and can severely impact on people’s quality of life,” Dr Byrne said.
“Our research aimed to better understand the biological basis of depression and found that assessing a broad range of symptoms was important.
“Ultimately, our research aimed to better understand the genetic risks and generate more accurate risk scores for use in research and healthcare.”
Despite recent breakthroughs, Dr Byrne said it was difficult to find more genetic risk factors because of the range of patient ages, their symptoms, responses to treatment and additional mental and physical disorders.
“Previous genetic studies have included participants who report having seen a doctor for worries or tension – but who may not meet the ‘official’ criteria for a diagnosis of depression,” Dr Byrne said
Published in JAMA Psychiatry, the study analysed data from more than 15 000 volunteers who provided details of their mental health history, depression symptoms and a DNA sample using a saliva kit.
“We wanted to see how genetic risk factors based on clinical definitions of depression differed – from those based on a single question to those based on a doctor’s consultation about mental health problems,” Dr Byrne said.
The study found that participants with higher genetic risk for clinical depression are more likely to experience physical symptoms such as chronic pain, fatigue and migraine.
“It is also linked to higher rates of somatic symptoms – that is, physical symptoms that cause distress and can severely impact on people’s quality of life,” Dr Byrne said.
“Our results highlight the need for larger studies investigating the broad range of symptoms experienced by people with depression.”
A simple form of talking therapy, delivered telephonically by trained support workers, successfully reduced loneliness in older people left isolated during the pandemic, according to initial results from a new study.
The intervention lasted for eight weeks and was designed in partnership with older people. People were contacted weekly and were encouraged to maintain their social contacts and to stick to a daily schedule, which included both routine and enjoyable activities.
The intervention developed in the BASIL-C19 (Behavioural Activation in Social Isolation) study lasted for eight weeks and was designed in partnership with older people who had direct experience of social isolation, loneliness and depression during the pandemic.
The importance of social connection was highlighted by the COVID pandemic and its restrictions. Pre-pandemic research identified 1.4 million older adults in England as experiencing significant loneliness with impacts on their mental health. Research since the pandemic shows that rates of loneliness and depression have increased, particularly for those who were self-isolating.
A team of leading researchers and clinicians anticipated the impacts of the pandemic on mental health and re-focussed their research expertise to examine the psychological impact of enforced isolation, disruption to daily routines, loss of social contact and loneliness.
They designed a very brief telephone delivered intervention to combat depression and loneliness. Older people appreciated the offer of telephone contact and they found the intervention to be helpful in maintaining daily routines and social contact.
In the preliminary results, published in PLOS Medicine, the research team found evidence of improved mental health, and a strong indication that loneliness rates were substantially reduced in the first three months. A much larger trial follow-on trial is now currently recruiting over 600 older people and is the largest study ever undertaken to tackle loneliness and depression in this way.
Getting a daily dose of sunlight can improve a person’s mood and sleep quality, a new study has found.
A research team led by Monash University PhD student Angus Burns and Associate Professor Sean Cain conducted a study published in the upcoming December issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders.
The study examined 400 000 participants in the UK Biobank programme, and found that a lack of daytime light exposure was a risk factor for depressive symptoms, poor mood, and insomnia.
Burns said that most light and health-related messaging focusses on avoiding light at night, as it disrupts the circadian rhythm, but this study highlights the importance of getting enough daylight to ensure our bodies function optimally.
“In this study, we observed that the greater time spent in outdoor light during the day was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, lower odds of using antidepressant medication, better sleep and fewer symptoms of insomnia,” Burns said.
“These results may be explained by the impacts of light on the circadian system and the direct effects of light on mood centres in the brain.”
Associate Professor Cain said a few small changes to a person’s daily routine could help improve their mood, sleep, and energy levels.
“People now spend most waking hours in intermediate, artificial lighting conditions, due to reduced sunlight exposure and relatively bright night-time light exposure,” he said.
“In this study, we observed that greater time spent in outdoor light was associated with better mood outcomes, better quality sleep, and ease of wakening.
“Insufficient exposure to daytime light could be a key factor contributing to poor mood and sleep outcomes in depressive disorders. My general advice for everyone is simple: when the sun is out, get as much light as you can, but after it sets, keep it dark. Your body will thank you.”
While sleep deprivation really messes with mood, a new study in PlosOne shows it does not interfere with their ability to evaluate emotional situations.
Researchers found that, contrary to the assumption that feeling more negative affects people’s experiences of their environment, 24 hours without sleep did not affect participants’ ability to process emotional words and images.
“People do become less happy through sleep deprivation, but it’s not affecting how they are processing emotional stimuli in their environment,” said lead author Anthony Stenson, WSU psychology doctoral student.
The researchers found that sleep deprivation does not numb people to emotional situations, but it reduces their ability to control their own emotional responses, with implications for healthcare workers and other professions who must deal with sleep loss.
For the study, about 60 adult participants spent four consecutive days in a sleep centre at the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. They were allowed to sleep normally the first night and then given a set of baseline tests to judge their mood as well as their emotional regulation and processing ability. Then, they were divided into one group of 40 people staying awake the second night, and a control group of 20 allowed a normal sleep period. The tests were then re-administered at different intervals.
The emotional regulation and processing tests both involved viewing a series of images with positive and negative emotional connotations. In the emotional regulation tests, participants were given a prompt to help them recontextualise negative images before seeing them and asked to control their feelings. The sleep-deprived group had greater difficulty reducing the emotion they felt when instructed to do so.
The processing tests involved responding to words and images with emotional content, for example rating the emotions conveyed by a smiling family, a growling dog or a crying child. All participants performed similarly on these tests whether they were sleep deprived or not.
The ability to process emotional content and the ability to control one’s emotions are distinct and important, especially for some professions, said co-author Paul Whitney, a WSU professor of psychology. “I don’t think we want our first responders being numb to the emotional nature of the situations they encounter, and it looks like they are not,” he said. “On the other hand, reacting normally to emotional situations, but not being able to control your own emotions, could be one reason sleep loss sometimes produces catastrophic errors in stressful situations.”
Previous studies have largely focused on the impacts of sleep deprivation on ‘cold’ cognitive tasks, which are supposedly emotionally neutral tasks like recalling facts. These studies have also found that regulation, considered a ‘top-down’ cognitive process, is a major problem with cold cognitive tasks. Mental flexibility, for example, is compromised by sleep deprivation, an ability emergency room doctors use in dealing with unexpected situations.
The current study shows that top-down regulation is a problem as well with ‘hot’ or emotional cognitive processes. Future research is needed to understand whether the effects of sleep loss on the two top-down processes are linked.
