Posts Tagged ‘mental health’


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  • Facebook Lets Users Chat With Suicide-Prevention Counselors

    Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 09:27 | Comments Off

    Can Facebook help prevent suicides?

    The social-networking behemoth is launching a new feature that will let users connect their Facebook friends with suicide-prevention support services.

    As this announcement from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) describes it, if users see a comment from a friend that seems to threaten suicide, they can report the comment to Facebook, which will deliver an email encouraging them to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or to click on a link for an ..read more

  • No Evidence of Actual Infestation in ‘Delusional Skin Infestation’

    Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 at 00:01 | Comments Off

    We admit it — when we read about the latest bedbug infestation, we always get a little itchy.

    But for a small group of people, the persistent feeling of invasion goes farther. These folks believe that they’re being infested by wood chips, filaments and living things such as insects, worms and bacteria — even after physicians come up with nothing.

    Some call their condition Morgellons disease, and, as the Los Angeles Times notes, “believe their symptoms are evidence of a new and ..read more

  • For the Newly Depressed, One Drug Will Do

    Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 07:33 | Comments Off

    It can be tough to find the right antidepressant since any given drug works for — at most — about two-thirds of people who try it.

    Well then, wouldn’t it make sense to take more than one drug at the same time, you might ask? Some research,  including a major clinical trial called STAR*D, has suggested that strategy has merit. In that trial, thousands of patients were systematically given different medication regimens, including a combination of drugs, and the majority of ..read more

  • Health Blog Video: Shedding Light on Bipolar Disorder

    Friday, April 15th, 2011 at 23:52 | Comments Off

    Catherine Zeta-Jones’s disclosure that she has bipolar 2 disorder has a lot of people looking for information about the condition. As we’ve written, about half of bipolar patients have that iteration of the disease, characterized by periods of severe depression interrupted by briefer periods of hypomania, a milder form of the extreme mania experienced by bipolar 1 sufferers.

    The WSJ’s Christina Tsuei recently talked to Igor Galynker, director of the Family Center for Bipolar Disorder at Beth Israel Medical Center ..read more

  • What is Bipolar Disorder, Anyway?

    Friday, April 15th, 2011 at 05:12 | Comments Off

    We’ll admit it up front: we’re writing about bipolar disorder today because — as you may know unless you’ve been too busy paying attention to things like the deficit debate or the latest from the Middle East — a rep for Catherine Zeta-Jones says the actress has sought help for the problem.

    But bear with us. While most people associate bipolar disorder with episodes of severely high highs and equally low lows, that just describes bipolar 1. About half of the ..read more

  • TED2011: Smiling Makes the World Go Round

    Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 09:29 | Comments Off

    If you ever needed someone to make the case for why it’s important to smile, think of today’s talk by Ron Gutman at TED University. (That’s a short series of presentations by TED conference participants.)

    Gutman, a member of the TED conference team and CEO of health-information company HealthTap, pointed out a study from the University of California, Berkeley that measured smiles in high school yearbook photos and looked at what the students were up to decades later. The bigger smilers ..read more

  • Medical Residency Directors Don’t Think Work Limits Will Cut Fatigue

    Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 08:06 | Comments Off

    Proposed new work limits for medical residents were announced last summer and approved in the fall by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. And that giant raspberry sound you hear is from the directors of residency programs who responded to a Mayo Clinic survey on the changes, which include limiting the workday of first-year residents to 16 hours.

    The study, which appears in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, covered responses from directors of 464 internal medicine, pediatric and general surgery residency programs. ..read more

  • Report: ICU Central-Line Infection Rate Drops

    Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 06:45 | Comments Off

    Good news from the CDC: the number of central-line bloodstream infections in intensive-care patients dropped 58% to an estimated 18,000 in 2009 from 43,000 in 2001.

    Why is that important? Because someday you, too, may end up in the ICU with a tube in a chest or neck vein, and you really don’t want that tube to spark a blood infection. The death rate hovers between 12% and 25% for ICU patients when it does, according to the report. Also, because ..read more

  • Health Blog Video: ‘Sidewalk Rage’ and its Causes

    Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 at 04:07 | Comments Off

    The WSJ’s In the Lab columnist Shirley Wang asks New Yorkers what kind of walkers make them lose their cool.

    See original here:  Health Blog Video: ‘Sidewalk Rage’ and its Causes

  • A.M. Vitals: Senate May Vote on Health-Care Law Repeal

    Tuesday, January 25th, 2011 at 00:09 | Comments Off

    Also: HHS announces fraud figures; Sanofi and Genzyme, still talking; an FDA panel weighs electroshock therapy.

    The rest is here:  A.M. Vitals: Senate May Vote on Health-Care Law Repeal

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