According to the researchers, of those parents with kids online, nearly two-thirds are concerned (32 percent very concerned) about online sexual predators. Similarly, about two-thirds of parents are concerned about loss of privacy (22 percent very concerned) and about one-half (21 percent are very concerned) about their children viewing pornographic material.

In contrast, smaller proportions of parents are concerned about their online kids playing games (35 percent), being the victims of cyber bullying (31 percent), or gambling (17 percent).

“Parents are quite aware of some online safety risks but seem less aware about others,” says Matthew Davis, M.D., MAPP, director of the poll.

“We know from other studies that about one in seven children between the ages of 10 and 17 have received sexual solicitation over the Internet and about one in three children have been exposed to sexually explicit material.

“So it’s not a surprise that most parents whose kids are online unsupervised are concerned about issues related to sexual predators and pornography. On the other hand, cyber bullying is a very worrisome problem for kids, yet the majority of parents say they are not concerned about it.”

Parents of girls who go online have different concerns than parents of boys who go online. For girls, parents’ leading Internet concern is sexual predators. For boys, parents’ leading Internet concern is viewing pornographic material.

Although lesser concerns, online bullying is much more likely to be a concern for parents of girls (38 percent) than for parents of boys (24 percent), and playing online games is more a concern for parents of boys (42 percent) than for parents of girls (28 percent).

When comparing parents concerns by race/ethnicity, the report shows black parents are generally more concerned about the safety of their children online than Hispanic or white parents.

“Black parents are more concerned than other parents about all of the risks we measured,” says Davis, who is also associate professor of pediatrics and internal medicine in the U-Michigan Medical School and associate professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

“For online gambling, black parents have about twice the level of concern as other parents.”

The poll also asked parents what actions they do take, if any, to safeguard their children online:

• 65 percent of parents report disabling pop-ups
• 62 percent monitor social networking sites
• 61 percent check Web history
• 49 percent block Web sites they don’t want their children to use
• 32 percent use child-safe software

Sixty-eight percent of parents report taking 1 to 4 of the above actions, while 19 percent take all 5 of the actions listed. However, 13 percent of parents whose children access the Internet report not taking any of these actions to protect or monitor that use.

“As the Internet has grown rapidly, so too has children’s access to everything the Internet has to offer - good and bad,” Davis says.

“Federal laws have been enacted to limit kids’ access to pornographic material and strengthen surveillance and stiffen penalties for online predators. But it is important for parents to remain vigilant about their children’s activities online.”

Source: University of Michigan

PE is defined as a male sexual dysfunction characterized by ejaculation which always or nearly always occurs prior to or within about one minute of vaginal penetration.

Premature ejaculation has a host of negative personal consequences for both partners ranging from distress to frustration or the avoidance of sexual intimacy.

Results of the double-blind treatment phase of the study showed that men who were treated with the drug five minutes before intercourse were able to delay ejaculation up to five times longer than those who used placebo.

Additionally, patients and partners in both trials reported significant improvements in sexual satisfaction, and the drug was well tolerated.

An estimated one-third of U.S. men ages 18-59 are affected by PE, making it twice as prevalent as erectile dysfunction. Currently, there are no prescription therapies approved in the U.S. to treat PE.

“Premature ejaculation can have a powerful negative impact on the emotional and sexual lives of men and their partners,” said Professor Stanley E. Althof, PhD, Center for Marital and Sexual Health of South Florida, West Palm Beach, Florida.

“Recently, the international sexual health community agreed that PE should be defined as ejaculation occurring within approximately one minute of penetration that causes the patient distress. Now we need to work to develop treatments, and these encouraging results with PSD502 seem to be a step in the right direction.”

Both trials showed clinically and statistically significant efficacy in the treatment of premature ejaculation, as measured by changes in Intravaginal Ejaculatory Latency Time (IELT) and Index of Premature Ejaculation (IPE), a patient-reported outcome of ejaculatory control, sexual satisfaction, and distress.

“We are excited that results from two pivotal studies have shown that PSD502 was effective for men with PE, and we look forward to the opportunity to help patients who have had no real options to date,” said Patrick Fourteau, Chief Executive Officer of Sciele Pharma, Inc.

“This data will support the New Drug Application for PSD502 that we are planning to submit to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which upon FDA approval would make PSD502 be the first prescription treatment in the U.S. for premature ejaculation.”

Source: Sexual Medicine Society of North America

Many women believe nicotine suppresses the appetite and boosts metabolism and would rather take the health risks associated with smoking rather than being overweight.

But a new meta-analysis (results of several studies) shows that women who quit smoking while receiving treatment for weight control are better able to control their weight gain and are more successful at quitting cigarettes.

The finding disproves current clinical guidelines that say trying to diet and quit smoking at the same time will sabotage efforts to ditch cigarettes.

“Women who smoke often feel caught between a rock and hard place, because they’re concerned about their health but also concerned about their appearance,” said Bonnie Spring, lead author of the study and a professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Now they don’t have to choose between the two.”

Previously, it was assumed that a person could only change one health risk behavior at a time. “But these findings show that, at least in the case of smoking and eating, you actually get an added benefit when you try to change a couple of behaviors at once,” Spring said.

Recently published in the journal Addiction, Spring’s paper examined the results from 2,233 smokers in 10 studies from 1991 to 2007.

The study showed that women whose treatment addressed both smoking and weight control were 29 percent more likely to quit smoking in the short term (at three months) and 23 percent in the long term (from six to 14 months) than those whose treatment addressed only smoking.

Women whose treatment included smoking and weight control also gained less weight than those whose treatment included only smoking. They gained an average of 2.1 pounds less in the short term and 2.5 pounds less in the long term.

Spring hopes the study results will change doctors’ attitudes and current clinical guidelines about combining weight control and smoking cessation.

“Perhaps this news also will encourage more women to quit,” she added, noting that cigarette smoking kills an estimated 178,000 women in the U.S. each year. About 17.4 percent of women in the U.S. smoke.

Her meta-analysis looked at different kinds of approaches to weight control.

“Some worked better than others, ” she said. “Now we need different investigators to test out those most promising treatments to see if they get the same good results.”

More studies also are needed that offer longer-term intervention for weight and smoking cessation. The literature on weight control shows patients lose the benefit when they stop treatment, Spring pointed out.

“We’re in the right ballpark, we just need to refine our pitch,” she said.

Source: Northwestern University

Phthalates have been used for more than 50 years and are important components of many consumer products, including toys, cleaning materials, plastics, and personal care items.

Phtalates have been widely studied with some linking exposure to hormone disruptions, birth defects, asthma, and reproductive problems, while others have found no significant association between exposure and adverse effects.

A new report by Korean scientists, published by Elsevier in the journal Biological Psychiatry, adds to the potentially alarming findings about phthalates.

They measured urine phthalate concentrations and evaluated symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using teacher-reported symptoms and computerized tests that measured attention and impulsivity.

Researchers discovered a significant positive association between phthalate exposure and ADHD, meaning that the higher the concentration of phthalate metabolites in the urine, the worse the ADHD symptoms or test scores.

Senior author Yun-Chul Hong, MD, PhD, explained that “these data represent the first documented association between phthalate exposure and ADHD symptoms in school-aged children.”

John Krystal, MD, the editor of Biological Psychiatry, also commented: “This emerging link between phthalates and symptoms of ADHD raises the concern that accidental environmental exposure to phthalates may be contributing to behavioral and cognitive problems in children. This concern calls for more definitive research.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the summary of their 2005 Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, state that “very limited scientific information is available on potential human health effects of phthalates at levels” found in the U.S. population.

Although this study was performed in a Korean population, their levels of exposure are likely comparable to a U.S. population.

The current findings do not prove that phthalate exposure caused ADHD symptoms. However, these initial findings provide a rationale for further research on this association.

Source: Elsevier

Using this method they discovered patients with recent-onset schizophrenia have higher levels of inflammatory substances in their brains.

Although the cause of schizophrenia is unknown, this new finding may give support to the theory that infections early in life might increase the risk of developing schizophrenia.

Furthermore, the discovery improves the potential to treat schizophrenia with drugs that affect the immune system.

The new analysis technique assesses inflammatory substances in the spinal fluid of patients with schizophrenia, instead of, as in previous studies, in the blood.

The results show that patients with recent-onset schizophrenia have raised levels of a signal substance called interleukin-1beta, which can be released in the presence of inflammation. In the healthy control patients, this substance was barely measurable.

“This suggests that the brain’s immune defense system is activated in schizophrenia,” says Professor Göran Engberg, who led the study. “It now remains to be seen whether there is an underlying infection or whether the immune system is triggered by some other means.”

According to the dominant hypothesis, schizophrenia is related to an overactive dopamine system. Previous studies have shown that interleukin-1beta can upset the dopamine system in rats in a similar way to schizophrenia in humans.

“We would have made terrific progress if we were one day able to treat schizophrenia patients with immunotherapy, as it might then be possible to interrupt the course of the disease at an early stage of its development,” says Professor Engberg.

The group is now studying if the inflammatory process is only activated in connection with the development of schizophrenia, or whether chronic patients exhibit the same phenomenon.

Source: Karolinska Institutet

“The Transcendental Meditation Program, a widely-used standardized program to reduce stress, showed significant decreases in blood pressure and improved mental health in young adults at risk for hypertension,” said David Haaga, PhD, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at American University in Washington, D.C.

Researchers at American University studied 298 university students randomly allocated to either the Transcendental Meditation technique or wait-list control over a three-month intervention period.

A subgroup of 159 subjects at risk for hypertension was analyzed separately.

At baseline and after three months, blood pressure, psychological distress, and coping ability were assessed.

For the students at risk for developing hypertension, significant improvements were observed in blood pressure, psychological distress and coping. Compared to the control group, students practicing the Transcendental Meditation program showed reductions of 6.3 mm Hg in systolic blood pressure and 4.0 mm Hg in diastolic blood pressure.

These reductions are associated with a 52 percent lower risk for development of hypertension in later years.

The findings are timely. Today, an estimated 18 million students are dealing with mental health issues on college campuses. Statistics from colleges nationwide indicate there has been a 50 percent increase in the diagnosis of depression, and more than twice as many students are on psychiatric medications as a decade ago.

According to recent national surveys of campus therapists, more students than ever are seeking psychiatric help on college campuses all across the United States.

“This is the first randomized controlled study to show in young adults at risk for hypertension reductions in blood pressure that were associated with changes in psychological distress and coping,” said Sanford Nidich, EdD, lead author and senior researcher at the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management.

“Previous research has shown that psychological distress such as anxiety, depression, and anger contribute to the development of hypertension in young adults,” said Dr. Nidich.

College students are particularly prone to psychological distress caused by interpersonal and social problems, pressures to succeed academically, financial strains, and uncertain futures. For the entire sample in this study, there was a significant improvement in students’ mental health.

“Hypertension is a common risk factor for cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Yet, decades of research show that high blood pressure begins in youth. This well-controlled clinical trial found that blood pressure can be effectively lowered in students with a stress-reducing intervention.

“This has major implications for the prevention of hypertension, heart attacks and strokes in adulthood,” said Robert Schneider MD, FACC, specialist in clinical hypertension, director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention and study co-author.

The study will be published in the American Journal of Hypertension, December 2009.

Source: Maharishi University of Management

Opioid medication include drugs such as Vicodin, OxyContin, Percodan, and Percocet.

Researchers discovered chronic pain patients with a history of depression are three times more likely to receive a prescription for this class of drug as compared to pain patients who do not suffer from depression.

The study, published in the November-December issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry, analyzed the medical records of tens of thousands of patients enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente and Group Health plans between 1997 and 2005.

Together, the insurers cover about 1 percent of the U.S. population. Long-term opioid use was defined as a patient receiving a prescription for 90 days or longer.

“It’s very widespread,” said Mark Sullivan, M.D., a study co-author and professor of psychiatry at the University of Washington.

“It’s a cause for concern because depressed patients are excluded from virtually all controlled trials of opioids as a high risk group [for addiction], so the database on which clinical practice rests doesn’t include depressed patients.”

Sullivan said most clinical trials exclude people with more than one disorder, but noted the problem is more worrisome here because depression affects so many — about 10 percent to 20 percent of the population.

The connection between pain and depression is complicated. First, no one really knows how often chronic pain and depression co-occur: 46 percent of patients seeing primary care doctors for ongoing pain have a history of depression and the vast majority of those seeing pain specialists have suffered both disorders, according to the authors.

“If you study depressed people, they tend to have lot of pain complaints that are poorly responsive to a lot of things so it’s not surprising that they end up on opioids,” Sullivan said.

Being depressed might make pain hurt more. “Emotional and physical pain aren’t all that different,” Sullivan added. “The same brain zones light up [in imaging studies].”

“Depression is mediated in some significant part by the brain’s opioid receptor systems; these things run together at every level that you look at them,” said Alex DeLuca, M.D., a consultant on pain and addiction and former chief of the Smithers Addiction Research and Treatment Center. He has no affiliation with the new study.

Consequently, it is impossible to tell whether pain is causing or exacerbating depression — or vice versa. To Sullivan, the bottom line is that “it is very important that opioid treatment for chronic pain does not replace or distract from treating mental disorders. ‘Both’ works better than ‘either/or.’”

Source: Health Behavior News Service

Two new studies of pedestrian safety found that using a cell phone while strolling can place one in peril. And for older pedestrians (over 60 years old), talking on cell phones is especially a problem when crossing a busy street.

The studies, in which participants crossed a virtual street while talking on the phone or listening to music, found that the music-listeners were able to navigate traffic as well as the average unencumbered pedestrian.

Users of hands-free cell phones, however, took longer to cross the same street under the same conditions and were more likely to get run over. Older cell phone users, especially those unsteady on their feet to begin with, were even more likely to become traffic casualties.

“Many people assume that walking is so automatic that really nothing will get in the way,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Art Kramer, who led the research with psychology professor Jason McCarley and postdoctoral researcher Mark Neider.

“And walking is pretty automatic, but actually walking in environments that have lots of obstacles is perhaps not as automatic as one might think.”

The first study, in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, found that college-age adults who were talking on a cell phone took 25 percent longer to cross the street than their peers who were not on the phone.

They were also more likely to fail to cross the street in the 30 seconds allotted for the task, even though their peers were able to do so.

Each participant walked on a manual treadmill in a virtual environment, meaning that each encountered the exact same conditions – the same number and speed of cars, for example – as their peers.

The second (and not yet published) study gave adults age 60 and above the same tasks, and included some participants who had a history of falling. The differences between those on and off the phone were even more striking in the older group, Kramer said.

“Older adults on the phone got run over about 15 percent more often” than those not on the phone, he said, and those with a history of falling fared even worse.

“So walking and talking on the phone while old, especially, appears to be dangerous,” he said.

Source: University of Illinois

According to a University of Missouri scholar, female breadwinners experience a range of emotions and challenges ranging from control, independence, ambition, pressure, worry, guilt and resentment.

Dr. Rebecca Meisenbach believes there are more and more female breadwinners in industrialized societies and they challenge the traditional Western gender norms.
In many countries, the male as breadwinner model is the ‘ideal,’ and it influences the creation of public policies.

The breadwinner ideal has also been linked to issues of masculine identity, such that a husband’s un- or underemployment threatens his perceived masculinity.

Her paper was just published online in Springer’s journal Sex Roles.

In her study, Dr. Meisenbach asks women to talk about and describe how they experience being the breadwinner. She hypothesizes that gender stereotypes and breadwinning may generate more tensions for women than for men, partially because women still face the cultural expectation of taking care of children, even when they are working.

Dr. Meisenbach conducted in-depth interviews with 15 women aged between 26 and 63 years old, recruited via electronic message boards and personal contacts. She asked them about their personal history and work-life expectations; how they became a breadwinner; their experiences as the breadwinner; and to describe the transition to a new situation, if they no longer were the primary breadwinner.

The women’s experiences highlighted six common themes - the ‘essence’ of being a female breadwinner in the midwestern and eastern US:

• Opportunities for control: though not all women wanted it, many female breadwinners enjoyed having this power
• Independence, which all women valued as part of their identities
• Pressure and worry – the downside of being the breadwinner
• Valuing, or being expected to value, their partner’s contributions to the family as a way of helping him maintain his gender identity
• Guilt and resentment – women struggling with societal and personal expectations of themselves and their partners
• Ambition, manifested by goal-setting and a strong drive to achieve.

Dr. Meisenbach’s paper also discusses some practical implications of her findings. On an individual level, knowing these essential experiences of female breadwinners may help women create and manage their own identities.

Couples and families struggling with the implications of the female breadwinner model may find this description of the essence of the female’s experience helpful in managing the way they communicate.

Organizations need to implement policies that recognize that both male and female employees may be the primary source of income for their households.

In Dr. Meisenbach’s view, the challenges that breadwinner motherhood offers to existing family leave policies has not been addressed in corporate America.

Source: Springer

Researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London discovered the relationship while comparing survey findings of 60,000 people to that of a comprehensive mortality database for four years after the survey.

Dr. Robert Stewart, who led the research team at the IoP, explains the possible reasons that may underlie these surprising findings: ‘Unlike smoking, we don’t know how causal the association with depression is but it does suggest that more attention should be paid to this link because the association persisted after adjusting for many other factors.’

The study also shows that patients with depression face an overall increased risk of mortality, while a combination of depression and anxiety in patients lowers mortality compared with depression alone. Dr. Stewart explains: ‘One of the main messages from this research is that ‘a little anxiety may be good for you.’

‘It appears that we’re talking about two risk groups here. People with very high levels of anxiety symptoms may be naturally more vulnerable due to stress, for example through the effects stress has on cardiovascular outcomes. On the other hand, people who score very low on anxiety measures, i.e. those who deny any symptoms at all, may be people who also tend not to seek help for physical conditions, or they may be people who tend to take risks. This would explain the higher mortality.’

In terms of the relationship between mortality and anxiety with depression as a risk factor, the research suggests that help-seeking behavior may explain the pattern of outcomes. People with depression may not seek help or may fail to receive help when they do seek it, whereas the opposite may be true for people with anxiety.

Dr. Stewart comments: ‘It would certainly not surprise me at all to find that doctors are less likely to investigate physical symptoms in people with depression because they think that depression is the explanation, but may be more likely to investigate if someone is anxious because they think it will reassure them. These are conjectures but they would fit with the data.’

The researchers point out that the results should be considered in conjunction with other evidence suggesting a variety of adverse physical health outcomes and poor health associated with mental disorders such as depression and psychotic disorders.

In light of the findings, Dr. Stewart makes suggestions on the focus of future developments in the treatment of depression and anxiety: ‘The physical health of people with current or previous mental disorder needs a lot more attention than it gets at the moment.

‘This applies to primary care, secondary mental health care and general hospital care in the sense that there should be more active screening for physical disorders and risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, adverse diet, smoking, lack of exercise, in people with mental disorders. This should be done in addition to more active treatment of disorders when present, and more effective general health promotion.’

Source: King’s College London

Investigators used automated neuroimaging analysis techniques to characterize the impact of an AD-risk gene, apolipoprotein E (ApoE4), on gray and white matter in the brains of cognitively healthy elderly from the KU Brain Aging Project.

They found that healthy elderly individuals carrying a risk-allele of the ApoE4 gene had reduced cognitive performance, decreased brain volume in the hippocampus and amygdala (regions important for memory processing), and decreased white matter integrity in limbic regions.

These type of brain changes are also found in people with AD. Therefore, brain changes, usually found in AD patients, are also evident in nondemented individuals who have a genetic risk of later developing AD.

Lead investigator, Robyn Honea, DPhil, Research Assistant Professor, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Department of Neurology, Alzheimer’s and Memory Group, comments, “It is important to note that findings of imaging phenotypes of risk variants, such as with this gene, have been shown in a number of studies.

“The unique element of our study is that we used several new neuroimaging analysis techniques. In addition, the individuals in our study have been well-characterized in a clinical setting.”

The results of this study are published in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Source: IOS Press

Although experts have known that depressive symptoms are associated with poor clinical outcomes after cardiac surgery, successful intervention to resolve or improve the situation has remained elusive.

The new initiative, “Bypassing the Blues,” included weekly telephone followup by a nurse using an evidence-based treatment protocol for depression.

The nurse collaborated with the patients’ primary care physicians and the study’s clinical management team, composed of a psychiatrist, psychologist and internist.

This approach has proven effective for treating major depression in primary care settings but had never before been applied to a population with cardiac disease.

“Dozens of studies have described a link between depression and heart disease, and the most recent science advisory from the American Heart Association recommends screening patients with heart disease for depression,” said Bruce Rollman, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine and psychiatry, Center for Research on Health Care, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and the study’s principal investigator.

“However, few depression treatment trials have involved cardiac patients and none used the collaborative care model or examined the impact of treating post-CABG depression on quality of life, re-hospitalizations or health care costs, as we did.”

Investigators recruited 453 post-CABG patients from seven Pittsburgh-area hospitals, from 2004 through 2007. They included 302 depressed patients who were randomly assigned to either an eight-month course of telephone-delivered collaborative care or to their doctors’ usual care for depression.

Investigators also randomly sampled an additional 151 non-depressed, post-CABG patients to facilitate comparisons to depressed patients. They tracked these patients to monitor quality of life, physical functioning, mood symptoms, re-hospitalizations, health care costs and deaths.

The researchers found that intervention patients reported greater improvements in mental health-related quality of life, physical functioning and mood symptoms. Overall, 50 percent of intervention patients reported a 50 percent or greater reduction in mood symptoms from baseline to eight-month followup versus 29.6 percent of patients in usual care.

“Men with depression were particularly likely to benefit from the intervention. However, the mean health-related quality of life and physical functioning of intervention patients did not reach that of the non-depressed comparison group,” said Dr. Rollman.

Study findings are presented in the current edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association .

Source: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences

Investigators discovered a variation in the genetic receptor of the hormone/neurotransmitter oxytocin was linked to a person’s ability to infer the mental state of others.

Interestingly, this same genetic variation also related to stress reactivity. These findings could have a significant impact in adding to the body of knowledge about the importance of oxytocin, and its link to conditions such as autism and unhealthy levels of stress.

Sarina Rodrigues, an assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University, and Laura Saslow, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, published their findings in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Rodrigues said oxytocin has already been significantly linked with social affiliation and reduction in stress. It is a peptide secreted by the pituitary gland and regulated by the hypothalamus of the brain and is best known for its role in female reproduction (it is important for labor and breastfeeding, for instance).

It is also associated with social recognition, pair bonding, dampening negative emotional responses, trust, and love.

Rodrigues, who studies stress in humans, studied 200 college students, of diverse ethnicities and balanced gender. The students filled out self-reported questionnaires, as well as participated in laboratory-based sessions.

Individuals can have one of three combinations of this particular naturally occurring genetic variation of the oxytocin receptor. All humans get one copy of this gene from each parent, thus the three possible combinations, labeled in the paper as AA, AG or GG allele.

The AA and AG gene group were not statistically different, so they were grouped together and compared in all tests with the GG group.

Rodrigues said the tests included a standard stress reactivity test involving white noise blasts directed in headphones after countdowns presented on the screen. Heart rate was monitored through sensors throughout the laboratory session.

In general, they found that women were overall more sensitive to the stress tests, but that both men and women in the GG allele group displayed a lower increase heart rate during this task, as compared to baseline heart rate measured at the beginning of the laboratory session.

One of the tests used to measure empathy included the “Reading the Mind in Eyes” test, created by Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin of actor/comedian Sacha Baron Cohen). Rodrigues said that this test is commonly used to discern how individuals can put themselves into the mind of another person, which overlaps with empathy, because it tests how well the participant can infer someone’s emotional state by their eyes.

“In general, women do better on this test than men,” Rodrigues said. “But we found a stark difference in both sexes based on the genetic variation.” Those with the GG genetic variation were 22.7 percent less likely to make a mistake on the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test than the other individuals.

Rodrigues said previous research has shown that people with autism display lower scores on behavioral and dispositional empathy measures, and that a nasal spray with oxytocin increases scores in these areas.

“Our data lends credence to the claim that this genetic variation of oxytocin influences emotional processing and other-oriented behavior,” she said.

However, Rodrigues cautioned against drawing too many conclusions just yet from the study’s findings. She said these population trends should not be translated to individuals, meaning there are plenty of people in the AA or AG gene pool who are empathetic, caring individuals.

“I tested myself and while I am not in the GG group, I’d like to think that I am a very caring person with empathy for others,” she said.

“These findings can help us understand that some of us are born with a tendency to be more empathic and stress-reactive than others, and that we should reach out to those who may be naturally closed-off from people because social connectivity and belongingness benefits everyone.”

Source: Oregon State University

The findings are remarkable because investigators studied more than 17,000 individuals located among health care systems in 37 different countries.

The research, published in the November issue of IJCP, provides a valuable international profile of the mental health disorder, which is estimated to affect as many as one in every 250 people at some point in their lives.

Schizophrenia is the fifth leading cause of years lost through disability in men and the sixth leading cause in women.

“The Worldwide-Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes study (W-SOHO) was a three-year observational study designed to assess costs and outcomes in outpatients using antipsychotics,” says lead author Dr. Jamie Karagianis from Eli Lilly Canada Inc.

“It has enabled us to build up a valuable international picture of the demographics and treatment of schizophrenia across ten European countries and 27 countries from East Asia, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.

“Minimal selection criteria were applied by the 1,563 clinicians who took part to ensure that the patients were representative of those receiving treatment in actual clinical practice settings across the world.

“Baseline data on the 17,384 patients - who were all starting or changing their antipsychotic medication – showed that they had an average age of 38 and 57 percent were male. Median duration of their illness was seven years and one in ten were receiving antipsychotic medication for the first time.

“On average, 19 percent were in paid employment, 69 percent were living in dependent housing and 62 percent had reported sexual problems in the previous month.

“Although there were some regional and country variations, on the whole the study provided a strikingly similar overall pattern when it came to key health, medication and socio-economic factors.”

Patients were assessed at baseline and at three, six, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. All clinicians taking part in the study were free to determine what treatment and medication their patients received and no drugs were provided by the study sponsor.

Key findings of the W-SOHO survey included:

• 26% of the study participants were taking more than one antipsychotic and about 74% were taking other prescribed drugs at the same time. 10% were taking antipsychotics for the first time.
• The key reasons for changing medication were the same across all the regions surveyed, with two-thirds of the investigators citing lack of effectiveness, followed by intolerance, patient request and incomplete adherence to the medication.
• Just over 34% of patients had been admitted to an inpatient facility because of their schizophrenia in the last six months. With the exception of the Latin American region (40.8%) all the other regions showed very similar rates, ranging from 31.2% to 36.3%.
• Sexual dysfunction averaged 61.5%. With the exception of East Asia (33.5%), the other regions reported similar levels ranging from 57.9% to 67%.
• The CGI-SCH scores (used to measure the severity of the illness) were remarkably similar, with an overall average of 4.4 and regional scores ranging from 3.9 to 4.7. The positive score averaged 3.9, negative score 4.0, depressive score 3.4 and cognitive score 3.7.
• Just under 26% of the patients had ever attempted suicide, with regional scores ranging from 21.7% to 30.1%.
• Paid employment status was similar, averaging 19% and ranging from 16.2% to 22.6%.
• Just under a third of patients (32.1%) were in a relationship, ranging from 25.1% to 38.6% in five of the six regions. People in East Asia were much more likely to be in a relationship (47.4%) than anywhere else.

“There has been considerable debate about whether developed and developing countries display different outcomes when it comes to schizophrenia and 21 of the 37 countries in our study are emerging or developing economies,” says Dr. Karagianis.

“Despite being drawn from a variety of economies, cultures and practice settings, the patients who took part in the W-SOHO study were remarkably similar across the six regions in terms of demographic and clinical characteristics.

“However, there were also important differences noted in some areas and these differences have as much relevance to clinical practice as the similarities observed.

“We hope that this study will help to build up a clearer picture of schizophrenia and its treatment across the world. One thing that is very clear from our study is that this mental health disorder has a profound impact on the lives of people, irrespective of geographical borders.”

The regions, countries and patient numbers included in the study were:

• Central and Eastern Europe – Czech Republic (477), Hungary (189), Lithuania (100), Poland (599), Romania (136), Russia (159), Slovakia (301), Slovenia (214)
• Northern Europe – Denmark (31), France (915), Germany (2,869), Ireland (53), Netherlands (160), UK (263)
• Southern Europe – Greece (690), Italy (2,869), Israel* (76), Portugal (166), Spain (1,987) *included in this category because of similar ethnicity, economy and health care systems
• Latin America – Argentina (349), Chile (152), Colombia (197), Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras pooled (267), Mexico (1,019), Peru (96), Puerto Rico (217), Venezuela (269)
• North Africa and the Middle East – Algeria (300), Egypt (183), Turkey (662), Saudi Arabia (196)
• East Asia – Korea (821), Malaysia (105), Taiwan (297).

Source: Wiley-Blackwell

The study discovered young people feel differently about two types of parental control — behavioral and psychological.

Young people are generally positive about behavioral control — a technique thought to be better for a child’s development.

However, when parents are very controlling, young people no longer make this distinction and view both types of parental control negatively.

The study, conducted in the United States by researchers at Örebro University in Sweden, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.

Unlike a lot of prior research on parenting that’s focused on control, this study looked at how adolescents view and react to parental control.

Behavioral control generally pertains to parents helping their children regulate themselves by providing supervision, setting limits, and establishing rules.

Psychological control includes manipulative behavior by parents, often resulting in feelings of guilt, rejection, or not being loved.

But the study, which asked 67 American children (7th and 8th graders, as well as 10th and 11th graders) to respond to hypothetical scenarios involving both kinds of control, found that the youths put a negative spin on both types of control when the parents in the scenarios exercised a lot of control.

Specifically, when parents showed moderate levels of control, they saw psychological control more negatively than behavioral control, but when parents were very controlling, they viewed both types of control negatively.

Specifically, the youths interpreted high levels of control as intrusive and as indicating that they mattered less as individuals.

Intrusiveness is a hallmark of psychological control, according to the researchers, and both high levels of psychological control and feeling that you don’t matter have been linked to poorer adjustment.

“Under some conditions, such as when personal choice is restricted, adolescents view behavioral control as negatively as psychological control,” according to the researchers.

“Such negative interpretations may mean that adolescents would respond as poorly to highly restrictive behavioral control as they do to psychological control.”

Source: Society for Research in Child Development