According to authorities, new technology will allow automatic uploads of status updates and a variety of social and geographic information.

European researchers are working to merge information pulled by ambient intelligence systems that use sensors and smart objects to create awareness of users’ whereabouts and activities to networking and messaging platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Combined, the two technologies promise to provide an omnipresent or pervasive awareness, that is, an encompassing way to stay in touch with friends and relatives.

“The theory we developed as the basis for our work is that social connections between people are enhanced by both the number and the quality of the interactions between them. Pervasive awareness systems can support and improve this social communication,” says Achilles Kameas, a senior researcher at the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (raCTI) of Patras, Greece.

Kameas coordinated the EU-funded ASTRA project, which brought together researchers from multiple disciplines, including psychology, interaction design, knowledge engineering and computer science, to take social networking to the next level.

In touch with friends and family, automatically?
Users of a social networking platform based on the ASTRA approach, for example, would rarely have to post status updates manually to let their family know what they are doing or where they are.

Surrounded by smart objects and sensors in their home or office, the system continually updates their status information, automatically telling friends that they are unavailable to receive a phone call while they are busy cooking or that they do not want to be disturbed during a business meeting.

“Not only is this information generated automatically, depending on the criteria set by each user, but it does not have to be displayed on a computer screen or in any other distracting way,” Kameas explains.

“In a smart home or office environment the system could let users know if someone is available for a phone call or not simply by changing the color of the frame of a photo of them.”

The researchers developed their approach based on the so-called focus-nimbus model to determine what information is shared and what is received by different people in a social network. In this context, a person’s nimbus consists of the type, amount and detail of information they want to share with others, while their focus contains the type and amount of information they choose to receive from others, including their reaction to the person’s nimbus.

The ASTRA software architecture allows both criteria to be defined through a rule-based system that governs what information is shared, in what way and with whom. A husband and wife, for example, may each want to know when the other gets home, but a mother may only want to be informed when her daughter returns, not the reverse.

User-defined applications
Different applications, defined by each user or community of users, allow for a wide variety of scenarios, from simple event alerts, to supporting more complex, community-wide situations.

According to Kameas, creating such apps is a relatively straightforward process, particularly for tech-savvy young people who are accustomed to modifying and adding features to their MySpace or Facebook pages. However, the researchers are currently working on a new interface to make the process even easier.

Consumer electronics manufacturer Phillips and mobile operator Telenor have conducted trials of the ASTRA technology, with Phillips testing it in its prototype HomeLab smart home.

The response of test users, Kameas says, has been generally positive, although many have raised concerns about privacy and security issues. In that regard, the ASTRA coordinator notes that the system is similar to Facebook and other online services in that users can choose how much information they share and with whom.

“It’s like a window. You can leave it wide open, pull the curtain, or close the blinds. Then, what you choose to put on display in the window, be it content or an activity, can be seen by others,” Kameas notes.

To meet user concerns, the researchers are planning to launch a followup initiative for adaptive pervasive awareness systems based on the notion of a trustworthy personal “bubble” that ensures privacy. At the same time, they are developing ASTRA-based applications for existing social networking platforms.

ASTRA received funding from the FET-Open activities of the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme for research.

Source: Research Academic Computer Technology Institute

Rush University Medical Center has opened a clinic that uses the TMS therapy system to deliver highly focused magnetic field pulses to a specific portion of the brain, the left prefrontal cortex, in order to stimulate the areas of the brain linked to depression.

The repeated short bursts of magnetic energy introduced through the scalp excite neurons in the brain.

Depression affects at least 14 million American adults each year. Researchers estimate that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability worldwide.

According to experts from the Chicago-based Rush Medical Center, drug treatment options can be ineffective or intolerable due to side effects.

Current antidepressant therapies are not beneficial for at least a third of depressed individuals, leaving many with a lack of adequate treatment options.

“Patients receive treatment in an outpatient setting and are able to return to normal activities right away”, says Dr. Philip Janicak, professor of psychiatry and lead investigator at Rush for the clinical trials of TMS.

TMS therapy does not require anesthesia or sedation and patients remain awake and alert. It is a 40-minute outpatient procedure that is prescribed by a psychiatrist and administered daily for four to six weeks.

“TMS therapy is a safe and effective alternative for patients who suffer from major depressive disorder and are not getting satisfactory improvement from antidepressant medications,” said Janicak.

Source: Rush University Medical Center

The digital divide is problematic as a central tenet of health reform is the use of information technology to improve access, drive quality, and reduce costs.

A new paper by Florida State University scientists outlines the barriers older adults experience and provides solutions for resolving the disconnect.

In Current Directions in Psychological Science, Neil Charness and Walter R. Boot claim the key to including the aging population in information technology is to adopt design principles that are age-sensitive.

According to the researchers, there are several age-related changes that affect technology use in older adults, including difficulties with vision, hearing, motor control and cognition.

Specifically, older adults experience reduced visual acuity, color perception and susceptibility to glare. They also encounter a greater difficulty hearing high-pitched sounds and perceive a greater interference from background noises. As for motor skills, ailments such as arthritis can limit a person’s use of technology as well.

Aging is also associated with a general slowing of cognitive processes, decreased memory capacity and attentional control, and difficulties with goal maintenance. It also takes older adults twice as long to learn new information compared to younger adults.

“These changes in function can slow performance and result in a greater number of errors as older adults interact with technology that was not designed with their capabilities in mind,” explained the authors.

The psychologists suggest web designers should avoid backgrounds that create low contrast for text, use larger fonts, minimize scrolling and provide navigation aids and instructional support. They also recommend designers undergo training that takes into account age-related perceptual and cognitive changes.

The authors explain that these changes will alleviate some of the stress of learning and using new technologies, but it will not eliminate difficulties all-together:

“It is reasonable to assume that technology will continue to advance rapidly,” they concluded. “Also, perceptual, cognitive and psychomotor declines will continue to occur with aging.”

So while changes in web design and development will dramatically improve usability for older adults, there will always be hurdles to overcome alongside emerging technologies.

But, as the researchers explain, there is hope that some technological advances, such as video games designed to sharpen cognitive abilities, may ultimately be able to boost technological abilities in the aging population.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

Unfortunately issues from ‘over-parenting’ — where parents dominate their children’s life with the meddling often extending into adolescence and continuing until college entry — transcend geographic boundaries.

Parents exert this control over their offspring for numerous reasons. And, to be fair, the behavior can be beneficial at times if the attention is some sort of parental guidance or rule-based boundary establishment.

However, studies in Western countries have determined that obtrusive parenting can often inflict psychological damage to children.

Experts have wondered if this parenting style is consistently detrimental or if the effect may not be as strong in East Asian countries. That is, does the Eastern culture create more acceptance or tolerance among children of their parents’ behavior?

In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, psychologists review evidence comparing the effects of parental control in the United States and China.

Traditionally, research on the effects of parental control has been guided by the premise that too much parental interference will damage a child’s psychological development – that is, make them feel as if they lack control over their lives.

This outcome may be particularly pronounced in the West, where autonomy and independence are emphasized.

Longitudinal studies have indicated that parental control in both Western and East Asian countries can have similar results on children from those regions.

For example, as children are entering adolescence, the more parents make decisions for them regarding personal issues, the more the child’s emotional suffering will be affected two years later — the size of this effect was similar in the United States and China.

However, there may be some contexts in which the effect of parental control is stronger in the West than in East Asian countries.

In Western countries, parents tend to decrease control more than Chinese parents do as children go through adolescence; Western children expect this decrease in supervision and therefore, their psychological functioning may be dependent on the extent to which parents decrease their control over them.

In addition, the negative effects of parental control over children’s academic learning may be stronger in the West than in East Asia. In East Asian countries, there is a very strong moral aspect associated with learning and an education has much greater financial impact than in the West.

For these reasons, when it comes to academics, East Asian children may be more accepting of excessive parental involvement.

Recent studies investigating the question of parental control in the West and in East Asian countries suggest that extreme meddling by parents can have negative effects on their children’s psychological development in both of those regions, although the effects may not be uniform.

The authors conclude their report by noting, “Recommendations that parents limit their intrusiveness in children’s lives are likely to be useful both in the West and in East Asia.”

Source: Association for Psychological Science

New research suggests there may be some truth regarding the unique orientation of southpaws.

According to scientists, there are areas in the brain devoted to our arms, legs, and various parts of our bodies.

The distribution of these sites within our brain is known as “body maps” and there are some significant differences in these maps between left- and right-handed people.

For example, in left-handed people, there is an equal amount of brain area devoted to the left and right arms in both hemispheres. However, for right-handed people, there is more cortical area associated with the right arm than the left.

Psychologists from the University of Virginia, Purdue University, and The College of William and Mary assessed if the difference in body maps would lead to differences in how we perceive the length of our arms.

The results, reported in Psychological Science, reveal some differences in the way left- and right-handed people perceive their arms. Left-handed volunteers judged both of their arms to be the same length, but right-handed participants underestimated the length of their left arm—they consistently perceived their right arms as being longer.

In addition, right-handed volunteers thought their right hands were larger than their left, when in fact, they were both the same size. When guessing how far they could reach with their arms, left-handed volunteers estimated they could reach equally far with both arms while right-handed volunteers predicted they could reach farther with their right arm.

These findings suggest that body maps in our brain may influence how we perceive our physical bodies—for example, if there is a lot of brain area associated with our right arm, we will view it being as longer compared to our left arm.

Source: Association for Psychological Science

The study was published in the prestigious Journal of Neuroscience.

According to background information, the result of experiencing a traumatic event — such as a car accident or terror attack — is the appearance of medical and psychological symptoms that affect various functions. While these conditions normally abate, 10 to 30 percent of people who experience a traumatic event develop post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition in which the patient continues to suffer stress symptoms for months and even years after the traumatic event.

Symptoms include reawakened trauma, avoidance of anything that could recall the trauma, and psychological and physiological disturbances. One of the problems in the course of treating trauma patients is that a person is frequently exposed to additional stress, which hinders the patient’s overcoming the trauma.

The researchers used a synthetic form of marijuana, which has similar properties to the natural plant, and they chose to use a rat model, which presents similar physiological responses to stress to that of humans.

The first stage of the research examined how long it took for the rats to overcome a traumatic experience, without any intervention. A cell colored white on one side and black on the other was prepared. The rats were placed in the white area, and as soon as they moved over to the black area, which they prefer, they received a light electric shock.

Each day they were brought to the cell and placed back in the white area. Immediately following exposure to the traumatic experience, the rats would not move to the black area voluntarily, but a few days later, after not receiving further electric shocks in the black area, they learned that it was safe again and moved there without hesitation.

Next, the researchers introduced an element of stress. A second group of rats was placed on a small, elevated platform after receiving the electric shock, which added stress to the traumatic experience. These rats abstained from returning to the black area in the cell for much longer, which showed that the exposure to additional stress does indeed hinder the process of overcoming trauma.

The third stage of the research examined yet another group of rats. These rats were exposed to the traumatic and additional stress events, but just before being elevated on the platform they received an injection of synthetic marijuana in the amygdala - an area of the brain known to be connected to emotive memory. These rats agreed to enter the black area after the same amount of time as the first group, showing that the synthetic marijuana canceled out the symptoms of stress.

Refining the results of this study, the researchers then administered marijuana injections at different points in time on additional groups of rats, and found that regardless of when the injection was administered, it prevented the surfacing of stress symptoms.

Dr. Akirav and Ganon-Elazar also examined hormonal changes in the course of the experiment and found that synthetic marijuana prevents increased release of the stress hormone that the body produces in response to stress.

According to Dr. Akirav, the results of this study show that cannabinoids can play an important role in stress-related disorders.

“The results of our research should encourage psychiatric investigation into the use of cannabinoids in post-traumatic stress patients,” she concludes.

Surprisingly, the method in which they look for information appears to influence how individuals comprehend or identify with the facts discovered in the search process.

University of Missouri researchers found that readers were better able to understand, remember and emotionally respond to material found through “searching” compared to content found while “surfing.”

Currently, 50 percent of adults use the Web to find information via search engines, while 38 percent use it to pass the time.

“If, as these data suggest, the cognitive and emotional impact of online content is greatest when acquired by searching, then Web site sponsors might consider increasing their advertising on pages that tend to be accessed via search engines,” said Kevin Wise, assistant professor of strategic communication and co-director of the Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects (PRIME) Lab at the University of Missouri.

In the study, the researchers examined how methods for acquiring news — searching for specific content versus surfing a news Web site — affected readers’ emotional responses while reading news stories.

They monitored participants’ heart rate, skin conductance and facial musculature to gauge their emotional responses to unpleasant news. The researchers found that unpleasant content triggered greater emotional responses when readers sought the information by searching rather than surfing.

In future studies, Wise will study the effects of acquiring pleasant content on readers’ emotional responses.

“How readers acquire messages online has ramifications for their cognitive and emotional response to those messages,” Wise said.

“Messages that meet readers’ existing informational needs elicit stronger emotional reactions.”

The researchers also found that information was better understood and remembered when individuals conducted specific searches for information.

In a previous study, Wise tested the effects of searching and surfing on readers’ responses to images and found similar results.

The study, “The Effect of Searching Versus Surfing on Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Online News,” was recently published in the Journal of Media Psychology.

Source: University of Missouri

A new national study presents a hedge to overcome adversity and increase the chance of life success among this cohort of aspiring adults.

Lance Erickson, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University and the study’s lead author documents the power of mentors, especially those in the teaching professions.

His research team found:

• For all teen students, having an adult mentor meant a 50 percent greater likelihood of attending college.
• For disadvantaged students, mentorship by a teacher nearly doubled the odds of attending college.

“Potential is sometimes squashed by the social environment, and the data show that mentors can overcome those forces,” Erickson said.

The research will appear next week in the academic journal Sociology of Education. Study coauthor Steve McDonald, a sociologist at North Carolina State University, notes a harsh paradox evident in the numbers.

“Youth who are most likely to need mentors are least likely to have them,” McDonald said.

Their research shows less than half of disadvantaged students report having any adult mentor. Only 7 percent had a mentoring relationship with a teacher.

The data includes information from more than 14,000 adolescents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

In the statistical analysis, mentors proved pivotal in whether students make the jump to college. For example, students whose parents do not have even a high school degree are normally 35 percent likely to enroll in college. According to the study, the rate jumps to 66 percent when the youth considers one of their teachers to be a personal mentor.

“Teacher-mentors close the college gap for disadvantaged kids,” Erickson said.

The authors point out that much needs to be done to help disadvantaged youth connect to the adults, especially teachers, in their lives.

“Comments from study participants indicate that their mentors weren’t necessarily doing anything extraordinary, just being involved and treating the young person as an important human being,” Erickson said.

Source: Brigham Young University

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers discovered survivors who lift weights regularly feel better about their bodies and their appearance and are more satisfied with their intimate relationships compared with those who do not lift weights.

The new study is published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.

Survivors’ self-perceptions improved with weight lifting regardless of how much strength they gained during the year-long study, or whether they suffered from lymphedema, an incurable and sometimes debilitating side effect of breast surgery.

“It looks like weight training is not only safe and may make lymphedema flareups less frequent, but it also seems to help women feel better about their bodies,” says senior author Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a member of Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center.

“The results suggest that the act of spending time with your body was the thing that was important –– not the physical results of strength.”

The new insights come from a randomized controlled trial that tested the impact of twice-weekly weight lifting for 12 months on survivors’ health and emotional status.

In the first report from the trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August, Schmitz and colleagues found that lymphedema sufferers who lifted weights were less likely to experience a worsening of their arm-swelling condition.

But the benefits extend further: Survivors who participated in regular weight-lifting during the trial had a 12 percent improvement in their body image and satisfaction with their intimate relationships over the 12 months of the study, compared with a 2 percent improvement reported by the women in the control group of the study.

Both groups of women benefited emotionally from the weight lifting in the study, called the Physical Activity and Lymphedema (PAL) trial.

Unlike many medical study questionnaires that ask about general quality of life factors, the one used in this study was developed specifically for – and by - breast cancer survivors. Called the Body Image and Relationship Scale, the questionnaire was developed with the help of survivors who had participated in previous clinical trials.

The new data are drawn from questionnaires completed by 234 breast cancer survivors at the beginning and end of the trial.

“They told us the basic quality of life questionnaire didn’t cover what was important to them,” Schmitz says.

“They told us what was changing with regular weight lifting and what they cared about, including feeling more proud of their bodies, feeling more comfortable in their own skin, feeling more empowered emotionally because they were more physically powerful, feeling sexier, feeling more like they could wear sleeveless things, feeling more comfortable having people touch their upper bodies, and some of them reported their sex lives improved.”

To Schmitz’s surprise, no such quality of life questionnaire existed when she initiated the PAL trial, so she and her team designed the Body Image and Relationship Scale.

“There has been an aching need for this assessment tool, not just here, but internationally,” Schmitz says.

“The survey has already been translated into five other languages – Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Swedish – and efforts to use it in clinical practice are under way. These are the issues that women have reported that they cared about for a long time but nobody was ever asking them the question.”

Source: University of Pennsylvania

According to some, the acknowledgment that the videos do not promote better brain development among young children is more than just false advertising. It is a salient indicator of how parents have replaced one-to-one contact with a DVD.

Lucia French, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist who studies language and cognitive development in young children at the University of Rochester, says nothing contributes more to a child’s early development than actual parent-child interaction.

“Babies learn language best when adults spend time with them, talking about things other than behavior,” says French.

French, who does not recommend any screen time for babies, says that research on language development has shown that young children acquire language from interaction with other people.

“They may acquire a few individual words from a television show or video, but to learn to use language to communicate effectively, they need to interact with other people who are interested in communicating with them,” she notes.

She stresses that most children learn language readily if they are in a language-rich environment and that strong language skills are an essential foundation for eventual academic success.

Parents can interact with infants and toddlers, and there are lots of ways to do that without using a video as a prop.

She offers parents the following tips to help enhance young children’s language skills:

• “Housekeeping” talk (e.g. stop, come here, go to sleep, eat your food, etc.) is common language that every parent uses. All children hear about the same amount of it, but children who develop better communication skills and more vocabulary are those with parents who go beyond “housekeeping talk” to talk with the child about other things, particularly about recent experiences and plans for the near future. Exposure only to “housekeeping talk” deprives children of building two-way communication and a rich vocabulary based on conceptual experiences.
• Be positive! A lot of children hear many more negative comments than positive comments. Parents should use “extra” feel-good words and vocabulary that have affirmations in them, are responsive terms, have active listening, and have restatements of what the child says.
• Be sensitive to what your child is interested in. Research shows that when their parents play with them, children are more responsive and learn language more rapidly if the parent enters into the interaction by focusing on what the child is already playing with, rather than trying to redirect the child’s interest to something else.
• Remember that children understand a lot more language than they can use themselves. Their receptive vocabulary is much larger than their productive vocabulary.
• Be alert to whether your baby is interested in what you have to say. Babies who aren’t talking yet adjust the amount of language input they are receiving by withdrawing their attention if they don’t understand what the adult is saying. The younger the child, the more the adult needs to talk about the immediate environment, familiar objects, and familiar routines, such as bath time and lunchtime. As children grow older—12 to 18 months—they are increasingly able to understand talk about other places as well as the future and past.
• Babies and toddlers like faces, music, movement and bright colors, and while Baby Einstein videos offer some of these features, the screen time isn’t going to help them learn a language. Parents should look for other non-video props and activities that tap into these interests.
• Read to your baby two to three times a day. Reading to children under 9 months does not necessarily contribute significantly to language development, but it establishes the “lap reading” positive relationship that connects the child to the reader to the book. It is really the quality of the interaction that is important from birth to about 12 months.
• Use picture books for children under 18 months, and as language develops, the amount of text can be increased. This interaction is really about talking together with a book as the focus, rather than actually reading the words in the book. Many parents develop a format involving four parts: Adult getting child’s attention; adult asking a question; child responding to the question; adult giving positive feedback.
• As children become older, they enjoy both simple stories and non-fiction books that help them understand the world they live in.

Source: University of Rochester

The finding, by University of Texas researchers is significant given the ubiquity of social media communication opportunities.

According to background information in the article, the role of physical appearance in creating first impressions has not been thoroughly investigated.

Psychologists Laura Naumann of Sonoma State University and Sam Gosling address this issue as the authors examined the accuracy of personality impressions based on appearance alone.

Their findings will be published in the December issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“In an age dominated by social media where personal photographs are ubiquitous, it becomes important to understand the ways personality is communicated via our appearance,” says Naumann.

“The appearance one portrays in his or her photographs has important implications for their professional and social life.”

In the study, observers viewed full-body photographs of 123 people they had never met before. The targets were viewed either in a controlled pose with a neutral facial expression or in a naturally expressed pose.

The accuracy of the judgments was gauged by comparing them to the aggregate of self-ratings and that of three informants who knew the targets well, a criterion now widely regarded as the gold standard in personality research.

Even when viewing the targets in the controlled pose, the observers could accurately judge some major personality traits, including extraversion and self-esteem. But most traits were hard to detect under these conditions. When observers saw naturally expressive behavior (such as a smiling expression or energetic stance), their judgments were accurate for nine of the 10 personality traits.

The 10 traits were extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness, likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity and political orientation.

“We have long known that people jump to conclusions about others on the basis of very little information,” says Gosling, “but what’s striking about these findings is how many of the impressions have a kernel of truth to them, even on the basis of something as simple a single photograph.”

Gosling cautioned that observers still make plenty of mistakes, but noted that this latest work is important because it sheds new light on the sources of accuracy and inaccuracy of judgments.

With this kind of knowledge, individuals can choose to alter their appearance in specific ways, either to make identity claims or shape others’ impressions of them, Naumann says.

“If you want potential employers or romantic suitors to see you as a warm and friendly individual, you should post pictures where you smile or are standing in a relaxed pose,” suggests Naumann.

For example, whether you smile and how you stand (tense vs. relaxed, energetic vs. tired) are important cues to judge a variety of traits. Extraverts smile more, stand in energetic and less tense ways, and look healthy, neat and stylish.

People who are more open to experience are less likely to have a healthy, neat appearance, but are more likely to have a distinctive style of dress.

The researchers also found males who have a neat and healthy appearance are often seen as more conscientious.

However, defining personality in women was more difficult because they were more strongly influenced by cultural demands to look presentable.

Source: The University of Texas

Scientists compared the incidence of depression among individuals consuming a diet consisting of a high proportion of fruits, vegetables and fish to that of individuals whose diet contained a high proportion of high-fat dairy food, processed meat, fried food, refined grains and sugar-laden desserts.

The study, performed by researchers in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL), UK and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), University of Montpellier, France, is published in the November issue of the The British Journal of Psychiatry.

As background information, the authors explained that much research on diet and depression tends to focus on individual nutrients so they thought they would look at links between overall dietary patterns and depression.

For the study they looked at data covering 3,486 participants of average age 57 years (nearly three-quarters were men) who were part of the Whitehall II study.

The data allowed the researchers to identify two dietary patterns: a whole food diet and a processed food diet.

They discovered a whole food diet was consistent with a 26 per cent lower risk for depression while a high processed diet was associated with a 58 percent chance of depression — five years later.

The researchers concluded that: “In middle-aged participants, a processed food dietary pattern is a risk factor for CES-D depression 5 years later, whereas a whole food pattern is protective.”

Although the study is based on correlations, rather than a definitive examination of cause and effect, the Chief Executive of the UK-based Mental Health Foundation, Dr. Andrew McCulloch comments:

“This study adds to an existing body of solid research that shows the strong links between what we eat and our mental health. Major studies like this are crucial because they hold the key to a better understanding of mental illness.”

Source: The British Journal of Psychiatry

Researchers found the combination of insults were more predictive of PTSD than exposure to only one type of disturbance.

Furthermore, the risk was additionally accentuated among individuals with a certain genetic mutation.

The report is found in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

Although 40 percent to 70 percent of Americans have experienced traumatic events, only about 8 percent develop PTSD during their lifetimes, according to background information in the article.

PTSD is a complex anxiety disorder that involves re-experiencing, avoidance and increased arousal following exposure to a life-threatening event.

“In addition to the obvious effect of environmental factors, PTSD has a heritable component,” the authors write. Recent studies estimate that genetic factors account for approximately 30 percent of the difference in PTSD symptoms.

Pingxing Xie, B.S., of Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., and VA Connecticut Healthcare Center, West Haven, and colleagues studied 1,252 individuals who had experienced childhood adversity (including abuse or neglect), adult trauma (such as combat, sexual assault or a natural disaster) or both.

Participants age 17 to 79 (average age 38.9) were interviewed and assessed for a variety of psychiatric and substance use disorders. DNA was extracted and used to differentiate between versions of a particular polymorphism or gene mutation—known as the 5-HTTLPR genotype—previously found to be associated with emotional response after stressful life events.

About one-fifth of the participants (229, or 18.3 percent) met criteria for PTSD. A total of 552 of the 1,252 participants (44.1 percent) experienced both childhood adversity and traumatic events in adulthood. These individuals were more likely to have a lifetime diagnosis of PTSD than were those who experienced trauma in only one life stage (29 percent vs. 9.9 percent).

“Although the 5-HTTLPR genotype alone did not predict the onset of PTSD, it interacted with adult traumatic events and childhood adversity to increase the risk for PTSD, especially for those with high rates of both types of trauma exposure,” the authors write.

The genotype may influence the way the brain processes the neurotransmitter serotonin, affecting an individual’s anxiety levels and changing the way neurons react to fearful stimuli, they note.

“It was only in the group of subjects who could be characterized as having had the highest rates of trauma exposure (i.e., in both childhood and adulthood) that an impact of 5-HTTLPR could be detected,” the authors conclude.

“This suggests that there may be many neurobiological (including genetically determined) ‘buffers’ to PTSD; only in instances of extreme and/or repeated trauma exposure (which, it should be pointed out, characterizes those trauma ‘types’ with the highest conditional risk for PTSD, e.g., domestic violence and military combat), in which these buffers are overwhelmed, can the impact of specific genes such as 5-HTTLPR be detected.”

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals

The UK investigation reviewed the effectiveness of an ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)’ program in a group of patients referred for treatment for depression or anxiety under Doncaster Primary Care Trust.

The results are published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology.

A total of 3,994 patients were referred for treatment during the 12 months from August 2006, and 2,795 went on to receive one or more appointments through a stepped-care collaborative approach.

Most of the patients received low intensity cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Their progress was closely monitored and those who needed it were quickly stepped up from low to high intensity treatment.

The clinical levels of depression (measured using the PHQ-9) and anxiety (measured using the GAD-7) of the 2,017 patients who had come to the end of their treatment by the census date, was measured at each contact, and these results were analyzed by Professor David Richards of Exeter University.

By the end of the census, 76 percent of depression sufferers who completed treatment were either in recovery or remission, as were 74 percent of the anxiety sufferers.

For all patients, (including those who dropped out of treatment), these figures were 61 percent (depression) and 62 percent (anxiety).

The average duration of treatment sessions was just 2 hours 45 minutes; most patients received low intensity CBT - the majority of which was carried out over the telephone - however, one-third of patients also received support for antidepressant medication.

Professor David Richards said: “The combination of psychological treatment and low intensity telephone based delivery produced significant clinical results for the depression and anxiety sufferers in the program.

“Although follow-up data on these patients will be important to investigate the lasting effects of the treatment, our results tell us that delivering psychological therapy in the method used in the program is an effective way to give depression and anxiety sufferers the psychological help they need.”

The National Advisor for Primary Care to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, Alan Cohen, said:

“Following the success of the Doncaster demonstration site, IAPT has gone from strength to strength. This month we expand to 115 IAPT sites around the country with over 2,200 people working in services, including over 800 people who have undertaken the IAPT training programme. 73,000 patients have entered services, 26,000 of which have completed treatment and recovery rates are well over 30 per cent and rising all the time.”

Source: British Psychological Society

Researchers analyzed data from 3,128 mothers of children born from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities to examine associations of child television exposure and household television use with aggressive behavior in children.

They determined about two-thirds (65 percent) of mothers reported that their 3-year-old child watched more than two hours of television per day. On average, children were exposed to an additional 5.2 hours of household TV use per day.

The report is found in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

“Early childhood aggression can be problematic for parents, teachers and childhood peers and sometimes is predictive of more serious behavior problems to come, such as juvenile delinquency, adulthood violence and criminal behavior,” according to background information in the article.

Various predictive factors for childhood aggression have been studied. These include parents’ discipline style, neighborhood safety and media exposure.

“After music, television is the medium children aged 0 to 3 years are exposed to the most.” Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children younger than age 2, studies have found consistent use of television in that age group.

Jennifer A. Manganello, Ph.D., M.P.H., of University at Albany, State University of New York, Rensselaer, and Catherine A. Taylor, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, analyzed the data.

Parents were interviewed at the time of the child’s birth and at one and three years. At three years, they were asked to report time the child spent watching TV directly as well as household TV use on a typical day.

Aggression also was assessed at 3 years of age using a 15-item aggressive subscale for 2- and 3-year-old children. Demographic information and other risk factors for aggression were also noted.

Direct child TV exposure and household TV use were both significantly associated with childhood aggression, after accounting for other factors such as parent, family, neighborhood and demographic characteristics.

“One explanation that could link both child and household TV measures with aggression involves the parenting environment,” the authors write. Households with higher rates of TV use may have fewer restrictions on children’s viewing habits such as exposure to unregulated television content.

Increased household television use may also affect daily routines such as eating and communication patterns and may decrease time spent on other activities.

“Current American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations mainly suggest limitations for direct child exposure to TV and other media; however, our findings suggest that additional household TV use may also be an important predictor of negative childhood outcomes, such as early childhood aggression,” the authors conclude.

“Future research in this area should consider inclusion of both of these TV variables along with additional parent-child interaction assessments, observational assessments when possible, quality and/or content of TV programs and longitudinal analyses.”

Source: JAMA and Archives Journals