Bipolar4LifeSupport

Objective: To examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between sleep disturbance and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive symptoms in a large cohort of adolescents exposed to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China.

Methods: Participants were 1,573 adolescents (mean age at initial survey = 15.0 years, SD = 1.3 years; 46% male) in the Wenchuan Earthquake Adolescent Health Cohort (WEAHC) in Dujiangyan, China, 20 km away from the east epicenter. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Self-Rating Scale, and Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children were used to assess participants’ sleep, PTSD symptoms, and depressive symptoms, respectively, at 12 months (T12m) and 24 months (T24m) after the Wenchuan earthquake that occurred on May 12, 2008.

Results: At T12m and T24m, 38.3% and 37.5% of participants reported sleep disturbance, 22.5% and 14.0% reported PTSD symptoms, and 41.0% and 38.3% reported depressive symptoms, respectively. The prevalence rates of PTSD and depressive symptoms at T12m and T24m significantly increased with sleep disturbance and short sleep duration. After adjusting for demographics, earthquake exposure, and PTSD/depressive symptoms at T12m, sleep disturbance at T12m was significantly associated with increased risk for PTSD (odds ratio [OR] = 1.80; 95% CI, 1.17–2.75) and depressive symptoms (OR = 1.51; 95% CI, 1.14–2.02) at T24m. Furthermore, sleep disturbance predicted the persistence of PTSD (OR = 2.35; 95% CI, 1.43–3.85) and depressive symptoms (OR = 2.41; 95% CI, 1.80–3.24).

Conclusions: Sleep disturbance, PTSD, and depressive symptoms were prevalent and persistent in adolescents at 12 and 24 months after exposure to the Wenchuan earthquake. Sleep disturbance predicts the development and persistence of PTSD and depressive symptoms. Early assessment and treatment of sleep disturbance may be an important strategy for prevention and intervention of PTSD and depression in adolescent trauma survivors.

Because of similar symptoms of depression, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder may be misdiagnosed or confused with one another.

In a new study, researchers reveal the distinct differences between bipolar and borderline personality disorders in order to better treat both.

An individual with bipolar disorder has cyclical changes in mood, energy and activity levels that range from deep depression, to mania or hypomania. A person with borderline personality disorder has trouble regulating emotions and thoughts, and has impulsive and reckless behavior and unstable relationships with others.

The findings reveal that patients with borderline personality disorder are more likely to have additional disorders and also more likely to have experienced childhood trauma than those with bipolar disorder. They may also experience longer and more severe episodes of depression.

The study involved interviewing 268 participants between 1995 and 2012. Of these, 62 participants were diagnosed with bipolar II depression and 206 participants were diagnosed with major depressive disorder with co-occurring borderline personality disorder (MDD-BPD).

Depressive episodes are a considered a part of bipolar disorder, but depression is a separate disorder that can co-occur with borderline personality disorder.

All the participants were between the ages of 18 and 68, and could only have one of the two disorders — not both. They also had to meet the official criteria for experiencing a major depressive episode at the time of the interviews.

The findings showed that the average age of the patients in the MDD-BPD group was 33 years old, versus 37 years old in the bipolar group. The MDD-BPD patients were also less likely to be married. For both groups, the average age of onset was below 20 years old.

Between the two groups, there were no major differences in race, education level, gender, the average number of psychiatric hospitalizations or amount of time spent away from work during the previous five years.

Furthermore, 38 percent of the MDD-BPD group was diagnosed with three or more non-personality disorders (anxiety, mood and eating disorders) compared to 26 percent of the bipolar group.

Thirty percent of the MDD-BPD group was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder compared to 10 percent of the bipolar group.

Patients in the MDD-BPD group also had longer depressive episodes, were more depressed overall, had a harder time doing day-to-day activities, and had significantly more childhood trauma events — especially physical neglect — than the bipolar group. This group was also more suicidal, with twice as many MDD-BPD participants as bipolar participants reporting three or more suicide attempts.

The only factor found to be more common in the bipolar group was having an immediate family member with a history of bipolar disorder.

The lead author of this study was Mark Zimmerman, M.D., from the Department of Psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown Medical School.

Meditation affects a person’s brain function long after the act of meditation is over, according to new research.

“This is the first time meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state,” said Gaelle Desbordes, Ph.D., a research fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Boston University Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology.

“Overall, these results are consistent with the overarching hypothesis that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing.”

The researchers began the study with the hypothesis that meditation can help control emotional responses.

During meditation, a part of the brain called the amygdala (known for the processing of emotional stimuli) showed decreased activity. However, when the participants were shown images of other people that were either good, bad, or neutral for a practice known as “compassion meditation,” the amygdala was exceptionally responsive.

The subjects were able to focus their attention and greatly reduce their emotional reactions. And over an eight-week period, the participants retained this ability.

Even when they were not engaged in a meditative state, their emotional responses were subdued, and they experienced more compassion for others when faced with disturbing images.

Around the same time, another group at Harvard Medical School (HMS) began to study the effect of meditation on retaining information. Their hypothesis was that people who meditate have more control over alpha rhythm — a brain wave thought to screen out everyday distractions, allowing for more important information to be processed.

“Mindfulness meditation has been reported to enhance numerous mental abilities, including rapid memory recall,” said Catherine Kerr of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and the Osher Research Center, both at HMS.

“Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts.”

Both studies used participants that had no previous experience with meditation.

Over an eight-week period and a 12-week period, both groups showed a marked change in their daily normal brain function, while they were meditating and while they were involved in medial activities.

Some researchers believe that meditation might be the key to help ease off dependency on pharmaceutical drugs.

“The implications extend far beyond meditation,” said Kerr.

“They give us clues about possible ways to help people better regulate a brain rhythm that is deregulated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other conditions.”

Source:  Harvard University

A new study has found that people experiencing a depressive episode process information about themselves differently than people who are not depressed.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers at the University of Liverpool scanned the brains of people in major depressive episodes and those who weren’t. The task subjects were given while in the fMRI machine was to choose adjectives to describe themselves or the British Queen — a figure significantly removed from their daily lives that all but one of the participants were familiar with.

“We found that participants who were experiencing depressed mood chose significantly fewer positive words and more negative and neutral words to describe themselves, in comparison to participants who were not depressed,” said Professor Peter Kinderman, head of the university’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society.

“That’s not too surprising, but the brain scans also revealed significantly greater blood oxygen levels in the medial superior frontal cortex — the area associated with processing self-related information — when the depressed participants were making judgments about themselves.”

The research leads the way for further studies into the psychological and neural processes that accompany depressed mood, he continued.

“Understanding more about how people evaluate themselves when they are depressed and how neural processes are involved could lead to improved understanding and care,” he said.

“This study explored ways to consolidate some of the differences between medical and psychological models ofdepression,” added Dr. May Sarsam, from the Mersey Care NHS Trust.

“It showed that brain activity only differed when depressed people thought about themselves, not when they thought about the Queen or when they made other types of judgments, which fits very well with the current psychological theory.”

“Thought and neurochemistry should be considered as equally important in our understanding of mental health difficulties such as depression,” she added.

The research, in collaboration with the Mersey Care NHS Trust and the Universities of Manchester, Edinburgh and Lancaster, was published in PLOS One.

Source: University of Liverpool

A few weeks ago someone raised in an interesting question in response to one of my posts: what are the differences between healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with boredom in ADHD?

We often talk about things being “healthy” or “unhealthy” from a mental health point of view, but these terms can be tricky to define – even more so because something that’s “healthy” for someone in one situation might be “unhealthy” for someone in another situation.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people with ADHD seem to have a tendency to cope with boredom using addictions and “addictions.” By addictions without quotes I mean actual addictions to nicotine, drugs, etc. By “addictions” I mean addictions in the sense of people saying “I’m addicted to Netflix.”

For example, some research (here’s one study, but there are others) suggests that boredom is an important factor that leads people with ADHD to start smoking, along with things like stress and restlessness.

When it comes to no-quotes addictions, we’re talking about things that are unhealthy in the literal, physical sense. So that’s a pretty obvious example of an unhealthy way of coping with boredom.

For with-quotes “addictions,” it’s a little more complicated. To generalize, if it’s something that makes you feel good and doesn’t harm you physically or lower your quality of life, it’s probably a healthy way of coping with boredom.

So for example, TV fails that test because I usually don’t feel that great after if I binge-watch a TV show.

On the other hand, the two “addictions” that do the most for me in terms of fending off boredom are music and travel. For me, both these things get my brain into gear, so I organize my life to be able to get as much of each as possible. With music, that just means listening to as much as possible – things like concerts are my biggest non-essential expense. With travel, one of the biggest advantages of being self-employed is that I can travel and work at the same time.

Of course, one of the things about ADHD-related boredom is that it tends to strike when it’s least welcome – often, when we’re trying to do some sort of tedious task we have to focus on. When people with ADHD are faced with unstimulating tasks, our brains can just disengage and go looking for something more interesting to do, refusing to come back to the job at hand.

A common ADHDer tactic here is simply to avoid boredom-provoking tasks. Depending on the situation, this can be healthy or unhealthy.

If there are unnecessary activities that make you bored and exacerbate your concentration problems, it absolutely is healthy to cut these out of our life altogether. However, the problem is when you have necessary activities that you find boring and hard to pay attention to.

Here, avoiding these things isn’t a healthy approach because it’s obviously not sustainable – the boring tasks will just pile up and become overwhelming. Instead, the trick is to find something you can do alongside these activities that’ll make your brain happier. For me, listening to music while doing boring tasks is something that’s very helpful.

More generally, I think the key to dealing with ADHD-related boredom is to figure out what’s really interesting to you (this part can take a little exploring) and then structure your life to do those things as much as possible – including while you’re doing the things that are boring!

What are some other healthy or unhealthy ways of dealing with boredom? Please share your experiences!