Bipolar Support Groups.com blog

Inspiration has been linked with people at risk of developing bipolar disorder for the first time in a study led by Lancaster University.

For generations, artists, musicians, poets and writers have described personal experiences of mania and depression, highlighting the unique association between creativity and bipolar disorder – experiences which are backed up by recent research. But, until now, the specific links between inspiration – the generation of ideas that form the basis of creative work – and bipolar disorder has received little attention.

New research by Professor by Steven Jones and Dr Alyson Dodd, of Lancaster University, and Dr June Gruber at Yale University, has shown people at higher risk for developing bipolar disorder consistently report stronger experiences of inspiration than those at lower risk.

The paper ‘Development and Validation of a New Multidimensional Measure of Inspiration: Associations with Risk for Bipolar Disorder’, published in PLOS One this week, found a specific link between those people who found their source of inspiration within themselves and risk for bipolar disorder.

Professor Jones, co-director of Lancaster University’s Spectrum Centre, said: “It appears that the types of inspiration most related to bipolar vulnerability are those which are self-generated and linked with strong drive for success.

“Understanding more about inspiration is important because it is a key aspect of creativity which is highly associated with mental health problems, in particular bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder highly value creativity as a positive aspect of their condition. This is relevant to clinicians, as people with bipolar disorder may be unwilling to engage with treatments and therapies which compromise their creativity.”

As part of the study, 835 undergraduate students were recruited to complete online questionnaires from both Yale University in the U.S. and Lancaster University in the U.K.

They were asked to complete a questionaire which measured their bipolar risk using a widely-used and well-validated 48-item measure which captures episodic shifts in emotion, behaviour, and energy called The Hypomanic Personality Scale (HPS).

They also completed a new questionnaire developed by the team which was designed to explore beliefs about inspiration, in particular the sources of inspiration – whether individuals thought it came from within themselves, from others or the wider environment. This measure was called the the EISI (External and Internal Sources of Inspiration) measure.

The students who scored highly for a risk of bipolar also consistently scored more highly than the others for levels of inspiration and for inspiration which they judged to have come from themselves.

Researchers say, although this pattern was consistent, the effect sizes were relatively modest so, although inspiration and bipolar risk are linked, it is important to explore other variables to get a fuller picture and to conduct further research with individuals with a clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

The research team is currently inviting UK-based individuals with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder to take part in an online survey exploring associations between inspiration, mood and recovery.

on line all diagnosis mental health support community @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

The benefits of incorporating approaches from positive psychology into existing understandings of mental health problems have recently been promoted by several policy development in UK.

However, the research in this area is still very limited. The aim of the study was to develop the evidence for a brief intervention that targets goal-setting and planning skills (GAP) to improve well-being.

A total of 82 service users were recruited through a large mental health trust in the Greater London area.

A cross-over design was used, with participants initially randomly allocated to either the intervention or a waiting-list control group.

Participants allocated to the waiting-list condition were offered the intervention after they had completed their measures as controls and follow-up measures were taken from all participants 1 month after completing the intervention.

The initial intervention group consisted of 11 males and 11 females with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 8 bipolar disorder, 4 mood disorder and 1 other. The control group consisted of 15 males and 19 females with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 7 bipolar disorder, 9 mood disorder and 3 other.

The groups did not differ significantly on any demographic or clinical variables.

Outcome measures were: positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), satisfaction with life (SWLS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) and a measure of outcome expectancy and efficacy for goals (OutEff).

At post treatment, the GAP group were significantly higher on SWLS and OutEff than controls and significantly lower on NA.

PA showed a trend to be higher and BHS showed no effect.

At follow up with all participants receiving GAP, SWLS, OutEff, PA and BHS all showed improved scores, but NA no longer showed any benefit.

According to the authors, the findings support the value to users of mental health services of interventions that are not symptom focused, but rather focused on enhancing positive aspects of people’s experience.

on line any mental health support group @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

The benefits of incorporating approaches from positive psychology into existing understandings of mental health problems have recently been promoted by several policy development in UK.

However, the research in this area is still very limited. The aim of the study was to develop the evidence for a brief intervention that targets goal-setting and planning skills (GAP) to improve well-being.

A total of 82 service users were recruited through a large mental health trust in the Greater London area.

A cross-over design was used, with participants initially randomly allocated to either the intervention or a waiting-list control group.

Participants allocated to the waiting-list condition were offered the intervention after they had completed their measures as controls and follow-up measures were taken from all participants 1 month after completing the intervention.

The initial intervention group consisted of 11 males and 11 females with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 8 bipolar disorder, 4 mood disorder and 1 other. The control group consisted of 15 males and 19 females with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 7 bipolar disorder, 9 mood disorder and 3 other.

The groups did not differ significantly on any demographic or clinical variables.

Outcome measures were: positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), satisfaction with life (SWLS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) and a measure of outcome expectancy and efficacy for goals (OutEff).

At post treatment, the GAP group were significantly higher on SWLS and OutEff than controls and significantly lower on NA.

PA showed a trend to be higher and BHS showed no effect.

At follow up with all participants receiving GAP, SWLS, OutEff, PA and BHS all showed improved scores, but NA no longer showed any benefit.

According to the authors, the findings support the value to users of mental health services of interventions that are not symptom focused, but rather focused on enhancing positive aspects of people’s experience.

online any mental health disorder support group @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

In a study of crimes committed by people with serious mental disorders, only 7.5 percent were directly related to symptoms of mental illness, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers analyzed 429 crimes committed by 143 offenders with three major types of mental illness and found that 3 percent of their crimes were directly related to symptoms of major depression, 4 percent to symptoms of schizophrenia disorders and 10 percent to symptoms of bipolar disorder.

“When we hear about crimes committed by people with mental illness, they tend to be big headline-making crimes so they get stuck in people’s heads,” said lead researcher Jillian Peterson, PhD. “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, not criminal and not dangerous.”

The study was conducted with former defendants of a mental health court in Minneapolis. The participants completed a two-hour interview about their criminal history and mental health symptoms, covering an average of 15 years. The study, published online in the APA journal Law and Human Behavior, may be the first to analyze the connection between crime and mental illness symptoms for offenders over an extended period of their lives, said Peterson, a psychology professor at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn.

The study didn’t find any predictable patterns linking criminal conduct and mental illness symptoms over time. Two-thirds of the offenders who had committed crimes directly related to their mental illness symptoms also had committed unrelated crimes for other reasons, such as poverty, unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse, according to the research. “Is there a small group of people with mental illness committing crimes again and again because of their symptoms? We didn’t find that in this study,” Peterson said.

In the United States, more than 1.2 million people with mental illness are incarcerated in jails or prisons, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. People with mental illnesses also are on probation or parole at two to four times the rate for the general population.

In addition to interviews with offenders, the researchers reviewed criminal history and social worker files to help rate crimes based on their association with symptoms of schizophrenia disorders (hallucinations and delusions), bipolar disorder (impulsivity and risk-taking behavior) or major depression (hopelessness and suicidal thoughts). The ratings were: no relationship between mental illness symptoms and the crime, mostly unrelated, mostly related or directly related.

A crime could be rated as mostly unrelated or mostly related to mental illness symptoms if those symptoms contributed to the cause of the crime but weren’t solely responsible for it. For example, an offender with schizophrenia who was agitated because he heard voices earlier in the day later got into a bar fight, but he wasn’t hearing voices at the time of the altercation, so the crime was categorized as mostly related.

When the directly related and mostly related categories were combined, the percentage of crimes attributed to mental illness symptoms increased from 7.5 percent to 18 percent, or less than one in five of the crimes analyzed in the study. Of crimes committed by participants with bipolar disorder, 62 percent were directly or mostly related to symptoms, compared with 23 percent for schizophrenia and 15 percent for depression. Some participants may have described their mood as “manic” during a crime even though they could have just been angry or abusing drugs or alcohol, so the percentage of crimes attributed to bipolar disorder may be inflated, Peterson said.

Almost two-thirds of the study participants were male, with an average age of 40. They were evenly divided between white and black offenders (42 percent each, 16 percent other races), and 85 percent had substance abuse disorders. The study did not include offenders with serious violent offenses because the mental health court did not adjudicate those crimes, but the participants did describe other violent crimes they had committed. The study also did not examine how substance abuse interacted with mental illness to influence criminal behavior.

The researchers said programs designed to reduce recidivism for mentally ill offenders should be expanded beyond mental health treatment to include cognitive-behavioral treatment about criminal thinking, anger management and other behavioral issues. Programs to address basic needs also are essential to reduce recidivism for all offenders after incarceration, including drug treatment and housing and employment support, Peterson said.

on line “any” mental health support group @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

Researchers have identified mutations in genes that control epigenetic regulation, which may contribute to both schizophrenia and autism.

Schizophrenia affects about 1% of the adult population. Currently, schizophrenia can only be diagnosed by observing behavior and measuring the duration of the symptoms and functional impairment. There is little biological understanding of the disease, which has presented a barrier in developing more precise diagnosis and more effective treatments.

As schizophrenia can be inherited and because genomic technologies have vastly improved in recent years, research has now turned to investigating the genetic risk factors for the condition.

Previous research in this area has provided estimates for about a quarter of the genetic contribution to schizophrenia risk, and has revealed a genetic risk overlap with some other psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder.

Also, past research has found that some genetic variants are implicated in autism, intellectual disability and seizure disorder, as well as schizophrenia.

To further explore this link, and as part of a collaboration between Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (CSHL) in New York, a team of researchers performed genetic sequencing on 171 Irish people who have at least one schizophrenic family member.

New genetic mutations identified

Analyzing the sequences, the team identified new genetic mutations that were present in people with schizophrenia, but not in their unaffected parents. This means that the mutations were new and not inherited.

DNA under a magnifying glass
The team identified new genetic mutations that were present in people with schizophrenia but not in their unaffected parents. This means that the mutations were new and not inherited.

First author, Shane McCarthy of CSHL, says: “We found that these types of mutations occurred more common than expected in people with schizophrenia and are likely to have functional consequences.”

“Such things can happen by chance, and we are all likely to carry a small number of apparently damaging mutations with no obvious health consequences,” senior author, Trinity College’s Prof. Aiden Corvin, told Medical News Today.

However, Prof. Corvin, further explains:

“Two things were of interest in this study, first that the genes where this was happening (AUTS2, CDH8, HUWE1) had already been implicated in autism and intellectual disability. When we tested whether this was a chance clustering we found this to be highly unlikely. Second, the genes appear to be involved in the same process, which is to control how DNA is used, or expressed as proteins. So they seem to be regulatory.”

What this means is that the genes have a common function – called chromatin modification – in regulating how other genes function. Prof. Corvin thinks that chromatin modification “may be an important molecular mechanism in explaining how developmental disorders of this type emerge.”

He adds that this process can be targeted by some treatments, so the team’s goal now is to further investigate this at a cellular level.

“I believe that treatments will emerge which target the underlying molecular problem,” he says, “rather than is the case now, the clinical diagnosis of autism or schizophrenia.”

Prof. Corvin concludes:

“This is a really exciting finding as it suggests that neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, which hitherto have been seen as different diseases may involve common underlying disease mechanisms. This may have implications in the future for how we conceptualize and treat these conditions.”

In 2013, Medical News Today reported on a study published in The Lancet that found four risk gene mutations common to bipolar disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, autism, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia

on line mental health support group @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

Use of antipsychotic medication has been linked to a significantly reduced risk of psychiatric patients committing violent crime, according to new research published in The Lancet. The study also records an association between mood-stabilizing drugs for people with bipolar disorder and a reduced rate of violent crime.

People with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are most likely to use antipsychotic treatments such as clozapine or risperidone, or mood-stabilizing drugs such as lithium and carbamazepine. These increasingly popular drugs are known to put psychiatric patients at less risk of relapse and rehospitalization.

However, there has been little research examining how these drugs influence potential adverse outcomes in the community, such as violent behavior.

Violent behavior, the new study notes, is one of the most important adverse outcomes for patients with psychiatric disorders. Previous research has shown that the relative risk of violence against others is four times higher in schizophrenia patients than in the general population.

The risk of interpersonal violence in people with bipolar disorder, meanwhile, is “substantially increased” when the patient is misusing substances.

Studying the influence drugs have on violence risk is difficult, because aggressive patients are less likely to be recruited or give consent to be in a study, and they are less likely to remain enrolled in a study than patients without violent traits. As such, the evidence for antipsychotic drugs to prevent violence in patients is described as “weak or inconclusive.”

medication capsules
When participants were using their medication, there was a 45% fall in violent crime among people taking antipsychotics and a 24% decrease in violence among patients using mood stabilizers.

For the new study, researchers in the UK and Sweden analyzed the psychiatric diagnoses and any subsequent criminal convictions of more than 80,000 patients recorded in Swedish health registries. This group were all prescribed either antipsychotic and/or mood-stabilizing medication at some point between 2006 and 2009.

Over the 3-year study period, 6.5% (2,657) of the men and 1.4% (604) of the women in the study were convicted of a violent crime.

Importantly, the researchers compared the periods when individual participants were not using medication with when they were.

Analyzing the results, the study found that when participants were using their medication, there was a 45% fall in violent crime among people taking antipsychotics and a 24% decrease in violence among patients using mood stabilizers.

Antipsychotics and mood stabilizers are often prescribed together, but the study did not find any further decrease in violence when the drugs were combined. Also, the researchers found that mood stabilizers were only associated with reductions in violent crime among male bipolar disorder patients.

Study can prove link between antipsychotics and reduced violence but not cause

The study was not able to make any conclusions about causality from their findings, because the researchers did not investigate how the associations between medication and violent crime are mediated.

For instance, patients with psychiatric disorders who are using medication may receive more support from family or carers, and this could make them less likely to commit violent crime, rather than the effects of the medication itself.

However, the authors point out that this would also mean that people who take mood stabilizers are equally less likely to commit violent crime as people who take antipsychotics, since they would both receive a similar level of support. Instead, the study found that people who took antipsychotics were significantly less likely to engage in violent crime than those who only took mood stabilizers.

Lead researcher Dr. Seena Fazel, of Oxford University in the UK, concludes:

on line mental health support group @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

Hi all,

I just wanted to give you a recent update on my group we have now added “awards” once you get to know people which is quick everyone is empathetic and very much greetings, you can send a pretty cool pic and a note to someone and it is added to the signature just to send something positive:)

We also have Blogs to share with group, for your eyes only, or just to share with friends, a gallery to share your life’s happenings, a chat room, a chat topic and many, many more on forum board for all diagnosis, an arcade to play, and a photo shop much more always to come check it out it is always having more features added it is a Lifetime SSA FREE membership what do you have to lose…. Just go to http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co and click “sign up” in the top right corner

Peace hope to see you there Jan

Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, investigating the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders have found that patients with these disorders have a reduced brain volume in the hippocampus.

The pathophysiology of psychotic disorders has been studied for more than a hundred years but still remains unclear.

Previous research has suggested that alterations in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and entorhinal cortex are indicators of schizophrenia.

The extent to which these alterations are found in patients with other psychotic disorders has been inconclusive, however. In bipolar disorder, for instance, most studies show either little or no change in the MTL.

Some research also found no reduction in the hippocampal volumes of patients with bipolar disorder who were taking lithium.

To investigate this further, the Harvard researchers – who publish their findings in JAMA Psychiatry – conducted a neuroimaging study in healthy volunteers and patients with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and psychotic bipolar disorder.

Consistent with previous research, the MTL appeared reduced in volume in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, but not in patients with psychotic bipolar disorder.

diagram depicting the location of the hippocampus in the brain
This study is one of the largest and most technologically sophisticated to analyze the role the hippocampus plays in psychotic disorders.

But the researchers did find volume reductions in the hippocampus across all three groups of patients with psychotic disorders, compared with the healthy volunteers.

Each psychotic disorder also demonstrated hippocampal alterations specific to that condition.

However, although the correlations between psychotic symptoms and reduced volumes in different areas of the hippocampus were statistically significant and consistent with other recent research, the authors admit that the association in their study is still weak.

This could be because there was not much variation in psychotic symptoms in their study participants, as the patients were stable and using antipsychotic medication.

“Yes, the association between hippocampal volume is weak,” study author Dr. Matcheri S. Keshavan told Medical News Today. “It is possible that measures of hippocampal physiology and neurochemistry are more sensitive in detecting relationships to clinical features such as psychosis.”

The researchers also found the reductions in hippocampal volume to be associated with the severity of psychosis, declarative memory and overall cognitive performance.

Different variations may account for different symptoms. For instance, although the hippocampus is involved in encoding new memories – and psychotic disorders are thought to arise from an inability to discriminate between present and past memory experiences – different areas of the hippocampus may play distinct roles in encoding or retrieving memories.

Further investigation of unmedicated patients and bipolar subtypes is required

As the patients in this study were mostly medicated with antipsychotics, the authors suggest that future studies should examine the hippocampal alterations in patients before and after beginning treatment with antipsychotics.

Also, this study did not include patients with non-psychotic bipolar disorder, so the researchers are unable to generalize their findings to patients with this condition.

But because this study assessed 549 patients with psychotic disorders (including 188 psychotic bipolar disorder patients) as well as 336 healthy volunteer subjects, the researchers think that the relatively large sample size lends credibility to their findings. They suggest this addresses the previous inconsistencies in smaller studies looking at hippocampal alterations in psychotic bipolar disorder patients.

Also, compared with other research, this study used the most sophisticated technology for analyzing the hippocampus to date.

Explaining why the Harvard study is important, Dr. Keshavan told us:

“This study demonstrated the ability to investigate smaller substructures within the hippocampus in a large sample of individuals with a spectrum of psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorders. Our observations suggest that changes in the hippocampus, a key brain region related to how we create, store, process and retrieve memories, may not be confined to schizophrenia alone, but are seen across a spectrum of psychotic disorders.”

on line mental health community @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

Bipolar disorder (BD) is among the 10 most burdensome medical conditions, according to the World Health Organization. The disorder is known for its dramatic highs of extreme euphoria, racing thoughts and decreased need for sleep, as well as its profound lows of sadness and despair.

Because it is also associated with a heightened risk of suicide, substance abuse, hypersexuality, familial discord and aggressive behaviour, BD affects not just those suffering from it, but also those around them – especially their children.

While previous research has shown that children of parents with BD are at a greater risk of developing psychiatric disorders, the psychosocial implications of being raised by parents with BD has been ignored – until now.

A new study conducted by Mark Ellenbogen, a psychology professor at Concordia University, and Rami Nijjar, a graduate student, reveals that children of parents with BD are more susceptible to psychosocial problems, most notably risky sexual behaviour. The study was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Using a longitudinal approach, the researchers followed children of parents with bipolar disorder and children from families without mental disorder from ages four to 12 until early adulthood.

They assessed:
◾ Suicidal behaviour
◾ Self-harm
◾ Smoking
◾ Delinquent or criminal behaviour
◾ Risky sexual behaviour (sexual activity before age 16, unprotected sex, abortions)

For both genders, the researchers saw the biggest group difference in the last category, which can be seen as an extension of other tendencies.

“Risky sexual behaviour falls along the spectrum of general externalizing behaviours, like delinquency and aggression. We know it is predicted by externalizing behaviours in middle childhood,” says Ellenbogen, who is also a member of Concordia’s Centre for Research in Human Development.

What can concerned parents with BD do?

To prevent the offspring of parents with BD from engaging in risky behaviour, doctors need to look beyond the patient and give the entire family, including the children, the coping skills they need to live with the disorder. “In psychiatry, we tend to treat the patient – there’s never any evaluation of their family or kids or partners. Across my career, I’ve been saying that’s the wrong way of looking at the issues,” Ellenbogen says. “The children of BD patients are at high risk of developing a number of psychiatric and psychosocial problems. We need to think about interventions that will work for all members of the family.”

A new pilot prevention program that is open to the public

Ellenbogen is now working to establish the first prevention program for children of parents with BD. Entitled Reducing Unwanted Stress in the Home (RUSH), the intervention will consist of 12 sessions of group therapy, with one group to teach children effective coping strategies and another to teach their parents the skills to manage stress, family discord and children. The pilot program, open to families in the Montreal area, will launch this summer. It will operate in groups of five to six families.

Ellenbogen and his team will monitor the behaviour, hormone levels and mental health of the children before and after the intervention in order to assess the effectiveness of the RUSH program.

“These parents need additional help in organizing family life, parenting, dealing with spouses and coping with stress,” Ellenbogen says. “The ultimate goal is to reduce the levels of stress in the family, which we believe will then reduce negative outcomes in their children.”

on line support community mental health @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co

Researchers from Tufts have gained new insight into a protein associated with bipolar disorder. The study, published in Science Signaling, reveals that calcium channels in resting neurons activate the breakdown of Sp4, which belongs to a class of proteins called transcription factors that regulate gene expression.

This study, led by Grace Gill, identifies a molecular mechanism regulating Sp4 activity. Her previous research had determined that reduced levels of Sp4 in the brain are associated with bipolar disorder. Her work overall suggests that misregulation of Sp4 may contribute to the development of bipolar disorder.

“Understanding how transcription factors like Sp4 are regulated may provide us with ways to change neuronal gene expression to treat symptoms of mental illness, including bipolar disorder,” said Gill, Ph.D., an associate professor in the department of developmental, molecular & chemical biology at Tufts University School of Medicine and member of the neuroscience; genetics; and cell, molecular and developmental biology program faculties at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts.

The main goal of the study was to determine whether a specific type of calcium channel – store-operated calcium channels – drive the breakdown of Sp4 protein. Along the way, however, the research team also discovered that signaling by these calcium channels is most active in the so-called “off” or “resting” phase.

“The calcium-signaling regulation of Sp4 during the resting phase was unexpected and suggests two things: resting neurons are more active than we had thought and calcium signaling influences gene expression in both active and resting neurons,” Gill said.

“We tend to think about cells being “on” or “off,” but the reality of the biology is far more complex. Cells are always busy,” she continued.

In neurons – cells that can be stimulated by electrical signals – transcription factors are regulated by calcium entry that is initiated when the cell depolarizes. Depolarization occurs when the overall voltage of the cell is increased. This is the “on” or “active” state for the cell. In contrast, when the cell’s voltage is decreased, hyperpolarization occurs. This is called the “off” or “resting” phase for the cell.

Store-operated calcium channels (SOCC) are a type of calcium channel found in all cells. These channels are activated when stores of calcium inside the cell are reduced. A calcium sensor called stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1) is responsible for calcium entry into the cell through SOCCs.

To determine whether STIM1 controlled Sp4 breakdown, the researchers reduced STIM1 levels in cells and measured Sp4 levels. A control group of cells contained normal levels of STIM1, while a comparison group contained reduced STIM1 levels. Both cell groups were placed in a solution for 60 minutes to place them into their “resting” state.

The cells in the control group displayed significantly less Sp4 when at rest while, in contrast, cells in the comparison group – those with reduced STIM1 levels – had higher Sp4 levels.

“These findings provide evidence that STIM1 is required for the breakdown of Sp4 when the cell hyperpolarizes, which tell us the presence of STIM1 directly influences Sp4 levels in neurons,” said first author, Jasmin Lalonde, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in Gill’s lab and now a research fellow at the Center for Human Genetic Research and the department of neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

This is ongoing work by Gill to understand the role of Sp4 in bipolar disorder. Some of Gill’s previous research, performed in collaboration with researchers from Spain, found that Sp4 levels were lower in two areas of the brain in postmortem samples from patients with bipolar disorder. In a study published in May of this year in the Journal of Neurochemistry, she and her team determined that one mechanism of Sp4 regulation is a glutamate receptor called the NMDA receptor.

on line mental support community @ http://www.bipolar4lifesupport.co